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A half minute, and then a minute passed. I stayed four layers ahead of the maelstrom, and then three.

As one minute passed to two, my lead narrowed to two thin layers of magic separating us from certain death. And the spell seemed to have way too many teeth.

Voices muttered behind me, but I paid them no heed. Any waver of my attention now and we would crash and burn for sure. I barely noticed when the elevator shook once, twice, and then began moving upward. The spell continued burning itself out on my makeshift shield, but there was still more spell left than bubbles of protection. Despair tickled my throat.

It had me changing from the tack of protecting all of

us to searching for a way to sacrifice myself to save the four crouched behind me. Maybe if I—

Chimes rang out and viselike hands gripped my arms.

I barely got out a choked protest before they yanked me back and to the side. My last layer of protection sizzled and popped as the spell ate through it and then exploded into the air where we’d ‘just been. I covered my head with my arms and braced for a death that never came.

Magical fireworks burst, creating a light show that would have been lovely if not so very lethal. I finally had the presence of mind to register that we’d somehow reached the penthouse suite. Scott’s arms loosened when I squirmed. I sat up and searched anxiously, relaxing only when I’d counted three other bodies nearby, all alive and well.

Wait, make that four other bodies. Dre Carrington, minus the blond hair that was his pride and joy, had plastered his body over Mya’s and was now checking her for the slightest hint of injury. That bumped him up several notches in my esteem, even though I didn’t want it to.

“Well,” I drawled when his eyes met mine. “Looks like they bought themselves another traitor.”

He tensed, but then nodded and drew Mya up, wrapping his arms around her protectively. “And owe you yet again, it seems, for saving the one most precious to me.”

The wheels in my head started spinning, and then my eyes lit up. “Well, now that you mention it, there
is
a little something you can do for me..

DRE HAD SOME ANSWERS FOR US LESS THAN
an hour later, but none of them gave me what I’d been looking for: the name. of the traitor living in the Murphy family’s midst.

“So Doreen only went rogue tonight, then?”

Denton, Dre’s secretary—excuse me,
personal
assistant— nodded. “It appears so. A very large sum of money was wired to her checking account just three hours ago.”

I gestured to the elevator. “She worked a very big spell in a very small, amount of time. I’d be impressed if she hadn’t been trying to kill us.”

Dre’s eyes flashed. “You must accept my apologies. I’ve never had an employee betray me like this.

She came with the highest recommendations—”

I waved his apology off. “Happens to the best of us, Dre.” I left the
and you’re hardly the best of us
unspoken.

Going soft in my old age. “That makes sense that they only now bought her off, seeing how she was the one to point out Mya’s odd coloring.”

His hands tightened around her shoulders. He looked in no rush to let her out of his reach. Not that I could blame him.

I turned toward Scott. “Think Mac could work some of his technical mumbo jumbo and trace down whoever wired her the money?” Seeing as how I couldn’t exactly request that, the PD run the trace through more legal channels.

Scott nodded. “Piece of cake for him. We should get back to Hounds so we can supervise the delivery and ask Mac to do his thing.”

My eyes blurred with weariness, but I merely rubbed the moisture away. “That’s right. The delivery should arrive any moment.”

Dre arched a brow but didn’t pry. Two points for him.

I returned my gaze to Denton. “Think you can get the truck by tomorrow afternoon?”

His lips curved into an almost-smirk. “Of course. It will be at the Murphy loading dock at precisely two P.M
.
tomorrow.”

My breath whooshed out as I nodded. One less thing to worry about. “All righty, then. Dre, keep a better eye on your girlfriend, will you?”

He tensed, raring for a fight, until he realized I’d been joking. Mostly. Rather than joining in the banter, however, he became uncharacteristically solemn. “And you find out what they did to
her.
Save her if you can.”

We shared a long, measuring look that spoke volumes more than we could ever say out loud. I held out a hand and we shook. Scott touched my back again, so I turned and followed him out of the penthouse.

This time we took the freight elevator, since the fancy-schmancy one would be out of commission for a while.

Dre sent an armed escort with us, same as he’d done for Mac and Ellie when they went back home, ostensibly to check on the Murphys.

