“That’s us!”

“Holy shit, how’d you do that?”

“All hail to the V.”

Just like that, Manny’s RV, along with all its gauze and syringes and scalpels, and the two sorry sons a bitches in its front seat, was undercover and locked in tight as a tick in the delivery bay.

Manny canned the engine, but didn’t take his grip off the wheel. Like he kinda expected to have to drive again. “What do we do now?”

Rhage put his window down further and listened to the sounds of the cop cars going by on the outside. “We chill—”

His cell rang and he answered it. “Nice work, my brother.”

Vishous’s voice was clear as a bell. “And you thought we’d never need it.”

“Thank God for remote activation.”

“Through my phone. Boom! You safe?”

“Yeah, but I think we’re going to be here for a while unless someone comes and gets us.”

“What the fuck is going on down there?”

“Pick us up and I’ll tell you on the way home.”

“Be there in twenty. Unless we have to worry about the CPD?”

“Oh, no.” Rhage pulled a pshaw with his hand. “You’ll be fine. No cops around.”

As he hung up, Manny looked over at him. “Are you out of your mind? This zip code is crawling with the police.”

“He needs the exercise.”

With a curse, Manny banged his head against the back of his seat a couple of times. “Damn it! I haven’t even gotten a chance to use this bad boy yet, and it’s all trashed.”

“Well, least you got to play with some of the buttons. And this was a good beta test of the whole bulletproof thing.” Rhage’s phone went off as a text came through. “Oh, good news—Trez and Selena made it home safely. Guess they got out of town before the fun started.”

“That is a relief.” Manny took a deep breath, but then cursed. “How’re we going to get this thing out of here? Every police station in town’s going to have a description of it.”

Rhage looked around the interior and shrugged. “Piece by piece, if we have to.”

“Somehow that doesn’t inspire confidence.”

“You haven’t seen your brother-in-law with a screwdriver. That motherfucker can take apart just about anything.”

“How’s he on the reassemble, though.”

“Great.”

“Are you lying to me just so I don’t cry like a little girl?”

“Oh, no. Not at all.”

Rhage twisted around in his seat and activated the flashlight app on his phone.

“Checking for hitchhikers?” Manny drawled.

“You got anything I can nosh on in here?”

“Not unless you like the taste of sterilization.”

Rhage resettled in his seat and put the thing on recline. “Worse comes to worst—”

“No, you may not eat my RV.”

“Are you off-limits, too?”

“Yes!”

Closing his eyes, he flipped off the doctor. “Party pooper.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

In the palace’s library, iAm slid out the last volume on the last shelf on the last row of healing texts. As he cracked the leather cover, the scream in his head was so loud, he couldn’t focus to read the table of contents.

“Here,” maichen said. “Allow me.”

Even though it marked him as a pussy, he let himself fall back on his ass, the hard floor biting through the thin cover of the pale blue maid’s uni.

He already knew what maichen was going to find. Or not.

The flaw in his reasoning, when he’d set out on this folly, was that he’d never heard of the disease. It wasn’t like he was one of the s’Hisbe’s healers, with an extensive knowledge of what ailed folks and how to fix it, but something like what Selena had? The Shadows would have viewed it as a defect to stay away from like the plague—so there would have been some common consciousness about it.

He should have known. But when it came to his brother, he was liable to do anything to save the SOB.

“Does he have a similar disease?” maichen asked.

“What?”

“You just said you would do anything to save your brother?”

Great, he was talking out loud now. “We’d better head back.”

She closed the volume. “I am sorry we didn’t find—”

“Come on, let’s go.”

iAm got to his feet and offered her his hand. In the process of reviewing that last book with all those worthless words, she, too, had seated herself on the floor.

Her masked face lifted upward as if she were staring at his palm.

“We need to go,” he muttered, wishing she would just put the damn book back and head out with him.

When she finally extended her arm, the heavy sleeve slid down, exposing her thin wrist and her long, thin hand. Which trembled.

He loved the color of her skin. Darker than his.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said roughly before he touched her.

“I know,” she whispered.

As he made contact, his body jerked, electricity licking into him, traveling from the connection to his heart and making that vital rhythm-maker tick even faster. And he wasn’t sure, but he thought that she felt the shock as well, the robing that covered her shifting sharply, as if she had jumped.

There wasn’t time to think about any of that, though.

Taking the book from her free hand, he replaced it into the slot that had been created and started off for the long trek back to the exit. He’d gone about fifteen feet when he realized he hadn’t dropped his hold on her yet.

He had to force himself to let her hand go.

When they came to the hidden door, he stepped aside and let her open things up in case there was some kind of tracer or security check in play.

Out in the hall, she said, “Crouch down, remember? You’re very tall and very big.”

iAm got with the program. “Thanks.”

Letting her assume the lead, he found himself watching the way she walked, the shift of her body under the robing camouflaged nearly completely. What was she like under there? What was her face like?

As soon as the thoughts hit him, he dropped them. Now was hardly the time to waste even a split second on anything like that.

They had gone about twenty-five miles, as far as he could tell, when a set of prison guards came at them. From underneath the mesh that covered his face, iAm tracked their approach, bracing himself for a fight to get away. Typical of s’Ex’s security team, they were in black, they were built like bouncers, and their weapons were obvious around their waists, the long-bladed daggers at their hips in ready reach. Their faces were uncovered, and he couldn’t remember—did that mean that they were on the warpath?

Shit, had they been discovered?

Ahead of him, maichen didn’t blink. She stopped, put both her hands in front of her heart in a steeple, and bowed her head in supplication. Staying in her lee, iAm copied her pose exactly, his thigh muscles tight as he forced his legs to remain at half-mast.

The guards looked the pair of them over, and iAm prayed that that lavender scenting trick did the job. If they caught a whiff of anything close to the aggression pumping through his veins . . .

But nope, they just nodded and kept going.

Thank fuck.

Another hundred yards or so later, she came to an abrupt halt—and he nearly plowed into her. “We’re here,” she said, looking up and down the hall.

He waited for her to trigger the door to his cell. When she didn’t, he leaned into her and said softly, “It’s not your fault. And thank you.”

Her head lowered, and the voice that came out from behind her masking seemed choked. “I’m so sorry. About all of this.”

“You don’t worry about it. And I don’t want you to come see me anymore. Trade off the duties, but don’t get involved in this. We got enough people in this nightmare already.”

That mesh panel shifted as she looked up at him. “I want to do more. Let me help you get free—”

“No.”

“I don’t want you to be a gerbil.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to be kept in there forever.”