“What’s wrong, Lizzie?” he asked in a low enough voice not to be overheard. “Is everything okay?”

She smiled brightly and if it was too bright, oh well, she was hanging on by a thread here and anything she could do in order to survive the coming private conversation with Dane once the others had dispersed, she’d latch on to with both hands and hold on to for dear life.

“Just wondering when the fuck our esteemed leaders became so goddamn long-winded,” she muttered, because it was such an Eliza thing to say.

To cover the brightness of her smile, she bared her teeth in a barely noticeable snarl, because that too was so her. “Don’t they have wives to go home to and make cutesy eyes at instead of wasting our time by covering shit we could recite in our sleep?”

Dane gave a light chuckle, relief flaring in his eyes, and she did a mental fist pump in victory. Getting anything over on Dane was cause for self-congratulation because the man did not miss a goddamn thing. He always had his eyes on every single person, his ears glued to every conversation, attuned to the slightest differences in tone, body language. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the man was psychic because his powers were superhuman.

And it wasn’t as though DSS wasn’t accustomed to dealing with some pretty freaky shit. Pain flashed through her chest, temporarily robbing her of breath. The women that had married the men of DSS all had kickass powers. Powers that defied scientific explanation. But then Eliza had no problem believing in the extraordinary. Because the man who’d once held her in his thrall was nothing like these women. They used their powers for good. They were good. They were everything that was right in a fucked-up world, filled with monsters who preyed on the innocent. And Eliza had allowed this man in her life, had allowed him to give her all the things she’d wanted, craved, had never had in her young life and that made her every bit as guilty as he.

“Lizzie?” Dane murmured, so the others wouldn’t hear. “What the fuck is wrong and swear to God if you tell me nothing, I’ll wring your pretty neck.”

Oh well, it was now or never, and it wasn’t as if she had any plans of disappearing without a damn good cover story and telling the man she directly reported to that she planned a long vacation. He just didn’t have to know the reason behind her leave of absence.

He’d likely be relieved. None of them, especially Wade Sterling—just thinking of the overbearing ass made her teeth clench and put her in a foul mood—had wanted her involved in the sting operation to take down the last of the people hunting DSS, and in particular Ramie, Ari and Gracie. A request for vacation to recover from her “injuries” would probably be met with relief and an order for her to take as long as she wanted and not to hurry back to work.

She felt a moment’s guilt for deceiving Dane. She was leaving the comforting camaraderie that her position at DSS offered. The first true home she’d ever had. The justice system had failed her. It had failed the countless women Thomas Harrington raped and tortured and murdered. She still heard their screams at night when she closed her eyes. Many nights she couldn’t sleep for the sounds of torture playing over and over in her broken heart and in the shattered pieces of her soul. Knowing it was her fault. She had done this to so many women because she’d been weak and needy and too stupid to know that behind the face of kindness—of love—lurked a monster with abilities of unlimited power and a sick, twisted mind to utilize every psychic tool in his arsenal.

She quickly yanked herself from the past, knowing Dane was studying her, growing more pissed and agitated and worried by the minute. It was the last she was most concerned about because if he got worried and then she fed him a line about needing vacation, he’d never believe her. He’d put her under lock and key and suffer no remorse whatsoever until he found out exactly what was going on in her mind, and he wasn’t above using Gracie or any of the other women to ferret out any information he felt would keep Eliza from harm.

And she knew the women would gladly offer their help because they felt they owed Eliza. She’d been there when each of them had needed help. She’d risked her life to save them and would do so again without a single hesitation. They didn’t owe her a goddamn thing for doing her job even if they weren’t a job to her, but people she loved.

Damn it. She had to talk her way out of this fast.

She sighed and gave him her best “busted” look.

“I just wish they’d hurry the hell up,” she grumbled. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about after this come-to-Jesus meeting. Preferably in private.”

Left unsaid, but understood by Dane, judging by the softness that suddenly transformed his features from that piercing, concerned look to one more of simple question, he well knew that while Caleb and Beau owned and ran DSS and signed all their paychecks, Eliza was his. His team, his partner. The two were the closest of any two of the operatives who worked within the group, not as partners, though Beau and Zack shared a similar relationship, preferring to rely on each other rather than the larger group as a whole.

Which made what she had to do all the more painful because she was, in effect, betraying Dane. She was repaying all the faith he’d displayed in her, his respect of her, the fact that he treated her as an equal, a partner—with treachery and lying.

She tried to console herself with the fact that at the end of the day she’d rather have him alive and well, pissed, angry and never able to trust her again and for her to be out of a job than to confide everything to him and have him end up dead.

Because Dane wouldn’t back off. It wouldn’t be a matter of trusting her, or trusting her to know what she was talking about and believing the very real danger they were all in. But he would never leave her to face a monster alone. Never in a million years. Even if it meant going against every single member of DSS and quitting so Eliza wouldn’t face the danger alone. Dane would do it without a single regret.

He’d be at her side, taking her back, just like so many times before, and they’d either triumph together or die together. And Dane would die.

A wave of grief consumed Eliza. Because of a bullshit legal technicality and a smooth-talking lawyer, Thomas’s sentence had been reduced to ten fucking years.

Eliza wanted to scream until her voice simply broke. But she held it in stoically, knowing she was on borrowed time, and that when Thomas got out, and he would be getting out in a week, she wasn’t going to bring him down like she had the first time, counting on the justice system to protect her, to protect those women and seek justice for those he’d destroyed.