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  Fuck.

  That was going to bruise.

  The shadow retreated; it was Zack’s turn to advance. He knew he didn’t have a chance against Quinten. He was a scary badass.

  “How’s Bonnie been?” Zack knew better than to taunt Quinten about his sister while he was in the ring playing punching bag with the man, but he was hoping to get under the guy’s skin so he could get an edge. “Y’all let her out of her gilded cage yet?”

  As Quinten growled low in his throat, Zack second-guessed himself. Quinten won fights like this all the time, but Zack had been under the illusion this was a friendly spar. He’d been sorely mistaken. Quinten had been distant with him the last few years, something he’d chalked up to Bonnie, and taunting him like this was a dumbass move. He’d just given him the excuse he needed to kick Zack’s ass.

  Quinten had never been out-and out-aggressive with Zack. It was like his friend finally had the chance to express his anger for the way Zack had treated his sister.

  Zack had thought all that was water under the bridge, chalked up to immaturity, but when he’d tried to have a conversation with Bonnie at the masquerade thing several months ago, Quinten had turned back into the twenty-year-old who didn’t think Zack was good enough for his baby sister.

  And he’d been acting like that ever since. Zack wondered if Bonnie had said something about what happened between them to her brother but didn’t think it likely. He couldn’t dwell on that now, not while he was in the ring with the guy.

  When he felt himself in the other man’s space, he launched himself, desperately grappling with Quinten like the blind man he was. He used his feet to kick the backs of his knees, bringing him to the ground with an oof.

  But he should have known better. Quinten was in his element on the ground.

  Before he knew what had happened, Zack was on his stomach, his right forearm ready to snap between Quinten’s legs which were somehow contorted around Zack’s body. Of course, Zack had no idea how he’d managed to get himself in this position.

  “Stay the fuck away from my sister,” Quinten murmured as if he weren’t even out of breath, while Zack was panting and practically foaming with pain.

  And all the other guys were there, watching. That was more humiliating than the fact his so-called best friend was kicking the shit out of him.

  In the back of his mind, another version of Zack dwelled. A bigger, buffer version of Zack. His constant companion—or alter ego—had a bushy beard and was two hundred and eighty-five pounds of oily, tanned muscle. Zack fondly referred to his mental companion as Dude.

  Right now, Dude was pissed. He raged around the recesses of Zack’s brain, cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth, sweaty muscles popping from a ripped tank top, as he clutched a fully loaded and cocked .50 caliber air craft mount machine gun in his arms, ready to blow Quinten to smithereens.

  “Chill, Dude,” Zack whispered under his breath right before tapping out. Dude looked at him, as best he could, with his own designer sunglasses—the kind worn for style and not necessity. He gritted his jaw but complied, the gun disappearing before he sat on a bench and pantomimed zipping his mouth shut.

  Gasping for breath, Zack cussed through the pain with each inhale. A snuffling, wet nose eased his hand, and he pet Shania, his service dog. He’d had her less than six months, but she was the sweetest animal he’d ever known. Initially trained to treat PTSD, she read his moods better than Dude.

  “Thanks, bro. I’ll remember that next time you ask me for a favor.” Zack’s voice heaved, and he tried not to puke. The pain focused itself in his gut, roiling around and sloshing, ready to come up his throat at any moment. Swallowing the thick saliva in his mouth, he tamped it down.

  “I’m not doing you any favors coddling you.” Yep, Quinten was pissed at him. That made Zack feel worse than the other guys witnessing his humiliation.

  Shadow Quinten jumped off the mat, and Zack could only remember what his friend must look like, all six foot seven of him, towering around with his broody façade. At one point, they’d been best friends—brothers almost—but it had been so long ago, Zack only had the memories. Somewhere along the line, Quinten had abandoned the friendship, leaving him grasping at something tenuous.

  But grasping he was.

