Page 64 of Cherished By the Sinners

“I’m serious,” Baz said.“Try not to kill anybody.”

Magnus turned to look at his cousin.“If they have hurt her, my brother and I will kill them all.”

Baz glanced at him.“Fuck, you’re supposed to be the logical one.”

Magnus laughed, and even to himself he sounded like a maniac.“Like you were logical when you killed every man who’d taken Nika?”He had.With his bare hands.He’d left an apartment full of bodies, and the police were still trying to figure out what happened and which head went with what body.

“Shit,” Baz muttered.“I should have Anna prep a cleanup crew.”

“Buy the damn building,” Magnus said.“So we can burn it.”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

Magnus leaned forward a little as Baz pulled the cab over on the street behind the warehouse, parking right behind Nika’s car.Mason got out of her car at the same time Magnus got out of the cab.

Nika got out too and came over to talk to Baz.They spoke softly for several moments, and when Nika went back to her car, she didn’t look happy.

“She wants to go in with us,” Mason told Magnus.

“Bad idea.”

“That’s what I told her.Hopefully Baz convinced her to wait until the threats are no longer so...threatening.”

Magnus snorted.“She’s as stubborn as Baz is.”

“Yeah, but she isn’t stupid.She knows she’s his biggest weakness.”

“Just like Darlene is ours?”

Mason paused for a moment.“Yes.”

Magnus let the idea sit with him for a few seconds.“She’s also our greatest strength.Without her, I think we would be lost to the madness our lives bring to us.”

“Like the British?”

He nodded.“And the Italians.”

Magnus and Mason looked at each other.“This is what the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians are trying to prevent,” Magnus said to Mason.

“At the very least,” Mason said.“But I think they all have alistof issues they don’t know how to solve.”

Nika pulled away from the curb and drove off.

Baz stuck his head out the window of his car.“Ten minutes.”He rolled his window up and followed Nika.

Magnus and Mason walked over to the entrance to the back alley and strode down it.Garbage had collected along the edges and it smelled like an open sewer.The back of the warehouse was no cleaner, despite there being only a narrow four-foot gap between their target building and the one behind it.

They surveyed the wall, noting that the windows didn’t start until the height of the second floor.The building was built of brick, but the edges of the bricks had worn down leaving little in the way of hand or footholds.

Magnus crouched and laced his hands together, offering them as a landing pad for a foot so he could toss Mason up high enough to reach the window.

Mason consulted the tracking device on his wrist, which had finally locked onto the signal from the watch Darlene was wearing.They were in the right place.Darlene was only a few feet away.

He put his foot on his brother’s hands.Magnus lifted with all his strength, pushing his brother up into the air.

Mason grabbed the edge of the window and pulled himself up.He looked in the window, just as a fire alarm began ringing inside the building.

Mason waited for a moment, then smashed the glass out of the window with his elbow.He looked inside, scanning from one direction to the other, then waved at Magnus to join him.