Page 52 of Shadow Of Sin

“Nobody ever does. And yet…” He throws his hands in the air.

Ronan opens his mouth but Wolfe cuts in.

“She’s here because I brought her here,” he says. “She’s been feeding me accurate intel for two weeks. Every piece has checked out. Without her, we wouldn’t know Dmitri’s name, we wouldn’t know his targets, and we wouldn’t know he’s three moves away from a play that could hit both families. You can interrogate her all day, or you can use what she’s got. Your call.”

Oooh. The air suddenly shifts. Ronan looks at Wolfe and something passes between them that I can’t fully read. It’s not fear on either side. It’s more like…recognition. The quiet brother just drew a line, and everyone knows he means it.

Ronan sits back in his chair, suddenly at a loss for words.

I stare at Wolfe. This is not the man who eats Cheerios in a crappy apartment and tilts his head when he’s confused. This is someone else. Someone who just told the most dangerous person in the room to back off, and the most dangerous person in the room did it.

Holy shit.

“Tell me about Renaldi,” Lochlan says, breaking the tension.

Before I can answer, the door opens and a woman walks in. Dark hair, piercing eyes, dressed like she just came from running something important. Because she probably did. Definitely brings the CEO aura.

Every man in the room straightens up. Even Ronan.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Traffic on Commonwealth was a nightmare.” She looks at me. “You must be Eva.”

This has to be Adriana. Lochlan’s wife. The sister-in-law whose operations guy I just handed to Dmitri on a silver platter.

“And you must be Adriana,” I say.

She extends her hand. I shake it. Her grip is firm, and her eyes don’t waver, and I know within about two seconds that this woman doesn’t get pushed around by anyone in this room. Including her husband.

She pulls a chair next to Lochlan and sits. “Vincent Renaldi has worked for my family’s property group for six years. He’s trustworthy, reliable, and has access to operational schedules for eight buildings in the Boston metro area. So when my husband told me someone pulled his calendar for the next two weeks, I cleared my entire day.” She looks at me. “What does Dmitri want with his schedule?”

“I don’t know specifically,” I say. “But based on the pattern of jobs I’ve done, he’s been building toward something targeted. The first few were broad. He wanted client lists and financials. Then his requests for data was narrowed to specific properties. Then specific people. Renaldi’s calendar is the most targeted request yet. He wants to know when your buildings are vulnerable.”

“When security rotates,” Wolfe adds. “When Renaldi’s offsite. When nobody’s watching a specific location.”

Adriana looks at Lochlan. Something passes between them, the kind of silent conversation married people have in a single glance.

“He’s going to hit one of my buildings,” she says. Not a question.

“That’s what the data suggests,” I say.

“Which one?”

“I don’t know yet. But if you give me access to the property layouts and security schedules, I can cross-reference with everything I’ve already pulled. The overlap should narrow it down.”

She studies me. Not the way Ronan did, like I was a threat. She’s sizing me up right now.

“You built all of this for Dmitri?” she asks. “The connections between targets.”

“I pulled the data. I didn’t build the connections. I didn’t even know there were connections until Wolfe showed me how the pieces fit.”

“But you could have,” she says. “If you’d looked.”

“Yeah. I could have.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asks.

“Because I don’t want to go back to jail.”

She nods. “Get her access to the property data,” Adriana says to Lochlan. Then she looks at Ronan. “She stays.”