  He sat up with a moan, desperate to retain a shred of dignity, even though he was pretty sure Q had broken one of his ribs. Shania licked his ear, and he returned the comforting gesture by burying his hands in her fur to hide the shaking. No. Not broken. If it were broken, he wouldn’t be able to move. Zack focused on that one simple fact and managed to breathe through the pain.

  “You alright, man?” Ryan was cool. Zack didn’t know him as well as Quinten and Simon, but he liked the guy a lot. He was level-headed most of the time and knew his shit when it came to survival. Zack knew he’d be the one to stand next to him with a sawed-off shotgun during a zombie apocalypse.

  Grunting something that was supposed to be an affirmation, but came off more like a wheeze, Shania whimpered and licked him again. Zack mumbled a cooing noise in her ear to reassure her.

  “Quinten, I need Zack later tonight,” Simon admonished his brother. “Don’t kill him.”

  Pierce Securities was his life, and Zack wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. Simon, at least, tolerated him. Although Evan and Ryan seemed cool enough, Q used to be his best friend. The guy who swapped locker room talk with him, shared beers, snuck cigarettes, and even helped him through the rough times when he’d started down the path of blindness.

  But when Zack made sure Bonnie would leave him when she went off to college, Quinten had left, too. Zack hadn’t meant for that to happen, but it had. And it had been a long, uphill battle getting his buddy back. With this job, Zack had thought things would be easier, but apparently not. His old brother from another mother clearly hated his guts.

  “Here are some pain killers.” Andrew, the newest guy on the team, entered his peripheral vision. The jury was still out on whether or not this guy was cool, but Zack listened to some pills shake out of a bottle and reached for them, his willingness to trust in the man overtaking his senses. He looked closely at the pills, seeing three little blue dots on his palm before popping them. “Aleve. Supposed to be an anti-inflammatory.”

  “Thanks, man.” Zack swallowed them with ease, his mouth having pooled with saliva from the pain. Andrew chuckled in response, but Zack ignored it. The guy had a fucked-up sense of humor, always trying to get a rise out of Deena Rae for no apparent reason. Her boyfriend, Slade, was about to kick the guy’s ass, and since Slade was his new brother, Zack decided he would happily sit on the sidelines and cheer him on. But right now, he smiled at the guy who had just given him pain meds.

  Simon’s voice broke through the red haze of pain, “I need you and Ryan to meet an informant tonight. I’ve got everyone else on assignment, and this one’s pretty important. It looks like you and Evan are right about those girls. It appears the recent kidnappings are a human trafficking/prostitution ring.” Zack’s spirits rose. Simon had to have some faith in his abilities if he were trusting him to meet someone. “It’s Macy’s boyfriend, a kid named Jeff. Says she texted him her whereabouts. But the kid said he was nervous. Didn’t want to talk on the phone.”

  Macy was a kidnapping victim her parents had hired the firm to find. Prior to retiring, Hollerman had been investigating cases with missing girls, and there were too many similarities to be ignored. So they’d been working a possible trafficking angle, hoping it would pan out. This was the lead they’d been praying for. The police certainly seemed to be out of them.

  Simon had been giving him some responsibilities around the office, but Zack couldn’t help feeling they were all tests of some sort. Like this. He was clearly not the best person for this job, which was probably why Ryan was going along, too. Not that he didn’t want to—he wanted it like he wanted beer and women—but it didn’t make sense.

  But having a job like this wasn’t like his oth
er jobs. Other jobs had been in the office. Evan had modified his own sight-impaired computer technology to help him. Zack had even been doing a little computer searching alongside Evan in his tiny, cramped office. But this? This was insanity.

  He was totally in.

  The clanking of weights and grunts of the guys working out filled Zack’s head. He nodded his affirmation, glad for his sunglasses shielding the watering of his eyes. Pain or gratitude. Didn’t matter.

  “When does Hollerman start?” Quinten spoke, ignoring the painfully obvious fact they were counting on a visually impaired man to do a job that probably required eyes. “He just retired from the force, right?”

