Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

"What the fuckare you doing here?" Cal stood with the door open, blocking whoever was on the other side from view.

"Good evening, sweetheart. Good to see you too." The voice was low with an Australian accent.

"Don't call me that." Cal's tone was cutting, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he drew himself up to his full height.

"Would you rather I called you Cali?—"

"Utter one more syllable, and I will end you like I should have in Budapest."

"Yeah, right. I'd like to see you try."

"Name the time and place."

Quin was studying Cal's back intently, no doubt trying to do their twin telepathy thing to figure out if the man on the other side of the threshold was a friend or another foe.

"So cranky. Not getting laid enough lately, Cal?"

Julius snorted, and Cal shot him a glare, giving us our first glimpse of the stranger. He was Cal's height and muscular, straining his heathered gray T-shirt to the edge of its capacity. He had sandy-brown hair that was cut close on the sides and a little longer on top. A shark tooth hung on a leather cord around his neck, and he was looking at Cal with a wry, lopsided smile.

"Fuck you, Jack."

"So that's a no on letting me in?"

"We were just on our way out, actually."

"Then I got here just in time." He put a large hand on Cal's shoulder and shoved him to the side, pushing past him into the foyer. "My name's Jack Grayson. Which one of you is CaesarsRome?"

Julius's eyes narrowed. "First, who are you, and why do you want to know?"

"I'm here on behalf of my employer, Reuben Machas. He's a friend of your grandmother's. He sent me to check up on her. Imagine my surprise when I figured out I'd been conversing with one of her grandsons on the dark web."

"How could you have possibly figured that out?" Julius's eyes were slits behind his glasses. I could tell he was trying to figure out where he'd made a mistake.

"I'm just as good as you are, Caesar. Your IP address bounces all over the globe, but it always comes back to the Seattle area. I knocked out the power for a sec, just long enough to triangulate your base IP address as you came back online. After that, figuring out the signal was coming from this house was pretty easy."

Julius looked impressed and pissed as hell in equal measure.

Whoever had Felix clearly didn't have this guy's skills with a computer, or they would have found out Felix was here. Or maybe they had. Maybe Felix hadn't been safe anywhere.

But I needed him safe now.

"Why did this Reuben guy send you to check up on our grandmother?" Quin asked the question I should have, but I was too blinded by the task at hand. This Jack guy couldn't have shown up at a worse moment.

"I think that's a longer story than we have time for." Jack nodded in my direction, correctly reading the room.

"Damn straight. I don't really give a flying fuck who you are or why you're here. My mate has been kidnapped, and we need to go get him. So kindly get the fuck out so we can get going."

Jack held up a black bag. "If you'll let me, I think I could help."

"How?" Quin eyed him skeptically.

"Shit. You look just like him." Jack hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating Cal, who was glaring daggers into Jack's back, likely thinking about exactly how he'd like to kill the other man. "Damn, sweetheart. I didn't know there were two of you." He never took his eyes off Quin, but the temperature in the room dropped a degree as Cal's stare turned icy.

Quin, ever the consummate professional, held out a hand, and Jack took it. "Quin Hunter. How do you know our brother?"

"Work." Jack and Cal had answered at the same time, both their tones making it clear further questions would go unanswered as they glared daggers at each other.

That was enough for me. I was done wasting time. I knew the kind of work Cal did. If Jack did the same kind of work, that meant he had experience with the kind of mission we were about to undertake to rescue Felix. Having Jack with us would be valuable—if what he said about why he was here was true—especially since I wasn't sure how Quin would do in a firefight if it came to that. My grandmother had taught me to trust my gut, and my gut was telling me we could trust Jack.

And if he betrayed us, I'd kill him. Or Cal would. I had a feeling my brother might enjoy taking the other man out. But for now, he was an asset.

"Fine. We'd be happy to have your help."

Jack smiled. "Excellent. Tell me what we're up against."

Twenty minutes later, Jack was caught up, and I was a second from storming out of the house without waiting for my brothers to catch up. All this talking and planning was taking too long. The job was simple—go in, get Felix, take care of whoever had kidnapped him, and get the fuck out.

"As far as I can tell after tapping into the feeds from the building site next door, Felix and three men who took him are the only people in the building. I haven't seen anyone else coming or going, and there is no one watching the perimeter from the outside." Julius had brought a laptop upstairs and was showing us the entrances and exits.

"Which means these guys clearly aren't professionals." Cal looked smug about that fact. "That will make things easy."

"Or it could mean they plan to kill Felix and leave him there. Definitely looks like they aren't expecting company." Jack glared across the table at Cal, and both men crossed their arms, staring each other down.

"Piece of cake." Cal's words were barely audible through his clenched teeth.

"And that right there is your problem, sweetheart. You never look at every angle."

"Sometimes things are as straightforward as they seem." Cal slammed his hands down on the table.

Jack laughed. "Really? In our line of work. Doubtful."

"You just overcomplicate everything."

"And you oversimplify everything."

"You—"

"As much as I'm sure we'd all love to stand here and watch"—Julius gestured between Jack and Cal—"whatever fucked-up foreplay this is, they've already had Felix for three hours. We need to get moving."

I nodded. I'd been pacing the kitchen like a caged animal, rage I couldn't channel yet searing my guts and making me feel like my skin was about to explode. I needed my mate back, and I was ready to do whatever it took to make that happen. "Quin and I will go through the front, the way they took Felix in. Cal, you and Jack go in through the back. We'll be going in blind since there is no way to know what the inside of the warehouse looks like, but I'm guessing it's a giant box like most others. Let's hope that's true."

Everyone nodded.

Cal clapped his hands. "Who needs firepower?"