Fast, but quiet.
Electronic, maybe?
He wasn’t sure why or how they closed the way they did. It just did it. One door after another.
Click, click, click, click.
“Come on,” Luv called, her voice echoing around the next corner she had taken.
The entire place felt cold.
And dangerous.
Definitely not like home. Certainly not like he belonged there. And that was the thing he recognized first and foremost inside the building.
He did not belong.
Diego hurried to catch up.
• • •
“Now, I know you know that when I called and said you needed to come in, Luv, that I didn’t mean you were to bring him.”
Sitting behind a desk made of metal and glass that dominated an already large room, the man who clearly didn’t want Diego to be where he was continued to stare at him like he might be able to make the young man disappear. Even if it was with his thoughts alone and nothing else.
Awkward?
Not even close.
Luv laughed lightly. “Well, you seemed very concerned when you called that he might not be okay, Dare. So, here he is. Perfectly fine. A-okay, even.”
Dare.
Why did that name sound familiar?
Where had he heard it before?
Diego didn’t get the chance to figure it out before Dare’s gaze cut back to him, and all at once, it became a lot harder to breathe comfortably. Just the man’s stare was unsettling. He wasn’t the first person Diego met in his life who could silence someone with just his gaze alone, but it was strange all the same.
“Actually,” the man muttered behind his desk as he reclined in the chair, “Renzo hounded Cree until the man made a call. I was only trying to get the information needed that would let Renzo feel comfortable about continuing his current …” Dare’s stare drifted to Diego, and he considered his words before finally settling on, “… job. You understand?”
Luv didn’t seem to care. “Like I said, I brought him here, and now you’ve got eyes on him. Tell Ren he’s fine.”
“Just … behave, Luv. And get him the hell out of here. This is not a place for someone like him.”
“He has a name.”
Diego cleared his throat, happy that he’d stayed closer to the door of the office and didn’t walk in further as Luv had. “That’s fine—he doesn’t need to use my name.”
For a moment, Dare’s gaze softened. Just as fast, he reverted to unsettling ice.
“Exit the property, Luv. No detours.”
That was that.
Diego left the office first; Luv was quick to follow. This time as they headed through winding hallways that only seemed like a maze to Diego, more people milled around than before. None spoke to him. All of them wore some variance of black. A few nodded Luv’s way.
“League members,” Luv told him, clearly seeing his curiosity about the people. “Like me, and Ren. Some just got back from a heist in Paris. There’s also two being trained, so a team is here for that, too.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know.”
Finally, he started to recognize where exactly they were. Or rather, that they were walking down the hall leading to the doors where they had first entered. At the far end, Luv pulled the black card from her back pocket and held it up for the camera overhead to see.
Diego glanced behind him one last time. He wouldn’t come back here. Of that, he was almost certain. Some places just didn’t feel like they were meant for him. This was one of those.
A click sounded. The doors opened to the outside.
This time, Luv didn’t need to tell him to hurry up or follow along. He was all too ready and willing to leave.
EIGHT
Luv
Luv Moore had a great many skills. Her training for The League started just after what was assumed to be her seventeenth birthday, but no one was really sure of her true age because her past was full of shadows that even she couldn’t see through to understand what waited behind the veil.
She didn’t know where she had been born, or who brought her into the world. Just that she had been shuffled from hand to hand until finally coming to The League. A year and a half after finding her way to the organization hidden within the depths of the Nevada desert, she now toted a profile as an up and coming assassin that could do just about any task put in her hands.
She excelled in bombs. Hence her mentor in Renzo. Hacking was her favorite. Put any kind of weapon in her hands, and she could be a man’s worst nightmare. She also had a liking for all things undercover or even … jobs that required infiltration.
What she didn’t do, though?
Tracking, recon, and so forth. Luv found all of that to be slow and boring. And while she was supposed to have an easy week looking after Renzo’s younger brother, she certainly didn’t expect to have to track Diego down because he just decided to up and go MIA on her.
She had much better things to do on a weekday.
A touch-up on her blonde hair; a fill for her nails because they were starting to grow out. Hell, she could have stayed in bed all day and read a book. Literally anything except tracking a guy from New York all over Las Vegas. And yet, that’s exactly what she found herself doing.
Luv showed up at the hotel around noon on the third day of Diego’s stay. He hadn’t done much after their trip to The League’s complex, and he didn’t seem interested in leaving the hotel on the second day, either. She left him be figuring they could meet back up today and maybe his mood would be better.
Except he wasn’t there at all, and the clerk at the front desk simply said Diego had left. Knowing better than to call Dare and say Renzo’s brother was missing when she was supposed to keep her eyes on him, she decided to handle the issue herself. She put out a few calls to some people in the city with boots on the streets and ears to the ground. It was always good policy in her business to have contacts in high and strange places.
It took an hour.
She grabbed lunch while she waited.
Eventually, her contacts came through with the information she needed. Diego—or someone they thought fit his description well enough—had found his way to an indoor and outdoor skatepark a few blocks away from his hotel. Luv made her way to the address without rushing because what was the point?
The guy was almost eighteen. Basically an adult, or soon becoming one. If he wanted to do something, he could. He didn’t need to ask for permission. She just needed to make sure he was safe while he did it, right? Simple enough.
That was how Luv found herself watching Diego from a distance as he laughed with a group of guys who had music blaring from portable speakers while the sound of wheels rolling over cement echoed all around the space. In her shadowed corner, Luv stayed where she couldn’t be seen, both amused and curious about the boy from New York and how he seemed entirely different from the one she met in the airport just days before.
With the people at the skatepark, he seemed a bit looser. Lighter, if that were possible. He chatted with the strangers and flipped over his board while a blunt was passed around the group. At least they were in the outdoor section to smoke, she thought. It was also the first time she noticed all the gear Diego carried in the backpack that rarely left his shoulder.