  “He’s a good guy,” Zack offered. Before his blindness, he’d been a cop. Not that he’d gotten far in the force before having to quit, but he’d worked with Detective Hollerman a couple of times.

  “Monday. I figured we’re not making his job any easier, he might as well join us,” Simon added with a hiss as he lifted something. He preferred the hand weights to the few machines in the pieced together gym they’d made from used equipment.

  A soft chuckle came from Evan, off to Zack’s left over by the pull-up bar. The guy loved his pull-ups and managed to work out nearly every muscle group that way. But his upper body strength was phenomenal.

  Jordan spoke up from across the room, “Does the guy have a first name? Or is it just Hollerman?”

  Zack grinned to himself. “It’s Poindexter. I dare you to call him that. He goes by Dex, but his real name is an earned privilege.” He had been an eye witness to Hollerman’s temper when people razzed him about his name. Poor schmuck. Zack thought Dex had been formally introduced to everyone at Valerie’s masquerade benefit thing, but a couple of them had apparently missed it.

  Deena Rae was the latest new hire, after Andrew, and she was awesome. She didn’t take shit from anyone and was excellent at her job. Right now, after being badly burned, she was supposed to be on medical leave but was home doing computer searches on supposed bad guys. In fact, she was probably doing the job Zack usually did to alleviate stress from Evan, leaving him to do the more complicated things, like find information they had no right to find.

  Evan piped up, “If you hire all these people, won’t we need more space?” Zack heard the thud as he dropped to the ground.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. The office next door is vacant. It wouldn’t take much to knock out a wall between them as long as it’s not load bearing. But it can be done.”

  “Won’t the building owner have something to say about that?” Ryan asked.

  “Quinten and I own the building. It’s part of Pierce Enterprises.”

  Zack had known that. Growing up with the Pierce kids meant their money was shoved in his face by their parents on a near daily basis. Not that Zack was poor, but hardly anybody in Austin could compete with the Pierce legacy. Their parents had been so disappointed when Simon had gone into the police force, so Quinten had bowed to the pressure to get a law degree. His parents wanted him to go into politics, but as soon as they’d died, the degree had sat in the caverns of Quinten’s brain, nearly useless.

  The Pierce boys seemed to almost resent their wealth, never rubbing it in anyone’s faces, acting and dressing like normal people, with the exception of Simon’s penchant for expensive suits. Quinten and Simon could buy them all, besides Evan, ten times over. The sudden silence in the gym attested to the fact most of the guys there had forgotten that fact.

  Zack sighed and clambered to his feet, Shania at his side as he found and clutched her harness. “So where am I meeting this kid?” The pain piercing his side was a little better, but not much.

  “You ever been to South by Southwest?” Simon asked with a little humor in his voice.

  Fuck no. Any Austin native knew to get the hell out of dodge when the largest music festival of the free world descended upon their city. Freeways were jammed, roads were closed, and nothing was normal as millions of people visited the already overpopulated capital.

  And Simon was sending him.

  Chapter Two

  Bonnie was finishing the ritualistic taming of her wild curls for the second time today. She was about to go out, one of her first excursions since she’d moved back in with her brothers. The occasion? She’d managed to keep it a secret from them.

  Sighing as she looked in the mirror, she used a finger to tame one wayward curl. Her brothers weren’t bad guys, they just had a seriously misplaced sense of security. Their idea of keeping her safe was locking her up and tossing away the key. She’d had to throw a temper tantrum just to get a job. Bonnie sort of felt sorry for her employers because of all the vetting they’d had to get through just for her to work there.

  But she wanted a social life, too.

  In fact, she was sick of begging off invites with her co-workers. They seemed nice, especially Brad, who made no effort to hide his romantic interest in her. But she felt pity for any guy who would want to date her—all because of her brothers.

  Quinten was worse than Simon, though. In fact, he should be here any minute. As if knowing she had plans, he’d called to say he was stopping by tonight to check on her. Bonnie sighed. He usually just came in, made sure she was here and alive, lectured her about being safe, then went on about his business. He had a social life and things to do, unlike her.

