“I did. This is someone else.”
As soon as the words left his tongue, a female voice sounded from another part of the basement. “Hello? Who’s down here? Is it you, Arnie? I just wanted to let you know I’m finally wrapping up for the night and heading home.”
Ah, shit.
Jordana.
It wasn’t unusual for Nathan’s mate to put in long hours at the museum. Art was her passion, along with her devotion to the former assassin who captained the Order’s patrol team in Boston.
“I can’t find Louis or Max anywhere,” Jordana said as she approached the area of the vault. “Where is every—oh, my God.”
She stopped short on a gasp. Her beautiful face went slack with shock as her ocean-blue eyes took in the scene with one swift glance. “Rafe. What are you doing?”
“Get out of here.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to her, or to Cruz and the rest of the thieves surrounding him. All he knew was this was the worst scenario he could’ve imagined tonight.
He was friends with Jordana. To him, she was family, the blood-bonded mate of one of his best friends. And now she was staring at him in disbelief, in utter contempt.
He glanced away from her to glare at the gang. “I said, get the fuck out of here right now!”
Fish and Axel scrambled into motion. Shoving past a stunned Jordana with the wheeled hand trucks, they sped toward the freight elevator.
She watched them, then swung her outrage back at Rafe. “This is how low you’ve sunk? I can’t believe this. What’s happened to you, Rafe?”
“Jordana, just go. Please.”
Instead of obeying, she took a step inside the vault. Her breath grew rapid as anger began to replace her confusion and fear.
“She’s prettier than I expected, vampire.” Cruz leered, swaggering toward her with his gun in hand. “Maybe we ought to take her with us too.”
Jordana lifted her hand and the weapon flew out of his grasp. It clattered onto the floor several feet away.
Ocho made the next stupid move. The big man lunged for Jordana, but another flick of her hand sent all two-hundred-plus pounds of him sailing out of the vault as if he had wings. As soon as he had gotten up from the floor, he took off running after his comrades.
Cruz was only an instant behind him.
“You too,” Rafe muttered to Brinks when it was only the two of them left. “For fuck’s sake. Go.”
She didn’t budge. And he didn’t have time to argue with her.
The way Jordana’s fury was mounting, he was going to have a much bigger problem very soon. Not only from this female who was pure Atlantean, but from the assassin who was bonded to her by blood.
Because by now Nathan would have felt every spike in his mate’s emotional state. And there would be no stopping him from coming to her rescue, no matter where he might be.
“Jordana, calm down.”
It was a lame thing to say, but it was all he had. He wanted to explain everything, but he was still in play and unable to breach his commanders’ faith in him. And while he and the Breed female at his side had reached some kind of mutual dependence inside Cruz’s gang tonight, that didn’t mean he was ready to give her any added leverage over him.
Not that it mattered.
Jordana was looking at him like a stranger now, an enemy.
“Nathan told me you’d hooked up with some lowlife criminals. I didn’t want to believe it.”
Rafe swore under his breath, his reply tasting like bitter acid on his tongue. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry to disappoint.” He glanced at Brinks. “We need to go now.”
He took a step forward and was stopped by a pulse of powerful energy. It shoved him back on his heels.
Jordana’s hands were down at her sides, her fingers curled into loose fists. Light emanated from within her palms, growing stronger. Not merely light, Atlantean power.
Rafe grabbed Brinks by the wrist and tried to haul her past Jordana.
A bigger blast hit him, jolting his nervous system and knocking him flat on his ass.
“Rafe!” The sound of Brinks’s concerned shout penetrated the haze of his rattled skull.
He lifted his head and saw that Jordana’s hands were aglow now, her palms and fingers engulfed in bright halos of unearthly light.
Rafe tried to get up, but invisible chains held him down. He cursed, fighting to break loose from her power. It was no use. She was far stronger than he imagined. No doubt, her blood bond with Nathan had only enhanced her abilities.
He would be damn impressed if he wasn’t glued to the floor of the vault.
“Let him go.” Brinks’s cool demand shocked him. Her face was anything but calm. As she stared at Jordana, her bourbon eyes threw off amber sparks like a bonfire. The tips of her fangs gleamed like diamonds as her lip curled back on a snarl.
Jordana glanced at the other female, but the force of her energy didn’t relent. Not even a little.
Brinks didn’t give her a second chance.
She launched herself at Jordana with a speed that surpassed anything Rafe was capable of. One instant she was standing off to his side in the vault, the next she was planted in front of Jordana, seizing her by the shoulders.
Jordana made a strangled noise as Brinks’s hands locked on to her and didn’t let go.
“Don’t hurt her,” Rafe shouted, but he wasn’t sure Brinks was listening. And as hard as he tried, he couldn’t shake loose from the telekinetic force that held him down.
Fuck, this wasn’t good. He didn’t think it could get much worse.
Then, upstairs in the museum came the crash of breaking glass.
A deep, unearthly roar shook the building. Unmistakably Breed.
Nathan.
The massive, black-haired Gen One seemed to materialize from out of nowhere.
And Rafe had never seen him so enraged.
Nor more starkly terrified as his mate began to sag against the unfamiliar Breed female. “Get away from her.”
The light in Jordana’s palms extinguished. As it faded, the power that had been holding Rafe down subsided. He leapt to his feet. “Nathan, this isn’t what it looks like.”
Smoldering, murderous eyes skewered him. “Then what the hell is this bitch doing with her hands on my mate?”
On a bellow, Nathan charged at Brinks in homicidal rage.
She lifted her hand away from Jordana and the massive male flew backward, tumbling ass over tea kettle before crashing into the far wall. He moaned, but didn’t—or couldn’t—get up.
“What the fuck?” Rafe gaped at her.
Brinks’s palms now glowed with the same light that had filled Jordana’s.
Rafe grabbed her hand and turned it over, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
He could feel the power circulating through her, hot and bright and almighty. Atlantean power.
Except it didn’t belong to this Breed female. She had drawn it away from Jordana.
“They will both be all right,” she said, gently lowering Jordana’s slumped, unconscious body to the floor. “But we should go now.”
CHAPTER 7
The storm that had threatened earlier was in full swing as Devony and Rafe burst out of the museum on foot. The delivery van was gone from the receiving dock, Cruz and the rest of the gang having left Rafe and her to make their escape on their own.