Page 18 of The Sentinel

I pulled my earbud and hitThe Unseen—the Queenscase again. “Truth doesn’t hide,” she said, voice cutting me open. She was too good. Too damn hot.

The plan was locked—a masquerade ball on Dominion’s turf. I’d invite her. Would slip a note under her door, cryptic and tempting. She’d come. She couldn’t resist. Masks, shadows, elite chatter—she’d dig, I’d steer. Department 77 would show. My gut said it. I’d watch her every move.

Ryker would hate it. She’d be too close, too wild. But I didn’t care—family first, always. Claire was the key. She was sharp, dangerous, and she was mine to wield.

The whiskey burned, grounding me. I saw her naked again. I wanted her bad. Wanted her safe, too. It was an impossible mess.

I’d use her to end this. Dominion standing. Feds blind. Department 77 dead.

Fuck, I was deep.

9

CLAIRE

Charleston was a city that breathed in secrets and exhaled silence.

By midday, the sun was already relentless, beating down on the streets like it had a personal vendetta. I was following a lead, or at least, what might have been one.

Deputy Norton had thrown me a name—Department 77—and even though I had no idea if it was real, I could feel it was something. I didn’t believe in gut instincts so much as experience, and experience told me that when someone tossed out a phrase like that in a town where people barely even admitted the Danes existed, it meant something.

So I went where information tended to loosen.

Bars were where people talked, even before dark. This wasn’t New York, where a dive would still be dead at this hour—Charleston was slower, lazier, and people didn’t wait for the clock to hit five before they started pouring bourbon.

I’d found a small, shadowed place just off a sidestreet—a bar that wasn’t really open, but also not closed—and slid onto a stool, watching. Listening.

A female bartender was wiping down the counter, giving me a slow, curious glance. A man in the back corner nursed a glass of whiskey, muttering into his phone. Two others sat at a table by the window, speaking too low for me to catch.

My fingers drummed lightly against the polished wood as I let my eyes sweep the room. It wasn’t much—dimly lit, smelled faintly of alcohol and fried food, the kind of place where conversations drifted low and private.

Exactly the kind of place I needed.

I’d learned a long time ago that bars were where the best information lived. The real information. Police stations had their walls, their rules, their chains of command. People in high-rises had too much to lose to spill secrets. But bars?

Bars were where the cracks showed.

I’d once spent two weeks practically living in a dive bar in Queens while investigating a missing girl—listening, watching, and waiting for the one wrong word that would send the whole case unraveling. It had worked. One guy got too drunk, let something slip about a jacket found in a dumpster, and boom—I had my story.

This was no different.

The Danes weren’t just billionaires with military backgrounds. They were something bigger. Something woven into the city itself, and people didn’t just not talk about them. They avoided it. And when people avoided something that hard? It meant there was something worth knowing.

And just like that, my luck ran out.

Marcus Dane.

I didn’t even need to turn my head to feel him enter. The air shifted, a ripple of tension moving through the space as he stepped inside, moving toward me with the kind of slow, deliberate gait that said he knew he had my attention before I even gave it to him.

Fuck.

“Jesus,” I muttered, not bothering to mask my irritation. “Do you just materialize out of nowhere?”

“Sometimes,” he said easily, stepping close. Too close.

One second, I had space. The next, I had him.

Marcus Dane didn’t just walk into a room—he took it over. And right now, he was taking over me.

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