“Michael said they were members of your parents’ cult.” Andre double-checked the location of his wallet and gun, obviously preparing to leave their unexpected sanctuary. “They didn’t know what you looked like. Only that you were a blonde who worked at the Demon’s Breath. Two of them, men, showed up at closing time and shoved Ginger into a van while she was out on the street, looking for you. She got away but ran from our people because she thought—”

“She thought they were working with the men who’d taken her,” Emma said, cursing beneath her breath. She’d suspected as much.

“Most likely.” Andre sighed. “But I guess it was good she didn’t go with our people, either.” Knowing that his family couldn’t be trusted was weighing heavy on his shoulders.

“Do you think Mikey ...” She let her words trail off, not wanting to voice the suspicion out loud. “Do you think Ginger’s safe?”

“I think Mikey is one of the good guys, but ... I can’t know for sure.”

“But he saved Ginger, right?”

He nodded. “The cult members found out they had the wrong girl and stopped at a hotel. She managed to escape. Michael and our team found her walking on the side of the road and convinced her they were the good guys. She’s okay but pretty messed up by whatever happened. She’s refusing to come back to the city. Little Francis told Michael to stay with her.”

“Little Francis?” Her skin crawled. “I don’t like the sound of that. Call Michael back. I have to talk to Ginger. I have to see if she’s really okay,” Emma insisted.

“Mikey said she’s hysterical and won’t talk to anyone. That’s why I told him to give her a—”

“I don’t like this, Andre. I need to know Ginger is safe, and I have to find out what happened to my purse.”

“Well, I can help you out with the last part. Ginger had your purse. You were right,” Andre said. “Michael sent it back to New York with a couple members of his team. It should be here within the hour.”

“What about the spell book?”

“It’s in there. Before she broke down, Ginger told him that the people who kidnapped her were after your book. They took it from her, but she managed to get her hands on it before she escaped. She knew it was something you’d like returned,” Andre said.

“She knows it’s dangerous. For everyone. That’s why I don’t let it out of my sight.” Emma sighed, the knowledge that her grimoire was in the possession of the Conti family members not giving her much comfort. “What about the men transporting it? Do you think they’re working for Little Francis?”

“I doubt it. I know Mikey’s team. They’re good guys. Besides, if cult members were the ones after you, Little Francis probably doesn’t even know about your book.”

“But we don’t know for sure. And we can’t let Little Francis get his hands on it,” Emma said, frustrated with Andre’s dismissive tone. “You should call the men. We can try to meet up with them ourselves.”

“Emma, relax. These guys are solid, and they’re going to the safe house. I’ll get up there and get your book and keep it safe. I swear it to you. Trust me.”

“I do trust you. I just ...” She buried her face in her hands, fighting to gain control of the anxiety pulsing through her veins. Something wasn’t right about this story. If former cult members were the ones after her and the grimoire ... “Andre, cult members taking Ginger by mistake doesn’t explain why two guys working for your family were trying to kidnap me. Why did Stewart leave that key in my apartment to lure me down to the shelter? He and that Death Ministry guy weren’t working with the cult.”

“They must think you know about the drugs. They must think that Greg guy told you he was a mule for Little Francis ... or something,” Andre said, beginning to pace the tiny space.

“But why kidnap me if it had nothing to do with the spell book? Why—”

“Not all drug mules are volunteers, Emma.” Andre turned to face her. “They might have decided to volunteer you themselves, especially after you threw off whatever drug Dr. Finch gave you and walked out of Conti Bounty under your own power. They probably figured you had the perfect mule constitution.”

“So they wanted me because of drugs,” she said, the explanation still not sitting well.

“And they probably still do.” He pulled his gun from his coat and pressed it into her hand. “That’s why you’re going to stay here with my stun gun while I go sort through this fucking mess.”

“Here? You want me to stay here? But what about—”

“I know it’s not ideal,” he said, his brown eyes shifting to the rumpled bed and the tray of demon antivenom. “But I don’t want you out on the street until we make sure you’re safe. Now that we know the Death Ministry has a contact in our organization, it isn’t safe for you to go back to the bounty office. Not until I have a long talk with Francis.”

“No, Andre.” She couldn’t let him walk into Conti Bounty alone. “He could hurt you, even kill you. You can’t go—”

“I’m not going to go in there alone. I’m going to meet the rest of Michael’s team at the safe house uptown, get your purse, and make sure that book is locked away in a safety-deposit box. Then me and a few of the guys I’m sure I can trust will head back down to the office.”

“What if the team is in on it?”

“I don’t think they are.”

