I jumped out before Reyes could stop me, and ran to her. “Strawberry,” I said, kneeling beside her, “are you okay?”

“No,” she said past the plastic in her mouth. “I’m okay. There’s an awful lot of blood, though.”

I took her into my arms, hoping none of the surrounding neighbors were watching. It would just look odd. Apparently, no one had seen me tearing out of the building earlier, covered in someone else’s blood. There were no cop cars about or crime scene teams scouring the place for evidence, like my bloody fingerprints all over the place. Thank heavens for small favors.

“Where are Rocket and Blue?”

She answered with a soft shrug.

I set her back so I could look into her eyes. “Did you see them, sweetheart? The big dogs?” I asked.

She lowered her head. “No. I just heard them.”

I embraced her again. “I’m so sorry. You can’t go back in there for a while, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Thank you.”

As I sat rocking her in my arms, I felt a sliver of cold metal encircle one of my wrists with a click.

I looked up at Garrett, who had the other cuff around his wrist. “What the hell?” I said, standing awkwardly, one hand imprisoned.

“Boss’s orders.” He gestured to Reyes with a nod.

I gaped at my husband-to-be. “What is this for?”

Reyes didn’t dignify my question with a response. “If she tries to go in there for any reason,” he said instead, addressing Garrett with a hard stare, “you have my permission to restrain her by any means necessary.”

“Sweet,” Garrett said.

Reyes cast one last glare before turning to the number pad on the front gate and entering the date. “How did you know?” he asked over his shoulder.

I knew what he was talking about: How had I guessed the key code? If he wasn’t going to answer my questions, I wouldn’t answer his. I crossed my arms over my chest, but just as quickly dropped them, as the action brought Garrett’s cuffed hand dangerously close to Will Robinson.

Not waiting for an answer, Reyes propped the gate open in case they’d have to make a quick exit before he and the Dealer – I would have to get that kid’s name someday – walked up the sidewalk to the building entrance, punched in the same code there, then entered what I now considered the mouth of hell.

“I’m going to go look for Blue,” Strawberry said. Before I could warn her not to go back into the building again, she was gone.

“This is so wrong,” I said to Garrett.

“Nah,” he said, checking messages on his phone, which was really inconvenient for me. “It’ll give us some quality time.”

Quality time, my ass. Garrett was that tall, sexy friend one almost wants to bang. A friend-with-benefits kind of thing, only we’d never taken our initial flirtations that far. Thank goodness, because every conversation from there on out would have been filled with those awkward silences as we tried to decipher what the other was thinking. But he was more than handsome enough to give me pause when we’d first met, during my pre-Reyes hookup days. He had deep mocha skin and silvery gray eyes that turned heads everywhere he went. Not to mention killer abs. I could’ve done laundry on those abs.

“Okay.” I leaned against his truck, a move that could be considered an act of war in some cultures, but he didn’t seem to mind.

He quickly did the same, his gaze glued to his phone. “What happened in there?” he asked without looking up.

I scratched my affronted wrist. “Let’s just say ‘they’re here.’”

He expelled a long sigh. “I was hoping the prophecies were wrong.”

“Have you gotten any more of the translations from the cow doctor?”

“Dr. von Holstein is not a cow doctor.”

I knew that, of course, but his name was Dr. von Holstein, for goodness’ sake. It screamed cow doctor.

“And he’s flying in tomorrow.”

I straightened in surprise. “He’s flying here?”

He nodded. “Yes. Apparently, he’s translated a large section that he feels we need to see. He says it’s not what we think.”

“What? What’s not what we think?”

He lowered his phone. “He wouldn’t say. Did you ever get that DNA for me?”

“Swopes,” I said, leaning against the truck again, “how on planet Earth am I going to get your ex-squeeze and her infant child’s DNA?” I’d made a deal with him to secretly get the DNA of an ex-girlfriend of his. She’d had a baby, and he believed the child might be his. But how did one go about getting someone’s DNA without her knowledge?

“I told you,” he said. “Not my problem.”

“Well, you better make it your problem if you want to know who that kid’s father is.”

“But he looked like me?” he asked. “You saw him, right? Didn’t you think —?”

“Yes, he looks like you, but so does your ex’s new boyfriend.”

“How much like me?”

I stood again to assess him. “Well, he’s not quite so squiggly around the edges. And his nose has never been broken.”

He leveled an expressionless expression on me, then went back to his messages. In reality, the guy wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as Garrett, and yet he did resemble him. I was right there with my surly skiptracer friend: I felt like Marika was up to something. Like she’d planned on getting pregnant with Garrett.