"Don't worry about us. You take care of you, understand?" She heard him typing something more on the keyboard in his tech lab. "You want me to send someone your way? Reichen's in Europe on a mission, but you say the word and I know Lucan will pull him-"
"No," she said as she turned the corner from cobbled High Street and slowly made her way along the hodgepodge collection of Victorian-era brick buildings and modern storefronts that lined the South Bridge. "It's not necessary, Gideon. I'm perfectly fine. I shouldn't have bothered you."
"No bother, Danika. You're kin, always will be. We all feel that way."
"Thank you," she replied, warmed by the thought. "I have to go now."
"Keep out of trouble," he cautioned grimly. "And you get in touch ASAP if you need anything at all. Right?"
"Yeah. I will." She told him good-bye and ended the call just as the car's GPS announced that she had reached her destination.
Although Gideon hadn't spoken the address when she'd asked him for it, his mind had given up the answer to her ESP talent. The building that housed Reiver's club had no signage, only a bloodred door with a brass wolf's-head knocker.
Danika drove around to a side street where she could park, then walked back to have a closer look. She shouldn't have been tempted to try the front door, but a tentative squeeze of the cold metal latch was too much to resist.
The building was unlocked. Strange. Unless Reiver's business encouraged straying visitors to enter. She eased the heavy door open and walked into the dim vestibule. Interior shutters blocked the daylight from outside as she closed the door behind her, the soft glow of a fluted wall sconce the only illumination inside. She didn't bother to call into the gloom to see if anyone was there. All she wanted was a quick look, something to either confirm her suspicions about Reiver or dismiss them.
She ventured farther inside and tried one of the interior doors toward the rear of the vestibule. It was shut tight, bolted. Another door appeared to lead to a stairwell, but it too was locked. So much for a quick look around.
Danika released a pent-up breath but sucked it short when movement sounded from somewhere inside the building.
She wasn't alone here.
She pivoted and raced back to the front door. It was locked now. She struggled with the latch, but it wouldn't budge no matter how hard she tried. "Damn it!"
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Danika wheeled around on a gasp.
It was him.
Not Reiver, but his menacing bodyguard with the mane of shaggy brown hair and the savagely scarred face. Gone was the dark suit and weaponry. Now he stood before her in nothing but loose jeans and bare feet, looking like he'd just rolled out of bed. It jolted her, seeing his naked, muscled chest and strong arms. Breed dermaglyphs tracked across his torso and over his bulky shoulders in swirling arcs and flourishes. As he moved toward her, the color of those genetic skin markings deepened from the golden tone of his flesh to dark shades that broadcast his displeasure.
His overlong hair drooped low into his eyes, but she didn't need to see his narrowed gaze to know that it was fixed on her in growing, dangerous anger. She glanced away from him, throwing an anxious look at the locked door behind her.
"You don't belong here, lass."
Maybe it was the fact that he was out of her line of sight in that moment, but when he spoke just then-when he called her lass-she realized she knew that gravel-and-velvet voice. She'd heard it in her head at the party, when he'd sent a chiding thought her way for eavesdropping on Reiver. Yet he hadn't outed her to him when he had every chance to do so.
And there was something else familiar about him, she realized now.
Something that spoke to her from a distant yet undeniable place.
She looked at him again, trying to see past the bearded jaw and battle-scarred face that hid behind the thick fall of his hair. "Do I know you?"
"No."
His curt answer should have been enough to convince her. Instead it only made her study him more. She stared at him, trying to make sense of what her instincts were telling her. "Mal ... ?"
The hard line of his mouth pressed flat, unreadable. "My name is Brannoc."
She didn't think so, despite the forbidding glower he pinned on her. "Brannoc what?" When he didn't answer, she tried a different tack. "Reiver called you Brandogge last night. Is that what you are to him, his personal watchdog?"
"When need be." He took a step forward, the bulk of his huge body crowding her back against the door. The roll of his Scottish accent deepened with each syllable. "It was unwise of you to come here. You're trespassing, and my employer does not tolerate intruders in his place of business."
The closer he got to her, the more the air seemed sucked from the room. He was heat and danger and dark menace, a storm pushing her to retreat. Danika held his simmering gaze, mere inches between them now. "Just what kind of business goes on in here?"
He didn't answer, merely took more space from her, his gunmetal gray eyes throwing off sparks through the tendrils of dark hair that hung into them.
"Reiver's running a blood club, isn't he." Not a question, because her eso,ecause arlier suspicion had now hardened into a cold certainty that settled like ice in her stomach. "You know this, and yet you can serve him? What kind of man could willingly protect someone like Reiver and turn a blind eye to the way he makes his living?"
"We all make choices in life. We do what we have to."
"At the expense of your honor?" she challenged hotly. "Even at the cost of your own soul?"