Yeah. Tiny mistake there, Hales, I scolded myself. I closed my eyes and sent a quick prayer for the police that would have to contain them. I hoped the cops were damned fast. They had a system. Over the last century, wrangling loose vampires had become a job for a specialized team of agents. I’d have to leave the vampires to them … for now. Until we got this serum figured out.
We still had so much to do—
But we had the cure. I ran a hand over my tangled mane, picking apart a knot that had formed, and just repeated that line to myself. We have the serum. It’s real. Callum proves it.
My throat grew tight and this time it wasn't from fear. My gaze tripped and fell several times as it traveled across my team members; I kept having to blink back tears.
Malcolm shook his head at me, his blue eyes solemn. “Nope. Tuck it back in. The game’s not over yet.” He handed a computer bag my way, his blond hair falling across his forehead as he leaned toward me.
Dammit. He was right. I blew out a breath and unzipped the bag as his bossy side came out.
“Hack the Pinnacle security feeds,” he ordered before he glanced around at the guys. “Change.” My anarchist wasn’t going to let us make any mistakes tonight. Any more at least. He wanted to fuck the Pinnacle. But he wanted it done right. He didn’t want those council members to be able to walk straight for days after what we’d done.
After seeing the prisoners in their lab, I didn’t blame him. I slid out a sleek new laptop and powered it up.
“Almost done,” Evan called out from his seat up front. “Then I can start to think about whatever spell is on Jolly.”
“Nope. Alibis first. He’s not going anywhere,” Malcolm dictated as Evan’s eyes roamed over Andros.
My eyes flitted to Andros for a second too. The huge giant of a man lay blue and still, his sandy hair gleaming, his normally blue eyes frozen open—his condition hadn’t changed since the spell had activated. I weighed everything. With Claude’s body on the vault level … I at least had to make an appearance somewhere far from the Pinnacle. I looked at Z who worried his lip, his eyes darting to his cousin every few seconds. Eventually, he nodded his approval. Then I looked at the driver. “Will you keep an eye on him? Stay close to the guys and if anything changes … anything at all, you call the guys back.” I didn’t like it but Andros hadn’t so much as blinked since we’d climbed into the van. He was in some kind of suspended state. Meanwhile, around us, time was running out if we wanted to all appear separate and lock down some witnesses …
“I’ll stay with him,” Evan declared. “I went to the ball with Tia anyway. Not like I should be out on the town after I ditched her.”
“But …”
“Anyone asks me anything, I can always say I went for a drive. That part’s true. An Honesty Amulet would register that. I can fix him.”
The tight feeling in my gut receded. Evan would stay and do what he could for Andros while the rest of us did what we had to do. I nodded my appreciation at him. “Okay then. Alibis. Get them done as quick as you can so we can get back and fix up Jolly.” I used Andros’ code name even though we were technically done with that part of the evening. It still just felt safer. I pulled my comm device from my ear and handed it to Malcolm. He shoved it in a trash bag with the other electronics as I clicked on the program I wanted and waited for the laptop to pull it up.
Evan turned back around in his seat, lifted his hips, and yanked on some pants, sans underwear.
My tired eyes were stuck in place for a second after that. Damn. Those glutes were … were … yeah.
The driver muttered about sanitizing his seats. That broke off my mental stuttering over Evan’s tight ass. But my gaze couldn’t help drifting to the guys as they changed. Unlike our driver, I didn’t have any complaints about it. Malcolm was too fast for me to appreciate it, and Z liked to show off too much—so I tried not to give him too much attention, but Grayson was completely unaware when he took his shirt off. He focused on wiping down his sweaty chest with a hand towel that was in a duffel bag.
His dark abs held me mesmerized for a second. He was so utterly beautiful, his close-cropped hair, his thick lips, and strong jaw contrasting those baby-fine, curled eyelashes of his.
“Ogle later, nemesis,” Gray ordered when he caught me staring. “Hack now, because then you’ve gotta change for alibi time too.”
I shook my head and blew out a breath, trying to focus on the screen in front of me. I blinked as the lines of code in front of me slithered like snakes for a second—my mind not quite able to control my exhausted body. Then I cleared my head and tried to focus.
Come on, Hales. Next step. You’ve been doing this for almost three years. Don’t mess up now.
The guys spoke around me but their words became a blur as I slid into hacker mode and ignored the world around me. I used magic to push the electrical impulses in my computer a little faster, unsure if I had enough juice to even do that. It didn’t work the first time, or even the third, but we had a long drive using a roundabout route Gray and his team had devised in order to lose anyone who might follow. Eventually, I was able to send a little surge of light pulsing through the system and a tiny radio signal through the Wi-Fi to speed up a process that normally took hours. I tossed an executable virus into the Pinnacle’s security system, so that the next time someone tried to log in to their security camera feed, the virus would activate and use a handy little spell I’d written to corrupt any video footage by replacing it with random TikTok videos.
It would give someone a fun morning. I smiled as I imagined the horrified face of some Pinnacle security dude as he mashed on the screens. Part of me wanted to add a spell to flip on the computer’s camera and send me a video feed when it happened … but I had way more important things to do.
I rolled my shoulder after I closed the laptop and started when I realized Malcolm had moved over next to me. My blond anarchist slid the laptop off my knees and shoved it into the trash with the other comm devices because they would go swimming in the lake later. Malcolm’s light blue eyes flicked from me to the back of the van. “Go change. We’re late. Our window of opportunity is closing.”
I scooted around Andros, who still lay like a big blue statue in the middle of the floor, sliding gently back and forth each time we had to brake, his stone skin making a scraping nose against the metal floorboards.
By the back doors, Gray held up my dress from the ball and I groaned before I stripped to my underwear, took a hand towel from him and wiped down—attempting to be careful with my wounds. Then I let him slide the gown over my head, only, this time, I didn’t feel any giddy excitement. “I just want to sleep. We don’t have to do my hair, do we?”
Gray leaned down and examined my hair. He ran his fingers through it a few times. “Let me brush it to cover up those burns on your neck. We can leave it down so no one sees those.” He grabbed a brush out of a bag and turned me around. Then he gently started to smooth my hair.
Z came forward and took a look at my wounds, frowning. He turned back to Malcolm. “Gimme a wand and stuff.” Without a word, Malcolm complied.
I shook my head. “You’re too drained.”
Z ignored me and dipped the wooden wand into an inkwell Malcolm had handed him and then unfurled a thin strip of parchment so he could write a spell.