He paled—as much as he could—and stopped trying to fight me. Idiot. Hadn’t he learned his lesson already? He would lose the next fight we engaged in, and this time I wouldn’t be satisfied with a tap out.
I curled my lip in disgust. “If you’ve hurt him, I won’t need to kill you. She’ll do it herself. I’ll just hand her the knives.” I dismissed him from my attention and stalked into my room to grab my computer bag.
“Is that why she’s gone?” Kai croaked as I returned to the corridor. “You told her that I’d—”
“Nope, I’m keeping that gem up my sleeve for a rainy day,” I told him with a cruel smirk. “She probably left because you’re such a subpar fuck. You know I needed to finish her off after your lame attempt at revenge last night? Pathetic.”
It was like waving a red flag at a bull. He launched himself at me with a roar of blind rage, and I ducked at the last second, sending him sprawling in the carpeted corridor. Quickly—to stem my own desire for a fight—I jumped over him and took the stairs three at a time to head back downstairs. He’d see she was still here soon enough, so why shouldn’t I fuck with his head a bit?
The more he let his jealousy and rage control his actions, the less Danny would like him. She appreciated intelligence and logic. Calm control. Kai lacked those qualities, and pretty soon the appeal of his caveman personality would run dry.
“Come back here, you coward!” he shouted after me as I reached the foyer. “Or are you too scared to fight me without the advantage of surprise? Huh? Worried I’ll mess up that pretty face of yours?”
I didn’t slow down, striding through to the living room where Danny was pacing the carpet in front of the TV with her phone to her ear. She was talking to someone—Sabine, I thought—and giving a brief recap of what’d happened to her. Shit she hadn’t told me. It made me simmer with frustration as I put my laptop bag on the table to unzip it.
“…do that, then,” she was saying to Sabine, but her eyes were on me. “Get out of town for a few days at least. Just let me figure out what the fuck is so important in this data, okay? And for fuck’s sake, Sab, stay armed.”
Her friend must have agreed, because Danny ended the call as Kai came barreling into the living room. The instant he saw her, he pulled up short, frozen to the spot as she frowned her confusion.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded, parking her hands on her hips. “What was all the shouting about?”
I kept my expression carefully placid as I pulled out my laptop and powered it up. Kai flashed me a death glare, then crossed the room to sweep my woman up in his arms.
“Holy fuck, Siren,” he gasped, burying his face in her silken hair. “I thought you’d gone.”
Her feet were well off the ground with the way he held her, and she adjusted her position to wrap her legs around his waist. It made me want to stab him in the kidney. It’d be so easy, with his back to me like that. Just whoops, my knife slipped and it was done. No take backs. Problem solved.
But then I wouldn’t get the satisfaction of killing him slowly… of making him understand the consequences of his actions. He murdered Layla, and now he was seducing my DeLuna. I’d be damned if I let history repeat itself, so I would do whatever it took to eliminate him before he could hurt my love.
“…get my note?” I caught her saying as I tuned back in—leaving my daydream behind—and she gave me a hard glare when the big dumb fuck asked what note?
I just met her eyes and shrugged. Surely she knew better than to expect me to encourage this fling? Not commenting, I plugged the first thumb drive into my computer and clicked my tongue in un-surprised irritation.
“Encoded,” I muttered, ejecting it and trying another. Same thing. On the upside, though, it was a code I already knew I could break with a little time. After all, it was one I’d invented. “DeLuna, my love, tell us what happened when you found these.”
Kai, poor thing, was a bit slow to catch up. “Are those… is that the data cache? Where did you find it? Why am I so out of the loop here?”
Danny soothed him with a tender kiss, and I nearly destroyed the thumb drive in my fist. “I was following up on a lead from Sabby.” She patted his shoulder and wriggled free of his smothering hold. “Which worked out, clearly. But then as I was leaving, I got shot at by a team of mercs.”
Kai’s eyes widened, and my own gaze sharpened on her.
“A team?” Kai repeated, maybe the information was taking a hot second to compute. “Guild mercs? How many?”
Danny shrugged, running a hand through her hair. “Like… maybe nine? Unclear on whether they were Guild or not. I had some backup sharpshooters from KJ-Fit lay down cover while Hades gave me a ride home. She looked less than impressed about the mess, though.”
I snorted a laugh. “Tough shit. They had to have been tailing you, though. And why today? Why put such a large team on you today of all days.”
“My guess is that they already knew the data cache was here somewhere and were just waiting for us to find it. Stupid of me to announce I’d found it over the phone where anyone could overhear.” Danny grimaced with guilt. “Regardless, we have it and they’re dead. How long will it take to decode?”
I cast my eyes back to the scrambled mess of code on my screen. “If I was home with access to my office, only a day. But from here? Hard to say. Maybe a week. Per drive.” Then a thought occurred to me, and I speared dickhead with a glare. “Your man put the insulting hit out on DeLuna. Was this team his handiwork too?”
Danny must not have considered that option, because her eyes widened as she peered up at Kai. “I thought you handled Sam?”
Kai glowered, his fists tight at his sides and his jaw twitching. “I did handle him. This wasn’t my team.”
I snapped my fingers. “Yeah, I’m not so sure, Goliath. How would you know? You’ve been here, salivating all over my woman. They could have—”
“I know,” he barked, “because Sam’s dead. I shot him. This was a Guild attack.”
Well, shit, I didn’t expect that. Maybe he isn’t as useless as he looks.
Danny looked genuinely shocked, her lips parted as she stared up at him. Goddamn it, don’t tell me he was getting her pity over killing his disloyal team member? That was just sensible leadership, not something to get his dick sympathy-sucked for.
“Kai, I had no idea…” she murmured, running a hand over her face. She was tired but doing a good job of hiding it. Except in those little moments when her hand passed over her face, or her fingers through her hair, and her eyes turned tired. I wanted nothing more than to take her home to my snow fortress and put her back in the hot tub.
The big asshole’s shoulders sagged, then all of a sudden his posture stiffened, going rigid. “Danny,” he whispered, horror filling his voice, “where did you get that?”
He was pointing at the necklace around DeLuna’s neck, lying against her black top like a shining beacon of disaster. I’d seen it when she came in but assumed she’d found it with the data cache.