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Biting the inside of my cheek to keep from reacting, I schooled my expression into a mask of nonchalance.
“Too bad Agent Stone got to you before I could. She hid you well, but I found you eventually. Took me almost five years, but I did it.” Another maniacal laugh. This guy was clearly unhinged. The familiarity of his voice tugged at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t pull a face to go with it into focus. My head hurt too damn much, and everything the asshole on the PA was saying was tumbling through my synapses in free fall.
“We both know you have what I’m looking for, so I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me where it is before I come down there and things get a little more interesting.” There was joy in his tone that told me things were going to get interesting for me whether I told him what he wanted to know or not.
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t technically a lie. The drive had slipped from my fingers at my apartment. It could be among theremains of my belongings, or, and I prayed this was the case, Cal had gone into my place to retrieve it.
Thinking of Cal made me think of Nero.
My mate.
What would happen to me if I didn’t make it home to him?
It didn’t bear thinking about.
So I’d do everything I could to make it back to him.
Even if my options were limited.
“Have it your way.” The PA clicked off, and deafening silence settled around me, punctuated only by the slamming of a metal door and footsteps on the metal steps leading from the catwalk. The sound of footfalls was muffled as the man behind the voice moved through the gloom toward me.
My heart beat so hard I thought it was going to burst through my ribs, and with every beat, I reminded myself that I could make it through this for Nero, to make it back to my mate.
As the man emerged from the darkness, my breath caught in my chest.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
NERO
“What the fuckare you doing here?” Cal stood with the door open, blocking whoever was on the other side from view.
“Good evening, sweetheart. Good to see you too.” The voice was low with an Australian accent.
“Don’t call me that.” Cal’s tone was cutting, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he drew himself up to his full height.
“Would you rather I called you Cali?—”
“Utter one more syllable, and I will end you like I should have in Budapest.”
“Yeah, right. I’d like to see you try.”
“Name the time and place.”
Quin was studying Cal’s back intently, no doubt trying to do their twin telepathy thing to figure out if the man on the other side of the threshold was a friend or another foe.
“So cranky. Not getting laid enough lately, Cal?”
Julius snorted, and Cal shot him a glare, giving us our first glimpse of the stranger. He was Cal’s height and muscular, straining his heathered gray T-shirt to the edge of its capacity. He had sandy-brown hair that was cut close on the sides and a little longer on top. A shark tooth hung on a leather cord around his neck, and he was looking at Cal with a wry, lopsided smile.
“Fuck you, Jack.”
“So that’s a no on letting me in?”
“We were just on our way out, actually.”
“Then I got here just in time.” He put a large hand on Cal’s shoulder and shoved him to the side, pushing past him into the foyer. “My name’s Jack Grayson. Which one of you is CaesarsRome?”
