The delivery van bounced over large potholes and uneven asphalt, the tires crunching in the iced-over brown slush that bunched on both sides of the pavement.

“Home sweet home,” Nassi said, in English this time, grinning at her from around his passenger seat. “Ride is over. Time to collect our fare.”

The two men laughed as the driver put the van in park and cut the engine. Nassi came out of his seat and started to head back inside the van. Jenna knew she would have only a few seconds to act—precious seconds to disable one or both of the men and bolt.

She inched into a stable position, preparing for the moment she knew was coming.

Nassi smiled broadly as he walked farther into the vehicle. “What do you have to offer us, hmm? Let me see.”

“No,” Jenna said, shaking her head and feigning the helpless female. “No, please.”

He chuckled wolfishly. “I like a woman who will beg. A woman who knows her place.”

“Please, don’t,” Jenna said as he stepped ever closer. The stink of him nearly made her retch, but she kept her eyes fixed on him. When he got within arm’s length of her, she thrust out her left hand, palm forward, as though to physically hold him off.

She knew he would grab her.

She counted on it, and could barely contain the answering jolt of triumph that surged through her veins as he snatched her by the wrist and hauled her up off the floor of the van.

She put her weight into the movement, using his own brute force to launch herself at him. With the heel of her free hand, she smashed him hard under the nose, driving soft cartilage up into his septum with a bone-crunching pop.

“Aaghh!” Nassi howled in agony. “Putanë! Bitch, you will pay for that!”

Blood gushed from his face and onto her as he thrust his hands out and roared toward her. Jenna feinted left, dodging his grasp. Up in front of the van, she heard the other man scrambling around, moving out of the driver’s seat to fumble with the console between the seats.

She didn’t have time to worry about him right now. Nassi was furious, and in order to get out of the van, she’d have to get through him first.

Jenna locked her hands together and brought her elbows down on her attacker’s spine. He shouted in pain, coughing as he made another sloppy grab for her. She eluded him again, dancing out of his reach as though he were standing still.

“Puthje topa tuaj lamtumirë, ju copille skëmtuar!” she whispered to him tightly, a threat she made good on when she then brought her knee up between his legs and nailed him with a sharp blow to the groin.

Nassi went down like a ton of bricks.

Jenna spun on a scream of her own, ready to do battle with his friend Gresa now.

She didn’t see the gun in the other man’s hand until the flare of the shot burned as bright as lightning. The sudden crack of the bullet as it exploded toward her was deafening. She blinked, dazed and oddly detached, as the searing fire of its impact slammed into her.

“Have we got anything?”

Lucan strode into the tech lab where Brock, Kade, Alex, Renata, and Nikolai were all gathered around Gideon’s workstation.

Brock had his hands braced on the desk, staring over Gideon’s shoulder at the monitor. He gave Lucan a grim shake of his head. “Nothing solid yet. Still searching DMV records for possible matches.”

Jenna had been gone more than an hour. Their best lead on where she might have fled was a couple seconds of surveillance footage captured by a mounted security camera on the south perimeter of the estate.

At roughly the same time that Renata saw Jenna leap the fence and disappear off the grounds, an unmarked white delivery van drove by on the street adjacent to the property. Gideon had only been able to get a partial reading on the van’s Massachusetts commercial plates before it rounded a corner and disappeared out of range. In the time since, he’d hacked into the Boston DMV and had been running plate number combinations, trying to narrow down whom the van was registered to and where it might be found.

Brock was sure that if they located that van, Jenna couldn’t be far behind.

“Whether we’ve got solid leads or not, as soon as the sun sets in the next hour and a half, we’re gonna need patrols scouring the city,” Lucan said. “We cannot afford to lose this woman before we understand what she might mean to our operations.”

“And I can’t afford to let anything happen to my dearest friend,” Alex said, pointing out the emotional wrinkle in the whole situation with Jenna. “She’s upset and hurting. What if something bad happens to her out there? She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve any of this.”

“We’ll find her,” Brock said firmly. “I promise you, we will.”

Kade met his gaze and gave a solemn nod. After the stunning circumstances of Jenna’s escape from the compound, finding the human woman with the bit of alien material inside her body was a mission none of the warriors would shirk. Jenna Darrow had to be retrieved, no matter what it took.

“Hang on, hang on,” Gideon murmured. “This could prove interesting. I just got a couple of new hits on the latest sequence. One of them is registered to an auto garage in Quincy.”

“The other one?” Brock asked, leaning in to get a closer look.

“Meat-packing plant in Southie,” Gideon said. “Outfit called Butcher’s Best. Says they specialize in personal cuts and catering.”

“No shit,” Renata said, her chin-length dark hair swinging as she pivoted her head to look at the others gathered in the lab. “The banking exec who lives a couple of miles up the road is hosting his Christmas house party next weekend. Makes sense that a catering van might be up this way.”

“Yeah, it does,” Lucan agreed. “Gideon, let’s get an address for this place.”

“Coming right up.” He hit a few keys and both the street listing and a satellite map appeared on-screen. “There it is, down in the underbelly of Southie.”

Brock’s eyes fixed on the location, burning as hot as laser beams. He pivoted around and stalked out of the tech lab, determination in every hard clip of his boot heels on the marble floor.

Behind him, Kade dashed out of the lab into the corridor. “What the fuck, man? The sun won’t be setting for a good while. Where are you going?”

Brock kept walking. “I’m gonna bring her back.”

CHAPTER

Five

The sun was just beginning to dip below the tip of the Boston skyline as Brock swung one of the Order’s SUVs onto a side street in Southie. Under his black leather duster, he was geared up in UV-protective black fatigues, gloves, and wraparound shades. At a decade or so past a century and several bloodlines removed from first-generation Breeds like Lucan, Brock’s skin could withstand the sun’s rays for a short period of time, but there wasn’t a member of his kind alive who didn’t treat the daylight with a healthy dose of respect.

He had no intention of frying his own bacon, but the thought of sitting at the compound waiting on twilight while an innocent woman was wandering the city, alone and upset, had been too much for him to stand. His decision was made all the more sound when he spotted the nondescript white delivery van sitting outside the address Gideon had traced. Even before Brock got out of the Rover, the odor of fresh-spilled human blood reached his nose.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, stalking through the frozen slush and street grime toward the vehicle.

He peeked inside the passenger window and his gaze snagged on a spent bullet casing on the floor between the seats. The coppery smell of hemoglobin was stronger here, nearly overpowering.

Being Breed, he couldn’t control his body’s reaction to the presence of fresh blood. Saliva surged into his mouth, his canine teeth ripping farther out of his gums until the fangs pressed into the flesh of his tongue.