“It could be true,” Hugh muttered.

Tess bit her bottom lip. Hard. “What?” she whispered, her eyes never leaving Dane.

“There was a hit out on Dane,” Hugh said. “He’d gotten into some trouble and pissed off the wrong people. We knew it was P.I.E. and we’d hoped to get him out of the mess without any casualty. I didn’t make the connection to Jason until this second.”

She darted a glance at Hugh. He was staring at her with apology.

None of it made sense. Her head swam with confusion. Was Hugh implying that Jason worked for P.I.E.? That was impossible. She would have known.

With a heavy, bored sigh, Christian rose to his feet. He’d ditched the knife for a gun. And had it trained right between her eyes.

“Don’t!” she shouted to Hugh as he jumped to his feet ready to attack. She didn’t know what kind of bullets Christian had, but she guessed they’d take care of her and a wolfen.

She swung so her gun pointed at the man who had saved her all those years ago. Who had promised her a better life. “Now I’d say we’re evenly matched. Hugh can take care of Dane, and you and I can come to some sort of arrangement.”

“I’ve always admired your confidence, Tess,” he said. “But we already have an arrangement.”

The reminder made her legs weak. “I suppose we do.”

“And in case you’re wondering about Jason…” His eyebrows lifted and the vilest smile Tess had ever seen spread across his ruthless face. “He was an eliminator.”

“You’re lying. He would have told me. I would have known. It wouldn’t have been a secret.” The gun in her hand wavered a fraction. She fought the threatening tears.

“Jason was part of a group of top secret eliminators. No one knew who he was but me. He, on the other hand, knew who you were long before you broke protocol and told him.”

Tess heard the words but couldn’t make sense of them. Jason had known about her all along and still kept his occupation secret? She let her mind race back to the time they’d spent together. He’d always kept her at arm’s length, never divulged his deepest thoughts or desires, no matter how often she’d prodded him. She’d attributed it to them being displaced as children, thought he was still piecing together his purpose. She sure the heck was. But she knew now that wasn’t it. Jason purposely never let her all the way in.

He’d lied to her. Just as she’d lied to him.

But his lie was worse.

She locked away Jason’s memory for good. Whether he’d truly loved her or not, she didn’t know. But she didn’t need to kill Dobson anymore to clear her conscience.

“Why is this all coming to blows now? What does this have to do with Hugh and the Night Runners?” Her mental frame shifted one hundred percent to Hugh and getting him out of here alive.

“With Hugh out of the picture,” Dane said, “I take over as leader of the Night Runners. A position I’m entitled to. A position that will allow me to grow and integrate the pack with other wolves and make sure we’re a force to be reckoned with.”

“So this whole elimination is your doing? You came to P.I.E. and ordered the hit because there was no way in hell Hugh was going to make you next in line?”

Dane fumed. “Fu—”

“Why didn’t you let the Banoth’s poison kill me?” Hugh said, calm, steady.

“If the pack had found out I wasn’t carrying and let you die, they’d never support me as the next alpha. They will when I tell them I tried to stop the hit and your last words were for me to take over.”

“What about Trey?” Hugh asked.

“He’s also meeting an untimely demise,” Christian said. “And Dane didn’t come to me. I went to him. P.I.E. is moving into the future. A future where eliminators will be virtually unstoppable.”

“Because they’ll be shifters?” Tess’s arm tired. Sooner rather than later, she’d need to shoot or run like hell.

“Exactly. It’s no longer about Veiler or human. It’s about good versus evil,” Christian said.

“I thought that’s what it was always about. What you want to do is enforce your version of good and evil. You want power, not justice.”

Daylight barely trickled into the room now, and Tess blinked several times to adjust her vision. The eerie red glow streaming in from the window allowed enough visibility to make out whole bodies, but little detail. If someone didn’t take action, they’d soon be in total darkness. Fine for wolfen—not so good for her.

She glanced at Hugh. He’d remained uncharacteristically quiet, but with such little light she couldn’t see him well enough to read his expression.

“Precisely,” Christian admitted.

“Where’s Trey?” she asked, even though she had the sinking feeling it didn’t matter But if there was a chance they got out of this alive and could save him, they needed to know.

Quiet filled the room.

“He’s under attack as we speak.” Dane took a few sidesteps toward the couch, aligning himself with Christian.

Tess felt heat radiating off Hugh, and knew the mention of Trey took away any control he had left. A split second later, the wolf in him emerged and he lunged toward Dane. Dane shifted and the two collided in midair. Ferocious growls spilled from their mouths. They hit the floor and rolled, filling the empty space between the sitting area and bed. A sick feeling hit Tess in the gut. Dammit, Hugh.

Suddenly, a gunshot sounded and both wolfen stopped, stiffened. It took Tess a moment to realize it wasn’t her gun that fired.

She lowered her arm. Pain and discomfort radiated through her shoulder. She’d been shot. Christian had shot her.

It was hard to tell in the dark, but she was certain the bullet had only grazed her. The spot burned but didn’t pulse. She lifted a hand to touch the laceration and felt blood trickle rather than spurt. A Band Aid and Tylenol would fix the wound.

“Don’t even think about it,” Christian hissed. “If anyone moves a muscle my aim will be much better next time.” He kept the weapon trained on her as his disposition wavered between frustration and satisfaction. The thin smile she barely made out on his face irritated the hell out of her.

He’d pay for making her bleed.

“What do you want?” she breathed, even though she felt she could run a marathon if she had to.

“You’ve got a job to do, Tess. Or am I to take it the reason you didn’t answer my earlier question is because the wolfen means more to you than Kensie and Francesca?”

Goddamn him. Bitterness wove through every muscle in her body. If something were going down in L.A. with Trey, she could bet the same held true for Kensie and Francesca. And there was no way she’d be able to save them if she didn’t follow through with her elimination.

That had to be the master plan. Get Hugh and herself to San Diego, make sure she eliminated him, then get back home to a nice, neat, new partnership between P.I.E. and the Night Runners. What an idiot she’d been not to see it.

“I had your word we’d keep to our deadline,” she said.

“Time’s up.”

This was it. The moment she’d dreaded. The moment she wished would never come. She forgot about the pain in her shoulder and felt a swell of anguish in her chest instead. Her lips went dry, her eyes burned.

Showtime.

She lifted her arms, pointed the gun at Hugh and pulled the trigger.

Hugh felt the impact of the shot and fell to the floor. His eyes shut. Dizziness filled his head. Not from the blast, but from the fact that Tess had actually followed through with her assignment. It had taken her all of ten seconds to act on her boss’s ultimatum.

Guess he didn’t mean much to her after all.

He heard the scuffing of furniture, registered heavy breathing and grunts from Dane in the near-dark room. Tess had shot him in wolfen form, which meant his superhuman strength and tissue regeneration immediately got to work repairing internal damage. But like the Banoth’s poison, those attributes wouldn’t help him now. This time nothing could help him. He remembered the pain after the Banoth’s poison had infiltrated his system and expected this to be the same.