Hunh. Neha knew a fair amount of the private investigative firms across the five boroughs, but she’d never heard of Third Shift. Did they have an Insta? A Twitter account? She seriously doubted there were Yelp reviews for their park-pickup skills. And all of the other shady things they probably handled. The hysterical giggle started to build in the back of Neha’s throat and she swallowed the sound, staring out the tinted windows at the storefronts on Queens Boulevard as they headed west toward Manhattan. She didn’t have to be a superspy to know that Finn would pick the Queensboro Bridge over the Midtown Tunnel. The bridge was out in the open. The tunnel could box them in.
The last thing she wanted to be was boxed in. Unless it was with Joe, like they had been for those blissful few days in Auntie’s rental. “I don’t want to just sit on the sidelines in some safe house. Or drink lukewarm tea in your conference room. I need to be a part of this.”
“You shouldn’t be a part of this.” Finn looked back at her, equal parts exasperation and sympathy. “You don’t have the training for this, love.”
What was it with attractive, dangerous men assuming she couldn’t handle herself? Neha resisted the urge to kick the back of his seat. While it would feel immensely satisfying, it would do nothing to solidify her argument that she was competent enough to be involved in whatever happened next. “You don’t have the knowledge for this. You don’t know Joe like I do.” She ignored the tiny voice in the back of her mind that suddenly wondered How much do you know him, really?
Finn’s eyes met hers in the mirror again. Like he’d heard that quiet question. Maybe he had. She didn’t know if he was fully human. For all she knew, he could be some sort of psychic sorcerer. But she wasn’t about to ask. “What are you?” was just as rude to a supernatural as it was to a person of color. Just as rude as if she asked Grace where she was really from.
“Ms. Ahluwalia. Neha.” His tone was gentler this time. She half suspected Grace had kicked his ankle or squeezed his thigh…giving in to the impulses that Neha had to rein in. “We know the sort of people he’s mixed up with. The sort of beings he’s mixed up with. Have you ever dealt with any of them without a visitor’s table between you and guards in the room?”
For all his efforts at placating her, she still bristled. “Would you ask your partner a condescending question like that, or am I just the luckiest woman in this SUV?”
Another ridiculously charismatic laugh rolled up from Finn’s chest. Practically filling the car like an aphrodisiac being pumped through the vents. “I would never presume to condescend to Grace,” he assured Neha, still chuckling. “She frightens me far too much.”
“Besides, they come to me on the table,” Grace added, something like a smile playing at her lips. “In that room, I am the guard. Between life and death.”
“In more than just that room,” Finn murmured, his admiration obvious.
Oh. She was a doctor. Surgeon, judging by the matter-of-fact yet utterly confident declaration. Neha wasn’t sure if she ought to be comforted by the revelation, but having a guard between life and death was somewhat reassuring nonetheless. “First, do no harm” and all that.
The rest of the drive went by in relative silence. Her temporary handlers would occasionally say something to each other, Finn’s undertone unmistakably flirty and Grace’s responses endlessly patient. Were they dating? Fucking? Pining for each other like the private investigator version of The Remains of the Day? She couldn’t tell. They seemed like polar opposites. The inveterate flirt and the über-professional ice queen. But, then again, what were she and Joe? Not exactly Couple of the Year.
“Ever fucked a blue-collar guy? What about a supe? Ever done one of us?”
All of her expectations were being laid to waste lately. Three decades’ worth of ideas about who she was and what the world around her was like…turning on a dime. For example, Neha didn’t know what she’d expected a black ops organization’s HQ to look like. It was disorienting, disconcerting, to climb out of the SUV into an underground parking garage on the city’s west side. It sat beneath a dark, sleek building that spoke more to hedge-fund management than a secret base of operations.
