The rain hadn't started yet, but the air was heavy with the metallic tang of a coming storm. It clung to the back of Elena's throat as she stepped out of the SUV, her heels sinking into the expensive gray gravel of the driveway.
Ahead, the estate's massive iron gates stood shut, illuminated by the harsh, white glare of security floodlights. In the center of that light lay Marcus.
He looked less like a head of security and more like a pile of discarded laundry. The bullet had entered through the base of his skull, exiting through his jaw and taking most of his teeth with it. Blood pooled in the depressions of the gravel, looking black and viscous under the LED beams.
Elena knelt. She didn't care about the mud staining the white silk of her dress. She didn't care about the four guards standing in a semi-circle behind her, their hands hovering over their holsters, their breath hitching in the cold night air.
"Don't get too close," Damian's voice drifted from the shadows behind the SUV. He wasn't kneeling. He stood ten feet away, a silhouette of sharp wool and cold indifference. "Forensics hasn't cleared the scene."
"Forensics will tell you what the caliber was. They won't tell you why he let it happen," Elena said.
She reached out, her fingers hovering just an inch above Marcus's right hip. The leather strap on his holster was still snapped. The Glock 17 inside was clean, undisturbed.
"Look at the safety, Damian," she said, her voice a low, steady vibration. "Marcus was a career soldier. He lived in a state of permanent paranoia. If he was being hunted, that gun would have been in his hand before the shooter even cleared the trees."
"Maybe he was slow," Damian countered, stepping into the light. The glare hit the sharp angles of his face, making him look like something carved from bone.
"He wasn't slow. He was comfortable." Elena shifted her weight, her eyes scanning the body.
She noticed the left boot. Marcus had always favored his right side because of an old shrapnel wound in his calf—she'd read that in his file three years ago. But the left boot was scuffed differently. There was a tiny, intentional slit in the tongue of the leather, hidden behind the laces.
Elena glanced back. The guards were focused on Damian, waiting for an order. Damian was watching the treeline, his jaw tight.
She moved.
It was a half-second blur. She leaned over as if checking the carotid artery, her fingers darting into the slit in the boot. Her nail snagged on a hard, sharp edge. A micro-chip, no bigger than a grain of rice.
She palmed it, the cold silicon stinging her skin, and tucked it into the lace-lined hem of her glove just as a heavy hand slammed onto her shoulder.
Damian jerked her upright. The force of it made her teeth rattle. He didn't let go; his fingers dug into the muscle of her arm, dragging her away from the corpse and into the dark space between the SUVs.
"You're a little too eager to touch a dead man's belongings, Elena," he hissed. He backed her against the side of the car, his body a wall of heat and suppressed violence. "What did you find?"
"I found out your men are incompetent," she spat, staring directly into his hollow, obsidian eyes. "They're looking for a sniper in the woods. They should be looking at the person who stood two feet away from Marcus and called him by his first name."
Damian leaned in, his face inches from hers. She could smell the peat-heavy scotch and the faint, bitter scent of gunpowder on his skin. He didn't look at her eyes; he looked at her throat, watching the steady, defiant thrum of her pulse.
"Marcus was the only one who had the bypass codes for the West Wing vaults," Damian whispered, his voice dropping to a lethal crawl. "An hour after you tell me he's a traitor, he ends up with a hole in his head. That's a very convenient coincidence for a woman who wants to burn this house down."
"If I wanted him dead, I wouldn't have warned you," Elena countered. "I would have let him finish whatever he was doing so I could use the chaos to get to your safe."
Damian's grip tightened. He moved his other hand, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw, pressing just hard enough to be a threat.
"You think you're the smartest person in this fortress, don't you? You think you can play the surrogate and the spy at the same time."
He leaned closer, his lips brushing the edge of her ear, his breath hot against her cold skin.
"But remember this: I didn't hire you because I trust you. I hired you because a wolf is easier to kill when you keep it in a cage."
He let go of her abruptly, the loss of his heat making her shiver.
"Get in the car," he ordered, not looking back as he walked toward the gates. "We're done here. The clean-up crew will handle the meat."
Elena climbed into the SUV, her fingers trembling as she felt the sharp weight of the chip against her palm. She looked out the window at Marcus's body being covered by a black tarp.
She had the key. But as the iron gates groaned shut behind them, locking her back inside the glass cathedral, she realized the second trail of blood she'd seen on the gravel wasn't Marcus's.
It was a smeared, frantic handprint on the gatepost. A handprint that matched the height of Damian's younger cousin, Julian.
The hunt wasn't just coming from the outside. The wildfire was already burning in the kitchen.