Page 47 of Howl Lotta Love

“Where did you learn to drive like this?”

“My father raced stock cars on weekends when I was a kid. Taught me on an empty airfield before I had a license.” She took the next corner without slowing, teeth bared in a grin that wasn’t quite a smile. “He always said the accounting degree was a waste of a good set of reflexes.”

“Remind me to send the man a thank-you card. They’re gaining,” Jace warned, bracing one hand against the dash as she took the next corner without slowing at all.

“They’re gaining on a straightaway. Watch what happens on the ramp.”

She hit the exit ramp at a speed that read reckless and handled clean anyway, tires holding the curve with a confidence that told him she’d meant every word about the airfield, and threaded the car through a gap in the rising gate with inches to spare on either side, Roman and Diesel’s van falling in behind them to block the pursuit as they burst out into daylight and traffic and blessed, ordinary noise.

Jace stared at her across the console, breathing hard, adrenaline and a much softer feeling both fighting for space in his chest at once.

“You drove us out of an ambush without hitting a single parked car.”

“I told you I was good.” She didn’t take her eyes off the road, knuckles white on the wheel, color climbing back into her face now that the worst of it had passed. “That man’s voice describing exactly how he plans to hurt me was the single worst thing I’ve heard all week, and that’s counting the mercenary who died weeks ago now.”

“I know.” His hand found her thigh, steady, grounding, not asking her to slow down or pull over, only staying. “We’re not letting him get close enough to try.”

She reached over at the next red light and laced her fingers through his, holding on tight enough that the last of the adrenaline visibly started draining out of her grip, and when the light changed, she brought his knuckles to her mouth and kissed them, once, before letting go to take the wheel with both hands again. Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the drive back. Neither of them needed to.

They regrouped an hour later at the basement command center, adrenaline finally bleeding out of the room in slow degrees, Roman recounting the parking garage escape to anyone who’d listen, clearly having had the time of his life.

“I want it on the permanent record that I predicted the parking garage,” he announced, for the third time. “Every single one of these guys uses the same floor plan. I should start charging consulting fees.”

“Nobody’s disputing you, Roman.”

“I like to be thorough.” He grabbed a protein bar off the counter and collapsed into the nearest chair. “Also, every mission goes better after a good car chase. Statistically.”

“That’s not a real statistic,” Diesel said, from the doorway, dead serious. “But I agree with the sentiment. Escapes improve morale. I’ve never once seen data to the contrary.”

“You’ve never looked for data to the contrary.”

“Exactly my point.”

Emma settled onto the arm of Jace’s chair, one hand finding the back of his neck, absent and easy, and he leaned into the touch without breaking off his conversation with Tucker, the whole exchange so unremarkable by now that nobody in the room so much as glanced over.

Tucker sat hunched over three monitors, running the recorded audio back a second time, his usual dry commentary noticeably thinner than normal. He isolated one clip, ran it again, frowned, and pulled up a waveform to cross-check it against the transcript scrolling beside it.

“That’s odd,” he said, half to himself.

“What?”

“Give me a second.” Tucker adjusted the audio filter, cleaned up a stretch of static Jace hadn’t even registered as static, and played it back clean. His face went carefully blank, the way it did when he already knew the room wasn’t going to like what came next. “You need to hear this yourself before I say anything about it.”

He hit play.

If Maddox won’t hand over the accountant, we’ll make him choose between his mate and his pack.

The room went silent.

Jace went very, very still, every muscle in his body locking down at once, because there was exactly one way Victor Kane could know that word, and none of the explanations were good ones.

“He knows,” Jace said, and his voice came out low enough that Roman stopped chewing entirely. “He knows about the bond. He knows exactly what that word means to a wolf.”

Emma’s hand found his in the sudden quiet, and she didn’t say anything at all, because there wasn’t anything left to say that the room hadn’t already understood.

Roman set his protein bar down, all humor gone from his face at once. “How.”

“I don’t know.” Every muscle in Jace had gone rigid, every alpha instinct in him screaming to put a wall between Emma and the rest of the world and never move it again.