Despite the fact that I’d been eager to have Mac trace down the source of Doreen’s recent financial windfall, suspicion settled into the pit of my stomach.
Someone
was feeding the mortals info from the inside. I drew in a deep breath before breaking the peace. “Scott, do you think it the wisest thing to go back to Hounds right now?”

“We need to organize the artillery before tomorrow, don’t we?”

I braced myself for a fight. “Yes, but we’ve only found one traitor tonight. Which leaves at least one more out there.”

“We don’t even know for sure—”

I made my voice gentle, yet unyielding. “Yes, we do.”

We walked in near silence for a moment, the scuff of boots the only sound in our immediate vicinity.

Finally, he relented. “Fine. We can just return to the safe house.”

I pressed my eyes tightly before taking the plunge. “When exactly
did
Ellie give up her family ties and turn merc for you all?”

He stopped. Our temporary bodyguards drew several feet away, giving us a measure of privacy while still watching the nearby streets for danger. Right now, the pissed-off Hound next to me was the biggest danger of all. Especially to my tender heart.

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“One that has to be asked. Why would a pampered princess like Elliana Banoub renounce her heritage to play around as a merc? Why would she—”

“—throw over the high and mighty Banoub clan in order to slum it up with us Murphys?”

I reached a hand out to touch him, but he’ took a step back. “Scott, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, then how did you mean it, Marissa?”

The silky soft ice in his voice cut me a hundred times less than his reverting to
Marissa.
I jammed my hands in my pockets and took off so quickly I nearly passed the two guards in front of us.

Scott cursed and then jogged to catch up. “Riss, I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“Forget it.” I’d been stupid to ever think I could mean as much to him as his family. He’d proven time and time again that I would never measure up to them. Not even Elliana, and once she’d been his least favorite relative of all. What did that say about any chance of a future for us?

“I didn’t—”

“I said,
forget
it. I’d like to sleep sometime tonight. Two—three—whatever number of near-death experiences in one day is enough for me.”

Something rumbled softly in my pocket. I nearly let out a scream before I realized it was the surviving disposable cell phone on vibration mode.

I flipped the phone open and tapped it on with more force than strictly necessary. “Yeah?”

“Riss?”

My face softened into a smile. “Trin. Good to hear your voice again. How you feeling?”

“Fine. Look, I need to speak to you.”

“Aren’t we speaking now?”

“No. Face to face.”

“Not sure that’s really possible tonight.”

Her voice became slightly exasperated. I could just imagine her overdramatic eye roll. “I’d rather not discuss this where not-so-little ears can hear. And trust me, you want to hear what I have to say.”

I let out a breath at the suggestion that her phone was tapped. Hell, I’d suggested it myself when she was still in the hospital, but hearing her say that reminded me how much danger she could still be in if they believed she could lead them to me. Which, of course, she could.

“Where and when do you want to meet?”

“Our favorite little place to eat. The one that gives you heartburn. Give me three hours.”

Okay, guess we
weren’t
going to get much sleep tonight.

“Great. See you then. And, Trin. . . be careful.”

Her voice sounded tired, way too tired, when she replied. “Yeah. You, too.”

Scott had caught up to me while I’d been distracted. He didn’t touch me, but his eyes looked concerned when I met his glance. “Trouble?”

“Could be. Trin wants to meet me in Chinatown in three hours.” I glanced at the digital numbers backlit on my cell. “It’s not too far from here, so we should have enough time to check on the delivery before I head over?’

His lips tightened. “Before
we
head over, you mean.”

“I thought.
.

He rolled his eyes. “You thought that just because we got pissed at each other I’d leave you high and dry? Jesus, Riss. Give me more credit than that.”

My body relaxed. I hadn’t even realized it needed to. “That’s not what I—oh, hell. Let’s just go.”

THE DELIVERY ARRIVED AND WAS PLACED
under lock and key in the freight area of Hounds of Anubis. Scott’s Uncle Ian agreed to keep watch over it overnight, and Scott and Blue took charge of sorting everything out while Mac and I headed to their apartment so he could hack into Doreen’s financial records. I still wasn’t 100 percent convinced Ellie wasn’t the traitor, but rationality reminded me she’d had ample opportunity to kill me a dozen times already. Especially in the elevator. Then again—if she’d interrupted my shield-building, her ass would have gone up in flames, too.