Grace and Finn led her to Third Shift without any acknowledgment of real estate disparities. Not even blinking as they used fancy biometric palm scanners to let themselves into what could have easily been a Midtown office building. They did the same scans before ushering her into an elevator. When they emerged on the firm’s floor, it could have been any high-end law office or decently budgeted magazine. There was an empty reception area with a black marble desk and a stylized 3S on a fancy wall marquee behind it. What she could see beyond the curved entryway was an open floor with a few desks and some offices lining the walls. It looked like a model office, not something anyone actually used.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise that it wasn’t where Finn and Grace took her. No, they detoured toward a second elevator. Unlike the first one they’d used in the garage, it had no number buttons. Only three more strange-looking scanner panels. Grace put her palm on one and leaned in for a retinal scan on another set slightly higher up. Red lights on each square turned green in almost no time at all. It was then that Finn tapped his card against the third panel and pressed something on the touch-screen display.
“Triple-factor authentication for me,” he explained, though it didn’t really explain anything at all. “Can never be too careful these days. All sorts of riffraff might get in.”
“What kind of riffraff are you?” she asked, since he’d given her the opening to appease her curiosity on that front.
“Worst kind,” he said, shaking his head in mock seriousness. “Lapsed Catholic. Former altar boy. Vampire. It’s why I get a card, too. Because they can’t rely on my bio scans.”
Vampire. That made all kinds of sense. Though Neha suspected he’d been born with the charm and the good looks. No supernatural help needed in that department. But… “What happens if you lose the access card?”
“I keep backups,” Grace answered before Finn could. “And I make him beg for them,” she added in a tone that would make a dominatrix proud.
Wonder of wonders, the vampire’s pale cheeks reddened. Neha suppressed her laughter as the elevator took them up in a swift journey that barely felt like a minute. She had no sense of how many floors they’d traveled, only that the doors were opening again with a metallic whir. Like the floor below, this one had an open floor full of cubicles and some offices. Unlike the floor below, there were flat-screen monitors practically everywhere. A long conference room—the one where she assumed she’d be parked with tea and condescending head pats—sat along the back of the space, the glass panel walls revealing a flurry of activity within.
“If I’m not back…if something happens…I want you to call this line.”
“Welcome to Third Shift,” Grace said, gesturing her forward.
“Welcome to Wonderland,” Finn corrected as the walls ahead dimmed and frosted over for privacy. “You may not think you fell down the rabbit hole, but you well and truly did.”
No, Neha had fallen into a far deeper hole than that. One she was terrified to label…and even more scared to lose.
* * *
“So now what?” Neha Ahluwalia demanded, her dark-brown eyes flashing fire at nearly every person in the room…and probably a few beyond the frosted glass in the cubes, too.
Danny watched the woman pace the command center like an angry tiger as Jackson and Elijah tried to field the question that had more answers than she could possibly guess. She was human, he knew, but he’d been around enough cat shifters to recognize and appreciate the similarities. The barely leashed frustration. The curled fists, like she was resisting scratching something or someone. He fully understood the inclination. He wasn’t particularly thrilled to be here either. Relegated to the desk work while Yulia was miles away in South Brooklyn, at her brother’s club, putting
herself at risk. But even he, a cop, knew better than to suggest involvement from law enforcement.
“I don’t understand why you can’t just tip off a police raid or something…especially if you know that Vasiliev is up to his eyeballs in illegal activity,” Ms. Ahluwalia exclaimed. “Just get in there. Blow it all wide open!”
“Would you want your man Peluso caught up in a police raid? Really?” Elijah was due to leave eventually for an engineered meet-cute with Meghna Saunders. Turning on the charm, creating a bond with her, all in the name of the mission. Maybe this was a practice run. The role of peacekeeper. Tamer of fellow lions. “Think about it,” he urged. “I understand you’re frustrated, but you know we can’t just go in guns and claws ablazin’.”
Danny winced. Because Elijah was right about what the NYPD would do in this situation. Too bad the voice his sister got starry-eyed over did little to calm Ms. Ahluwalia. Though she stopped pacing, she rubbed her arms as though she were cold. Her gaze continued to dart around from Lije to Jackson to Grace and Finn to him and Joaquin. “Then what do we do? Just let Vasiliev execute Joe? How’s that any different than letting the state do the same?”
