and looked into Eunice’s eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Now that you’re here.”
She believed him, but she saw shadows in his eyes. “I respect you too much to go into your head and see what happened. Will you tell me?”
“I signed papers saying I wouldn’t tell anyone. If you want to know, you’ll have to dip into my head — but only the past couple of days.”
Was he giving her permission to look? It sounded more like a challenge than an offer. Carefully, she asked, “You want me to know?”
“I absolutely do not, but I also don’t want you to think I’m keeping secrets from you.”
“It’s work shit, right? You’re allowed those secrets, so long as they don’t involve me.”
He sighed. “It was the last of our mission. Tying up loose ends.”
No. It was more than that. He’d told her he didn’t want her to know, and she needed to respect that, but she had one more question before she could turn away from it. “Will I be in danger if I don’t know about it?”
“No.”
“Well then, I don’t need to know, but I appreciate the offer more than I know how to say.”
Collosa was also worried about Eunice. He seemed to have arrived with a little less of his soul. Collosa had an idea of what Aaron had asked Eunice to do, and Collosa intended to let Aaron know it might be time to retire the mongoose shifter from that sort of thing unless there was no one else available.
Eunice had once interrogated someone in front of Collosa. Or rather, had started the process before sending everyone out of the soundproof room. A true sadist would’ve enjoyed what Collosa had only seen the beginnings of, but Eunice only got off on hurting people who wanted to be hurt. He was a consensual sadist, not a true sadist, and maybe those terms were fucked up, but it made sense in Collosa’s head, so he was sticking with them.
Fabio got it, too. That was likely why he’d wanted to make sure Eunice stayed in Kelsey’s arms over the next couple of hours, until she went down for the day. Also, Fabio had more of an idea what their friend was capable of, since he’d seen him in action while they were in the military.
“Okay, downstairs and into something more comfortable, tiny vampire,” Collosa told her. “We’re all in sweats, so maybe we can hear you out without this turning into sex, because it really feels like we all just need to cuddle tonight.” He looked over at Fabio. “And that means all of us, but I appreciate you offering to take the sofa first.”
He’d swap with Fabio when it wasn’t awkward, but he was going to make sure Eunice stayed in the bed with Kelsey until it was time for her to go into her compartment.
Aaron had met with her once she was healed enough to comfortably handle a debrief, and they’d all read his report, but they wanted to hear it from her. Plus, they needed to know about her time with the vampires.
Collosa understood one of the reasons Fabio wanted Collosa in the bed, holding her, was because the grizzly would best be able to keep them on track. The men needed to hear what happened from Kelsey, and then they all needed to know what could be done to help her heal with the vampires that they hadn’t been able to provide.
He doubted they’d get through everything in three hours, but that depended upon how much she could tell them about her time with the vampires.
There were no new revelations about the op. She’d worked fast and ignored the action around her while keeping feelers in the brains of a few bad guys. Not all of them, but a few. They hadn’t realized she could hack a computer and monitor brains around her at the same time. Abbott or Kendra could’ve monitored all of the bad guys, probably Gavin and Josef as well, but he wasn’t sure any other vampire he’d met could’ve monitored even some of the bad guys from inside their head while doing complex puzzles. In his mind, this made Kelsey nearly as good as Josef, and that shouldn’t be possible. Collosa knew she didn’t have even a tenth of Josef’s strength. How could she be even close to mentally on par with him? She said going into brains was a little like hacking a computer, could that have given her such a big leg up?
He