JULIUS REACHED FORWARD and tightened the strap of my bulletproof vest. I sucked in a breath. “This isn’t supposed to be a high-risk mission,” I reminded him, rolling my shoulders to give myself some more breathing room.
“Anything that involves a high-profile target comes with a greater risk,” Julius said.
“But Malik isn’t a target.”
“Malik is the target. We might not be killing him, but we are collecting information from him. With any luck, this operation will go smoothly, but we have to be prepared if it doesn’t.”
I nodded, glancing around the posh hotel room three hours from our usual stomping grounds. Julius had been the crew’s leader for years, and his strategies had never led the guys astray. I could trust him on this.
He was the one who’d found out about our current opportunity. Damien Malik had been invited to speak at a political convention being held in the convention center next door to the hotel. Malik and all the other participants were staying here, which gave us the perfect opportunity to dig for information more directly than we’d had the chance to before.
Garrison had sweet-talked the front desk staff until he’d wrangled us the room right over Malik’s. Now it was just a matter of making a quick trip down.
“Stay alert, and I’m sure it’ll all go fine,” Julius said, giving me one last onceover. “Talon and I will be keeping an eye on the convention—we’ll let you know if there’s anything to be concerned about.”
“Right,” I said. We’d determined that Malik and his team should be busy until well into the evening, no time to stop back at his room unless there was a sudden deviation from schedule.
I turned toward Blaze, who was already strapped into his harness beyond the open doors to the balcony. “Let’s do this.”
He grinned at me, the breeze ruffling his hair. “Ready when you are.”
As I walked over to fit my own harness around me, Julius and Talon headed out. Garrison watched them go with a subtle frown and poked at something on his phone. He tipped his head toward us, focusing on Blaze rather than me. “Everything still looks good from my vantage point.”
The cool air raised goosebumps on my arms, but the adrenaline starting to thrum through my veins drowned out any discomfort. I grasped the rappelling line, gave it a testing tug, and motioned to Blaze.
We lowered ourselves toward the balcony below in tandem. I knew from experience that my stomach would accept the trip a lot better if I avoided looking at the fifteen-story drop below my feet. I could have made the drop in a few seconds, but I restrained myself to Blaze’s less swift pace in case he ran into any trouble. He handled the descent with the obvious skill of someone who’d done it before, but clearly he hadn’t made as much a habit of it in past jobs as I had.
“That’s better,” he said with a rush of an exhalation when his feet touched the balcony railing.
I laughed softly under my breath and sank down in front of the balcony doors. It only took a little prodding and a few twists of my picks to deal with the simple lock. No one expected intruders to be coming from this direction, especially not fourteen floors up.
Leaving our gear attached so we were prepared for a hasty getaway, we slipped into the dark hotel room, our ropes trailing behind us like massive tails. Blaze immediately spotted the laptop on the desk. He opened it, his eyes darting across the screen as it blinked to life.
I took my position by the front door of the hotel room, listening for any sounds of unexpected arrivals while watching Blaze work his magic. He was the one handling most of this mission. I was just here to keep the hacker safe.
Even though technically all he was doing was typing, he was something to look at. He maneuvered that keyboard like I might have a knife or a gun, his gloved fingers flying with brutal efficiency, his gaze fixed on the screen with total intentness. When he broke past the security, he let out a muted cheer of victory before diving farther in with a sharp grin.
He rarely came across as vicious in his everyday life—not like Julius and Talon, who exuded physical menace with every move they made, or Garrison, who could take a weaker person’s head off with a verbal barb. But Blaze clearly had the same killer instinct. How could he not, as part of the Chaos Crew?
He knew what he did well, and he accomplished it with feral intensity.
As I watched him in the partial darkness, the stream of sunlight from the displaced curtains catching on his pale red hair and determined expression, a tendril of wanting unfurled low in my belly. When he wasn’t being flirty—when he didn’t remind me of that time that I longed more than anything to forget—I couldn’t help wondering what it’d be like to have his attention focused on me with the same intensity. To have those fingers moving over my body with all that energy and passion…
I shook myself mentally. This wasn’t a good moment to be dreaming about hooking up with another member of the crew. If that was something he ended up wanting too, we’d figure it out some other time.
Maybe it was understandable that my sexual urges were going into overdrive when I’d gone so long without the opportunity to fully satisfy them, but I hadn’t lost my sense of self-control.
I was being careful not to break Blaze’s concentration, but when he leaned back for a moment with a cock of his head, I let myself speak. “Have you found anything?”
