Page 48 of Howl Lotta Love

“Somebody talked.” Tucker’s voice had gone quiet, careful. “Or somebody’s been watching closer than any of us realized.”

Gerri, still smelling faintly of the seventh floor’s overcooked salmon, entered the room, the performance falling away from her all at once. “That changes the entire calculation.”

“It changes everything.” Jace pulled Emma closer, arm banding around her waist, in no apparent hurry to ever let go. “If Kane knows about the bond, he isn’t only threatening the investigation anymore. He’s threatening her, directly, as leverage against me. That’s not a financial crime. That’s a declaration of war on my pack.”

Nobody in the room argued. Nobody had anything left to say that would soften it into anything less than exactly what it was.

FOURTEEN

JACE

The message hit Emma’s phone at nine at night, and Jace watched her face change before she’d finished reading the first line.

“It’s Walter.” She turned the screen toward him, the phone trembling faintly in her grip. “He says he has proof tying Kane to every fraudulent acquisition. He says Kane’s going to kill him. He wants to meet, tonight, in exchange for protection.”

“Walter Pierce doesn’t get to want anything from us.” Jace crossed the room in three strides, every protective instinct in him snapping fully awake. “He helped rob you blind, Emma. He walked thieves into a building on camera. Forgive me if my sympathy’s a little thin.”

“I know what he did.” She set the phone down, spine just as rigid as his. “I also know he taught me everything I know about this job, and if he’s telling the truth, he’s the only person alive who can tell us how to permanently stop this. I’m not turning down proof because I’m angry at the man handing it over.”

“Being right doesn’t make it safe.”

“Nothing about my life has been safe since a gala weeks ago, and you were standing right there for most of it.” She crossed her arms, chin up, daring him to argue the point. “You don’t get to play the safety card now, not after everything we’ve already survived.”

Jace studied her, the fury and the fairness both sitting plain on her face, and let the growl building low in his chest lose its argument the way it always did when she made a call he hated and turned out to be right about it anyway.

“Fine.” He was already reaching for his jacket, the whole operation taking shape behind his eyes before she’d finished nodding. “We do this my way. Full team, full perimeter, and if anything about that meeting point feels wrong, we’re gone before he finishes his sentence. No exceptions, no matter what he claims to have.”

“Understood.”

“I mean it, Emma.”

“I said understood.” She caught his hand on the way past, laced her fingers through his, and pressed a brief, hard kiss to his jaw, lingering half a second longer. “I’m not interested in dying for Walter Pierce’s redemption arc. I only want the truth.”

He caught her waist before she could pull away, tugged her back against him, and kissed her properly this time—slow, thorough, reassurance that meant a good deal more than it let on. “That’s better,” he said, against her mouth.

“That was blatant manipulation.”

“Effective manipulation.” He let her go, moving for the door. “Gear up.”

Tucker had the meeting coordinates up on the command center screen before either of them made it downstairs, a red pin blinking on a stretch of forest north of the city that made Jace’s jaw tighten the second he saw it.

“That’s isolated.” Tucker didn’t look up from his monitor, already pulling satellite imagery. “No cell coverage for half a mile in any direction, one access road in and out. If I were setting a trap, I’d pick that exact spot, specifically because it looks defensible to the people walking into it.”

“If Walter’s setting a trap, he’s not smart enough to hide it.” Roman checked the charge on his sidearm with the ease of long habit. “If somebody’s using Walter to set a trap, that’s a different problem, and considerably more likely.”

“Which is why nobody goes in blind.” Jace pulled up the map, already building the perimeter in his head, wolf pacing restless under his skin at the thought of walking Emma into an unknown space. “Diesel and Roman take the tree line thirty minutes ahead of us. Tucker, eyes on that road the second anything moves. Emma and I go in, side by side. If this goes wrong, it goes wrong with the whole team already in position, not scrambling to catch up after the fact.”

Emma caught his eye, steady despite the danger sitting plain in every word he’d said, and nodded once. That was enough.

The rendezvous point sat off a forest access road twenty minutes north of the city, an abandoned church gone dark and hollow against the tree line, stained glass catching moonlight in fractured colors that did nothing to soften the place.

“Of course it’s a church.” Roman’s voice crackled low through the earpiece, perimeter already swept. “Every villain in this city has the same taste in real estate. I want it on record that abandoned churches need a reservation system at this point. There’s clearly a waiting list.”

Jace kept his eyes on the tree line, Emma close at his side, one hand curled loosely around her hip where nobody but her could feel it. “Diesel, north perimeter. Roman, south. Tucker, eyes on the road.”

“Copy,” came back twice, clean and fast.

Emma’s phone buzzed once. She glanced down, then up at Jace, uneasy. “He says he’s already here.”