Page 113 of Bought for Blood

Faine stands. Standing, she’s taller than Odile.

“Thirteen, then, counting you and Odile,” she says. “That’s the number. Nobody adds to it after this.”

“I said four.”

“You said four was guessing.” She picks her coat up off the arm of the chair. “Fewer than thirteen can’t take that building once the shooting starts. So you’ll cover what you can, and we’ll find out what that is at the fence, while there’s a choice about it. Whoever you can’t hold stays in the trees.”

The room starts moving after that.

They bring bags down the stairs, long canvas ones, and two hard cases that open flat. Somebody spreads a map on the table with the corners weighted down by a lamp and a glass. Crowe is arguing over the north side of the quarry with a man who has a torn ear, and Odile ends the argument by putting one finger on the map and holding it there.

A woman I haven’t spoken to hands me a coat that almost fits, a pair of boots, and a knitted hat.

“Hair up,” she says.

I put the boots on sitting on the edge of the table because there’s nowhere else, and nobody watches me while I do it. The boots have been worn by somebody with a wider foot.

Crowe comes over with a knife and sets it down.

“Do you know how to use one of these?”

“No.”

“Then leave it.” He takes it back and puts it inside his coat. “You get us in. You keep us covered. When it starts, you get behind me.”

“And if it goes wrong?”

“You drop everything, you run, and you hold the glamour until you fall over.” He crouches down to my level, his hands on his knees. “That’s what I promised him. Don’t make me break my promise.”

Twenty past twelve.

My wolf wants out. Whatever she’s feeling is in me too, and it isn’t fear.

Mate.

The word comes out of nowhere, but I can’t think about it now.

Odile comes to stand beside me while I’m getting my hair under the hat.

“He’ll be badly hurt,” she says. “Be ready for that. They haven’t kept him in there without harming him.”

“I know.”

“You don’t. You will.” She pulls her gloves on, finger by finger. “I’ve watched that man walk away from things ever since I’ve known him. He has never once wanted something enough to be stupid about it.”

“And now?”

She waits until I’m looking at her. “He bought a woman, locked her in his house, and then tried to take down an entire criminal organization on his own because they were after her. What do you think?” She flattens the leather at her wrist. “Twenty-five past. Get in a car.”

Outside, the vehicles are running in the lot with their lights off, and the snow has already stopped settling on the hoods.

Thirteen of us. Nobody at Aurora knows we’re going, and nobody is coming after us. Back inside that mountain, my sister is asleep a day after we found each other again.

I’m sorry, Grace. I have to do this.

Faine stops beside me at the door with her coat on and her hands folded again.

“Five hours to the quarry,” she says. “That puts us in the trees before six, with an hour we can’t afford to spend. You go in ahead of us.”