“Nothing that would connect him to you so far.” He clicked open a few more documents and scanned them. “Malik has his fingers in a lot of pies, but I’m not seeing what would have drawn your trainer’s interest to him or anything that ties him to the household.”
“And no hints of anything criminal either?”
“There’ve been occasional murmurs about misconduct in the past, but either they weren’t true or he’s very good at hushing people up. I haven’t come across anything on here that’d point to wrongdoing right now.” He glanced over at me. “Honestly, it wouldn’t be surprising for the guy to have had a few unstable moments where he got in a bit of political trouble earlier in his career, but I wouldn’t read much into that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Back when he was first making a name for himself, one of his kids died, very young—a car accident that killed her and the nanny. That could throw anyone off kilter. And besides, a lot of people feel he’s a little too harsh on crime, so for him to be involved in a criminal organization at the same time…” He rubbed his mouth, frowning.
A vague flicker of memory returned to me. “He’s got some new bill he’s been pushing, doesn’t he?”
Blaze nodded. “He’s advocating for more severe sentencing across the board as well as increasing the usage of convicted criminals in forced labor.”
“Maybe Noelle and whoever else she’s worked with saw him as an enemy, then.” I suggested. “They could have simply been keeping an eye on him.”
“Possibly. I’m not sure why she’d have felt the need to travel around going to his rallies in person for that. His activities are pretty well-publicized. She’d have found out more reading articles on the internet. So, maybe his supposed political stance is a really thorough cover-up for his real interests. Stranger things have happened.” He let out a huff of breath. “Well, I’ll download everything on here so I can do a more intensive search when we’ve got the time.”
He plugged a hard drive a little bigger than his hand into the side of the laptop and clicked a few more times. A progress bar appeared on the screen.
The bar was nearly full when footsteps reached my ears on the other side of the door, shuffling along the carpeted hallway. I would have assumed it was another hotel patron heading to a different room if not for the voices I heard a moment later.
“Did he say where in the room we’d find it?”
“Of course. You know Damien—everything in its place. He left the notepad on the table at the left side of the bed.”
Damien. My nerves jittered, and I leapt away from the door. “We have to go now,” I hissed under my breath.
Blaze’s eyes widened, but he didn’t let panic throw him off. The progress bar had just topped out. He tugged the hard drive free without a sound, closed the laptop, and sprinted across the room toward the balcony.
I ran after him, jerking the doors shut behind us. The curtain would hide us—but who knew if Malik’s staff would find some reason to come out here?
I yanked my rope taut in an instant. Blaze fumbled with his. Acting on instinct, I whipped myself into his arms.
“Hold me,” I whispered as the door at the other end of the room squeaked open. Blaze hesitated for a split-second but wrapped his arms around me before I had to repeat my command. I grasped the rope and hauled both of us up there with the strength of my arms.
A burn spread through my muscles—and through my torso where I was pressed tightly against Blaze’s lean body. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant sensation. When we reached the level of our own balcony, Blaze immediately rolled over the railing so he could release me, and some part of me regretted the loss of contact.
I leapt over the railing after him and hauled any remaining rope up out of view. I couldn’t hear anything from the balcony below. It didn’t sound like we’d been spotted.
Exhaling in relief, I glanced at Blaze. He gave no sign of having noticed how our closeness had affected me, though his own cheeks looked a bit flushed from the hasty escape.
“A tight one, but we made it,” he said, offering a fist for me to bump.
I couldn’t help smiling as I returned the gesture. “We make a good team.”
When we hurried into our own room, Garrison was pacing by the front door. “Nothing from Julius or Talon yet?” I asked him.
He shook his head, only catching my eyes briefly before diverting his attention. I braced for some of his usual snark, but nothing came. The exhilaration that’d rushed through me with our escape dulled.
I wished he’d start snarking at me like he used to. At least then I’d know things were normal between us. Something about our passionate interlude on the deck had thrown off the dynamic between us, and I didn’t know what to say to fix it. Especially when he seemed determined to interact with me as little as he could get away with while fulfilling our missions.
I might have tried to rile him up, but just then, Talon strode into the room. The urgency of his entrance hummed through the air.
“Malik’s talk got bumped to an earlier slot,” he said. “He’s going on in fifteen minutes. Dess, Julius wants you to come and see if you can spot anyone in the crowd or his staff you recognize.”
“Of course.” My pulse hitched. That’d always been part of the plan, but we hadn’t thought Malik would be giving his main speech until later today.
