With a soft sound, Veronica pulled back, just for a moment, just long enough to catch her breath. Her eyes were dark, her lips slightly swollen and she looked at him with an expression that was equal parts desire and triumph.She stepped away from him and began walking backward toward the bedroom, her heels clicking against the floor with the same deliberate rhythm. Her fingers found the thin strap of her dress and pushed it off one shoulder. Then the other. The silk slid down her body in a single, fluid motion, pooling at her feet like liquid gold.She stood before him in nothing but a black lace thong, her skin glowing in the low light of the suite. The city sparkled behind her through the windows, a million lights stretching to the horizon."Coming?" she asked.She didn't wait for an answer as she pivoted and walked through the doorway into the bedroom, her hips swaying, her bare ass a canvas of smooth skin and subtle muscle.Saul stood there for a moment, his chest heaving, hi

The next morning, Kim couldn't reach him.She stood in her office, phone pressed to her ear, listening to it ring for the fifth time. The call went to voicemail again. She didn't leave another message. She had already left two, and a third would cross the line from friendly concern into something that would raise questions she wasn't ready to answer.With a small sigh , she set the phone down on her desk and stared at it. The windows behind her showed the city waking up, the morning sun burning off the last of the night's fog, the streets filling with cars and buses and people who had no idea that anything was wrong. But something was wrong. She could feel it. Saul had gone to meet Veronica last night, and now he wasn't answering his phone, and the staff at his penthouse, whom she had called after the second unanswered ring, had confirmed that he never came home."He didn't return last night, Director Vance," the head of security had told her, his voice careful and professional. "

The sound came first.It was a deep, thundering boom that seemed to shake the air itself. And it kept on going, one after the other.Each explosion sent a shudder through the walls, a deep, visceral tremor that seemed to travel up through the floor and into Kim's bones. She could feel every impact in her teeth. The police station had become a war zone in the space of minutes. The air was thick with dust and the acrid smell of smoke that seeped in through the shattered windows. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered wildly, casting the chaos in strobe-like flashes: officers running, shouting, grabbing weapons from lockers, dragging unarmed civilians toward the back rooms.The gunfire was a constant crackling backdrop.It came from outside, from across the street, from positions Kim couldn't see and didn't want to imagine. The police seemed to be returning fire. She could hear their shouts, the distinctive bark of service weapons answering the attackers' barrage. Somewhere in th

Leo looked closer at the box in his sister's hand. It was small, no bigger than a compact mirror, made of dark metal that gleamed dully in the flickering fluorescent light. The surface was unmarked except for a single engraving, the Kinai wolf, its teeth bared, its eyes catching the light. Leo recognized that box immediately. It was the same kind of container Kim had carried to the Lantern the night she'd dosed Saul.  Kim only ever put one thing inside a box like that. She opened it with steady fingers. Nestled against a bed of dark velvet were two small, white, rounded patches. They looked harmless.  It looked like the kind of thing you'd stick on a child's scraped knee. Leo knew better.  He'd used them before, during the late nights in the server room when he needed to trace financial anomalies through terabytes of data, when he needed to see patterns that would

 She shook her head rapidly, swearing under her breath. "Everything happening outside, the stand off with the police, even the damn explosions, it's all just one big distraction. They're not trying to kill us. They're trying to keep us contained. To keep us pinned down. Keep us thinking we're under siege while they….." "......set up the real trap." Leo's face had gone pale.  "Oh, fuck. Kim, we need to get the fuck out of here. Now." The words had barely left his mouth when the first person fell. It was an officer near the front desk, a young man with a radio clutched in one hand and a service weapon in the other.  One moment he was standing, shouting into the receiver, coordinating the defense with the calm efficiency of someone who had trained for this exact scenario.  The next moment his eyes rolled back in his head and he