Chapter 1 Dagger’s Shield
DAGGER’S SHIELD
Dagger
My timing was the bloody worst imaginable when I stepped out of Magnolia’s room at the same time Givre exited hers. Even more abysmal was that when she glanced at me, I was running my fingers through my still-wet hair.
Her reaction—raised brow, smirk, and head shake—was no different than what I’d anticipate.
“What are…oh,” said Magnolia, bumping into me as I stood outside her door. “Good morning, Givre,” she added as she skirted around me and the two women met at the top of the villa’s staircase. “Time for coffee, or should we head out?”
“I have things to review before the briefing, so now would be best,” Givre responded without giving me a second look.
We didn’t typically carpool to Minerva Protocol’s headquarters even when there was an all-team meeting, like there was this morning, given our hours, ops, and missions were quite varied.
I stayed a few paces behind them as we descended to the main floor of the estate in Lausanne that had served as our operational base for the last two weeks and studied the woman I was half-mad for.
Her coat was over one arm, and her computer bag was slung on her opposite shoulder.
Her hair was pulled into a tight bun, and she wore jeans, a sweater, and boots.
She could’ve come down in a bin bag, and I’d still have forgotten whatever I was about to say.
Givre, who I’d wanted to fuck since the day she walked into Minerva, kept me firmly planted in the colleagues zone for exactly what had happened this morning.
I was a scoundrel. A dog. A player. I didn’t do relationships. Never had. My line of work was the excuse I used, but the truth was, beyond a shag, a laugh, or occasionally grabbing a pint, I had neither time nor interest in romantic entanglements.
She and Magnolia were out the front door, and I was about to follow when I heard my name.
“Dagger? A moment if you could,” said Lyra Hyde-Carrington, aka Mercury, director of the elite private intelligence firm whose headquarters I was on my way to.
“Of course,” I said, following her and her husband, Henry, into her study.
He closed the door behind us and motioned for me to take a seat.
“Have you heard any chatter about Vasiliev’s whereabouts?”
“None. He hasn’t surfaced in the two weeks since the warehouse raid.” The one in which her sister, Eleanor, was killed, not that she needed that reminder from me.
“Which likely means he’s gone underground to plan his next move,” she muttered.
I agreed. We all did. “Was there anything else?”
“No. Thank you, Dagger.” She glanced at her mobile. “We’ll see you at the headquarters shortly. Let everyone know we’re ten minutes behind you, if you would, please.”
“Of course,” I said as I left the room.
The weather was decent, so I took the Triton. The café racer was a sixties’ build with a Norton frame and Triumph engine, which I’d spent my breaks between missions restoring.
Throughout the entirety of my fifteen-minute commute, I couldn’t shake the weight of what I’d done.
It wasn’t that I regretted sleeping with Magnolia.
It was that Givre witnessing me coming out of her room was another nail in the coffin of whatever quiet chance I’d been holding out for with her.
She’d spent months telling me, in so many words, that I wasn’t the sort of man she took seriously, and this morning was a prime example of why not.
Just as I rounded the final curve above the lake and the Minerva headquarters came into view, a blast in front of me made my bike jolt.
I nearly went down as a series of explosions came fast, one after the next.
The west side of the building blew out with the first. The east wing shifted with the second.
Then the third brought it down. Dust and smoke poured out of what was left.
I pulled to a hard stop and got a foot down on the ground as the rest of the building folded and floor on floor on floor pancaked.
Givre was in there.
Magnolia. Blackjack. Beacon. The council. Our people.
I dropped the Triton and ran.
Reaper and Amaryllis were ahead of me, already racing toward the building.
The entrance was half blocked, and debris was still falling—plaster, stone, pieces of ceiling coming down in the gap where the west corner had blown out.
Magnolia came out right as we went in. She was dazed and bleeding but upright.
When she staggered, I put my hand on her arm to steady her.
“Basha, can you make it out on your own?”
“I think so. You need…there are…they need help.”
“Understood.”
She started to walk away.
“Wait. Givre?”
Magnolia’s head dropped, and she shook it. “I have no idea.”
The air inside was thick enough to taste, and the light came through in broken shafts where the ceiling was open to the morning.
Reaper was marking the positions of the dead for the recovery crews. I kept going deeper, working the area where the gallery had come down. The footing was bad where rubble was stacked three and four feet deep. I climbed over a fallen support beam and found two more bodies. Neither had a pulse.
I was heading farther in when a faint groan stopped me, then a steady tapping, like stone on stone. It was deliberate as if someone was alive under there.
I tracked the sound to a cracked slab of masonry resting on a broken timber. An arm was extended from beneath it, palm up, fingers half curled. A flash of silver caught my eye—a ring on a woman’s index finger. It was Givre.
Blackjack reached me a second later from the opposite side as I dropped to the rubble and started clearing the stone along the length of her body, working fast but placing each piece where it wouldn’t shift the weight on top of her.
He came at the slab from the other side. The masonry had cracked across the middle, one half resting on a broken timber, and the eight inches of clearance underneath was the only reason she was still breathing.
I got the last of the debris off her legs while Blackjack cradled the masonry. I eased the broken timber out an inch at a time, and when the slab settled onto the rubble beside her, she was clear.
The medics were there with a stretcher before I had my hands off her. They stabilized her neck and got her lifted.
I followed the stretcher out. Blackjack stayed.
They had the ambulance doors open and her loaded before I reached the bumper. I climbed in behind her, and the driver sped out, and I put my hand on the rail.
The EMT had cut her jeans away and was working on her thigh. There was ash on her face and blood at her hairline.
I kept my eyes on her chest.
She was breathing.
Then she wasn’t.
Get it now!
Dagger’s Shield