Page 124 of Tenderfoot

I thought I even heard a bird tweeting.

All of this took, at most, five minutes.

Maybe half a minute later, as we stood in stupefied silence, Jinx rolled up in her older model BMW, parked on the curb, got out, and called, “Hola, bitches!”

No one greeted her.

But Willow whispered, “Did I just see what I think I just saw?”

“I think we all saw it,” Jessie replied.

We hesitated two more seconds.

Then we raced into Titus’s garage.

We were sitting on Titus’s couches in his man cave: Luna, Raye and Shanti on one, me, Jess and Willow across from them.

Titus was sitting on his throne up on the dais at our sides, Jinx lounged at his feet, her back to his chair, her short legs stretched out in front of her, angled down the steps, ankles crossed.

We were sipping delicious palomas Titus made for us from his fab wet bar (they had a sugar rim and everything).

Don’t get the wrong idea about Titus’s throne, or the killer portrait of himself behind it, or the gold Camaro that was parked in that garage (though it was more like an art showpiece). The wet bar. The floor-to-ceiling wine rack.

Yeah, it was all way cool, but it wasn’t affectatious.

This had to be as it was because serious stuff happened in this room.

Like, lives being saved.

We did not, as we’d all hoped we would, get to witness a Nightingale interrogation.

Within minutes, Roam, Liam, Brady and Jacob showed. They cut the zip ties that connected wrists to ankles, yanked the bad guys to their feet, loaded them up in their Denalis, and they took off. Cap and Gabe went with them, leaving us with Titus to look after us, and promises we’d stay with Titus until someone returned to play bodyguard.

Roam, by the way, lived on the streets with Cap when they were kids. They were both adopted by the same lady, Shirleen (who I knew, because she’d moved down to Phoenix—she was amazing, and not just because she did that). So they were like brothers (or even more like brothers than actual brothers).

But also, Roam, along with Cap and Eric, were Mace’s seconds in command because they all had the most experience and had been working with Nightingale or at Mace’s security company (which had merged with Nightingale Investigation) for years.

As they took their new suspects (prisoners?), Titus made us cocktails.

All of Titus’s guys were long gone.

One thing that was good about all of this (outside the cocktail and getting to hang with Titus), Roam had assured us the team had been made privy to what was happening and would be on more than their regular high alert.

Nevertheless, for the most part, none of us had been able to process all we’d witnessed outside in the ensuing time.

I knew we were going to process when Jinx groused, “I’m ticked I missed all the action.”

That was when Raye looked to Titus and remarked, “Methinks you’re not a one-man band.”

Methought so too.

Big time.

Titus smiled largely and replied, “Would love to have that kind of pull with the people, darlin’, but as it’s been throughout the millennia, the only way to keep the peace is to raise an army.”

Hmm.

I’d sensed there was way more to Titus than we knew.

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