Putting his hands into the pockets of his cashmere coat, he leaned back and regarded the sky, seeing not some version of heaven, but merely vacant, cold space.

For some strange reason, when he righted his head, his cell phone ended up in his palm.

And before he could stop himself, a call was ringing through. Once. Twice. Three times . . .

“Hello?” a female voice said.

Assail’s body responded like a tuning fork, his veins vibrating inside his skin, his brain’s wiring flushed with a buzz that not even cocaine could get near.

“. . . hello?”

Closing his eyes, he mouthed something he was glad Marisol could neither hear nor read upon his lips—and then dropped the phone from his ear. As he ended the connection, he wondered why he kept torturing himself by calling her and hanging up like that.

Then again, he didn’t just enjoy torturing others, did he.

After all, enmity, like kindness, started at home.

It was like watching paint dry.

As Vishous lit up another hand-rolled and sat back against the shelving full of lesser jars, he watched the torchlight flicker over Xcor’s ugly fucking face. He’d started his shift at nightfall, and had sent Butch downtown to work. At this point, it was a waste of resources to have more than one person babysitting for the bastard.

Wake up, asshole, he thought. Come on, open those eyes.

Yeah, file that under NFW. The movement that had been twitching that one side of Xcor’s body had ceased during the day, and now the only break in the slab-of-meat inanimation was the rise and fall of the chest. The monitoring equipment—which V had silenced because one, he could see the readouts just fine, and two, the incessant beeping had made him want to go lead-shower on the shit—indicated that, for someone in a deep coma, Xcor’s basic functions were doing all right. And meanwhile, the IV was pumping fluids and nutrients into his veins, the catheter was draining his bladder, and that electric blanket was keeping his core temperature up.

V Really fucking wished the bastard would come to.

Too much time to think—

As a text chimed, he checked his phone, then got up and strode off, covering the distance to the gate quickly.

Jane was waiting on the far side of the iron bars with their steel mesh, duffels hanging off her shoulders, white coat and blue scrubs insanely erotic even though they were baggy as hell, phone in her hand as she texted someone. Focused on her cell, her short blond hair fell forward and obscured her face, but he could tell she had no makeup on—and for some reason, he took special notice of her blunt, unpolished nails.

She always kept those puppies filed down so she didn’t snag surgical gloves on them.

Or internal organs, as it were.

For a moment, he stopped and simply stared at her. She was so buried in her work, she hadn’t even noticed him, and man, he just loved that about her. Her mind, that huge engine under her skull, was the sexiest thing about her, the force that challenged him, kept him on his toes . . . and made him feel, every once in a while, as if maybe, possibly, perhaps he wasn’t actually the smartest person in the household.

And then, of course, there was her in the middle of that battlefield, lesser body parts everywhere, guns and the possibility of devastating chaos as close as the grass under your feet, and her entire focus on saving his brother.

“V?”

The way she said his name suggested she might have tried to get his attention a couple of times.

“Sorry, hey.” He freed the lock and opened the gate, standing aside so she could fit in with all that gear. “You want some help lugging that shit?”

“Nope, I got it.” She gave him a smile, and then was all business. “How we doing in there?”

Funny, they didn’t really hug much, did they. The other couples in the mansion usually did that big greeting thing, but he and Jane? Always too much to talk about.

Whatever, he’d never been into the sappy crap.

After all, anything even remotely pink made him itch. And not just because it might be a sign of a localized skin infection.

“Xcor and I have been arguing.” As the two of them walked side by side down the corridor, their shadows sped forward and then fell back as they came up to and passed by the various torches. “He’s a Yankees fan, so you can imagine the smack talk. There is some common ground, though. He hates my mother, too.”

Jane’s laughter was deep and kind of abrupt, an arguably ugly sound that he fucking loved.

“Is that so?” She jacked up one of the duffels. “Any other conversations of note?”

“He has no taste in music. He didn’t even know who Eazy-E was.”

“Okay, that is just wrong.”

“I know. These young kids today. The world’s going into the shitter.”

At Xcor’s bedside—or gurney-side, as was the case—Jane dropped her load and then just stood there, her eyes going over her patient and lingering on the readouts.

“Battery life is stronger than we thought,” V murmured as he took a drag. “We still have a couple of hours before we need to do a switch.”

“Good—I’ll leave the replacements off to the side here.”

V backed up and let her have some room as she checked Xcor’s catheter, gave him a new bag of saline solution, and administered a number of drugs through his IV.

“So what do you think?” he asked. Not because he didn’t have his own opinion, but rather because he loved her to go clinical on him.

As she began rattling off a number of multi-syllabic Latin-derived medical terms, he had to rearrange himself in his leathers. Something about her getting all professional made him want to get all up in her. Probably had to do with the bonding thing—he wanted to mark this spectacular person as his, so the whole world knew they needed to back the fuck off.

Jane was the only female who had ever gotten his attention and held it. And yeah, if he had to wax psychological on the situation, it was probably because her single-minded passion for her job, shit, her relentless commitment to excellence, made him feel a little like he was always chasing her just to keep up.

On so many levels he was a typical predator: The chase was more electric than the capture and consumption.

And with Jane, there was always something to pursue.

“Hello? V?”

When their eyes met, he frowned. “Sorry. Distracted.”

“There’s a lot going on.” She smiled again. “Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve had a consult with Manny and Havers. We’re thinking of maybe opening up his head. I want to watch him for the next twelve hours, but the pressure on his brain is gradually increasing even with the stent I put in this morning.”

“Can you operate here?”

She glanced around. “I don’t think so. Lot of debris in the air. Light is not great. But more to the point, we’re going to need imaging that we just can’t get in a cave.”

“Well, you let me know what you want and we’ll do another transport on him.”

“You’re the best.”

“Yeah, I am. I’d also do anything for you.”

As their eyes met, she put her hands in her pockets and backed up until she was leaning against the shelving.

When she didn’t say anything, he frowned. “What?”

“So do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

V laughed softly, and wasted a little time staring at the end of his hand-rolled. In the silence, he debated brushing the question off, but that was because he hated talking about anything even remotely emotional.

“You know, I’d deny I’ve got a head fuck going on, but—”

“It would be a waste of time.”

“—it would be a waste of time.”

They both smiled as they spoke the same words with the same tone and at the same time. But then he got serious.

Stabbing his cigarette out on the bottom of his shitkicker, he put the deadie into the empty Coke can he’d been using as an ashtray. To give himself a second longer, he looked at the hundreds and hundreds of jars all around them. Then he glanced at Xcor.