Blood Assassin (The Sentinels #2)(104)

She shivered. They were in the abandoned warehouse and the male psychic had just shot himself in the head.

And her brain felt as if it had been pierced by a hot poker.

“What happened?” the assassin demanded, his voice lacking any concern for her welfare.

The jerkwad.

“It was the psychic,” she said, wincing when her voice came out as a thready whisper.

There was nothing she hated worse than revealing weakness.

Especially when Bas was watching her like a vulture.

“Did he attack you?” he pressed.

“No.” Ignoring Fane’s grunt of disapproval, Serra forced herself to a seated position, keeping her gaze firmly averted from the dead psychic. Not that she could entirely block out the presence of a corpse only a few feet away. There was the acrid smell of gunpowder that lingered in the air along with the unmistakable scent of blood. A lot of blood. She gave another shudder. “He mentally shoved through my shields.”

Fane tightened his arms around her. “Why?”

“To give me a name.”

Both men stiffened at her revelation, their combined heat washing over Serra to sear away the lingering chill.

“What name?” Fane asked, his fingers trailing a comforting path up and down her arm.

“Jael,” she said, repeating the name that had been so roughly shoved past her mental barriers.

Bas abruptly surged upright, his expression shocked. “Shit.”

Serra tilted back her head to watch as the assassin paced jerkily across the office. The name had obviously disturbed him.

“Does the name mean something to you?” she asked.

“She was one of my witches,” he explained, waving a hand toward the dead man. “And the psychic’s lover.”

Serra frowned. If the witch was a lover to the psychic, why the shock?

Unless he was arrogant enough to assume anyone who’d ever worked for him maintained complete loyalty to him.

“Did you fire her?”

Bas halted his pacing to send her an impatient glance. “I thought she was dead.”

Serra gave a confused shake of her head. “You killed her?”

“Not me.” His gaze moved to the dead man on the floor. “But it’s possible that Sandoval held me responsible for her death.”

Serra rigidly kept her gaze from Sandoval. Unlike her friend Callie, she wasn’t used to being around dead bodies. Fane, however, moved to investigate the corpse with swift efficiency.

Ruthless, but necessary. The man might very well have a vital piece of evidence in his pocket.

“So you think he kidnapped your daughter for revenge?” Fane demanded.

“It’s possible,” Bas said, his tone unconvinced.

“No.” Serra gave an emphatic shake of her head that made her wince in pain. Her connection to Sandoval had been brief, but it had given her a glimpse into his tortured mind. “When he spoke her name it was filled with . . . anger. Betrayal. He wasn’t naming his dead lover,” she said. “He was revealing his accomplice.”

Bas returned to his pacing, his expression troubled. “He was saying she’s the kidnapper? How the hell is that possible?”

Fane straightened, holding what looked to be a small cocktail napkin in one hand while covertly tucking a small scrap of paper into his pocket with the other.

“We know there has to be a witch involved to spell the men who attacked us,” the Sentinel reminded the assassin. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Bas turned to face her, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. As if she would lie about something that could lead them to his daughter.

“If it is Jael, then why didn’t Sandoval just tell me?”

She glared at the assassin in exasperation. If it weren’t imperative that they concentrate on discovering Sandoval’s accomplice, she would have punched him in the throat.

She was only here because the ass had forced her to try to track his daughter.

Now he wanted to question her psychic skills?

“Because he was spelled. He couldn’t physically say her name or give details about her plans, but she wasn’t clever enough to include his psychic abilities,” she said between clenched teeth. “Once he realized he was going to die he used the last of his powers to try to bypass my shields. They’re strong enough that all he could get through was the name.”

Fane moved to her side, wise enough to accept her claim without hesitation.

“Do you have a way to track Jael?”

Bas hesitated, then, grudgingly accepting that Serra wasn’t plotting some mysterious trap, he shoved impatient fingers through his hair.

“She lived at the lab with the rest of us so she didn’t have an apartment in town,” he said, his brow furrowed with concentration.

“Any family?” Fane pressed.

“No.”

Fane held up the napkin he’d taken off Sandoval and unfolded it to reveal that it was emblazoned with gold.

“Does the name The Emerald Lounge mean anything to you?”

Bas sucked in a startled breath, his lean face beginning to show the strain of the past days. The shadows beneath his eyes had darkened to bruises and the high cheekbones were more prominent, as if he’d lost several pounds.

“There was a club she used to visit whenever she was off-duty called The Emerald Lounge,” the assassin said. “The woman who ran it was a close friend.”