“But they could be. Michael could be lying. He could—”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take to get this book off the street. If no one can touch it, then no one’s going to want to touch you. Right?”

Emma nodded, comforted that her safety was Andre’s top priority, even at a time like this, when his family could be falling apart.

“So I’ll have an armed escort for that talk with Francis. As soon as we’re done, I’ll come back here to get you.” He walked to the door, pausing to flip open the two locks. “I’ll be an hour and a half. Two at most. I’ll drop another grand at the front to make sure you’re not disturbed.”

She hesitated, torn between continuing to argue with Andre until she convinced him he couldn’t handle this alone, and jumping through the window he’d just opened. It would take him an hour to get uptown and back. That was more than enough time for her to get to the Conti offices, have that hands-on chat with Little Francis, and make sure he never hurt anyone again. There was a chance Andre wouldn’t be able to forgive her for taking out his cousin, or that she might not be able to handle Little Francis and his thugs on her own, but those were risks she was willing to take.

She owed Andre two or three, and she knew that being forced to take out his own cousin would destroy an important part of him. He was a lover, not a killer. No matter how tough he tried to play it, Emma could see how horrified he was by the thought of taking a life. She, on the other hand, had experience dealing death. If one of them was going in there alone, it should be her. She’d just have to be more careful, shoot first and ask questions ... never.

It would have been a no-brainer if it weren’t for one thing. “But what about Francis? Isn’t he going to be expecting both of us? If you show up uptown, he’s going to get suspicious and—”

“Little Francis is busy in the basement with Stewart and the Death Ministry guy they just picked up. That’s why Mikey called me. Douglas told him I was free to meet the team at the safe house.”

“But Francis is expecting us both at the office,” Emma said, still confused by the fact that Andre wasn’t confused. “He knows you’re with me. Why would he—”

“I left Francis a message while I was paying for our admission,” Andre said, hand lingering on the door handle as if he’d leave any second, as if he hadn’t just confessed to telling her one thing and doing another. To lying, when he’d insisted she tell nothing but the truth. “I told him we’d been delayed because you were ill but that we were in a safe place. I’m assuming he thought I’d taken you to the safe house, so it won’t be a big deal for me to meet the team and fill them in on what’s been going on. And if that’s the case, it doesn’t seem he thinks we know anything about his ... extracurricular activities.”

“I thought we agreed it was dangerous to call Francis,” Emma said, keeping her voice low and controlled.

Andre shrugged. “I didn’t want him to get suspicious. I’m sure that phone call bought us more time. I did what I thought was best.”

“Right. Of course.” His intentions were in the right place. And now she’d do what she thought was best, minus the guilt about lying to the man she loved.

Love him. She really did love him. Even knowing he’d lied didn’t make her as angry as it usually would have. But then, she was hardly in the place to judge.

“It’s not like you haven’t misled me once or twice today,” Andre said, reading her thoughts in that uncanny way he had.

“I know. I’ve apologized. I’ll apologize again if you—”

“No, I don’t want an apology.” His hand slipped from the door, and for a second, Emma thought he was going to reach for her. Instead, he crossed his arms at his chest and stared, peeling her secrets away with his eyes. She’d thought she’d been on the receiving end of his most piercing look before, but she’d been wrong. This was piercing. She fought the urge to squirm. “I want us to be honest with each other from here on out.”

“Me, too,” Emma said, managing not to wince as the words left her mouth. She did want that; she just wouldn’t be able to deliver for a little bit longer.

“I ... I care about you. I want this to work.”

“Me, too.” And she did.

If she didn’t know firsthand how awful it was to take the life of another human being, there was no way she’d lie to him again. She wanted to trust Andre, and she wanted his trust in return. In an hour or two she would do her best to earn that trust, even if that meant telling him that she’d killed his cousin.

Of course, there was a chance her search of Francis’s memories would prove he was innocent.

There was also a chance that pigs would fly. Out of her ass.

Emma crossed the room in two steps and pressed her lips softly to Andre’s. “Just hurry back.”

“I will. Stay safe.” Andre kissed her again, his tongue teasing against hers for the barest second before pulling away. “Don’t open the door for anyone but me, and don’t be afraid to use that gun.”

“I won’t be.” She watched him slip out of the room, then closed the door behind him, sliding the locks closed once more. They clicked in their chambers, a sharp sound she knew would carry. Good. Andre would assume she was locked in tight.

She leaned into the door, closing her eyes, listening to his footsteps fade away down the carpeted hall in time to the music throbbing from the speakers in the ceiling. Amazing how she hadn’t noticed the music when they were together. She’d had ears only for Andre’s voice, for the sharp intake of his breath, for the sounds of skin upon skin echoing through the room as they came together. The memory made her light up, electricity dancing across the previously undiscovered territory Andre had awakened with his touch.

