Until he had a name or a face that would lead him to Opus Nostrum’s inner circle, everything else was just a matter of clearing obstacles.
Even if they were beautiful ones like her.
Hell, especially then.
She swung her legs off the bench and abruptly stood up. “This conversation is over. You want to know anything about Cruz or his business, ask him yourself.”
She started to walk away. Using preternatural speed, Rafe moved off the bench and planted himself in front of her before she had taken her next breath.
She sucked in the gulp of air on a gasp, her big eyes going even wider as he blocked her path. He needed honest answers and he didn’t have the patience to risk waiting for them.
Which meant he was going to have to trance her and take the truth from her.
He reached for her arm and she flinched out of his hold on a curse. “Get out of my way.”
Her voice was a low, dangerous growl. And she was strong. His fingers had clasped nothing but pure, lean muscle in that brief moment of contact. There was more power in her than he would ever have imagined possible in a human.
Unless . . .
Rafe reeled back from her, scowling. “What the fuck?”
“Heeey, man!” Fish’s drunken greeting announced him as he approached their tension-wrought corner of the terrace. “There you two are. I’ve been looking all over for you, Rafe.”
He had a pair of giggling women under his arms, and a bottle of beer sloshing precariously in his hand. His shirt was still torn and stained from the gunshot he’d survived, but his companions didn’t seem to mind.
“Here, I brought something for ya.” Fish shoved one of the women at him.
As soon as Rafe’s attention was diverted, Brinks ducked away, as slippery as a ghost.
Biting off a tight curse under his breath, he watched her vanish into the crowd.
He wasn’t going to find her again tonight. She would make certain of that now.
But she couldn’t avoid him forever.
He wasn’t going anywhere. Not until he’d unraveled all of Cruz’s secrets . . . and hers.
“Come on, man.” Fish clapped him on the back. “These chicks have never partied with one of the Breed before.”
“Is that right?” Rafe grinned, totally disinterested. “Then let’s go back inside so I can show them what they’ve been missing.”
CHAPTER 4
Sunrise came early, especially considering he only made it home to his shitty rental in Southie a couple of minutes before the first rays began to break through the dark.
Rafe pushed open the door of the dumpy studio apartment and stepped inside. “Home, crap home.”
The unit on ground level of the old triple-decker boasted few windows, all of them covered in state-of-the-art ultraviolet-blocking shades. It was one of the first improvements he made his first night in the place.
The other upgrade he’d added was just as essential.
Bypassing the fold-down Murphy bed in the living room, Rafe walked into the kitchen where a cabinet with a false facade concealed a computer workstation. He stared blearily into the retina scanner, then waited for a moment as the device launched an encrypted, highly secured connection to the Order’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Gideon’s face filled the screen. Sharp blue eyes shaded by similarly tinted, round glasses stared back at Rafe from under the spiky crown of the Breed male’s short blond hair. “Christ, about time you reported in. You look like roadkill, by the way.”
Rafe grunted at the warrior who was also his godfather. “Good morning to you, too.”
As Gideon’s fingers clattered over a keyboard on the other end, Rafe’s screen split to accommodate the other two Order elders who were looped in on the call.
Lucan Thorne’s expression was grim, his black hair accentuating the harsh angles of the Gen One’s face. In the other video window, Sterling Chase looked equally sober. Both the Order’s leader and the Boston commander peered at Rafe like disapproving fathers.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Chase demanded.
Lucan seemed equally pissed off. “This debriefing was supposed to happen more than four hours ago, son.”
Rafe reeled back at the undue reprimands. “If I hadn’t still been in the field and undercover until now, it would have. Sirs.”
What the hell? It wasn’t like any of the Order’s chiefs to lay into a warrior for simply doing his job. Rafe knew he had some ground to make up after the way he’d screwed up in Montreal, but this kind of micromanagement was ridiculous.
“All due respect, but if any of you feel you can’t trust me to undertake this mission, you should’ve said so up front.”
Chase bit off a curse. “That’s not it, Rafe.”
“You sure? Then what the fuck is it . . . sir?”
Lucan lowered his chin, a wry glimmer seeping into his stormy gray gaze. “You’ve got your father’s blood running through your veins, no doubt about that.”
But his deep voice was oddly sober.
And Rafe still didn’t know what this was about.
“We’re dealing with a . . . situation on our end,” Lucan said. “It has nothing to do with you or your mission, and, frankly, until we get our arms around it I want to keep it contained.”
Rafe wasn’t going to press. Judging from the look of gravity in the Order leader’s eyes, whatever it was had not only him concerned but the other two males as well.
Chase cleared his throat. “Now that you’re here, Rafe, tell us how things went last night. I understand Eli and Jax walked in cold on the operation at Asylum. Shitty timing. Sorry about that.”
Rafe shrugged. “Under the circumstances, I can’t say I was happy to see them. But it actually couldn’t have worked out better.”
He explained what had happened, and how he’d gained crucial credibility with the leader, Cruz, and the others by healing the wounded gang member.
“They invited me with them to this place.” He typed in the address of the building where the party was held, and an area map came up on their displays with the high-rise highlighted.
A moment later, Gideon had scoured the internet and assembled a full dossier on the owner, which displayed onscreen. “Judah LaSalle. Age thirty-two. Single. Sole heir to a French billionaire industrialist. No less than a dozen residences around the world, not counting a megayacht he purchased last year from a Saudi prince for a cool two-hundred million.”
Lucan’s brow furrowed. “This guy Cruz has interesting taste in friends.”
“Or is it the other way around?” Chase asked.
Those were questions Rafe had been asking himself all night. “Cruz and the others like expensive toys too. They’ve got a few hundred grand tied up in their vehicles and that’s only the start, based on what I was able to get out of a couple of them last night after the drinks had been flowing for a few hours. Hopefully, I’ll have the chance to squeeze them for something more substantial soon. I told Fish, the guy I healed, that money’s been tight since the Order gave me the ax and I’m looking for something to do. We’ll see if they take the bait.”
“What about LaSalle?” Lucan asked. “Any reason to think he might be part of Cruz’s band of merry men?”