Nervous tension twisted my stomach into knots while we waited. Maybe nothing would happen. God, I hoped nothing would happen.

Sasha and I sat in my truck a mile down the road from the site in a grocery store parking lot while Ian and his team held positions onsite. Damn, I wanted to be up there with them, but we had a plan and I intended to follow it through.

“It’ll be okay,” Sasha said. She set her phone aside in the cupholder, and I glimpsed a text conversation with Isisa and Nandi. All I could imagine was the two of them pacing their penthouse while they waited.

“Yeah, I know. Just makes me sick to think it’s one of my guys.”

“We could be wrong about that, you know. It could just be an eavesdropping snake—”

“Got movement on the eastern perimeter.” Juni’s soft voice spoke up over the comm line. She’d wanted to be involved, but Ian asked her to be our woman in the chair—the boss overseeing the mission from behind a desk and computer monitor—since she was still healing from a serious injury. Broken bones, even for shifters, took time.

“What do you have?” Ian asked.

“A green Range Rover pulled off into the brush. Someone’s climbing the fence now. No ID yet, sorry.”

Except I didn’t need her to name our mystery visitor, and my heart sunk. Only one man on my crew had that vehicle. “It’s Jesús. My subforeman.”

Nadir spoke up after a brief pause. “Do I get to remark on the irony of a dude named Jesús being your Judas?”

I laughed weakly, because if I didn’t, I’d be crying. Jesús had eaten dinner at my goddamned table alongside me and my family before. He’d been a loyal member of the crew back when I discharged from the Marines. Fuck. My dad had hired him in the early days.

“Won’t the security cameras film him coming in?”

My fists clenched around the steering wheel. “You said the eastern fence line, right? That was our blind spot. He knows that because I have him and Sergio patrol it a few times each day.”

“Good thing he doesn’t know about our extra additions,” Sasha muttered. She reached over and squeezed my hand.

“What’s he doing, Juni?” Taylor asked. “Wait, shit, lights outside just went dark.”

“He’s cut the power and disabled the generator,” Juni relayed. “Got him moving toward the office trailer now. Looks like he’s making a call.”

I waited on the edge of my seat until Juni reported the arrival of two trucks a half hour later. Jesús opened the gates wide for them, and soon the sound of tires crunching over dirt and gravel reached my ears through the comm line.

“Wait for it,” Ian cautioned. “We need to catch them in the act if we’re going to have any chance of putting these guys away.”

Waiting while men loaded up the first crates of “marble” tested the limitations of my endurance and sanity.

“I got two men, armed, outside the storage house. Medrano is there giving orders. Three more loading the goods. You sure you wanna confront them first, Esteban?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. This guy likes to talk and run his mouth a lot. He won’t shoot me straight away.”

“All right, you’re green to go. We’ll start moving into position in case things turn ugly.”

I turned over the engine and looked at Sasha. She held a sleek, personalized Beretta in her lap and had a second matching handgun tucked into a holster beneath her left arm, a hint of the pearl grip visible, my own elegant and classy GI Jane. “Ready?”

“I won’t be far behind you,” Sasha whispered. “Be careful.”

She vanished into the shadows and left me to make the walk up the drive alone. I didn’t think my truck parked in the gate would do much to deter anyone from leaving, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Their trucks came into view around the next bend. Ian’s soft voice assured me he had me in his sights, and the others all reported the same. Even though I couldn’t see them, I trusted that they had my back.

One truck faced the building they were emptying with the headlights on for illumination. The other had the bed facing the door for ease of loading. From here it looked like they’d loaded maybe a quarter of the shipment.

“Jesús?”

Everyone turned to face me at once. Two of them had guns, and having them pointed at my chest raised the hairs on my nape. The last time someone had pointed guns at me, I’d eaten them for lunch. Literally.

Control it. Don’t shift. Don’t shift.

“What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded.

Jesús stepped forward, both hands empty and down at his sides. He looked back at the truck loaded up with the stolen supplies then back to me. “You shouldn’t have come, boss. I didn’t want it to go down like this.”

“Like what?” My left temple throbbed, and the familiar tingle of wanting to shift began in my fingertips. “How much did it take to make you betray us, huh? This job wasn’t enough for you?”

“You give all of the good jobs to your brother. I worked here from the start alongside your dad, and all he did was hand it over to you. I was loyal to all of you—treated you like my own sons, and what good has it done me?”

I stared at him, cold fury pounding through my veins. “You call that loyalty, Jesús? You turned on us the moment you saw a better deal come along. We had two more jobs after this. Dupont and I signed the contracts last week, and I was going to surprise all of you before Christmas with first dibs to work the out-of-city crews. You would have led your own fucking site. You were first on my list to run the entire operation in San Antonio.”