They’d be together again soon. She was sure of it. In a real bed with nothing but time on their hands and pleasure on their minds. This last lie would help ensure their future happiness. It would preserve that part of Andre that had never known what it was like to commit the ultimate sin.

Emma used another towel to wipe away the last of her spark as she counted to one hundred and then back down to one, giving Andre plenty of time to exit the building. Only then did she slide the locks back into their open position and ease out into the hall.

All was clear and quiet. She turned right, moving swiftly past the empty rooms to the top of the stairwell. A peek around the corner revealed that the stairs were deserted. The only sound beneath the music was the faint rumble of Jeremiah Boudreaux’s laughter drifting from the closed door of his office.

She could have slipped down the stairs, past that door, and gone out the way she came, unobserved. Instead, Emma padded softly toward the window at the end of the hall. Windows had been good to her today. She saw no reason to buck a successful trend. Besides, she could do without another encounter with the ground floor of this establishment. If she never saw another hot pink wall or black velvet painting again it would be too soon.

She was up to something. But what?

He’d known better than to ask, but his suspicion made him hide in the shade of Yang’s awning for several long minutes after he should have been on his way. Michael had said the rest of the team would arrive in the city within thirty or forty minutes. Andre needed to hurry if he wanted to reach the safe house when they did.

The sooner he got there, the sooner he could take care of the dreaded encounter with his cousin and get back to Emma. He wanted her in a car with an armed guard on her way to his apartment as soon as possible. It could be days, even weeks, before he and the family members he could trust got to the bottom of what was going on with the Death Ministry, the drug mules, Dr. Finch, and Little Francis and finally ensured that their organization was traitor free. Not to mention sorting out this cult business and making certain there weren’t any other crazies out there looking for Emma or her spell book. During that time, he wanted her by his side. In his arms. In his bed. It wasn’t as if she had a safe place to go home to, and she seemed as intrigued by the idea of starting something real as he was.

Andre tried to ignore the nagging voice, but it echoed, bouncing around inside his head, making him watch the door for just one more minute. And then one more. And then—

He caught the slight movement out of the corner of his eye. If he’d been looking in the other direction, he wouldn’t have. He would have missed the blur of white and the flash of long legs hurrying down the street. He would have continued on his way uptown without confirmation that the woman he was in love with had lied to him. Again.

Some part of him wished he hadn’t seen her, that he still believed she cared enough about him to tell him the truth. But she didn’t. And maybe she never would. This thing between them was probably doomed before it even started.

“Conti Bounty office.” Andre ordered his bud to make the call as he eased from the shade, tailing Emma down the street. Doomed or not, he had to follow her. He had to know what she was hiding this time.

Douglas answered on the second ring. “Conti Bounty.” Andre breathed a small sigh of relief, grateful that Francis hadn’t answered the phone. He didn’t want to talk to that bastard until he could look him in his flat, greedy eyes.

“Douglas, this is Andre. It’s going to take me a little longer than expected to get uptown.” He moved faster, turning the corner just in time to see Emma disappearing around another corner. “I’ll get there eventually, but—”

“Oh, no, sir! Mr. Conti was very insistent that—”

“I’ll get there. Don’t worry. I’ll do what needs to be done,” Andre said, his tone making it clear that they were at the end of their discussion. Thankfully, the underling in Douglas recognized an order when he heard it.

“Yes, sir. Just a moment. I’ll tell Mr. Conti.”

“No, wait. I don’t—” Andre cursed as the Conti Bounty promo message droned softly into his ear, assuring him that the Contis were the most experienced, professional, and successful hunters in the United States.

He watched Emma turn right on East Tenth, greatly narrowing her destination options. There was nothing down East Tenth anymore except a few warehouses, a block of low-income apartment buildings ... and the Conti Bounty offices.

Shit again. What the hell was she doing? She’d warned him against coming back here without backup and yet here she was, on another solo mission. Hadn’t she realized the whole “lone cowboy” bit wasn’t working for her? She’d nearly been killed or kidnapped half a dozen times in the past year.

But even as a part of him cursed her for being a fool, another part of him felt the marrow-deep joy of being loved for the first time in way too long. She was doing this for him, to protect him, because she loved him enough to put her own life at risk to ensure his safety. It made him love her even more.

And it made him angry, too. They were going to have to have a talk about the lying and putting herself in danger. A serious talk. Right now.

