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She’s quiet as she follows me, and when I glance over my shoulder at her, I’m suddenly reminded of the hot fury and the cold stab of fear I felt when she lost her shit at McKenna’s club.
When she almost got killed.
I stop suddenly, turning around to face her. She comes up short less than a foot away from me, her eyes widening in surprise.
“What?” she whispers.
Reaching out, I grip her arm and haul her against me, dropping my head so that my lips touch her ear.
“Like Dante said,” I murmur gruffly, “don’t fuck this up. Don’t deviate from the plan. I don’t care what you see, what happens, what fucking goes wrong once the action starts. You’re here to do one thing, and only one thing.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she whispers, frowning. “It’smysister. Remember?”
“It was your sister at Club Prestige too.”
She jerks slightly in reaction to my words. Anger flares in her eyes, followed by a flash of guilt. She swallows, her hand moving up to press against my chest in a way that makes me unsure if she’s trying to push me away or ground herself through the contact.
“I won’t fuck it up,” she breathes. “I promise, Maddoc.”
I can hear the sincerity in her voice, and I know she understands how dangerous the shit she pulled at the club was. I doubt she’d let herself get carried away like that again, especially knowing the stakes. But still, somehow, her words aren’t enough to soothe the agitation churning under my skin.
“Don’t go trying to be a hero,” I insist, tightening my grip on her arm a little. “If the plan gets fucked, run.”
She sucks in a sharp breath. “But my sister—”
“We’ll get Chloe out, I promise you. But you can’t help her if you’re dead. So don’t fucking die. You get me?”
Riley hesitates, her gaze bouncing between my eyes before she finally nods. “Okay.”
“Good. Then go.”
Releasing her and stepping back, I jerk my head toward the darkened corner of the warehouse Logan thinks will give her the best direct line to Chloe once our targets arrive.
She heads to the spot without a backward glance, and I get into the position that should give me line of sight for the drop, hidden behind a dusty stack of pallets across the warehouse from Riley.
If Logan’s prediction about where it will all go down proves true—and his predictions, based on such a stupid amount of research that he’s like a damn machine, usually do—then they won’t be able to see either of us until we move on them.
Ican still see Riley, though… and she looks like a fucking queen.
She’s got a mask of determination on, her lips pressed together tightly and her body poised. Still, but ready. Every molecule in her body focused on the task at hand.
She’s not going to fuck this up.
She’s not going to die.
That thought settles something inside me, and I’m finally able to push away the irritating feeling of unease that I’ve been fighting all night.
Maybe it shouldn’t matter to me so much that she gets through this in one piece. After all, Riley isn’t actually one of my people. But if she hadn’t come into our lives the way she did, if the circumstances had been different… she could have been. She would’ve been a perfect fit.
A Reaper.
One of us.
We all underestimated her at first, but the steel she’s shown under that gorgeous face and all her soft curves proves that my first impression was wrong. When she turned her back on us at Clancy’s that first night, I saw her as prey.
She’s not.
She’s more than any of us bargained for.
