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But I couldn’t think about her yet.

Especially since there was a good chance she was already dead, or would be soon.

“She’s not dead,” Black had muttered, dropping another bag on our king-sized bed. “We’ll get her back, Miri. Alive. I’m more confident about that now than I was. The fact that Jem took her with him and didn’t just murder her outright is the most hopeful part about all of this. He wants her for something, or he would have left her corpse on the tarmac at SFO.”

I winced.

“No, heneedsher,” Black amended darkly.“Someoneneeds her, anyway.”

“You really think Brick is behind this?” I asked again.

“I think it’s very fucking possible, wife,” Black replied.

I’d only nodded as I zipped up my bag. I could tell it felt more than just “possible” to Black. He was now acting on the assumption that itwasBrick. He definitely thought the vampires were involved, and more than likely the reason for Jem’s odd behavior.

Something about that still didn’t feel quite right to me.

My eyes followed the rayon satchel he’d just brought out from the back part of our shared closet. I recognized it. It was one he kept hidden in our bedroom for security reasons, and held another gods-only-knew how many guns, and enough magazines to bring down an army. He likely had other things in there, too. Knives. Kevlar.

Grenades.

“This isJem,”I reminded him.

Black didn’t so much as slow his movements.

“I’m having them bring tranq rifles,” he said, either hearing me or seeing my eyes on the rayon bag. “Don’t worry, doc.”

“Who’s worried?” I murmured, taking my eyes off the bag.

We’d left our penthouse together about five minutes later.

Black had carried the two weapons bags with him as he waited for me to leave in front of him with our smallish roller suitcase and two garment bags. Black hoisted the larger, rayon bag to his shoulder, and winked at me, a taut smile on his lips.

Now we were on the borrowed plane, and it was taxiing towards a runway.

In the end, Black decidednotto cancel the contract.

He was still mulling about calling the cops.

“We’ll find them, first,” he muttered under his breath, adjusting his weight inside the green, fuzzy seat next to mine. “Then we’ll decide.”

I didn’t answer.

Lucian Rucker and his gang of sociopaths was the least of my worries right then.

“They ditched your plane,” Dexter said to Black, plunking his weight and considerable height into a sky-blue chair across from both of ours. He rubbed a dark, calloused hand over his bald head. “It’s now parked inside a private hangar at J.F.K.”

Kiko, who’d walked up with Dex, spoke up before Black could answer.

“We alsofinallygot them on C.C.T.V.,” she said. Kiko took the chair next to Dex, and crossed one leg easily over the other. “They just boarded a commercial flight for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. First class. The terminal says he paid cash, but Jax says it’s likely he just pushed them into printing him boarding passes.”

There was a pause where Kiko scrutinized Black’s expression.

“We didn’t get word until it was too late,” she added, a touch sourly. “We didn’t have anyone close enough to stop them, anyway, and you said to let them go as long as we could still track them. They’ve been airborne for probably fifteen minutes.”

She waited.

I knew why she was waiting, and what she was waiting for, and I waited with her. Black still had contacts that might be able to turn the flight around. He knew people in the military, and in Homeland Security. He had people who would bend the rules for him, even without having to push them with his light.