His eyes widened.

“They paying you enough for your dignity too? You say you treated us like sons, but you were family, man. You ate at our table with us.”

“Enough talking.” Luis Medrano stepped forward into the light. I’d only ever seen the man once before, but he’d made an impression. Built like a bull, he tended to shadow his older brother like some sort of hulking bodyguard. Still, it didn’t surprise me not to see the elder Medrano here. He didn’t seem like the sort to get his hands dirty.

“You won’t get away with this,” I said.

“Why not? We have your marble, no one knows we are here, and you and your little cat won’t be around to tell anyone after we’re gone.”

“Look, no one said anything about killing.” Jesús stepped forward but stopped short when Luis turned the gun on him.

“You want to join them? No? Then shut up and do what we paid you to do. Finish loading the goods.”

“What about him?” one of the thugs asked.

“Kill Castillo and toss him inside. We’ll leave him as a message to everyone else not to fuck with us. Dupont will learn we are not to be ignored. Our money belongs with our own kind.”

Our own kind? Was Dupont a shifter after all?

Before I could question him, before they could even think about following his orders, a red beam appeared on the center of Medrano’s chest. He glanced down, bewildered.

“What the hell is this?”

“That, my friend, is a dot belonging to my friend Nadir’s .357 magnum. He doesn’t need the sight but…”

Nadir’s voice reached us from the second-floor bedroom of the house behind me. At under fifty yards, he had Medrano dead if he pulled the trigger. “I like it, and it brings me a little joy when I see the kind of startled expression you’re making right now.”

A shotgun cocked. An unnecessary noise that carried a lot of intimidation with it. So did the guy holding it. Taylor stepped forward with his Mossberg. He’d been lurking nearby, outfitted in a black tactical vest and unseen by their gang members in the pitch-black night. None of Espadachines were trained for this kind of thing, accustomed to dealing with kids on the street and the helpless, not armed military operatives who knew how to fight back. “Easiest infiltration job I’ve ever worked.”

“I’ve got you covered, too,” Ian said cheerfully. He was on the rooftop of the house they’d robbed, wearing a black cap over his white hair. “Trust me, if I pull the trigger, even at this distance, Medrano, your people will be working with a closed casket funeral.”

“You hired security?”

“The best security in Texas,” I replied.

Jesús began to shake. In the glare of the headlights, he’d turned an ashy shade of gray. “I didn’t think it would go down like this, Esteban. You gotta believe me. They made it sound like they were going to hurt my family if I didn’t help them.”

I ignored him. Jesús had an ex-wife and two kids, both of his sons living out of state in college.

“Place your firearms on the ground,” Taylor said.

“There are two remaining threats inside the house. They’re moving for the door,” Juni announced over the comm.

“Guns down now,” Taylor ordered again, prodding one in the back with his shotgun.

As one guy lowered his gun, another charged onto the porch, firing blindly into the group of us. The entire scene dissolved into chaos, from a neat and orderly arrest to a clusterfuck within seconds.

Nadir’s red beam swung from Medrano to the initial shooters and plugged one neatly in the face, a split second too late to save me from taking a round to the chest. Taylor’s shotgun roared.

Kevlar might stop a bullet, but the impact still hurt like hell. I stumbled back and hit the ground. In the same moment, Sasha appeared around the truck and drove her fist into a thug’s face. He joined me on the dirt.

“Are you all right, Esteban?”

“Yeah. Go, I’m good.”

“Medrano is running for it,” Juni reported. “Eastbound!”

“He must be going for Jesús’s ride. I got him.” Sheer determination got me up off the ground and running after Luis.

Despite the considerable gap he’d gotten during his head start, I pushed my body and forced my lungs to cooperate. Sasha had promised awakening my shifter half would make me faster and stronger. It did. I flew over the ground and closed in on him.

Luis glanced over his shoulder. The full moon above us lit his panicked features, and raw fear rolled over me, the stench tangled with his smell.

He shifted. A pile of clothes fell, and his serpentine body darted forward toward the fence to go beneath it.

“Oh no you don’t.”

One thought, that was all it took to make me explode from my clothes. Cotton and denim burst at the seams, unable to contain my growing body. I may not have been as graceful as my girls, but I landed running on four paws and pounced with everything I had in me. Luis’s serpentine body flattened beneath my paws. He struggled, twisting his thick length, but I’d caught him right behind the head.

This was the man who had hurt my friends. Who had threatened my mate.

A deep growl reverberated in my chest, and I pressed down with my claws. The viper went still. Dead? No, I hadn’t killed it yet. I wanted to. One bite would sever his head from the rest of his body. One swipe of my claw would rend the olive scales to pieces.

