Page 58 of Dangerous Deviance

“We’re the Adlers,” Derek said loudly. The woman’s shoulders rose, her eyes unblinking as she stared at us.

“What did you say?” she asked.

Axe raised a brow. “She never speaks.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s homicidal,” Derek said.

But at those words, the woman gave herself space, then catapulted her whole body towards the wall of the cage, moving the whole thing forward.

“Shit!” Derek said.

The two of us ran forward, holding it down in spots. Axe went to one of the locked cabinets on the opposite wall of the room.

“I’ll find a tranquilizer,” Axe said.

“You killed her. You killed her! You fucking monster!”

She slashed at the cage, but the bars were too close together for her to make any impact. I held the walls of the cage, lowering them into place, then Axe tossed us padlocks to anchor it to the metal loops in the concrete floor. Once the cage was latched, the two of us stepped back. The woman paced back and forth. Axe held a syringe in the air, the liquid dripping down the sides of the needle.

“I will kill all three of you,” she murmured.

“You won’t,” Axe said.

“Where are you from?” I asked. The woman glared at me, her eyes shooting imaginary spears. “We’re in Sage City. You must be far away from home.”

“Fuck you,” she hissed.

“Who do you think we killed?” I asked. “Is it your sister? A mother?”

“My daughter, you asshole.”

My chest tightened. What the hell was going on?

“We don’t know who your daughter is. We didn’t kill her. You’ve been tricked.”

“Liars!”

She jumped backward and threw herself at the bars again, the whole cage shaking. I sucked in a breath, then gestured towards the door. The three of us started heading out, but at the entrance, Axe lifted his gun from the holster, showing the woman that he was armed. Then he stepped out.

We waited outside in silence, trying to process what had happened. I had always figured that the women and our dead men were related, but I had never thought that the women would be responsible for the deaths. They were too vulnerable. Naked in the woods. No memory. As if they had been wiped clean.

Perhaps being close to Ellie had messed with me. I didn’t want her to be sent by an enemy, knowing what that would mean. I wanted us to work. I didn’t want to kill her.

But that didn’t matter right now. Ellie was chained up, and so was the woman. And now that we knew the trigger, if there were any more women, we’d be able to keep our surname silent, to prevent any further damage.

“They’ve sent soldiers,” Derek said.

“To kill us,” Axe said.

“The dead one must have killed our men.”

“We’ll get rid of them.”

“Wait,” I said. “Killing them won’t solve our problem. Whoever it was will just send more of them, and we’d lose these two as a resource.” I shook my head, waiting for them to object, but neither of them did. I continued, “Right now, we have them under our control. We can try to learn from them, see what they know. Figure out who sent them.”

“Or we can kill them,” Axe said. “Trap the next one. Use her instead.”

I met his eyes and I clenched my fists. My cut palm hurt like a mother fucker, but I narrowed my eyes through the pain, to prove a point.