“Right, right.” He paws deeper and lifts out a crystalline bottle of perfume. “And you figured smelling nice would help with our escape?” He tosses that back in and pulls out a ticket stub. “And going to concerts too. Busy woman.”
Riva’s jaw twitches, but her voice stays only terse. “I didn’t bother to empty the purse when I grabbed it. I was in kind of a hurry, which shouldn’t be a surprise. That stuff isn’t mine.”
“Uh huh. Looks more to me like you’d just come back from one of their stupid missions, with the benefit of a little R&R time.” Jacob slings the purse strap over his own shoulder. “Zee, check her over and make sure she’s not carrying more than what’s in the bag.”
Riva’s shoulders tense, but she doesn’t shy away from me when I step closer. Her fitted tank top and sweatpants don’t leave much room for hiding weaponry. I can see with my regular vision that she doesn’t have a pistol shoved in her waistband or a sheathed knife at her hip.
But because he asked, and because any tiny miscalculation could screw us all over, I stare a little harder, letting the tingling of my talent form in the back of my eyes.
I skim my gaze over her hips and back, jerking it away quickly from the curve of her small but sculpted ass with a flush of heat through my skin that I hope the other guys can’t see. Then I move up beside her so I can give her front a quick scan, darting over her breasts with similar speed.
More heat trickles up the back of my neck and singes my cheeks. As I yank my focus back into regular sight, for a moment I simply watch her marching along next to me.
She looks so much like the Riva I knew. The same delicate features. The same odd hair, dark gray beneath and silver on top, pulled back in a typical if loosening braid.
The same deceptively slim frame that you’d think would snap in a swift breeze, when actually you’re lucky if she doesn’t snapyouin half.
Still just as pretty—maybe even more so with the sharpening of her face with adulthood and the slight filling out of her modest curves. Still leaving me with the same urge to scoop her up and shield her by tucking her close against my much broader body.
I used to imagine holding her in other ways too, but my mind freezes up against those memories.
I thought I knew her. I believed the affection for me that I saw shining in her eyes, her determined commitment to all of us.
How could the girl I knew back then have turned on all of us—onGriffin, of all people—like that?
What kind of a woman is she now?
My temper stirs and simmers, but I hold back a full-out flare of rage. Wolfing out isn’t going to help any of us.
And how can I feel angry and still have to hold my fingers back from brushing over her hair, her bare shoulder, as if I can reconnect with her that literally?
As if someone like me has any business touchinganyonethat way.
I wrench my mind away from those images—and a different thought hits me like a smack of frigid water.
“The trackers!”
The others all jerk to a halt, Riva last.
Jacob spits out a curse and jabs his finger at her. “Aren’t you so glad your distraction made us forget?”
Riva blinks at him. “Forgetwhat? What are you talking about?”
“We don’t have time to argue about it,” Andreas breaks in. “We have to get them outnow.”
Dominic clears his throat with an uncomfortable expression. “Riva might have one too.”
She almost definitely does.
I step in front of her. “Open your mouth.”
It’ll be easier that way.
She knits her brow. “What—"
“The guardians put tracking devices in our teeth,” I blurt out. I should have remembered it sooner—I’m the one who found them in the first place. “We figured it out after—after some things happened. Unless we pull the right tooth out, it’ll be a homing beacon straight to us.”
Something wavers in Riva’s expression. Horror at the thought of yanking a tooth right out of her jaw or at losing some level of protection she thought she had thanks to the guardians she sold us out to?