Page 78 of Cops and Robbers

“What happened?” Raz asked.

“I must have fallen and hit my head,” Danielle murmured, holding her head.

Raz released a breath he’d been holding. Kate had finished her work. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so, but I’ll need to have a CT to know if I’m concussed.”

“We need to get back to the surface pronto,” Caige said, walking around the case to get to the other handle.

“Danielle, head on toward the front. We’ll be right behind you.”

“Okay,” she said slowly as she began walking in that direction.

Caige nodded toward him, and the two of them picked up the case to follow Danielle.

They only had to get themselves and the case back on the rescue submarine, back to base, and then leave base before this mission was complete. But Raz knew he’d be holding his breath until Kate woke up again.

“How are they doing?” Caige asked after they dropped off Danielle at a hospital to stay in character as her guards. The setting sun’s light shot through the houses of a gated community as they drove toward the airport.

“They’re sleeping.” The steady, quiet drum of consciousness along the link told Raz as much for Kate. Sitting in the van’s middle row, Raz unlatched the coffin to prop the bottom partition up.

That escape had been close.

No matter what happened down there, his dragon still saw Kate as his soulmate. But this situation planted seeds of doubt in his ability to trust Kate. She’d betrayed her best friend to save her own skin and used him to save that friend.

Raz slammed his fist against the car door.

“You doing okay?” Caige asked.

“Just fucking peachy. I’ll be happier when that damn Bell is destroyed.” His body trembled, recalling the feel of that tone as it knifed straight through him. It was as bad as he remembered. And the LRAD replica was still out in the world—capable of wreaking even more havoc than the Bell they had. “Do you really think Midnight will help us recover the other one?”

“Hard telling. Kate seems to think so. If Midnight has any remorse for anything she’s done, she’d want to stop it.”

“What if he’s already sold it?”

Caige’s hands clenched on the steering wheel. “Then we’ll figure out who it went to.”

“Who puts together a weapon of mass destruction just to sell it?”

“Men with superiority complexes sometimes just need to prove that they can.”

Raz sighed into his chair. “I knew she was hiding something, but this…” Raz stared at the unfamiliar thirty-something Asian woman. She and Kate were similar in height and shape. Midnight’s black hair flowed long and unruly compared to Kate’s bob. He clenched his fist to keep himself from shaking Kate awake. He was so angry with her but also had so many questions burning in his mind.

“Why are you so trusting of Kate?” Raz asked.

“At the gala, she risked this mission to make sure I could get closer to Matsuda. Some of her motivations may have been hidden, but her intentions never wavered. You trusted those intentions, or you never would have gone down there.”

“She should have told me the truth,” Raz said.

“Agreed. But you should listen to her before you call it quits.”

Raz clunked his forehead against the window. Everything was clicking into place: her actions, secrecy, and defending Midnight.

Her friend’s life was on the line.

Flashbacks took him under their control, and images of his clanmates piled on the floor, bile and blood covering their dead bodies. Gerard had used the Bell to incapacitate them so he could kill them all. Raz had trusted him, and his clanmates had paid for it. A metallic tang filled Raz’s mouth. Kate didn’t murder his clanmates, but her betrayal hurt just as badly. Especially when she knew what he’d been through before. He didn’t understand why she didn’t just tell him the truth.

“Kate told me she gave Matsuda information about the Fallen,” Raz said. “But what…Midnight’s been walking in her spirit form while he’s kept her body from her?” He shivered, not wanting to think about what that felt like.