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Eyes Never Lie

Page 246

by Evie James

Good, she needed the sleep, and I needed to find out what the hell had happened while I’d been chained beneath the Salvadoran coffee farm.

After dressing, I eased the bedroom door closed behind me and headed toward the main cabin.

Nik was focused on his laptop. Rory sat across from him with a tablet resting on one thigh, while Gabriel occupied another chair with a drink in his hand. Lucian stood at the bar, pouring whiskey into a glass.

Four heads turned when I walked in.

Nik’s eyes traveled over me once. “You look considerably less tense. And by the sound of it, Isabella has been thoroughly distracted from her panic.”

“Fuck off.”

Gabriel laughed into his drink.

Lucian held the whiskey out to me. “Take this before he gets worse.”

“Finally, someone useful.”

I accepted the glass and lowered myself into an empty seat. My ribs gave a dull protest, a reminder of Marcela and the men who’d helped her—and the accounts I still had to settle with anyone who’d survived.

Lucian noticed and didn’t comment, which made him the only man on this plane with the good sense not to give me shit.

“She asleep?” he asked.

“Aye. Out cold.”

“That’s good. After everything you two have been through, I’m sure she needed it.”

I took a swallow of whiskey and let the burn settle into my chest.

For the first time since Marcela drove that needle into my neck, I was surrounded by my own men, headed home, and finally safe.

I’d never doubted they would come for me, but a few days in Ciro’s chair could make a man question damn near anything.

I rolled the glass between my palms. “All right. Tell me how badly I fucked up your week.”

Rory leaned back. “How much time do we have?”

I rubbed my thumb along the side of the glass. “Fair enough. I’m sorry I put all of you through this.”

Nik’s expression sobered as his gaze moved over the cut on my face. Of everyone on the plane, he understood exactly what being cuffed to a chair could cost a man.

“How about I give you the short version? You were less than two minutes ahead of us in Jersey.”

My hand tightened around the glass.

Lucian sat beside me. “Rory breached the house when you didn’t respond to his message.”

“The place was empty by then,” Rory added. “Your phone was still there, exactly where that bitch wanted it. And the exterior feeds showed no one leaving.”

“She took me through the basement.”

“We figured that out.”

Nik turned the laptop enough for me to see an aerial image of the New Jersey neighborhood.

“The tracker didn’t fail. You went somewhere no implant can reliably transmit from. GPS is useless underground, and anything small enough to live under your skin has limited power. Yours sends an encrypted signal to our receivers, but it can’t punch through concrete and earth simply because I want it to. The moment they took you below the house, you went dark. The moment they brought you back above ground, we had you again.”

“So even your expensive paranoia has limits.”