“Yeah,” Brock agreed. “And doesn’t that just suck ass.”

From the rear of the tech lab, his booted feet propped up on the conference table while he tipped back in his chair, Sterling Chase cleared his throat. “All things considered, maybe it’s not such a good idea to give this woman so much freedom around the compound. She’s too big of a question mark right now. For all we know, she could be some kind of goddamn walking time bomb.”

For a long moment, no one said a thing. Brock hated the silence. Hated Chase for putting something out there that none of the warriors would want to consider.

“What would you suggest?” Lucan asked, shooting a sober look at the male who had spent decades as part of the Breed’s bureaucratic Enforcement Agency before joining up with the Order.

Chase arched a blond brow. “If it were up to me, I’d remove her from the compound ASAP. Lock her away someplace tight and secure, as far away from our operation as she can get, at least until we have a chance to take Dragos down, once and for all.”

Brock’s growl erupted from his throat, dark with animosity. “Jenna stays here.”

Gideon put his glasses back on and gave a nod in Brock’s direction. “I agree. I would not be comfortable removing her now. I’d like to keep an eye on her, get a better understanding of what’s happening to her on a cellular and neurological level, at a minimum.”

“Suit yourselves,” Chase drawled. “But it’s gonna be all of our funerals if you’re wrong.”

“She stays,” Brock said, aiming his narrowed gaze down the table to where it skewered the smirking ex-Agent.

“You’ve had a hard-on for this human since the second you saw her,” Chase remarked, his tone light but his expression dark with challenge. “You got something to prove, my man? What is it—you just one of those born suckers for a damsel in distress? The Patron Saint of Lost Causes. Is that your deal?”

Brock vaulted across the table in a single leap. He would have had his hands around Chase’s throat, but the vampire saw him coming and moved just as fast. The chair toppled, and in half a second the two big males were eye to eye, jaw to jaw, locked in a simmering standoff neither one of them could win.

Brock felt strong hands peeling him away from the confrontation—Kade and Tegan, there before he could take the shot Chase deserved. And behind Chase were Lucan and Hunter, the two of them and the rest of the warriors ready to dial the situation down if either male thought to escalate it.

Glaring at Chase, Brock allowed himself to be guided away from his comrade, but only barely. For what wasn’t the first time, he considered the antagonistic, aggressive nature of Sterling Chase, and he pondered what it was that drove the otherwise skilled—once upstanding—male to be so volatile.

If the Order had a time bomb to worry about in its midst, Brock wondered if he wasn’t looking at the source of that danger right now.

“What the hell is taking them so long?”

Jenna hadn’t realized she’d spoken her frustration out loud until Alex reached over and took her hand in a reassuring grasp. “Gideon said he wanted to run some extra tests on your samples. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.”

Jenna huffed out a sharp sigh. Cane in hand, even though she felt only the smallest need to lean on it, she got up from the sofa she’d been sitting on and limped to the other side of the apartment’s living room. She had been brought there by Alex and Tess following her blood draw in the infirmary a few hours ago, told she’d been granted use of the private quarters as her own for the duration of her stay at the compound.

The residential suite was a big improvement over her room at the infirmary. Spacious and comfortable, with oversize leather furniture and dark wood tables that were meticulously polished and free of clutter. Tall wooden bookcases were lined with a library’s worth of classics, philosophy, politics, and history. Serious, thought-provoking books that seemed in contrast to the shelf full of neatly organized—good grief, alphabetized—popular commercial fiction that sat alongside it.

Jenna let her gaze wander the shelves of titles and authors, needing even the momentary distraction to keep herself from dwelling too long on what might be keeping her waiting all this time for answers from Gideon and the others.

“Tess has been down there for more than an hour,” she pointed out, idly pulling a book about female jazz singers from its place in the history section. She flipped through a few pages, more to give her hands something to do than out of any real interest in the book.

As she thumbed past a section on 1920s-era nightclubs, a yellowed old photograph slipped out. Jenna caught it before it fell to the floor. The beaming face of a pretty young woman dressed in shimmering silk and glossy furs stared out of the image. With her large, almond-shaped eyes and porcelain-light skin that seemed to glow against her long jet-black hair, she was beautiful and exotic, particularly within the setting of the jazz club behind her.

With her own life spiraling into confusion and worry, Jenna was struck for a moment by the sheer jubilation in the young woman’s smile. It was such a raw, honest joy, it almost hurt Jenna to look at it. She had known that kind of happiness herself once, hadn’t she? God, how long had it been since she’d felt even half as alive as the young woman in that photograph?

Angered by her own self-pity, Jenna slid the picture back between the pages, then returned the book to its place on the shelf. “I can’t take this not knowing. It’s driving me crazy.”

“I know, Jen, but—”

“Screw this. I’m not waiting here any longer,” she said, pivoting to face her friend. The tip of her cane thumped on the rug-covered floor as she made her way to the door. “They must have some of the results back by now. I have to know what’s going on. I’m going down there myself.”

“Jenna, wait,” Alex cautioned from behind her.

But she was already in the corridor, walking as fast as she could manage between the impediment of her cane and the twinge of pain that shot through her leg with every hasty step.

“Jenna!” Alex called, her own footfalls quickly gaining in the empty hallway.

Jenna kept going, around one curving length of polished white marble to another. Her leg was throbbing now, but she didn’t care. Tossing away the cane that only slowed her down, she all but ran toward the muffled sounds of male voices coming from up ahead. She was panting as she reached the glass walls of the tech lab, a sheen of pain-induced sweat beading above her lips and across her forehead.

Her eyes found Brock before anyone else in the solemn-looking group. His face was taut, the tendons in his neck drawn tight as cables, his mouth flattened into a grim, almost menacing line. He stood in the back of the room, surrounded by several other warriors, all of them seeming tense and uneasy—all the more so now that she was there. Gideon and Tess were huddled near the bank of computer workstations at the front of the lab.

Everyone had paused what they’d been doing to stare at her.

Jenna felt the weight of their gazes like a physical thing. Her heart lurched. Obviously, they had the analysis of her blood work. Just how awful could the results be?

Their expressions were unreadable, everyone holding her in cautious, silent observation as her footsteps slowed and came to a stop in front of the tech lab’s wide glass doors.

God, they looked at her now as though they’d never seen her before.

No, she realized as the group of them remained unmoving, simply watching her through the clear wall that stood between her and the sober meeting on the other side. They were looking at her as though they might have expected her to be dead already.

As though she were a ghost.