“And Uncle Qhuinn smiles when he’s with you. He doesn’t smile much anywhere else.”

Blay frowned. “Oh, sure he does. He’s really happy. He’s got me and the twins, and Layla and Xcor, who are excellent co-parents with us. Plus he’s a member of the Brotherhood.”

“I guess he’s just happier with you.” Bitty shrugged. “Okay, I’m going to put ‘wedding cake’ down on my sample list.”

“What else you got on there?”

“Fourth of July cake. Fruit cake. Bundt cake. Pineapple upside-down cake—”

“What’s Fourth of July cake?”

“It’s a red, white, and blue cake. Then there’s funfetti, red velvet, Black Forest, pavlova, Yule log—”

“Wait, so are you researching holidays and celebrations? Or cakes.”

“Both.”

He thought of Rhage’s famous appetite. “Is your dad on this committee?”

“How did you know?”

With a wave, the girl strode off with her list, and Blay intended to return to the article he’d been reading. Too bad his eyes refused to get with the back-andforth program. He just kept staring at that fish with its bicycle. The rainbow trout was anthropomorphized, dressed in a suit and pedaling with his back fins, the basket in front filled with what looked like groceries.

None of the drawing made any sense. Not the clothes, not the food, not the breathing without water. Then again, it was just a cartoon, free to be some kind of metaphor, the point of the pen-and-ink artistry unclear to Blay at the moment.

Maybe it was merely a whimsical sketch, like a vase of flowers for the eye in the midst of an article about something serious.

He checked his watch. A little after ten p.m.

The night seemed long as a lifetime, and he couldn’t wait for Qhuinn to get back from his shift on rotation. The pair of them were allowed to be in the field together, but they were never paired up, and sometimes, like this evening, one of them was off while the other was working. It was fine. There were always the daylight hours.

Blay smiled as he thought of the bed they shared.

And what they did in it.

Okay, fine, no wonder he blushed so much around his mate. But that was nothing Bitty ever needed to worry about.

Forcing his eyes to get going with the busywork of tracking letters, words and sentences, he had to push aside a lingering distraction. The sense that something was off-kilter in the universe, some kind of calamity due to arrive at any minute, was the worst company a guy could have.

Especially when the male you loved more than anybody else in the world was out in the cold in the field.

Blay let his head fall back again. The ceiling was about thirty feet up, and it had old beams that were varnished the same tone as all the mahogany wood of the shelves, the hearth mantel, the floor. Whenever he retreated to this room, he always thought that this must be what the inside of a jewelry box was like, the glow of gold from all the spines of the ancient tomes like an extension of the crackling fire, the sense of protection and being among that which was rare making him feel kind of special himself.

He looked to the archway. Voices of doggen and Brothers and fighters wove together, some louder than others depending on whether they were next door in the billiards room, coming down from the grand staircase, or out in the dining room.

The mansion was never truly quiet.

And on a night like tonight, when he was on edge for no good reason . . .

It was such a reassurance to know that he was not alone.

As Elle landed facedown in the snow, she flipped onto her back and braced herself for a knife, a gun, a fist—whatever came at her. Mostly, the defensive response was because she wanted to fight for her life, but she was also a coward because she couldn’t watch Terrie’s face while she got murdered. She already knew her sister was screaming in the driver’s seat. She could hear it. And the fact that this was Elle’s fault, all of it, from the drive, to the wrong exit, to the bad turn, to the snowbank, was—

“Relax, kid.”

The voice above her was grave and very deep, the kind of thing a radio-show host would use when making a public service announcement. It was also slightly bored, as if sniveling, panicked teenage girls and their bigmouthed sisters hadn’t been on the man’s list of things to do tonight.

Elle paused with her flailing on the snowpack. “What?”

“You can stop freaking out, okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The guy was absolutely enormous as he loomed over her, and she had a feeling he wasn’t just a tow truck guy. After all, his leather jacket was open, and there was something strapped, handles down, to his huge chest. Knives? And what else from Fortnite could be under there? Add those piercings and the laser-eye routine, and she was pretty sure that he was speaking in a foreign language and she’d translated “I’m going to fuck you up” incorrectly.

