7. Jace
SEVEN
JACE
Gerri’s engagement party had lasted exactly two days as a plan before Jace killed it—too many guests, too many unscreened exits, and a guest list Kane’s people could study for a week before ever setting foot in the room.
Gerri had sulked about the wasted venue deposits for one full afternoon before pivoting, with visible relish, to a new target.
“Fine,” she’d said, already texting someone.
“We use the enemy’s own party instead. Considerably more efficient, and I get to watch you both work a room I didn’t have to pay for. ”
“Kane Foundation gala, Thursday night. Two hundred guests, half of them donors, half of them people who want to be seen donating.” Jace slapped the floor plan up on the wall screen, red pins marking exits, sightlines, the two staircases that mattered. “Perfect access to their offices and files.”
“You aren’t even sure Kane is behind all this yet,” Emma reminded him.
“My instincts say it’s him.” He turned back to the map. “We go in as a couple selling a story nobody’s supposed to question. You work the donor lists. I work the room. Neither of us wanders off alone.”
“I wander off alone constantly. It’s my whole professional method.” Emma leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, not remotely fazed by the floor plan or the two hundred strangers she was about to charm. “You’re describing my ordinary day.”
“Your ordinary day doesn’t usually end with someone photographing you from a rooftop.”
“Fair.”
Roman rose from his seat with the gravity of a man about to deliver a TED talk. “For the record, I want to formally offer my services demonstrating convincing fiancé behavior. Hand-holding. Meaningful eye contact. I took a class.”
“You didn’t take a class.”
“I watched several romantic comedies with real focus.” He advanced on Emma with both hands extended, palms up, doing his best impression of theatrical devotion. “May I demonstrate the—”
The sound that ripped out of Jace wasn’t language. It came from somewhere low and old, a warning shot his body fired before his brain signed off on it, sharp enough that Roman’s hands dropped and every easy line of his stance went instantly, comically rigid.
“Noted.” Roman sat back down at double speed. “Boss has opinions. Duly noted and never repeated.”
Emma studied Jace with open, delighted interest, one eyebrow climbing toward her hairline, and he found his shirt sleeves suddenly fascinating rather than confirm anything with his face.
“Anyway.” He planted both hands on the table and leaned in, all business, though the growl was still humming somewhere under his ribs looking for an excuse to come back out.
“Victor Kane’s hosting. Runs half the philanthropic circuit in this city, funds three of the charities on our list, and his security detail moves with military-contractor precision instead of event-staff shuffling, which tells me exactly who’s footing the bill.
You mirror me. I mirror the room. We don’t split up. ”
“We’re going to have to split up eventually if I want access to anything useful.”
“Not on night one.”
“Night one is when the guard’s lowest.”
“Night one is when I don’t know the room yet.” He held her gaze until she looked away first, which she did with visible reluctance. “We do this my way until I’ve mapped the exits myself. After that, negotiate.”
“Fine.” She said it in the tone of a woman banking the disagreement for later use, which was, he was learning fast, exactly what it was. “For the record, I’d rather be doing actual surveillance than pretending to enjoy the hors d’oeuvres for three hours while a string quartet murders Vivaldi.”
“You’ll survive the Vivaldi.”
“I’ll survive the Vivaldi. I make no promises about the shrimp.” She stood, reaching for her bag. “This whole operation is going to be surveillance with appetizers, isn’t it?”
“Accurate,” Tucker said, from behind his laptop, without looking up. “Putting that in the mission file.”
“Don’t.”
“Already did.”
Diesel looked up from the tactical vest he was inspecting. “I could come as backup catering staff. Nobody questions a man carrying a tray.”
“You’re six foot five and built out of muscle and bad decisions.”
“Doors carry trays too.”
“That’s not—” Emma visibly decided arguing with Diesel’s logic wasn’t worth the hour it would cost her. “Fine. Not tonight. Maybe next time.”
Milo didn’t glance up from the medical kit he was restocking. “I give the cover story forty-eight hours before it stops being a cover story. Nobody’s taking bets tonight, but I want it on the historical record that I called it early.”
“Nobody asked, Milo.”
“I never wait to be asked. That’s the whole system.”
Jace let the noise wash past him, running the floor plan again behind his eyes—entrances, sightlines, the dozen small ways a room that size could go wrong in under a minute.
