11. Emma
ELEVEN
EMMA
The regional map now took up an entire wall of the command center, and Emma had stopped being able to look away from it.
“Expand the radius again.” She tapped the edge of the current overlay, restless, chasing a pattern that kept growing every time she thought she’d found its edge. “Kane’s acquisitions don’t stop at the city line. Show me everything within a hundred miles.”
Tucker didn’t argue. He’d stopped arguing with her instincts three days ago, right around the time they’d started being right more often than not. The map redrew itself, pins multiplying outward from Manhattan in a slow bloom that made Emma’s stomach drop lower with every new cluster.
“You’re doing the thing where you don’t blink,” Roman said, from the doorway, arms full of what appeared to be every snack the safe house had left in its cabinets. “Worried face or productive face? I genuinely can’t tell anymore.”
“Ask me again in ten minutes.”
“I brought reinforcements, either way.” He dumped the haul within reach and dropped into a chair backward, watching the map bloom wider with the interest of a man who honestly enjoyed watching other people work as long as he didn’t have to do the work himself. “Tell me it’s good news.”
“It’s the opposite of good news, and I’m about to ruin your whole week.”
“Story of my life lately.” Roman stole a handful of pretzels and settled in to watch the disaster unfold, which Emma had come to recognize as his version of moral support.
Jace stood at her shoulder, arms crossed, close enough that she could feel his heat without either of them making a production out of it—an ease that hadn’t existed between them two weeks ago and now read as the most natural thing in the world.
He pressed a kiss against her temple without breaking focus on the screen, one hand settling low and possessive at her waist like it had always lived there.
“There.” His voice went cold, the tone he only used when sizing up a threat instead of reacting to one. “Upstate. That’s not city infrastructure.”
Emma followed his finger to a dense cluster of red pins ringing a stretch of forest two hours north, and it clicked into place with a cold, sick certainty.
“That’s my family’s land.” He said it without inflection, flat in the specific way she’d learned meant he was one wrong word from losing that flatness entirely.
His jaw ticked once, hard. “Kane’s been closing a ring around my pack for years, and none of us saw it, because we were all watching the money instead of the map. ”
“He’s not only after Gerri’s charities.” Emma’s voice came out quieter than she meant it to. “He’s building a noose around every piece of paranormal infrastructure in the region, and your pack’s territory is dead center in it.”
Roman had gone very still in his chair, pretzels forgotten. “That’s my home too, for the record. Small correction, but an important one.”
“Nobody’s losing an inch of it.” Jace didn’t look away from the map, and the growl underneath the words registered more in her ribs than her ears. “That’s not hope. It’s a fact I intend to enforce personally.”
Tucker’s monitor pinged. He frowned at it, fingers flying to the keys. “That’s not the upstate cluster. That’s a live alert. Motion sensor tripped at Wilder Hope’s Riverside campus.”
The whole room shifted at once.
“Define tripped,” Jace said, already crossing to Tucker’s station.
“Perimeter camera caught a vehicle circling the block twice, no plates visible, parked two minutes on the east side before moving on.” Tucker pulled the footage up, grainy and dark, a sedan idling exactly where a man planning a break-in would idle it. “Could be nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” Jace’s whole posture had changed, gone lethal and coiled in the space of a breath. “That’s a scout. He’s already looking at the ground before we’ve finished deciding how to defend it.”
“I’m calling Gerri.” Emma had her phone out before she finished the sentence. “She needs to see this for herself in the morning.”
“Roman, Diesel, gear up.” Jace didn’t raise his voice. The whole room moved anyway at the same volume. “I want eyes on that campus within the hour. Nobody sleeps until I know exactly who was in that car.”
Roman was on his feet, pretzels abandoned, all business. “On it, boss.”
Gerri arrived at nine the next morning with a box of pastries, three hours of sleep, and absolutely no patience left for being told what to do by anyone in the room.
“I come bearing croissants and gossip, in that order of importance.” She swept into the command center in a cloud of expensive perfume and even more expensive opinions, setting the box down in front of Roman like an offering.
“Also, darling, I need someone to explain why my landscaper called at midnight asking about a permit delay, because I ordered new hedges for the east lawn and I refuse to let bureaucracy postpone them.”
