“I’ll do better than that, dear. I’ll call her myself and let her know you’d like to ask her about some of those shelter girls.” Behind Sister Margaret, the teakettle began to whistle. She smiled, as pleasant as a sweet little granny. “First, we’re going to have that cup of tea together.”

They’d gulped their tea as quickly as they could without seeming completely rude.

Even so, it had taken more than twenty minutes to get away from sweet Sister Margaret Mary Howland. Fortunately, her offer to phone Sister Grace had proven useful.

The other retired nun was apparently in better health than her friend, living without assistance, and, from the one-sided conversation Jenna and the others had been privy to, it sounded like Sister Grace Gilhooley was willing and able to provide whatever information they needed about her work in the New York shelter.

“Nice place,” Jenna remarked as Renata wheeled the Rover along a stretch of shoreline road that led to a cheery yellow Victorian secluded on a jutting peninsula of rocky land.

The big house sat on about two acres of land, a postage stamp compared to home sites in Alaska, but clearly a luxury setting here on the coast of Cape Cod. With snow filling the yard and clinging to the rocks, the steel blue ocean sprawling out to the horizon, the bright canary Victorian looked as wholesome and inviting as a spot of warm sunshine in the midst of so much cold and winter.

“I hope we have better luck here,” Alex said from beside Jenna in the backseat, peering out at the impressive estate as they followed the white picket fence in front, then turned into the narrow driveway.

As Renata parked the Rover near the house, Dylan pivoted around from next to her up front. “If she can’t help identify some of the missing women from the New York shelter, maybe she’ll be able to tell us the names of the Breedmates in the two new sketches Claire Reichen has given us.”

Jenna got out of the back with Alex, both of them coming around to the front of the Rover, where Renata and Dylan now stood. “I didn’t realize we had new sketches.”

“Elise picked them up from her Darkhaven friend yesterday.”

Dylan handed Jenna a manila file folder as they walked toward the gingerbread-style veranda and front porch of the house. Jenna opened the folder as she followed her companions up the creaky wooden steps to the front door. She glanced inside at the artist’s renderings, which were based on Claire’s recollections of faces she saw some months ago, when her talent for dreamwalking had given her unexpected access to one of Dragos’s hidden labs.

Dylan rang the doorbell. “Cross your fingers. Hell, say a prayer while you’re at it.”

A housekeeper appeared a moment later and politely informed them that they were expected. Meanwhile, Jenna studied the two sketches a bit closer … and her heart dropped like a stone into her stomach.

An image of a young woman with sleek dark hair and almond-shaped eyes stared back at her. The delicate face was familiar, even in the pencil drawing that didn’t quite capture the full impact of her exotic beauty.

Corinne.

Brock’s Corinne.

Could it really be her? If so, how? He had been so certain she was dead. He’d told Jenna he’d seen the Breedmate’s body after she had been recovered from the river. Then again, he’d also mentioned that it had been months since she’d vanished before her remains had been found, and that all they had to identify her was her clothing and the necklace she’d been wearing when she disappeared.

Oh, God … could she actually be alive? Had she somehow ended up in Dragos’s hands and been held captive by him for all this time?

Jenna was too astonished to speak, too numb to do anything more than follow her friends into the house after the housekeeper invited them inside. One part of her was squeezed tight with the hope that a young woman presumed to be dead might, in fact, be alive.

Yet another part of her was gripped with a dark, shameful fear—the fear that this new knowledge might cost her the man she loved.

She had to tell Brock as soon as possible. It was the right thing to do—he had to know the truth. He had to see the sketch for himself and determine if Jenna’s suspicions might be correct.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll go tell Sister Grace that you’re here,” said the pleasant little woman as she left Jenna and the others alone in the front parlor.

“Alex,” she murmured, giving a little tug of her coat sleeve. “I need to call the compound.”

Alex frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“This sketch,” she said, glancing at it once more and feeling utterly certain now that Claire Reichen had seen Corinne during her dreamwalk into Dragos’s lair. “I recognize this woman’s face. I’ve seen it before.”

“What?” Alex replied, taking the folder to look at it herself. “Jen, are you sure?”

Renata and Dylan moved closer, as well, all three of Jenna’s companions huddling around her in the quiet front room of the house. She pointed to the delicate face of the dark-haired young woman in the sketch. “I think I know who this Breedmate is.”

“By all means, dear,” said a cool, female voice. “Do tell.”

Jenna’s gaze snapped up and clashed across the room with a pair of calm gray eyes that stared back at her from a lined, outwardly kind-looking face. With her long silver hair caught in a loose chignon, Sister Grace Gilhooley’s pale blue floral housedress and white cardigan made her seem like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But it was those eyes that gave her away.

Those dullish eyes, and the prickling of Jenna’s new senses, which lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as the woman entered the room.

Jenna held the sharklike stare, realizing in an instant just what the good sister was.

“Holy shit,” she said, recalling the same peculiar look in the eyes of the FBI men who’d tried to kill her and Brock in New York just days before. Jenna glanced over at Renata. “She’s a fucking Minion.”

CHAPTER

Thirty

That’s about the tenth time you’ve checked that thing since we came down here.” Brock smirked at Dante as the warrior—the anxious, expectant father—broke away from the group in the weapons room to look at his PDA. “Damn, my man, you’re about as jumpy as a cat.”

“Tess is napping in our quarters,” Dante replied. “If she needs anything, I told her to text me.”

Apparently finding no messages since his last look about five minutes ago, he set the device back down on the table and returned to the firing range where Brock, Kade, Rio, and Niko waited to resume their target practice.

As Dante swaggered back to his place among his brethren, Niko peered at him with mock intensity, getting up close and staring at his face before finally giving an exaggerated shrug. “I’ll be damned. Nothing there, after all.”

“What?” Dante asked, his black brows crunched into a scowl. “What the hell are you doing?”

Niko grinned, baring his twin dimples. “Just looking for a nose ring or something. Figured Tess might have had one installed on you to go along with that short leash she’s got you attached to.”

“Piss off,” Dante said around a deep chuckle. He pointed a finger in Niko’s direction. “I’m gonna remind you of this when Renata’s the one who’s eight and a half months pregnant and it’s your turn to worry.”

“No need to wait on that,” Kade put in. “Renata’s already got him trained to jump on command. Probably got him on a leash of her own, too.”

“Yeah?” Niko reached for his belt and made a show of starting to unbuckle it. “Give me a second and I’ll show you.”

Brock shook his head at his brethren, not quite feeling part of the jokes and lighthearted smack-talk about Breedmates and babies soon to be on the way. He couldn’t help thinking about Jenna, and about how he might find a way to make a future for them together.