I hustled out of the room at Talon’s heels. He walked on swiftly and silently like the predator he was, but his lack of conversation didn’t niggle at me the way Garrison’s did. Talon was quiet most of the time—it was just how he was, nothing to do with me. He didn’t hesitate to meet my eyes, and once we were inside the convention center, he guided me through a staff-only doorway with a brief touch to my waist that showed no signs of discomfort.
I wasn’t sure if he was going to want any more passionate interludes, but his steady demeanor put me at ease.
He led me to a maintenance area and then a ladder that brought us high over the auditorium, near the lights. I peered down from the metal catwalk, letting my eyes adjust. We were far enough up that I didn’t think anyone would notice us through the thin slats in the walkway floor. Of course, it was hard for me to make out the faces below in much detail either.
Talon was prepared for that. He handed me a pair of binoculars. I shot him a smile in thanks and sprawled out on my stomach for the most comfortable viewing position from this angle.
“Where’s Julius?” I murmured.
“He’s keeping watch from below, just in case we’re made. Do you have a good enough view?”
“With the binoculars, no problem.”
I swept my amplified gaze over the audience, from the back to the stage and then in reverse, pausing just long enough here and there to fully absorb each group of figures. People sat in their seats, chatting amongst themselves and waiting for Malik, who I knew would be out soon.
I squirmed forward on my belly to lean my elbows over the edge, and Talon set a hand on my back as if to confirm my balance. There was nothing provocative about the touch, but it sent a pulse of warmth over my skin all the same. I glanced back at him. “Thanks. I’m okay.”
He nodded at me with the briefest hint of a smile, which was practically a manic grin where Talon was concerned. “Of course you are.” And all at once I was sure that even if he wasn’t the type to want to hash out his intimate encounters after the fact, he didn’t feel any regrets about what we’d shared either.
I couldn’t dwell on that enjoyable realization. From the growing enthusiasm in the voices traveling up to us, Malik should be arriving at any moment. He might simply be waiting for whatever notes he’d asked his aides to go back to his room to grab for him. When he showed up, the lights would probably dim over everything but the stage, and I’d hardly be able to make out anyone.
I continued my scan as quickly as I reasonably could. The seconds ticked by. Then, just before I tilted the binoculars onward, my attention snagged on a face that’d turned to the side, on the far side of the auditorium near the back. I zoomed in with the binoculars as far as I could go, and certainty reverberated through my chest.
“Talon,” I whispered. “There’s a man here who was talking with Noelle in one of the other photographs Blaze found with his search.”
At the same moment, the lights near us blinked out. Only a spotlight on the stage remained. The spot where the man had sat was swallowed in darkness.
Talon grunted and motioned to me. “We’d better get out of here. You’ll be able to point the guy you saw out in that picture?”
“Definitely.” I could already see the image in my mind’s eye, with the man walking just ahead of Noelle in a city park.
A cheer rose up, drowning out any other answer I might have given. Damien Malik had just walked on stage, his arm raised and his face beaming with a smile that could have lit the room all over again. My heart skipped a beat.
Was I looking at another of the household’s targets… or the very man who’d orchestrated my kidnapping for a secret dark agenda of his own?
To be more discreet, we left the convention in two cars, me with Julius and Talon, and Garrison and Blaze on their own. I hoped they wouldn’t end up biting each other’s heads off before they made it home, but at least Blaze had the search for the new mystery man to keep him busy. He was already analyzing the convention records when we left.
Julius turned on a classic rock station at a low volume, and those tunes filled the car as he drove. I leaned my head against the window and tried not to wonder too much about the politician I’d just watched greet his audience. Speculation wasn’t going to lead me anywhere. If there was evidence to tie Malik to the household or to me, Blaze would find it.
We’d been on the road only half an hour or so when Talon’s phone rang. He answered it on speaker. “What’s up, Garrison?”
“We have a problem,” he replied in a flat, terse tone that had my spine jerking straight. Whatever the issue was, it was serious.
“Are you and Blaze okay?” Julius asked.
“For now. But I just got a call from our client from the household job. I think it’s best if I just play it for you.”
“We’re ready.”
I wasn’t sure if I was, but I braced myself in my seat. It took a moment and a few clicks before a rough voice spilled through the phone, taut with anger.
“You might think you can play us for fools, but this isn’t a fucking game of Candyland, no matter what you seem to think. We know you have a young woman from the job site in your possession, and you need to turn her in before you’re in even worse violation of your contract. Otherwise, expect that she’ll be retrieved by whatever means necessary.”
