Page 44 of Howl Lotta Love

Tucker found them an hour later, standing near the wreckage with a recovered phone bagged in evidence plastic, his expression grim in the way that meant the night wasn’t finished handing out bad news.

“Pulled this off one of the mercenaries. Damaged, but I got one message off it before the drive corrupted.” He held the screen out, the recovered text glowing pale against the dark.

Board meeting moved. Eliminate the accountant before she arrives.

Emma read it twice, the smoke-raw ache in her chest turning colder by the second, the words settling into her bones with a weight the smoke in her lungs hadn’t put there.

Roman, reading over Tucker’s shoulder, went very quiet—a stillness that sat wrong on a man who filled every silence by default, the sort that meant he was already three moves into planning an operation nobody had authorized yet. “That’s not a threat. That’s a schedule.”

“They’re not done,” Emma said.

“No,” Jace agreed, already reaching for her hand, his grip closing around hers like he had no intention of letting a single inch of distance open up between them again tonight. “Not even close.”

Gerri, still holding her ruined shoes in one hand, looked out at the smoldering remains of the archive building with an expression that had gone strange and dangerously calm. “Well, if Victor Kane wants a war, I do hope he’s prepared for the version of me that doesn’t send fruit baskets afterward. He picked the wrong charity to set on fire, and he’s going to discover that in excruciating detail.”

“That’s the spirit,” Roman said, and for once, nobody laughed.

Emma looked down at the deeds still clutched in her arms, ash-smudged but intact, two decades of proof that had nearly cost her everything to save. Somewhere behind her, sirens still wailed as the last of the fire trucks worked the storage buildings into submission, and somewhere upstate, past all of it, sat the pack land Jace refused to lose an inch of. The scale of what they were truly fighting had stopped feeling abstract somewhere around the moment the ceiling came down on top of her, and she doubted it would ever go back to feeling abstract again.

“We need everything on that board member,” she said, quiet, mind already racing past the smoke still sitting heavy in her lungs toward the next move. “Whoever it is, they’ve had access for years. That’s not a small betrayal. It’s a wound that goes all the way to the bone, and it’s going to take real time to heal.”

“We’ll find them,” Jace said, and the certainty in his voice left no room for doubt. “Whoever they are, they’re not getting close to you again. Not while I’m still breathing, and not after either, if I have any say in the matter.”

THIRTEEN

JACE

“Confidential board meeting, Kane Strategic Holdings, tomorrow at eleven.” Tucker turned his monitor around, a floor plan already pulled up beside a guest list half-redacted with question marks. “Buried in a scheduling system I wasn’t supposed to find. No public record, no press release, nothing.”

“That’s the meeting where Kane genuinely runs things.” Emma leaned over Jace’s shoulder, close enough that he caught the smell of her shampoo under the coffee she’d been living on for two days straight, and brushed her mouth against his jaw without breaking her focus on the screen. “The gala circuit is theater. This is the real boardroom.”

“We need eyes inside.” Jace kept his arm around her waist, an anchor neither of them commented on anymore, and dropped a second kiss to the crown of her head for good measure, because he could and because he’d stopped needing a reason weeks ago. “Cover story?”

“Wealthy engaged couple attending a charity luncheon three floors down.” Tucker pulled up the building directory. “The Kane Foundation is hosting a benefit lunch same building, same day. Nobody questions an engaged couple wandering a few floors off course looking for the restroom.”

“I’ll get you into the elevator bank. Getting past the board floor’s security is your problem.” Tucker didn’t look thrilled about handing over that exact problem. “Once you’re in range, I can compromise their presentation system remotely and pull audio. Documents are a different problem. No camera in that room means no way to get eyes on paper without somebody standing over it.”

“That’s fine. I’ll get the documents,” Emma said.

“You say that like it’s simple.”

“It is simple. I walk in, I photograph what matters, I walk out. The hard part is timing, and timing’s my specialty.” She tapped the floor plan, eyes already tracing a route out that didn’t exist on the paper yet. “Walk me through the security rotation on that floor.”

“Heavier than any financial meeting needs. Two guards per hallway, cameras on a closed loop I can spoof for about ninety seconds before the system flags the gap.” Tucker’s jaw tightened. “Ninety seconds isn’t a lot of runway.”

“Ninety seconds is plenty, if nobody wastes any of it.”

Gerri breezed into the house without knocking, a garment bag over one arm and an agenda already forming behind her eyes. “I’m coming too.”

“Absolutely not.” Jace kept his eyes on the floor plan.

“Again, I wasn’t asking. I was informing.” She hung the garment bag on the nearest chair, already savoring an argument nobody had actually agreed to have. “Two of Kane’s trustees sit on my hospital board. I’ll host an impromptu luncheon on the seventh floor and keep them so thoroughly distracted they won’t think about board business until Thursday. Consider it a professional courtesy.”

“That’s reckless.”

“That’s Tuesday.” Gerri straightened his collar with two brisk, uninvited tugs. “Wear the navy suit. It photographs better in case anyone takes pictures of your arrest.”

“Nobody’s getting arrested.”