New York had abolished the death penalty in 2007. Plenty of states were rushing to tweak the laws in light of the supernatural come-out in 2016, but that wasn’t what Neha was talking about. No, they all knew too well what she was talking about. From “accidents” as a result of excessive force to being secreted away in some detention facility never to be heard from again, there was no shortage of things that could be done to someone like Joe Peluso. That had been done to so many others before him.
“Peluso is alive.” It was Jack’s turn to weigh in. And he did so in a tone that brooked no argument. As if that wasn’t enough, he added some minor theatrics. Magic prickling across his skin, dancing across his fingertips in tiny balls of light. “No one’s executing anybody on our watch…and we are watching.”
Joaquin had been on it for hours, using the spider to hack the phones, computers, and security cameras in Kamchatka. They were a bona fide Dark Web wizard—no magic needed—so they’d eventually succeeded on all fronts. Now the team had audio and visuals on the space. Danny turned to their guest again, watching her focus on the wall of monitors and the sound that was piping in on the speakers on low volume, like the most depressing streaming playlist. Even with Jack’s little show, Third Shift didn’t look like much right now. A few people in an office with an overly secure elevator. He understood why she was so wired, so impatient. But that was the thing about hiding in plain sight, about developing shields and defense mechanisms… It was all so you didn’t notice what was right in front of you. The multiple angles on Kamchatka flashing across the screens. The bursts of Russian and Slovak that they were running through translation apps on a thirty-second delay. The fact that this room, this boring-ass conference room, currently hosted a lion shifter, a sorcerer, a vampire, and a hotshot doctor who was probably scarier than all the others combined.
Jack and Elijah were explaining some variation of that very thing when Danny’s phone vibrated, dancing across the tabletop a few inches. His heart knocked around his chest at roughly the same rhythm.
Our guest is not scheduled for checkout yet. He might appreciate a mint on his pillow from a nice maid. Can you arrange for a service?
Yulia. Finally texting him back. She’d been on-camera a handful of times. Navigating the hallways. Smiling and soothing and ducking grabby hands in the fight pit below the club. Going through one private door twice. To a place where there was no surveillance. One guess as to where that was. The barest of details followed the initial message. A big show of some kind planned two nights from now. From which Joe Peluso might permanently check out.
“Uh. Hey. Everyone.” Danny cleared his throat. “Yulia’s saying she can get at least one of us into the club.” And if one of them were in… Well, that meant all of them were in. He quickly recounted everything she’d texted him. “It’ll be a tight window, but she’s willing to make it happen.”
“Me,” Ms. Ahluwalia said before Jack or Elijah could make any kind of call. “If anyone’s going in there for Joe, it’s going to be me.”
The bosses looked at her. Looked at each other. Some sort of eerie silent communication passed between them. Probably not psychic, probably just the shorthand of two people who’d worked together a long fucking time, but Danny had learned a while ago not to make assumptions about anyone at 3S. Maybe there was a whole mental conversation going on there between the lion, the male witch, and their wardrobe.
“It’s not going to be you alone,” Jack assured her, the steely resolution in his voice offset by the thrill of the chase gleaming in his eyes. “We’re pulling together an op. They want to put on a show? We’ll give them audience members. A few of the city’s finest and not-so-finest.”
The knot of tension that had been sitting in Danny’s chest for days loosened just the tiniest fraction. He caught Finn’s grin across the room and felt an answering smile spread across his face. Third Shift was about to go on the hunt.
Chapter 25
The Locker could have been at the top of the midrise building or at the bottom. Neha really had no idea. Up was down, and down was up. Finn was right: she’d stepped through the Looking Glass into Wonderland. A place where the rule of law didn’t matter as much as the rule of claw did. Grace had whisked her back into the elevator just moments after Jackson had made his big pronouncement about putting together a mission. Before Neha could even voice a protest about that or anything else—not that there was much protesting would do versus Grace’s surprisingly firm grip on her arm. And now here they were in a cross between a weapons locker, a gym locker, and a Foot Locker…all decorated in dark, dour colors and easily cleanable tiles.
