GARRET

      “Are you bloody serious?” Wes exclaimed later that night. “You’re going to try to sneak into yet another Talon facility? Is our life not exciting enough, or do the lot of you just have some sort of mutual death wish?”

      It was late evening, and the four of us were back in the cabin, having explained to Wes what we had found at the crash site. Riley stood in the center of the living room, arms crossed, while Wes watched him from the kitchen counter. I leaned against the far wall, and Jade sat peacefully in an armchair, watching everything in silence. The only one not in attendance was Ember, who had retreated to her room as soon as we’d arrived, claiming that she had a headache and wanted to lie down. She had been quiet and withdrawn ever since we’d left the hotel, probably brooding over her brother and his involvement with Talon. I worried for her; Dante was the one person who could get under her skin and make her question everything.

      Riley sighed. “It’s not like it’s a heavily armed secret compound, Wes,” he said. “You researched it yourself. It’s an office building, certainly owned by Talon, but in the middle of a city. There’s not going to be guards with machine guns walking around.”

      “You hope,” Wes shot back. “This is Talon. I wouldn’t put anything past them, and you should know better, too, Riley. You could be walking into a death trap.”

      “You’re the one who wanted us to uncover what Talon is up to.”

      “Bloody hell, I realize that! But I didn’t think we were going to be waltzing into Talon itself.”

      “This is necessary, Wesley,” Jade said in her cool, unruffled voice. “This only proves that Talon is planning something, and we must discover what that is before it is too late.”

      “And you know you’re going to go along with it,” Riley added. “So can we just skip the whining and get to the part where you actually start helping?”

      “I could do that,” Wes said, scowling at him. “But then, who would tell you what an absolute wanker you are?” He sighed and opened his laptop, then bent over the keys.

      I rose and slipped quietly from the room toward the hallway where the bedrooms were located. Riley watched me leave over the back of Wes’s stool, but he didn’t say anything as I continued into the hall and walked to the door at the very end. Light glimmered through the crack at the bottom, and I tapped on the wood.

      “It’s open,” came the muffled voice beyond the frame.

      I pushed the door back with a squeak. Ember sat on her bed with her back against the headboard and one leg drawn to her chest. She had changed out of the black suit, which lay in a crumpled pile at the foot of the bed, and now wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, though I could still see the slick material of the Viper suit poking up through her collar. I knew she rarely went without it anymore, just in case she needed to Shift into her real form, either to escape or to attack. Her hands rested in her lap, one of them curled around an item I couldn’t see.