Page 189 of My Unhinged Alphas
Knox says, “What is this?”
The initiate steps back. “I was just told to deliver it.”
“You’ve met him?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Not directly.”
Lie, maybe. Or maybe not. Initiates are often used precisely because they genuinely do not know enough to be useful under pressure.
I fold the paper once, slowly. “What’s at the address?”
The kid shakes his head. “Didn’t tell me.”
“Why us?” Lena asks before anyone else can.
The initiate looks at her for one second too long, like he recognizes something he shouldn’t, then says, “Wasn’t for me to ask.”
And then he’s gone.
The paramedic near Knox says, “You know that kid?”
None of us answers him.
I look down at the paper in my hand again. Location. Security code. That’s it.
Vale is staring after the initiate like he wants to tear the night open and drag answers out of it. Knox looks even harder to read than usual, which is saying something. Lena is watching all three of us now, blanket tight around her shoulders, eyes narrowing as she realizes this just changed the shape of things again.
I say what all of us are already thinking. “Well,” I murmur, “that clears up absolutely nothing.”
No one disagrees.
The paramedic comes back to Knox with a monitor clipped to his finger and a look I don’t like at all. “You need to go in,” he says. “Now.”
Knox still has the oxygen mask hanging loose around his neck. “No.”
The paramedic doesn’t even blink. He’s probably dealt with men like this before. “Your vitals are not looking good.”
“I’m sitting up. Talking. Breathing.”
“Badly,” the paramedic says. “And your oxygen saturation dropped twice while I was standing here. You inhaled a lot of smoke. We need to rule out airway injury and carbon monoxide exposure.”
Knox gives him the kind of look that usually makes people rethink their careers.
This man does not rethink anything.
Vale is leaning against the side of the ambulance now, bruised to hell, one eye swollen, wrist wrapped, looking like he should probably be in a hospital himself and still somehow the calmer one of the two. “Knox,” he says.
Knox doesn’t take his eyes off the paramedic. “No.”
Vale pushes off the ambulance a little, slower than he means to because of the ribs. “Havoc and I will follow through.”
That gets Knox to look at him.
Vale jerks his chin toward the slip of paper in my hand. “We go to the location. You go to the hospital. Lena goes with you.”
She stares at him. “I what?”
Knox says, at the same time, “Absolutely not.”
