Defy the Dawn

Brynne’s head snapped up at the mention. “Me?”

Tavia smiled. “If not for your quick thinking, we might not have realized Carys had been taken from Neville Fielding’s party. The Order might’ve arrived too late to help her and Rune escape from Riordan and his men.”

Brynne looked uncomfortable with the praise. Her eyes darted around the room—although, Zael noticed, still careful to avoid him—before she glanced down at the floor. “I was only doing my job.”

“And you’re damned good at it,” Lucan said. “Your instincts about Fielding being dirty were spot-on. Without your hunch and your cooperation in getting us inside that party to search for intel, we’d be a lot further behind Opus than we are now.”

Chase cleared his throat. “I’m sorry that cooperation was a problem for your colleagues at JUSTIS. Tavia mentioned earlier tonight that you’d been let go.”

Brynne shrugged. “I suppose none of that matters anymore, right?” Her tone was crisp, but Zael heard the note of regret in her firm voice. “I would do it all over again, no hesitation. Even knowing what it would cost me. Like all of you, I also want Opus Nostrum stopped. Now more than ever, I want that. Whatever it takes.”

Around the Order’s war room, heads nodded in agreement.

Brynne looked over at Gideon. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to provide Fielding’s computer hard drive or any of his data files for you. As soon as his body was discovered along with the poison he ingested, JUSTIS swept in to clear the house and seal it for investigation.”

“It’s all right.” Gideon shook his head. “At least we have Riordan’s files. Well, we will have them. Eventually.”

“Still no luck breaking that encryption?” Lucan’s question sounded incredulous. “You’ve been working on it for going on forty-eight hours. Hate to say it, but this must be some kind of record for you. And not something I want to hear right now.”

“The encryption is…complicated. It’s actually pretty fucking impressive.”

“Also not something I want to hear,” Lucan muttered darkly.

“Believe me, I’m as stunned as anyone that I haven’t been able to get around it yet.” Gideon raked a hand through his spiky blond hair. “I hacked Riordan’s hard drive and passwords—that was cake. But aside from learning he had bad music taste and a fondness for farm animal porn that made me want to scrub my corneas with a razor blade, Riordan’s hard drive was a bust.”

Lucan frowned. “We’re all but certain Opus members are in contact with one another electronically. Are you saying there’s no trace of communication software or log files anywhere on that computer?”

“They’re too careful for that. The process to delete directories and data was set to run every night like clockwork. I was able to kill it before it took off one last time. In Riordan’s purge file, I found an ID fragment for a secured private network.” Gideon blew out a deep sigh. “And that’s where my problems began. There’s a lock on the network—a very sophisticated program that acts as a booby trap on the whole thing. I nearly set it off today before I realized what I’d run into. Whoever programmed it knows their shit. We’re talking pro skills and then some.”

“Are you going to be able to break it?”

Zael hadn’t known Lucan very long, but he doubted any man or woman in the room right now had ever heard the note of doubt that crept into the Order leader’s deep voice.

Gideon was quiet for a long moment, and that silence said a lot. “I’ll break it. I’m not going to rest until I do.”

Lucan nodded grimly. “Good answer.”

Then he turned his serious gaze on Zael. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you that anything you hear in this room tonight is to be held in the strictest confidence.”

Zael inclined his head. “Of course. You have my word.”

Now that Lucan and the other warriors were looking at him, Zael felt the weight of their curiosity—even suspicion—come to rest on him.

“You never mentioned what you were doing in London last night, Zael. There on business of some kind?” Lucan studied him, his shrewd gray eyes assessing.

“No,” Zael admitted. “I wasn’t there on business.”

“Pleasure, then?” The Order’s leader was asking casually, but there was no mistaking that this was a test of trust. Lucan may not know for certain what sent Zael to the very city where Opus Nostrum had just done their worst, but he would damned sure know if Zael attempted to deceive him.

And if that happened, any alliance they’d forged would be weakened practically before it began.

“I didn’t go to London for business or pleasure. I went there to see Brynne.”

Across the room, her tense anticipation was a palpable current in the air. Zael glanced her way now, and instead of seeing her eyes divert or avoid him, she stared at him in resignation. In unspoken misery and contempt.

But Zael wasn’t about to lie to his new friends. He needed their trust as much as they needed his.

“When Brynne and I met here last week, I thought there might’ve been some spark of interest. After hearing what happened with Riordan and the councilman who killed himself in the middle of a house party Brynne was attending, I decided to search her out and look in on her, make sure she was all right. See if I was right about her interest in me.”

He didn’t have to glance her way now to know that she was silently wishing for a sinkhole to open up and swallow him. Tavia, Chase, and several other Order members exchanged surprised looks before those intrigued gazes volleyed between Brynne and him.

“I was mistaken,” he said.

Even if part of him knew better, he would give her this one courtesy in front of her sister and friends. Let Brynne call him an asshole for tormenting her when they were alone, but anything that happened between them was going to remain private if he had anything to say about it.

Still, just thinking about Brynne’s lips on his was enough to ignite his arousal all over again. Even here, in a room full of lethal Breed warriors who’d likely want to string up any Atlantean who deigned to put his hands on one of their females.

Zael had wanted to do far more than that with Brynne last night, but he’d been serious about not letting her blame the alcohol—or him—for it later. Now all he had to show for his dubious display of honor was regret and a bad case of blue balls.