When he extended his arm, she shrank back and covered her face with her hands. When nothing happened and nothing hurt, she peeked out from between the picket fence of her fingers. The man was leaning over her . . . with an extended open palm. That had nothing sharp and shiny in it.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated.

Elle glanced back at her dad’s car. Terrie had both of her hands covering her mouth like she was worried that saying anything, even inside the car, might spook the big man into disastrous action.

The guy rolled his mismatched eyes. “Come on, kid. I don’t have all night. Shit or get off the pot.”

“You shouldn’t curse around children,” Elle mumbled.

“Children aren’t in this part of town at ten o’clock at night. You were an adult when you took that car out, sweetie, and now you’ve got an adult-level problem. Hearing the word ‘shit’ better be something you can handle because it’s the least of your worries.”

Well . . . shit . . . he had a point.

“You talk like my dad.”

“That’s because I am one, so I have the same rule book yours does.”

“Rule book? And you have a kid?”

“Two. So I’m viewing this as a training exercise for when they can drive.”

Elle put her hand in the man’s and was pulled up to her feet so fast she almost fell on her face again. He kept her upright by planting a palm on her shoulder and steadying her.

“I’ll get you out of that snowbank,” he said, “and then you gotta head off to wherever you belong. Things aren’t safe down here.”

As he stomped back to his tow truck, Elle pulled her coat into place around her torso and stared at his stalking stride. God, his black boots were the size of her head, and he might have sounded like her dad, but he sure didn’t move like Basile Allaine. This man prowled like you didn’t want to mess with him, like he was really strong and knew it, like he might not mind having to set someone straight. Her dad was an international tax attorney.

Elle blinked. For some reason, she thought of how her mom had once been a lawyer. A long time ago. Now, she wasn’t anything professional, and that was another reason Elle had wanted to go out tonight. Sometimes, it was too hard to stay inside with all the things going on in her head.

She went back over to the BMW. Before she could hit the door handle, Terrie threw things open and exploded with talk, her words carbonated and shaken up from the scare, releasing in a rush.

“OhmyGodIthoughthewasgoingtokillyou—”

“Just stop, okay. He’s going to pull us out.”

“Do you have money to pay him?”

“Sure, I do.” No, she didn’t. “Just relax, will ya.”

Instead of getting in, she reshut the door on Terrie because she couldn’t handle anything right now. Fortunately, she didn’t have to do much else. The tow truck came over and eased front-in to the back of their dad’s car, and then the man with the piercings and the knives got out and went to a winch mounted on his bumper. There was a whirring sound, and moments later, a hook the size of a boxer’s fist and a wire thick as a boat rope was pulled over to the BMW’s rear.

“Um . . .” Elle cleared her throat. “I don’t have any money to pay you. I mean, not on me. But I can mail in—”

“Don’t worry about it,” the man said without looking at her. “I gotchu.”

The fact that the guy was fixing a problem for free that she had created on a stupid impulse made her feel small, and not just in terms of physical stature.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The man bent down with a flashlight, and latched the hook to something under the—

Later, Elle would wonder what exactly made her look over her shoulder. It wasn’t a sound, and she certainly didn’t have eyes in the back of her head. But some tickling sense on the nape of her neck had her turning her head.

The three figures in the shadows were as distinct as ghosts in a fog bank, nothing clear about their outlines or whether they were moving. And yet she was absolutely certain of their presence.

They were watching. And not in a Good Samaritan, how-can-we-help-ya kind of way.

“Um, mister—”

As she pivoted back around, the tow truck guy was already on it. He had straightened from the winch and was staring over her head, at the shadows.

“Hey,” he said evenly, “how ’bout you get in your car.”

Elle bobbleheaded that idea. “Yup, I’ll just—”

“And lock the doors.”

“Should we call the police? I mean, can we call the police—”

“Lock the doors. I’ll take care of it.”

Elle lunged for the driver’s side and yanked at the handle. When nothing opened, she glared at her sister, who seemed to be in a cognitive freeze-up as she looked back and forth between the tow man and those three people standing next to the warehouse.

Great. Terrie was broken. Could her sister never be a help—

“Open this right now,” Elle bit out.

Terrie fumbled with all kinds of switches, her hands slapping at the dashboard, the steering wheel, the console—when there was finally a pop, Elle yanked the door open, and pitched herself inside, slamming things shut and punching the lock mechanism.