“Hey now, big guy. I know what you’re thinking, and trust me, I’d do the same, but we have to be better than them.” Sasha stroked my ears. Then her voice hardened. “Shift back, Medrano, or I might decide to let him eat you anyway.”

Medrano shifted back. His terror stank, and the adrenaline pumping through his body would have ruined the taste anyway. My paw remained on his chest, claw tips against bare flesh while Ian jogged up with his restraints.

“Look at you.” Sasha tugged on the Kevlar vest still caught around my neck along with bits of cotton from my shirt. “You were amazing, but it’s time to get you dressed, yeah? Don’t think we wanna explain a lion or a naked site manager.”

---

We secured the surviving FEL members, and I provided medical attention to Jesús while we awaited the authorities. Juni had already phoned in a report regarding the burglary attempt and assault, specifying that several members of their security team were armed, and that there had been two casualties among the attackers.

Esteban jumped to his feet and stared toward the open trailer door. “Mr. Dupont, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I wanted to see for myself how everything went.”

No fucking way. The scent of iron and old blood wafted to me on the air, a metallic odor that we associated with all vampires. I stiffened and turned, slowly, resisting the urge to reach for the gun on the nearby desk. Bloodsuckers weren’t exactly an every-day occurrence though I knew about a coven that lived close to San Antonio.

“Sasha, this is Mr. Dupont.”

The vampire was all rosy and pink, fresh-faced like he’d had a few good sips of blood prior to visiting us. He smiled, unnatural gray eyes twinkling in the fluorescent lights. “I told you, call me Julien. We have worked long enough together to be on a first-name basis by now, I would think.”

“Right, of course.” Esteban’s tired smile crinkled his eyes. “I think we won’t have any more problems with the site.”

“Yes, I saw Mr. Medrano in the back of a cruiser. Excellent work.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” I finally said. Our gazes met, and the man tipped his head in silent recognition. Did Esteban know? I doubted it.

“I hope this won’t change your mind about working with me in the future, Julien.”

“On the contrary, it’s refreshing to know you’re associated with such dependable people and that you’d go through this much effort to see my assets secured. In fact, I plan to speak with Mr. MacArthur about providing security in the future for all projects.”

Julien took a step further inside. Natural instinct boiled up, and reflexes put me between Esteban and a possible threat. The vampire paused, and my mate shot me a confused look.

“You okay, Sasha?”

“Yeah, sorry.” I moved back and ducked my head, mentally kicking myself. Esteban didn’t need my protection, and not every vampire was a bloodthirsty fiend. He’d been around Dupont for months before I ever met him.

“Forgive me,” Julien said. His composure never faltered. “Your lovely mate is reacting as would be her natural inclinations when danger is present.”

“Danger? What danger?”

“It’s nothing,” I mumbled. “Really. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s quite all right. Had I been aware that Esteban knew of our world, I would have revealed myself sooner.”

“Is that what Medrano meant about keeping money in ‘our world’?” Esteban asked. “Are you a shifter, Julien?”

“No.” He folded his hands before him. “I’m a vampire.”

Esteban blinked a few times, eyes drifting from me to Julien and back again. His mouth opened and shut until he regained composure and cleared his throat. “That explains a lot of things I’d wondered about but didn’t question. UV shielded windows.”

“And our dinner meetings.”

Pride surged through me. No matter what life threw at him, Esteban handled every situation with tact and dignity. Only three months ago, he’d been a working man ignorant to the world of the paranormal, now he was a shifter bound to his own pride, working for a billionaire vampire. There was no better man in the world as far as I was concerned.

“Now what?” Esteban asked. “About Medrano, I mean.”

“He goes to jail. I doubt he’ll flip on his family, but between him, the gang, and Jesús, we should have enough to incriminate the family and call for an investigation,” I said.

“Until then, I’ll do what I can to ensure no further retaliation is taken against the project, beginning with speaking to your friend outside. If you’ll both excuse me.”

Dupont left us alone once again, taking his unpleasant scent with him.

“Wow. Vampire. I don’t even know what to think right now.” Esteban sank into his chair and rubbed his face.

“He seems nice though.”

“Yeah, he is. Good man to work for. Uh… he’s not gonna want blood or anything, right?”

“Doubtful. His kind have lots of rules and shit they follow, but we can talk about that later. How are you holding up?”

“I dunno, Sash, I really don’t. Jesús’s betrayal hurt bad. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell my guys about this. Or my father. They were close friends.”

“Just tell them the truth.”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes and released a deep sigh. “At least now we should be able to finish the job on schedule. Everyone needs a break after this.”

“Easy sailing from here?” I asked.

“Hope so, but we have one more adventure ahead of us.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

Esteban opened his eyes, sat up, and smiled. “Christmas with my family next month. My entire family.”