A slow smile curved her lips, and she pressed her empty glass into his hands. “You provide transpo, supplies, and watch our backs. We’ll take care of everything else. For that, it’s a sixty/forty split—and I’m being generous, so don’t try to negotiate with me. Sound good?”
Rafe would have haggled. He would have sold the con by working Nina around to a fifty/fifty profit share. But Knox had lied with the truth a little too well. He was desperate, and Nina knew it. She could smell it on him.
As long as she didn’t figure out why, this would work out just fine.
Silently, he held out his hand.
“You’ll have to take my word to seal the deal. I’m not real big on touching strangers.” Still smiling, she leaned past him and retrieved her jacket. “And Captain? If your plan is to burn me, don’t. My team and I can make you wish you had just let the Protectorate execute you when you had the chance.”
With that, she left him standing there, his hand dangling in the air, his body a riot of thwarted violence and simmering need—and a thrilling edge of fear.
It had been a long time since he’d faced someone he wasn’t sure he could defeat in single combat. He’d forgotten what that did to his body, too.
So it was probably for the best she hadn’t touched him. He’d gone down some dark roads since the Protectorate had ground the hope out of him, but he wanted to believe he wasn’t the kind of asshole who’d fuck a woman he was about to betray. But maybe they’d beaten that last scrap of goodness out of him, too. Maybe there wasn’t anything left in him worth saving.
He sought out Gray’s somber face in the crowd. Rafe’s easy smile. Conall’s jittery intensity.
Knox was doing this for them. And for Luna, who’d been snatched out of her apartment because of her connection to them. Four reasons to do the job, no matter how much of his soul it consumed. If he could buy them all a second chance at life, Knox would follow the devil himself straight down into hell.
He was already headed there, anyway.
RAFE
Rafe had always liked people.
It was an admittedly weird trait in someone who’d met as many assholes as he had. Even weirder for a Protectorate soldier. Most folks who joined the Protectorate were either damaged or desperate, and that was before the TechCorps started playing with their biochemistry and cultivating their most violent instincts. A decade-plus of living with that violence had honed some of Rafe’s edges, but it hadn’t sliced out that fundamental aspect of his character.
Rafe liked people. And people liked Rafe.
He hoisted the case of nutritional supplements up into the truck and did a final count of the neatly wrapped bars. He’d had to be careful gathering supplies this time. At least a third of his contact network could probably be persuaded to sell him out to the Protectorate. Another third wouldn’t do it for money, but they had family that could be leveraged.
The only ones Rafe could really trust were the folks with bigger bounties on their heads than his. Luckily, he’d spent the last decade pointedly not turning any of them in, so they all owed him favors. A lot of favors.
He’d spent the last week cashing in.
Now the trucks were stocked for a long trip, and Rafe had found everything he wanted except for the shelters. The tents waiting to be packed away were sufficient for good weather—barely—but they wouldn’t hold up to a real storm, and they offered no other protection. When the Devils had deployed on missions for the TechCorps, they’d requisitioned lightweight antiballistic carbon-fiber composite shelters that expanded into structures sturdy enough to keep out both the elements and feral animals.
He’d tried to get his hands on a few, but the technology was proprietary. And the quartermaster was probably the only Protectorate officer who couldn’t be bribed. After all, the TechCorps kept their equipment on tighter lockdown than its personnel.
They’d always considered people easier to replace.
“Anything left for me to do?”
Rafe turned to find Gray leaning against the side of the truck. He was as tall as Rafe and almost as built, but the bastard moved like a wraith. “You got their supplies packed in?”
“I did.” But he shook his head. “I told Knox it was a waste of time. They’re going to show up kitted out with all their own shit, you know they