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“Yeah.” She didn’t know why she’d gotten her hopes up. Of course she had to do this on her own. She’d agreed to it with Graves. “At least they’re safe.”
“I got them, Kierse.”
She shook off the disappointment. She could only rely on herself after all.
“I am also forbidden from revealing his secrets,” she told him, waggling her eyebrows.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Did you cross your fingers?”
She shrugged. “I’ll see what he tells me first.”
Nate’s expression went pensive. “You sure you can handle this?”
Kierse slid out of the booth. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”
“Just looking out for you. Someone has to.”
“I look out for myself.”
Nate came to his feet and gripped her wrist before she could bust out of there. “This isn’t like our other missions, Kierse.” She held her ground as she was caught in the wolf’s claws. The feral side of Nate that had made him the undisputed leader of the Manhattan wolves was something that he usually kept covered in her presence. His heat was always there, but the fire radiated with energy as their eyes met. “One wrong step and you’re dead.”
“You don’t have to go all alpha on me,” she teased, moving from a challenge to a coy smile and lowered lashes in an instant, her training kicking in the second it encountered a threat.
“Kierse,” he groaned. “You don’t have to do that with me.”
So, she twisted her wrist, breaking his grip with ease. “Then don’t treat me like I’m a liability and not an asset. I know exactly what the mission is, Nate. Just keep my friends safe and let me do the hard work.”
He nodded once, appreciation in his irises, before she brushed past him and left the coffee shop behind. She took the subway to the Upper West Side, sneaking back in the way she’d come, with no one the wiser. A smile touched her features as she slid into her satin sheets.
She’d put her plans in place. Now the real work began.
Chapter Seventeen
When Kierse came downstairs the next morning, Graves stood in the entranceway in an impeccable three-piece suit with his face buried in a different book than what he’d been reading at dinner last night. She tilted her head to try to make out the title, but when he sensed her approach, he snapped it closed and tucked it under his arm.
“Just some light reading?” she asked.
“Something like that.” He eyed her workout attire. “We’re going out.”
“I thought I had weapons training. We only have a few weeks,” she reminded him.
“I’m well aware of the timeline. You will train when we return. This is more pressing.”
She sighed. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.” He gestured toward the entrance to what she presumed was the garage.
Before they could enter, Edgar appeared, offering her a long, black woolen jacket. “For the chill.”
“Thanks,” she said, sliding her arms into it. Compared to Graves, she was grossly underdressed, but he seemed unconcerned.
Edgar swung the door wide for them, and she followed Graves into an elevator. Graves pressed the button for the bottom floor. It opened again on a darkened room big enough to hold a dozen cars. A limo idled silently on a circular underground driveway. The driver, a gruff-looking man in his fifties, stood at attention, clad in an all-black suit and hat. A third employee that she had never seen in her stakeouts. What the fuck?
“George,” Graves said in greeting.
“Sir,” George said as he whisked the door open at their approach. “Miss McKenna.”
“Thank you, George,” she said with a polite smile before getting into the limo.
Graves settled into the backseat next to her as George closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Does George always drive for you?” Kierse asked.
“He does.”
“Does he know what you are?” She had to assume that Edgar and Isolde did. They couldn’t serve him day in and day out and not know there was something else, something more to him.
“George has been in my employ for many years.”
Which seemed to be answer enough because he returned to the book he’d been reading.
“Is he magic, too?”
Graves sighed heavily, as if unused to someone interrupting his reading time. “He is not a warlock, if that is what you are inquiring.”
“But there are other beings with magic,” she pressed.
George sank into the driver’s seat and closed the door heavily behind him. “Ready, sir?”
“Yes, George. You know the way,” Graves told him, then returned to Kierse’s question. “There is other magic in this world. But those of my employ are just good workers who I pay handsomely for their time.”
“And silence,” Kierse guessed.
George coughed under his breath at her impertinence as he pulled away from their spot and into an underground tunnel that led away from the property.
“Silence is preferable, yes,” he said pointedly.
Kierse bit her lip as she watched the limo climb toward the surface. An automatic garage door lifted, and they pulled out onto the New York City street. She craned her neck at the cross street, surprised to find they were several blocks away from Graves’s house. It was clever. No one would ever suspect that a mansion lay half a mile on the other side of the garage they’d just exited. No wonder she hadn’t ever seen him coming or going.
