Page 77 of Saint of the Shadows

Gravel snapped under the tire as the motorcycle pulled into the driveway of the estate.

Tobias said, “Pictures don’t do this place justice.” Marisol gazed back at him. He stared, mouth agape.

“Yeah. Empty, dusty, and full of old crap. Media never seems to report that.” She got off the motorcycle and approached the garage door.

She stifled a yawn. Her body demanded rest down to its bones, but her heart answered her exhaustion with a resounding,hell no!

She flipped up a keypad. Like the handlebars had earlier, the pad lit white-hot under her fingers, and the doors roared open. The motorcycle carrying Tobias followed her inside like a beckoned dog.

The garage door sealed behind them. “What do you think?” Marisol asked.

Tobias’s mouth and eyebrows returned to normal. He stood and looked around, hands on his hips. “A billionaire couldn’t afford a bigger garage?”

The ramp opened on cue. Marisol nodded for him to follow her into the black depths. As soon as they reached the end of the ramp, the lights flickered on, one after the other. “Big enough for you now?”

Tobias spun around in both directions. “What is all this?”

“Storage. I say we load up what we need in his SUV.” She nodded toward the massive black, matte-chrome vehicle parked in the basement. With the plan in place, she rushed to the metal wall cut into grids. As she touched it, a box lit white under her hand and the compartment opened. “Heat vision goggles.” She tossed a pair to Tobias. He juggled to catch them.

Marisol opened another drawer. “His suits.” In a row, she saw how Vincent adapted, from navy wool coats and gray tights to midnight blue rubber and charcoal armored neoprene.

After a sweep of his gaze, Tobias’s face pinched with confusion. “I thought they were black.”

“Night isn’t pitch black, you know,” she said flatly.

Tobias looped the goggles over his upper arm and leaned against the compartment. “I didn’t say it was. I just realized the stories about him, they’re not accurate.”

“You’d prefer people tell stories about men in blue who fight crime?” Marisol flashed a blink-and-miss-it grin.

“You’re funny.” But all he did was turn a corner of his mouth and puff a single laugh, as if it hurt to be happy. He squinted and rubbed his chin. Something caught his attention—the glowing blue window of the vault door. “What’s in there?”

“500-year-old conquista-cicles,” Marisol said as she moved from drawer to drawer, opening them with her touch. Never stopping, ever moving, she fought the creeping need to sleep. She found gas masks, concussion grenades, flash bombs, and tear gas canisters. She gathered them and threw them in the back of Vincent’s SUV.

Tobias wiped the window, and the glass squeaked under his hand. Peering through it, he shuddered. “Looks like frozen beef jerky.”

“What else do we need?” She emptied an entire compartment’s contents into the SUV.

“Bulletproof vests? Holy water?” Tobias paced slowly around the open compartments.

Marisol opened more—one refrigerated compartment containing vials drew her attention with the cool vapor emerging from it. “I may need to do a little digging for specific requests.”

Tobias moved to a compartment of weaponry and picked out a black metal stick. “A cattle prod.” He smoothed his hand over its length before he swung it in the air. He lunged, stabbing an invisible assailant. “Zzzz,” he sounded through closed teeth.

Marisol shook her head. “Men and their toys.” She studied the vials—Vincent’s regenerative serum, anesthetic, antibiotics, and voila! tranquilizer. Guess they didn’t need Izzy as much as he needed them.

While she read the labels, her eyes drifted shut and knees buckled underneath her. She steadied herself against the open compartment. Damn. She had paused long enough to surrender to exhaustion. In a moment, she’d walk her drowsiness off like a kick to the shin.

“Whoa, kid.” Tobias dropped the cattle prod and rushed to her side. “You’re no good like this.”

She slapped her cheek. “It’ll pass. How do you think I handle rotating shifts?”

“We’re not talking about going through a shift on autopilot.”

She picked up a vial of regenerative serum. It was the good stuff that healed her broken leg and churned her insides until she barfed her guts out. Sure, it had unseemly effects, but the resulting adrenaline and endorphins could be the boost they needed. “My leg was broken.”

He snorted. “No shit. I used my tie as a tourniquet.”

”But he healed it, injecting me with this.” She held up the vial. “It initiated cellular regeneration at a rapid speed and pumped me with enough adrenaline, I could leap over buildings. This could be a good night’s rest in a bottle.”

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