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I walk, I need coffee, a lot of it if I'm going to get through the day. I tried to sleep, but it was hard when you have information in your head, and it’s not even everything. I’m not even fucking halfway into the information, and it’s already giving me sleepless nights.

"Miles. Are you listening?"

"No."

Declan falls into step on my other side. He's been quiet since we left, and I’m not about to ask him about it either. Trixie probably said something to him, and now he's pissed off.

"What time did you go to sleep?" Declan asks.

"Late."

"You look terrible." Declan jokes.

"Thank you." I’m not in the mood to talk about my lack of sleep. I’m not in the mood to leave my bedroom, never mind going to college.

"I'm not being mean." He glances past me at Mason, then back. "What happened?"

I check the street, the pavement behind us, the gap between buildings to the left, the couple twenty feet ahead moving away. A student with headphones, a jogger turning the corner. There’s nobody close enough, nobody who looks like they shouldn’t be here. Before I say anything, I look around to see how many cameras are around. Is this campus safe for‌ girls?

"Cain gave me something to look at," I say. "Missing girls in multiple cities, no pattern anyone's found yet. It's been running a long time." I leave it there.

I don’t say anything else because I don’t have anything else to say, so I wait for my brothers to share their thoughts.

"How many?" Declan asks.

"Enough, not sure how Cain got his hands on it, but he wants this done slowly, he told me not to rush it. He seemed…" I stop talking, not sure what else to say. “This one's got him worried and for Cain that’s saying something.”

"Lileah," Mason says, and I can hear the worry in his tone, because I felt the same way last night when I opened the file. "I want to know where she is all the time. I don't care if she thinks it's excessive." Now Mason is going to be even more protective of her than he already is. I mean, the four of us are already protective, but now it’s going to be worse for her.

"She'll think it's excessive," Declan jokes.

"I don't care," Mason snaps.

"Neither do I," Declan says. "I agree with everything Mason is saying." He lowers his voice. "You should have woken me up last night."

"There was nothing to wake you up for. I was reading. I’m still reading, I have about a hundred more files to work through.”

"Miles." Mason looks at me sideways. "You need to sleep, I'm serious. Whatever this is, you're no good to anyone running on nothing." He holds up a hand before I respond. "I know. I know you're going to say something about being fine. Save it. Sleep."

I don't say anything. Maybe he has a point, but I would sleep if I could. There are too many names floating in my head, and there’s going to be a lot more of them once I finish reading all of the files. Then I have my sexy Sadie, who doesn’t even know how pretty she is, who’s also in my head for a whole different reason.

We walk into Grounds, and the place is busy with all the students getting their morning coffee.

There isn't a queue at the counter, which means I'm at the front. “A large coffee, black, please.” After ordering I step to the side and that's when I see her. She’s coming through the door with her camera bag on one shoulder and a coffee already in hand. Her head is turned back to say something to one of the girls.

She doesn't see me.

I see her, all her beauty, sexy smile, and sexy eyes. God, she’s beautiful.

The collision happens in the space between one second and the next, her trajectory and mine converging at the exact point where the counter ends and the open floor begins. Her shoulder catches my chest. Her coffee tilts and then the full cup falls it ends up soaking through my shirt in one immediate wave that registers as cold before it registers as hot coffee.

I look down at my shirt.

Then back up.

She's already looking at me, wide-eyed, the color rising in her face, one hand still outstretched from where she tried and failed to catch the cup. Up close she's exactly what every hour of watching her prepared me for, and yet somehow, she’s nothing like it at all. The camera strap is cutting across her collarbone.

"I'm so sorry," she says. "I wasn't… I didn't see you, I'm really sorry."