But hatred was a difficult disease to wipe out completely. It festered in silence, invading wherever it found the slightest purchase.
It waited for the opportunity to spread.
Waited for a new carrier to come along and give it fresh life.
And now it had found one in the terrorist group calling themselves Opus Nostrum.
Devony walked inside the former panic room and let her gaze travel over the maps and photos and dossiers that covered each of the four walls. Red strings attached to pins connected some of those individuals to others on the wall. Drug dealers, gangbangers, petty criminals. Corporation heads, politicians, community leaders. A few weeks ago, she’d added photos of Ricardo Cruz, Wayne Fishbaugh, Vincent Axelrod, and Eugene “Ocho” Snyder.
Many of the faces she’d added to the walls now had a large “X” drawn on them.
Before this was over, she expected to eliminate numerous more.
Because this room served a new purpose now.
No longer a place for panic, but one for cold and steady justice.
It was aiding in a new war—a very personal one.
Devony took a sip of her tea as her gaze moved along the images and connecting lines she’d established between groups and individuals. Eventually, she would find the link that led her to Opus. One day, she would pay them back for what they had taken from her.
Until then, she had to have patience.
And she was not about to let the former warrior from the Order knock her off that course.
CHAPTER 5
Devony rode her Triumph into the parking lot behind Snyder’s Exotic Auto in Roxbury.
At 10 PM on a weekend, Ocho’s garage had been closed for several hours but a dim light glowed from the small windows above the two bays out front. Cruz’s dark gray Lambo was sitting in the nearly empty lot next to the rest of the group’s vehicles.
They were all here ahead of her. That didn’t exactly ease the niggle of anxiety that had been troubling her from the moment she’d received Cruz’s text, instructing her to come for a meeting at the gang’s unofficial headquarters.
All day, she’d been plagued with paranoia about her standing in the group.
It was bad enough that she nearly revealed herself to them at Asylum. Then, at Judah LaSalle’s party, she had practically bolted from the place after her unnerving run-in with Rafe on the terrace.
Had anyone noticed her extreme discomfiture around the Breed male?
Had she given them any reason to suspect why he made her so nervous?
Or, worse, had he voiced his suspicions about her to Fish or the others after she was gone?
“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself under her breath. If she had been compromised, she would just have to deal with that swiftly and on her own terms.
She hadn’t yet found solid evidence that Cruz and his friends were in league with Opus Nostrum, but they were far from choir boys. If things went south with them here tonight, she had no problem counting them as collateral damage in her quest for answers . . . and for retribution.
Devony killed the Triumph’s growling engine and swung off the seat. With her helmet secured on the back of the bike, she headed for the rear entrance of the garage and went inside.
The door was unlocked, the low rumble of conversation and intermittent chuckles leading her to the manager’s office where Cruz, Ocho, Axel, and Fish were seated.
She met their inquisitive stares with cool, measured confidence. “Looks like I’m late.”
Fish carefully shook his shaggy head. He was wearing sunglasses and looked to be nursing a protracted hangover. “I just rolled in five minutes ago. What happened to you last night, Brinks? One second you were chatting it up with Rafe, the next you were gone.”
“Gone?” Devony shrugged as if she hardly recalled. “No, I hung around for a while. Not that any of you would’ve noticed the way you three were sucking down the drinks and drooling over the women.”
Axel chortled. “You jealous, Brinks?”
“Excuse me?”
From behind his metal desk, Ocho smirked. “If you prefer chicks, that’s cool. It’d be even cooler if you let us watch sometime.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He held up his hands in mock surrender and it took all she had not to reach out and snap off the three fingers he had left on his right hand.
Fish snickered. “Rafe told us what happened between you two last night.”
Oh, shit. The statement made some of the blood drain from her face. She had no fear of these human men, but confusion and dread had her pulse hammering in her temples. “He told you what, exactly?”
“Said he made a move on you,” Axel said. “He told us you shut him down hard.”
Fish grinned. “Actually, what he said was that he thought you were gonna try to kick his ass, and that’s about the time I walked up. I saw you were pissed at him, but damn, girl. Are you suicidal too? You couldn’t touch him if you tried. He’s a fucking Breed.”
So, they didn’t know anything. Thank God.
They didn’t know, because Rafe kept their conversation to himself.
She wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or even more deeply concerned. Why would he lie for her? And what did he think he could demand in return? All she knew was, she didn’t want to find out.
Devony kept her silence as the three men continued making jokes and laughing.
Cruz didn’t seem to share their amusement. His text to her had seemed all business, and his sober attitude now only confirmed it. “You three boneheads about done? I didn’t bring you all here for shits and giggles.”
“What’s going on?” Devony asked him.
“We’ve got a gig on the docket for tonight. A big one.” He pulled a brochure out of the pocket of his leather jacket and held it out to her.
She stared at the advertisement for an upcoming Impressionist art exhibit on loan to one of the city’s museums. Nearly a dozen masterpieces soon to be on public display, each one easily worth millions. But not in the hands of a bunch of thieves like Cruz and his gang.
She glanced up at him. “You can’t be serious. Even if you get your hands on them, they’ll be worthless to you. You’ll never be able to fence them.”
His mouth quirked in the center of his goatee. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got it covered.”
“What about security? We’ll never even make it inside, let alone get close to the art.” She shook her head, not wanting to be a party to this at all. “There’ll be guards posted around the clock. Alarms on the doors and windows, even on the exhibits.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Got all that covered too.”
“Covered how?”
“Rafe,” Fish said, looking at her over the tops of his dark sunglasses. “Turns out, he’s looking for work. Lucky for us.”
“Lucky?” She gaped at Fish, then swung her disbelief in Cruz’s direction. “Tell me you’re joking.”
But he wasn’t. His face was pure resolve. “You said it yourself, we’ll never get inside unless we can take care of the guards and the security systems. We need the vampire to get it done.”
No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.
Her stomach sank, cold and leaden. All her hopes of keeping Rafe at a safe distance—not only for her personal goals, but for her state of mind—were evaporating by the second.