Aric snarled and leapt across the distance. He was just about to throw the door open with his mind when a shotgun blast exploded the panel in front of him. He dodged the spray and of wood and shrapnel in time to avoid the worst of it, then he dove through the opening and body slammed Mackie to the bottom of the stairs.
The fat coward screamed as Aric seized hold of him by the throat. His fangs felt as immense as daggers in his mouth, his eyes lighting up Mackie’s face like an amber spotlight. “Not so brave now, are you?”
“What the fuck!” His eyes went wide, full of shock and terror. “Daywalker?”
“That’s right,” Aric snarled. “Your worst nightmare.”
Not far from where he had Mackie pinned, crates that looked disturbingly similar to the ones the Order had recovered from the van at Scrully’s estate were lined up on the concrete floor of the basement. Easily a dozen of them.
He growled a curse and tightened his chokehold on the gang leader. “Now, before I eviscerate you, you’re going to tell me where you got this UV. I’m guessing from that black bug you’ve got tattooed on your right tit that your buddy Fineas Riordan hooked you up before the Order wasted him.”
“I’m not telling you shit.” Mackie gritted his teeth, struggling against Aric’s unyielding hold. “You’ll have to kill me. If I squeal, Opus will make sure I’m dead.”
Behind him on the stairs, Aric heard Kaya’s soft footsteps. “The house is clear.”
Aric nodded tightly, dragging Mackie up off the floor by his throat. “You and Leah all right?” he asked, looking at her because he needed to see for himself.
Kaya had come to the bottom step. Leah stood behind her halfway down, looking like a ghost version of her vibrant sister. “We’re okay.”
“Good. As soon as this sack of pus tells me what I want to know, we can be out of here.”
“Fuck. You.” Mackie sputtered.
Kaya walked up next to Aric. “There’s another way to get the information we need.”
She touched the human’s flailing arm and asked him the same questions Aric had. But now Mackie’s mind was open, his thoughts spilling loose at just a suggestion from Kaya. “Riordan supplied the ultraviolet weapons and rounds. Mackie has had contact from Opus, but never in person. He doesn’t know any of the members.”
“In other words, he’s useless,” Aric said, hardly disappointed to have the license to end the bastard. But there was still one very important question that he suspected Mackie could answer. “Where is Opus getting all of their intel on Order movements?”
Kaya sucked in a breath. “They have someone on the inside. Mackie knows it.”
“Who?” Aric demanded, squeezing his throat nearly to the point of crushing it.
The human attempted a chuckle. “I love seeing you bloodsuckers chase your tails. Almost as much as I like seeing you smoked in a pile of ash under my boots.”
Aric roared his fury. “Tell us, goddamn you.”
“There is a mole,” Kaya confirmed, her voice wooden. “They’ve got someone embedded. Someone who’s feeding them high-value intel on a regular basis now. Data files too.”
“What the fuck?” Aric scowled, beyond enraged. “Who is it? Say the name or say goodbye to your larynx.”
“Some Irish bitch,” Mackie finally relented. “Iona something.”
Aric reeled back. He caught Kaya’s confused gaze too. “If you’re talking about Reginald Crowe’s mistress, Iona Lynch, she’s dead. I saw her savaged body with my own eyes last week.”
“Yeah?” Mackie taunted despite the strangling hold on him. “Then she must be sending messages from hell because she’s the one who got a warning passed on to me that the Order was after my ass a few nights ago.”
“What?” Kaya swiveled a questioning look at her sister. “I thought you warned him after I came to see you.”
Leah shook her head. “This son of a bitch has been holding me against my will for six months, threatening to kill me and my baby if I try to leave. I would never tell him anything.”
Aric’s blood ran ice cold. When he glanced at Kaya, her face showed the same astonished dread that was currently coiled around him.
“Oh, my God,” Kaya murmured. “Rafe.”
CHAPTER 27
At the insistence of their mates the Order’s meeting in the war room had broken up half an hour ago, sending the Breed elders up to the mansion to join the women. Mira’s comrades had invited Rafe to the weapons room for some sparring and the usual bullshitting and ball-busting that was a staple of warrior life in any of the Order’s command centers, but he had declined the offer.
He had other diversions in mind.
Namely, Siobhan.
He’d been surprised to discover she wasn’t in her guest room in the main residence. Curious to find she hadn’t even stopped by to see Renata or fawn over the baby, which she’d seemed to be so excited for whenever he spoke about the pending arrival of the Order’s newest family member.
As Rafe strode back down to the command center, the only place she could possibly have gone, he felt a niggling pang that he was tempted to call suspicion. He might have, if his faith in Siobhan wasn’t so complete. Had she gotten lost down in the maze of corridors that threaded through the labyrinthine nerve center of the warriors’ domain? She knew the area was restricted to Order members, but she was an inquisitive woman and maybe she had simply woken from her long nap and gone looking to find him.
The idea comforted him, sweeping away the colder sense he had that he was missing something. That he was blind to something right in front of his face.
That his obsession with Siobhan was making him weak in ways he didn’t quite comprehend.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered as he trekked through yet another twisting passageway and found no sign of her.
He pivoted to go
