I rolled my eyes and headed to my desk as he called Kent into his office.
I’d barely sat my butt down when my phone rang. I sighed and dipped my hand into my back pocket.
After a quick glance, I answered with “Lucas.”
“Thought you could escape without making good on those drinks you promised, huh?” His voice was tight.
A frown pulled my brows low. Lucas knew I didn’t drink. Not only that, his tone was off. “Sure. You want to tell me where and what time?” Uneasiness floated in my insides, especially as it hadn’t been that long since I’d seen him. I glanced at my watch. Probably forty minutes.
“The usual place.”
I went on high alert. Lucas either suspected or knew his calls were being monitored. Or perhaps it was mine that were. The only “usual” place referred to an old warehouse he owned. One he kept off the books and I was sure fewer than three people knew about. It was security-proofed like crazy.
“Got it. Malones it is,” I said, referring to a bar twenty minutes in the other direction. “What time works?”
“Just have a couple of things to do here. Should be good for maybe eight.” Which meant an hour earlier.
“Sounds like a plan.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond before I ended the call. Concern barrelled through me. My thoughts immediately went to Brent and our meeting. The whole thing had reeked of koala shit.
A glance across the room told me Thatch was still meeting with Kent. As if feeling my eyes on him, he lifted his head, his gaze fixing on me through the glass wall. His look was questioning, his brows dipping. He followed up with a head flick in his direction. Not needing a further invite, I hauled arse over there.
On entering, I sat in one of the empty chairs, and Kent continued speaking.
“There’s no chance we can get into his phone. His laptop, maybe. But I imagine everything will be encrypted and in the cloud, so I’m unsure of our chances.” Frustration ebbed off her. That was the difficulty when trying to focus on one of our own. Their technology and safeguards were the same as ours.
“We may not need to,” I said, my gaze fully on Thatch.
His eyes bored into mine as he asked, “What have you got?”
“Lucas contacted me for a private meet.”
Thatch’s eyes widened at that.
“Mathew Lucas?” Kent asked.
“Yeah, know him?” While they were both vamps and both in the same city, that didn’t necessarily mean they were—
“He’s my sister’s ex.”
The hell?
Frowning, I tried to think of any girlfriends Lucas had had since knowing me. Absolutely zero came to mind, which may have been bloody weird until I realised that I was in the same boat. Penises had come and gone for me, but I’d not wanted any of them to stick around.
My gaze travelled to Thatch. Yeah, until Thatch.
I shook that thought away and asked, “Girlfriend?”
The familiar roll of her eyes followed. “Before you were born, cub.”
I scratched my nose with my middle finger. Her lips twitched, which was as good as saying she thought I was awesome. Meanwhile, Thatch exhaled a deep breath, drawing our attention to him. Wide-eyed and unimpressed, he waited for me to continue.
“I’m meeting him in a while. I have no specifics, but I can’t help but think it’s related to our meeting with Brent.”
Thatch bobbed his head. “Where are you meeting him?”
Relief and warmth swirled in my chest when he didn’t immediately demand an invite. Trust was a heady thing, and beyond Lucas, it had been a long time since I’d had any thrown my way. Just like I didn’t hand it out often.
I shook my head. “As soon as I have anything, I’ll come home—”
Kent made a small noise in the back of her throat. Not sure if it was amusement or that she was thirsty or what, I stared at her hard until I realised what she was reacting to.
Despite the heat racing to my cheeks, I reined in my reaction, and rather than telling her to bugger off, I averted my gaze to Thatch and continued. “—and give you an update.” Amusement shimmered in his eyes, alongside something else I couldn’t get a read on. Perhaps he liked that I’d called his place home, though I was sure it wasn’t the first time that faux pas had slipped out.
“Are we going to work theories or just wait to see what Lucas has for us?” I asked, determined to focus.
“I think we just wait and see what the meet is for. Kent’s also been working on decrypting data we expect to be your Doc Evil’s shopping list and formula to not only LIXER, but to whatever they’re using to try to turn humans into shifters.”
Which was also quite possibly connected to the experiments done on my sister. The more we discovered about the operation and the links, which I’d spent hours poring over from the team notes they’d acquired over the past eighteen months or so, the more it became apparent that an antidote of some sort was needed.
For those who OD’d on LIXER and the selection of other drugs Thatch’s team had found a connection to, all had died. No one had escaped the effects of the drugs or the experimentations. When Thatch had told me about the few individuals who’d managed to survive, it was only because they were at the end of the queue. Legit, the nasty bastards who ran the show simply hadn’t got to them yet.
“That’s good news,” I answered.
“If we can at least get ourselves prepared to save anyone else who’s impacted, then that has to be worth something till we nail the arseholes,” Kent said.
“Agreed.” I nodded. “I read the report out of SICB this morning that there’s been a reduction in drug-related deaths.”
“With our focus on closing production labs, we believe it’s a direct correlation to them simply running out of production space and victims.” Thatch’s anger