He’d run worse operations with worse odds and never once had his focus slip this badly.
Victor Kane wasn’t the distraction. The woman currently arguing catering logistics with a six-foot-five wolf shifter, treating the whole exchange as perfectly routine, was.
Gerri had booked the boutique fitting without asking anyone, which surprised precisely no one, and Jace found himself pacing a dressing area heavy with orchids and money, waiting for a woman to walk out from behind a curtain and end his career as a functional adult for the second time in one week.
“I don’t need your opinion,” Emma called from behind the curtain. “I need you to confirm the dress doesn’t have a security flaw.”
“Can’t confirm that until I see it.”
“Suspicious logic. Fine.”
The curtain moved. Every tactical thought in Jace’s head evacuated at once, no survivors.
Green again—darker than the ballroom-night silk, cut close through the waist, falling in a line that rerouted every functioning brain cell he owned somewhere well past strategy.
Her hair was down, loose in a way he’d never seen, and she watched him watch her, plainly satisfied with the result, like she’d run an experiment and gotten exactly what she wanted.
“Well?”
“It’s fine.” His voice landed rougher than the word required.
“You’ve been staring eleven seconds.”
“Checking for concealed weapon access.”
“You were not.”
“There’s a slit up the side. Anyone could hide a knife in that.”
“I’m hiding a knife in that.” She turned, checked the fit in the mirror, far too pleased with herself. “Emergency measure. You’d be amazed how often a woman needs one at these things.”
He wasn’t amazed, and he tucked that fact away as one more reason this woman was going to be the death of him, and none of it on the clock.
She caught him staring in the mirror and didn’t call him on it—only tucked the moment behind her eyes, a thing worth keeping, and went to find better shoes.
“You know,” she called from the shoe rack, not looking at him, “you’re allowed to say the dress works. I won’t hold it against you.”
“The dress works.”
“That’s it? Three words?”
“Rationing them. I’ve got a whole gala to survive, and I need a few functioning brain cells left by the time we walk in.”
She laughed, and the sound of it hit him low in the chest, somewhere his training had never once prepared him to defend.
The gala took the bottom floor of Kane Foundation’s twenty-story high-rise Jace had cased twice, which made the security review fast and the charm offensive noticeably harder to fake.
He kept a hand at Emma’s back crossing the ballroom, steering her past the string quartet and a wall of donor photographs toward the bar, sensing the room take notice of them before he’d finished the walk—the newly engaged security consultant and his accountant, fresh gossip dressed up in black tie.
Conversations caught half a beat as they passed.
Picked back up the second they’d moved on, already reassembling the story into a better shape than the truth.
Victor Kane held court near the bar the way certain men held court everywhere—effortlessly, warmly, a hand on every shoulder and a name for every face. Silver-haired, expensively tailored, the kind of smile built to make people feel personally chosen. His eyes gave away nothing.
“Mr. Maddox.” Kane’s grip was firm, dry, calibrated down to the millisecond.
“And Ms. Burke. The city’s talked about nothing else all week.
I confess I didn’t see it coming—a security consultant and a forensic accountant.
Practical people, both of you. Practical people rarely fall this hard this fast.”
“Practical people know a good thing when it walks into them.” Jace’s palm settled low against her spine, and she leaned into it exactly enough to sell the line.
“Charming.” Kane’s smile didn’t move, but his eyes recalculated behind it, tucking the exchange away. “You’ll introduce me properly at the reception. I do love a story with good timing.”
He drifted off trailing donors in his wake, comet-tailed, and Jace watched Kane’s security reposition without a word passing between them—not staff timing. Muscle memory. Men who’d run protection as a unit long enough to move as a single animal instead of four.
“Ex-military,” Jace murmured, mouth close to her ear for the benefit of anyone watching. “Coordinated. Badly overqualified for a donor party.”
“His numbers are wrong too.” She smiled at a passing donor, seamless, voice pitched for him alone. “Same accounting code under three different wine distributors tonight. Same shell firm on two donor cards already. He’s not hiding it well. He’s betting nobody’s looking.”
“Somebody’s looking.”
“Two somebodies.” The look she gave him sent his pulse where it shouldn’t have been at a work event.
Gerri’s text arrived during the first slow song, right as Jace got a hand at Emma’s waist and turned them so his back faced the room and her eyes faced the exits—tactically sound, and not entirely why he’d chosen it.