Diesel intercepted the box before it was opened, inspecting the contents like a man conducting quality control. “Almond and chocolate both. You’re the only person who remembers Milo’s allergy without being told twice.”
“I remember everything, darling. It’s a curse.” Gerri plucked the coffee somebody had already poured her off the counter without breaking stride, totally unbothered by the theft.
“Gerri.” Emma’s voice must have carried a warning in it, because Gerri’s easy chatter cut off mid-sentence, her sharp eyes narrowing on Emma’s face with the same focus she usually reserved for a bad investment.
“What.”
“Sit down.”
“I loathe sentences that start with ‘sit down.’ They’re never followed by good news.
” But Gerri sat, coffee forgotten, and Emma turned the monitor around so she could see the full map—the ring of shell company holdings, the acquisition list, the third property from the top with the Wilder Hope Foundation’s name on it, and the grainy footage of last night’s sedan pinned beside it like an exhibit.
Gerri went very still.
“That’s my Riverside campus.” Her voice had lost every trace of its usual music. “Three shelters. A children’s clinic. Forty-two staff who’ve worked for me for a decade, some of them longer.”
“He’s scheduled to close on it in three weeks.” Emma kept her voice steady, because someone in the room needed to be. “And he already had a man scouting the property last night. Nina died getting us this list, Gerri. I’m not going to let it sit unused.”
Gerri set her coffee down without drinking it, and for the first time since Emma had known her, she didn’t have a joke ready. She stared at the screen in silence, hands very still, the ferocious warmth that usually lived behind her eyes gone cold and calculating instead.
“Well.” She finally looked up, and the softness that had lived in her face a minute ago had hardened into a shape far more dangerous. “Isn’t that inconvenient. I ordered the hedges yesterday.”
“Gerri—”
“I’m allowed exactly one bad joke before I get serious; it’s written into my contract with the universe.
” She stood, smoothing her skirt, every inch of her radiating the calm of a woman who had survived worse than this and fully intended to survive this too.
“Tell me the plan. Leave nothing out. I’ve buried better men than Victor Kane for considerably less than this, and I intend to enjoy burying him too. ”
Roman, from behind the pastry box, offered his own two cents unprompted.
“I’ve met a lot of criminal masterminds in this line of work, and their timing is uniformly terrible.
You’d think a man patient enough to run a decade-long conspiracy could wait until after somebody’s landscaping was finished. ”
“Thank you, Roman. That’s useless and strangely comforting at once.” Gerri squeezed his shoulder on her way past, crossing toward the map for a closer look, all business now, though her hand wasn’t quite steady when it landed on the table’s edge.
The plan, once Gerri heard it, took a great deal less time to become an argument than Emma expected.
“Absolutely not.” Jace’s voice filled the conference room before Gerri had finished outlining it, immovable, a wall dropping into place.
“You’re not using yourself as bait for a man who already proved last night, he’s got people watching that property.
He’ll burn it down with you inside it and call it a tragedy. ”
“I wasn’t asking your permission. I was informing you of my decision.
” Gerri’s tone stayed light, but her eyes had gone hard as glass.
“It’s my foundation. My staff. My decision, and I’ve made it.
We let him believe the acquisition is proceeding, we flood the campus with your people disguised as staff, and when he moves, we’re there waiting. ”
“That’s not a plan. That’s an invitation with a bow on it.”
“It’s an excellent plan,” Emma said, and Jace’s head snapped toward her so fast, she nearly took it back out of pure reflex. “Every move we’ve made so far has been reactive. We’ve been one step behind him since the very first gala. This is the first time we get to choose the ground.”
“I’m aware of the tactical advantages, Emma.
I built the tactical advantages.” His voice had dropped, low and rough, more growl than words now.
“I also watched an innocent girl bleed out on a warehouse floor, and I had a man scouting the Riverside campus last night. Forgive me if I’m not eager to hand him a third target. ”
The room went quiet. Gerri, for once, didn’t fill it.
Roman cleared his throat from the corner, uncharacteristically careful. “I don’t love it either, boss. But Emma’s not wrong about the ground. We pick the field, we know every exit before Kane’s people do, and the whole team’s inside instead of racing to catch up after the fact.”
“Nobody asked for a second opinion, Roman.”
“You got one anyway. That’s how teams work.” He held Jace’s glare without flinching, which told Emma more about how long these two had known each other than any amount of banter could have.