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“No.”

“He didn’t say anything about a fight with Nick, anything that made you think––”

“No, Black.” My voice grew warning. “But you heard Nick. This predates the girl. Do you really think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew?”

“I felt you thinking about that human patient-confidentiality thing, and––”

“What about Yarli?” I asked, cutting him off. “Could she help, do you think?”

Black grunted. “You were there. I already told Jem to see her.”

“But will he?” I pressed.

It was Black’s turn to exhale through the comm. I imagined him combing his hand through his own raven-colored hair, his gold eyes focused out one of the windows of his office suite, taking in the late afternoon sun.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just sent Jax and Kiko to find him. I’ll tell them to broach the Yarli thing with him when they do. I admit, I still think he’d talk to you before he would her.” Black paused. “Are you going to join us? Nick and Mika just called in. They should be heading back soon. I’ve got everyone else gathering in the bullpen to lay out final plans for tonight.”

“The Prometharis run?” The abrupt change of subject threw me. “Do you need me there for that? I thought you didn’t want me coming tonight?”

“I’d still like you here for the meeting, if only to get your opinion on––”

Before he could finish, an alarm exploded overhead.

25

THE ALARM

Ifumbled to put my earpiece back in my ear. I’d ripped it out when the alarm started, mostly because it shocked me so badly, it felt like an assault.

I got it back in and clicked it on in time to hear Black’s voice, loud on the line.

“…you’re sure it’s him? Dalejem?” he growled. A bare pause passed while someone else came onto the line with a click. “Where? Where did he trip it?”

“Inside the penthouse,” a deep voice said. I recognized it immediately as belonging to Dex. He sounded grim, even disturbed. “We’re checking every camera in the building now. But there’s definitely a view on Jem breaking into your room. The alarm went off a few seconds later. Looks like he tripped one of your secondaries, likely the one that tracks you and Miri by your location, and knew someone unauthorized was in there.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

I hadn’t even known Black had something like that in our apartment.

He must have activated it when he got worried Jem might go looking for Aura. There’s no way that level of security was on allthe time, or we’d set it off every time someone went in there to grab Panther for a walk.

“Who’s closest?” Black barked.

“Jax and Kiko are over there.”

“Have them guard the door until we get there. They can’t take him alone.”

I felt sick.Takehim? This was Jem we were talking about.

Jem, who had broken into our penthouse.

That meant using his sight to hack the bio-lock. Even Jem wouldn’t have been able to break down the door. Not without a bazooka, or maybe one of those shockwave guns I’d seen Black and the others experiment with, mostly in a “boys will be boys” kind of way, knocking down cement walls and blasting boulders apart just to see what the weapon could do.

Gods. Would Jem really hurt her?

Would he even kill her, if he decided he needed to?

When I’d told Black there was a risk of that, I’d been speaking from the theoretical, purely logical side of my mind. I hadn’t let myself contemplate him actuallydoingit. But now it suddenly felt like a real possibility, and what the hell were we going to do? We’d have to lock Jem up. Nick was going to lose his mind.