Neha didn’t want to think too hard about how much blood had been cleaned off the floors she now walked upon. Hell, she wanted to turn her brain off entirely…except that Joe needed her to be on her A game. He needed her mind, her tenacity, her fighting for him.
Grace looked up from a tablet she’d drawn from inside her jacket. “Jack’s already got the bare bones laid out, as per Yulia’s messages. We’ll be going in as waitresses, extra hires for the big event. So we should look the part. Off to the costume closet we go,” she said wryly.
Neha blinked. It hadn’t even been five minutes since they’d gotten off the lift. She was still in the middle of the nickel tour. Staring at grenade launchers in a reinforced glass case. There were operation specs already? Third Shift looked simple on the outside…but they were far from it once you got past the surface. Maybe she could trust her decision after all. Maybe she could trust herself. “And then what? What do we do once we’re in?” she prompted. “Because I need to see Joe. I need to know he’s okay.”
They’d had visuals on every single thing in Aleksei Vasiliev’s club up on those screens in the conference room. Every single thing except Joe. He was, no doubt, behind the door that Yulia and a few brutish guards had periodically been vanishing through. It felt like he was millions of miles away.
Grace didn’t answer right away, instead leading Neha down a narrow hallway toward what was, indeed, a clothes closet. A really big closet, illuminated once Grace flipped the studio lights on. Poles heavy with hangers ran the length of the room on either side, while shelves and drawers made up the middle. Most everything was in shades of black or blue. To hide bloodstains. Neha again had the disturbing thought, and she had to shake it off as the surgeon-spy waved her over to a rack toward the back. Here was a splash of color. No, more than a splash. Like Picasso and Cyndi Lauper’s sartorial love child. Neon. Fuchsia. Leopard print.
“I’ll be assessing the hostiles,” Grace said as she flipped through jackets and skirts, each louder than the previous. “We already have a head count on the regulars going in and out of Kamchatka, but there will be a massive uptick on Friday night. Joaquin has already hacked in an
d added one of Finn’s aliases to the digital guest list. One of his disreputable ones,” she added with a slight smile.
Could anything be more disreputable than Finn already was? The bit of humor was enough to relax Neha just enough to rifle through clothes herself. “And then you go all superhero team and take the bad guys down?”
“No.” Grace grimaced…and the expression did nothing to make her look less beautiful. “We prefer to be a little less big-budget than the Avengers. Our extraction of Joe Peluso will be dependent upon exactly what they have planned for him. We may have to let Vasiliev’s show play out and then take action.”
Neha didn’t like the sound of that. Because it meant Joe could be collateral damage during his own rescue. He could get hurt. “He’ll need to know. That’s why I need to see him as soon as possible. So he can be warned, prepared.”
“Is that the only reason?” The other woman’s gaze was too keen, too penetrating…but her voice was gentle. Low and comforting, not the don’t-fuck-with-me tone she seemed to default to around her male colleagues.
Was it that obvious? What Neha and Joe had been up to these past few days? Could the shifters smell it on her? Could they all see the desperation on her face? Neha swallowed hard and drew on her composure as she drew some items off their hangers and slung them over her arm. “It’s the only reason that’s relevant.”
“Okay.” Grace nodded, accepting the evasion for what it was and letting it go. She shifted gears seamlessly. “Is there anything else you need before we check back in with the bosses and find you someplace to bed down for the night?”
And just like that, Neha’s composure wavered. Because she needed dozens of things. Hope. Strength. A bottle of wine. Pani puri with Tejal. Ibuprofen. Joe’s arms around her. And… “Do you think I could call my mother? I promise it’ll be secure. She thinks I’m on a business trip.”
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