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“How are we getting back?” he asks. “Your mother is right; we can’t take the car back. Especially if James knows who we are.”

They skirt the edge of the building, following it around in the opposite direction of the parking lot. It takes an extra few minutes, but they’re able to follow the driveway back toward the road without being seen. Maybe they can find a taxi on the other side.

“Are you alright?” Leo asks finally, guiding the distracted alpha into the cover of a large bush, when an expensive black car flies past them up the drive. No sense in being seen or remembered, even if it’s somebody in for a quick round in the middle of the day.

“No. Fuck. I hadn’t expected that.”

“Me, either. She seemed—” Leo breaks off, a sharp pain in his belly making him catch his breath at the same time Jay clutches his chest.

“Ow, fuck.”

It’s gone as quickly as it had come, but it was Nix, for sure.

They reach the entrance to the Club, and the security guard is on the phone and paying them no mind when they skirt under the arm of the gate.

Jay already has his burner phone in hand.

“Gid. What the fuck is going on? Is Nix okay? Are you?”

Leo steers them toward the safe house along the side of the road—and hopefully toward a ride.

He has no problem hearing Gideon’s annoyed tone over the line.

“Well, yes, to all of that. We’re okay, but Gray blew the MRI machine up with whatever mojo he’s got cooking now, and he’s out. Nix isn’t taking to that too well, and Finn was a pincushion for some exploding glass that we really need to get out right now. We might have to replace a three-million-dollar MRI machine.”

Mojo? Blew up the MRI? Three million dollars?

Leo is sure his face mirrors his alpha’s concern and disbelief.

“What’s happening to Gray?”

“No idea, but we have a civilian incoming. Will call later.”

The line goes dead, and Jay hits himself in the forehead with the device a few times.

“What next, Leo? That could have been the worst kind of bad.”

Jay sits for a minute in the grass, heedless, as he usually is of his expensive clothes.

If they cover his ass, he couldn’t care less how much they cost.

“No fucking kidding. Everyone is alright, though.”

Jay lies back, and Leo joins him. The sky looks much the same here as it does at home—the white clouds in a bright blue sky.

It’s a strange feeling. Maybe he could capture it for a song.

“I’ll call back soon. Do you think my mom is going to be okay?”

The last thing Leo wants to do is feel guilty about leaving Miranda Rhodes to the big bad wolf, but the question makes him think about her fear—and that wrist movement.

Jay is too good for this world, and Leo has always been too honest.

“No, I really don’t.”

“Me either.”

Jay climbs to his feet, pulling Leo up after him, turning back toward the Golf Club.