  Nope. She was locked away in the guest house over her brother’s five-car garage. It was a nice place, but a prison nonetheless.

  Like clockwork, her ever-punctual brother knocked on the door before letting himself inside.

  “Hey, Bonnie. Everything alright?” Quinten’s massive frame towered in the doorway of her bedroom, lounging against the frame. His eyes narrowed. “You getting ready to go out?”

  So he hadn’t missed the fresh scent of her hair product reapplication.

  Bonnie sighed and turned to Quinten, knowing this was a long-overdue talk.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I am.”

  Brushing past him, she strode to the kitchen, needing a glass of wine for this conversation.

  “Where?” His words, while not exactly accusing, still held a note of menace she was accustomed to.

  Glass of wine in hand, Bonnie took a sip of fortification. “I’m meeting some people from work at a bar downtown. We’re going to people-watch the tourists here for South by Southwest. See if we can spot anyone famous.”

  Quinten stalked to her fridge and grabbed a beer, twisting off the top and taking a long pull before slamming it on the counter. She had no idea why her going out pissed him off so much. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? We can’t protect you there.”

  Well, he was probably right about that. South by Southwest was the largest musical experience on the planet. Blocks and blocks of downtown Austin were roped off to music—music on the streets, music in every club, and even expos about the music industry. Big stars, little fish, and everybody who was anybody in the music industry were there. And that was not including the concert-goers, using every drug known to man and smoking everything but their shoes. It was a time of very little inhibitions, lots of music, and people having fun. In her brother’s eyes, that would translate to danger.

  She softened her voice against his hard edge, trying desperately to make him see reason. “I don’t need your protection anymore. It’s been almost two years. I just need to go out and be normal. Can’t you see that?”

  Quinten’s eyes softened on hers. “What if something were to happen, though? All the security guys are on jobs, and we can’t shadow you to keep you out of trouble tonight. Can you reschedule?”

  “No.” Taking another sip of wine, Bonnie resented the fact she needed alcohol to stand up to her brother. “I’m going out. Jonas is gone. He hasn’t been able to find me since school. You guys did a fantastic job of erasing any trace of me, but I want to live my life now. Please.”

  The stalker who had chased her back home was a constant reminder of what evils the world held, and she was
almost sorry she’d ever turned to her brothers for help. They had totally overreacted, and now Bonnie found herself in a situation she was desperate to regain control of.

  Quinten sank into her kitchen chair, looking defeated. “You’re right.” His sigh filled her with righteousness. He was seeing her side. Finally. “Who will you be with?”

  She laughed ruefully. “Like I’m going to tell you. I don’t want you doing background checks on my friends. Just trust my judgement, okay? You did protect me when I came home, and I appreciate that. But I’m twenty-four years old. I need to be going out with friends, Quinten.” Bonnie reached for his hand, unwilling to whine about not really having friends, only co-workers. “All I do is go to work and come home. I need to get out and enjoy myself. You are setting a total double-standard. You go out to dangerous places all the time with your fighting. I’m not going out looking for trouble, I just want to have fun.”

  She gave him a reassuring smile and hoped for the best. But Quinten was an arguer and didn’t let it go.

  “Why don’t you just go to the movies with your girlfriends or something? Movies are fun.”

  “Because I’ve never been to South by Southwest, and I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to enjoy any of it to go! Just because it’s not something you’d do, or even approve of, doesn’t mean you can keep me from going. You can sit here on your high horse all you want, but I’m leaving.”

  She reached for her purse, but Quinten’s next words stopped her.

  “Zack’s going to be there.”

  There was a time in her life when those words would have broken her heart. But she was no longer that eighteen-year-old girl watching her boyfriend kiss Megan Watts on her bed at her own graduation party. Nope. She’d had a lot of time to get over that.

  Zack could be there, amongst all the other people she was sure to see, and she wouldn’t give a good goddamn. That’s what she told herself anyway, even as the butterflies swarmed in her stomach.