He raised his hand, preparing to call out to her, when a big man in a black T-shirt crossed the street, trotting to catch up with Emma. He was following her; he had to be. There were only a handful of people on the street, and no one headed in Emma’s direction. She’d acquired a tail, one who just might draw that gun tucked into the back of his pants if Andre called out to warn her that she was being followed.

Damn it. He had no choice but to keep quiet, to fall back and hope the man in black didn’t notice that he was being tailed, as well.

Andre kept his distance as Emma closed the final blocks to Conti Bounty and turned right into the alley just before the Conti building. Her shadow lingered near the bricks at the alley’s entrance. Apparently Emma didn’t plan on taking the front door, preferring to make a surprise appearance through whatever window she’d used to escape Dr. Finch the first time. It would have been a decent plan ...

If it weren’t for the man following her and the armed guards tracking her movements from the roof of the building across the street. There were always at least one or two men on duty there, keeping watch. It was a minor miracle she’d slipped past them unnoticed the first time, one Andre could guess they’d been appropriately reamed out for.

They certainly weren’t letting their guard down now. One man was already on his bud reporting Emma’s presence, while the other trained his gun down the alleyway. Andre’s heart squeezed unhealthily in his chest even after Trace—the sniper on duty—gave him a curt nod of recognition. The knowledge that a gun was aimed at the woman he loved made him crazy. He was about to shout for the men on the roof to disarm—and hope they actually listened to him instead of whatever order his cousin had given—when a breathless Douglas came back on the line.

“Mr. Andre, are you still there? Is that you outside?” Douglas asked, his usually high, thin voice stretched so tight, it made Andre wince.

“Yes. Emma Quinn is coming in the back,” he said, hoping Douglas wouldn’t ask for an explanation he didn’t have. “I’ll be at the front entrance in a few—”

“Thank god. Please hurry. Something’s wrong with Mr. Francis. He’s cuffed me to the desk,” he said, confirming all of Andre’s suspicions in one horrible, screechy stream of words. “And the scary men he brought in after your phone call are walking around the ground floor. With guns!”

Andre broke into a run, racing the last block to the Conti Bounty entrance.

“What about the rest of our people?” Andre asked, nearly to the door.

Douglas sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. Trace called for backup, but I want out of here! I’ve got a miniflamethrower in my bag that could cut through the cuffs, but I can’t reach it. Please help me!”

“Are you being guarded? Is there—”

“A couple men are patrolling the ground floor, but there’s no one near the front desk right now. You can get in and get out before—”

“I’m here, I’m here.” Andre hurried through the double doors and the metal detector, stopping only when Douglas and two men in Conti guard uniforms stood up from where they’d been hidden behind the main desk.

He froze. Douglas had lied to him, he thought, noting that the two guards were men he’d never met before. By the time he realized that the second man on the roof had also been a new hire and begun to theorize that a hostile takeover was in progress, the two guards in front of him had pulled their guns and trained them on his chest.

“So sorry, Mr. Andre,” Douglas said, his voice as polite as ever. “But I’m going to need you to give me any weapons you have, please.”

For a split second, Andre debated lunging for one of the guards. His combat training had been a long time ago, but he was still in excellent shape and damned fast. There was a chance he could take care of the guards and Douglas before he was shot.

“We’ve already got Miss Quinn, so it would be best if you’d cooperate.” Douglas was the picture of smiling, deferential servitude as he issued threats like a criminal mastermind. Even when he motioned for the guards to advance on Andre, it was hard to believe that Douglas was a traitor. “Guns, please, Mr. Andre. I know we’d all hate to see something bad happen to Emma, because—”

Rage bloomed inside him, moving his feet forward despite the guns still aimed at his heart. “You son of a bitch. If you hurt her, I’ll—”

“Save the threats, smart guy,” came a familiar voice from down the hall. Andre turned, betrayal punching him in the gut as Little Francis ambled toward him, hands in his front pockets, as at ease as he would be on any other day at the office. He’d suspected his cousin of duplicity, but the smug note in his voice brought home what he’d done in an entirely awful way. “We’re not going to hurt her. At least not right away. You, on the other hand ...” He trailed off with a shrug and a smile. “You should have gone to the safe house like I told you. I was going to leave you out of it, but now you’re here, and ... Well, sometimes the transfer of power has certain consequences.”

“Your father’s going to kill you,” Andre said calmly, stating the facts. Firstborn son or not, Uncle Francis would kill Little Francis for this.

“My father’s already dead.” Francis smiled again, his satisfaction at sharing the news making the bottom drop out of Andre’s stomach.

If what his cousin said was true, then he was a walking dead man, and a number of the people he loved might not be too far behind him.