A yawn cracked my jaws wide open as Mac ushered me into the one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment he and his little woman called home. The half bedroom consisted of a closetless room too small to be considered a true bedroom, more like a closet itself. Mac muttered something about me being free to make myself at home and scurried into the, “closet.”

I went off in search of the elixir that could cure the exhaustion that ailed me.

“Ahhh, coffee!” My mouth curved in a satisfied grin, which only widened when I recognized the gourmet bag nestled next to their fancy coffeemaker. Ten minutes later I carried two Snoopy mugs (either Ellie had a bigger sense of humor than expected, or Mac enjoyed tweaking her nose) into the tiny office set up as Mac’s electronic wonderland.

No fewer than five flat-screen monitors sat atop a wooden credenza that had been converted into a desk. A virtual smorgasbord of hard drives sat beneath, wires running every which way in barely contained chaos. Several lap-tops sat on a newer glass-and-chrome desk that ran perpendicular to the credenza. Two humongous plasma TVs were mounted to the wall above the flat-screen monitors, and Mac had his gaze plastered on the one to the right. His hands flew along a keyboard hooked up to one of the hard drives—which, in turn, must have been attached to the, plasma TV—and he made little sounds of satisfaction from time to time.

The gibberish scrolling across the screen was all Greek to me, but apparently it meant something to Mr.

Techno Wiz. He merely grunted when I crossed the three feet of open space in his closet of an office and read over his shoulder. That lasted precisely twenty seconds before my eyes started to blur.

“And
this
is what you do for a living? Gods, I’d slit my wrists in an hour.”

“Hmm?” He threw an exasperated look my way, the glint of his green eyes clearly saying,
Can’t you
see I’m busy here?
When he saw the mugs of steaming coffee in my hands, however, he perked right up.

A man after my own heart. Too bad he was already married. Oh, and that I was kind of, sort of, still hung up on Scott.

“That for me?”

I nodded. Mac accepted one of the Snoopy mugs and sipped as I leaned over him to tap the monitor.

“Does any of this bizarre foreign language tell you who paid off our pal Doreen?”

Annoyance and humor warred across his face, with the humor winning out. “If you call someone who tries to kill you a pal, I’d hate to meet up with someone you consider an enemy.”

I snorted. He cleared his throat and gestured to the text dancing across the plasma screen. “In a nutshell, I traced the source of the funds wired to Doreen’s account around the world and back again. It was shuffled across a few ghost accounts belonging to fictitious corporations, bounced here and there and everywhere. Whoever did it is an expert at covering electronic tracks.”

“Yeah, well, I thought
you
were an expert at this electronic crap.”

His eyes rolled, and he hit a few keys before pointing again. “I didn’t say they were better than
me.”

His lips curved arrogantly. “I take great pride in being the best at what I do.” Those words had my hands clenching around the coffee mug, since they echoed a sentiment my mother had often expressed. I pushed aside the sudden pang of longing and focused on him. “After weeding out the ghost accounts and fake corporations, I tracked down one that seems real enough.”

“Seems?”

A tight smile flashed across his face. “It’s an officially registered company located here in Boston, and I can find online traces of it actually conducting business, but the address is phony.”

I leaned against the only empty stretch of wall and pursed my lips. “The name of this seemingly real company?”

His smile faded and his expression grew troubled. He hesitated before striking a few more keys. The window on the plasma screen switched to a web browser, and a web-page popped up. My mouth dropped open and the mug of coffee nearly slipped from my fingers when the glossy corporate logo splashed across the page. Erinye Unlimited.

Erinye, the Greek version of the Roman mythological creatures nearest and dearest to my heart—

Furies.

Rage exploded, pushing me away from the wall and as close to the plasma screen as I could get. “You have
got
to be kidding me!” I scowled up at the ugly winged woman smirking down at me—one that resembled a Harpy much more than any Fury I’d ever come across. “That’s some sort of sick joke, right?”