Automatically, she shook her head. She was tired, but needed to keep monitoring the situation, just in case. “I need to keep looking.” The clue she needed had to be out there. Somewhere.
“Not tonight.” He scooped her up and lifted her from the chair, pulling her snug against his chest.
Amber stiffened and opened her mouth to argue as he strode for the door, then stopped herself. He was right. There was nothing more she could do right now. And when he held her like this, took care of her like this…
She slid her arms around his neck and curled into him, reminding herself how lucky she was to be his. Laying her head on his solid shoulder, she closed her eyes and let him carry her up to their room.
****
A new message.
“Well, well. What’ve we got here?” Ivy murmured, absently scratching Mr. Whiskers behind the ears with one hand as she opened the message. It had been a while since she and Amber had been in contact.
Put the intel you sent to good use. Ring destroyed. Tell me who you are.
Yeah, she wasn’t telling her that. By now the cops, and probably Amber too, would know about the body in the alley. Would have scoured any security and CCTV video feeds in the area, looking for the shooter.
Her.
That had been an unfortunate but unavoidable complication in the op. Yet she was pleased by the outcome.
They’d passed the test.
Tarasov was in custody. The captive women were free. And the kidnapping ring was destroyed.
Now there was one more, equally important test they had left to pass. One that could prove deadly for them and her.
It was finally time to put the second phase of her plan into action.
She set the cat down on the rug and straightened, thinking up the appropriate wording for this final coded message she would send. It had to be something unique. Something clever that only a Valkyrie would recognize.
When she finally had the right words and method in mind, she composed it using various cheater programs in her arsenal, then stopped to check it. Satisfied that it did everything she wanted it to, she sent the message to Amber in the same way she had before, and leaned back with a tight, satisfied smile, anticipation stirring her blood.
This was it. Everything she had wanted was on the line now.
Within a few hours she would know what course of action to take for the final part of this mission.
Chapter Twenty
Bleary-eyed after dragging her ass out of bed when the birds had woken her with the sunrise, Amber let out a jaw-cracking yawn and sat at the breakfast room table to check what Lady Ada had uncovered in the past few hours. Her to-do list was long and complicated, including retrieving the big chunk of money she’d paid from her investments from the Architect op to Tarasov to secure Eden’s kidnapping before authorities investigated.
Before she got to that, she had more important things to tackle first.
Trinity popped her head in. “Marcus and Kiyomi are home.”
Amber jumped up and followed her out the front door to wait on the top step. Karas raced after them, her whole back end wagging in doggy glee.
Ty was driving the car, Megan in the front passenger seat. It pulled up to the bottom of the stairs. Amber and Trinity rushed forward as the back doors opened. “Welcome home,” Amber said, sweeping her gaze over the rear passengers.
Kiyomi was pale, her left arm bandaged up and cradled to her chest with a sling. She gave them a tired smile. “Good to be back.”
Marcus’s face was strained, lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth and eyes. “There’s a pair of crutches in the hall closet.”
“I’ll get them.” Trinity hurried back inside.
“Let’s get you up to bed,” Amber said to Kiyomi, bending to curl an arm around her friend’s waist, careful not to knock her bandaged arm as she helped her from the car. “How you feeling?”
“Just tired.”
And sore as hell, no doubt. “I’ll bet. We’ll get you upstairs and tucked under the covers.” She guided Kiyomi up the steps as Trinity came back down with the crutches for Marcus.
“Any news?” Kiyomi asked as they stepped into the house, Karas dancing from them to Marcus and back.
“Some. Rycroft is in London working his magic right now.”
She nodded and started up the staircase to the second floor. “Megan said there was another player involved yesterday.”
“Yes. Haven’t been able to ID her yet, unfortunately.”
“Is it our source?”
“Don’t know yet. But I’m betting the two are connected.”
Crutches thumped on the floor behind them as they climbed the stairs. Amber took Kiyomi straight to her and Marcus’s room, pulled back the covers and set her friend on the edge of the bed. “Need anything? Tea? Toast maybe?”
Kiyomi shook her head, shifting gingerly. “Just sleep.”
Amber moved aside as Marcus came in, Karas next to him, wagging her tail. He was hurting bad, his movements stiff and slow, and his jaw locked tight. “We’ll leave you guys in peace so you can get some rest. Text me or Trin if you need anything.”
Karas jumped up on the bed and settled herself in the middle of it, watching Marcus expectantly. “Thanks,” he said to Amber. He winced as he gingerly lowered himself onto the mattress and set the crutches aside.
Amber backed out of the room and shut the door. When she got downstairs, Trinity was in the breakfast room with Megan, Ty and Jesse. Eden and Zack hadn’t come down from their room yet. “They’re going to try to sleep for a while. What’s the update on Kiyomi’s prognosis?” she asked Megan.
“The surgeon managed to patch the nerve together. She’s got partial movement in her hand, but the whole thing’s numb right now. We won’t know more until the swelling goes down,” she answered, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table. “Heath’s in rough shape though. He’ll be in for another few days at least.”
“Chloe’s going to stay with him, I’m assuming?”
“Yes. Now fill us in on what you found last night.”
Amber told them everything over breakfast. Trinity got called away by Rycroft partway through, asking her and Briar to come back down to London.
After they ate, Megan and Ty went up to bed. Amber went straight back to her work, opening Lady Ada to take a look.
Her pulse kicked when she saw the new message alert waiting for her, and glanced up momentarily when Jesse walked into the room.
“Morning,” he murmured in a deep voice, coming over to kiss the top of her head. “Get any sleep?”
“Some.” She opened the message, barely aware of her husband putting a plate of pastries together for himself five feet away.
Like all the others had been, the message was encrypted. And once her program cracked it, there was yet another hurdle to overcome. It was written in a complex code.
Maybe there was something wrong with her, but she enjoyed it when someone challenged her like this. It was her kink.
She took several cracks at it, attacking the problem from various angles. She had to admit, whoever the mystery source was behind all of this, they were damn good. So good it made nerves bubble in the pit of her stomach.
She muttered to herself under her breath and kept trying. A thrill raced through her when she began to uncover several letters in the message. Bit by bit she kept at it, slowly unscrambling the coded characters and using the same process to reveal the letters they symbolized.