I waited to hear her footsteps on the stairs before I summoned the mutt. Angel, she called him. Her investigator. He appeared beside me and I tilted my head in question.

After stuffing his hands in his pockets, he nodded. “You were right. He’s spying for someone.”

“For whom?” I asked, not in the mood for games.

“Look, pendejo, I’m doing this for her. I work for Charley. Not you. She deserves to know.”

The punk had always been afraid of me, but he was getting bolder. I’d have to rip that bandanna off his head and wrap it around his throat soon. But now was not the time.

Instead of acting on my instincts, I glared at him.

It worked. The mutt bit down and said, “I don’t know who it was. Some guy in a black Rolls. A rich f**k with more money than sense, if he’s doing what you say he’s doing.”

I nodded. That would be my father’s emissary. And the spy the kid had been following on my orders was one of Dutch’s newest hard cases. He’d been watching her for a while. And I’d been watching him.

I wondered how to tell her that a deadhead, one she considered a friend, was spying on her for my father. With everything else going on, she would not take it well.

His name was Duff, and Dutch, like so many before her, had been taken in by his baby-faced charm and childlike stutter. But I knew him for what he really was. He’d been in prison for a reason, after all.

“Keep an eye on him. Let me know if there are any changes.”

“What if Charley needs me?” he asked.

“Then be there for her, but get back to the deadhead the minute you’re finished.”

With a nod, the mutt started to leave, but then stopped. “Will this guy hurt her?”

“Duff?” I asked him.

“No, the rich f**k.”

“Only if we give him the chance.”

The kid bowed his head. “I can take him out.”

“And deny me the pleasure?” I took a purposeful step closer. “I would not suggest that course of action.”

He took a wary step back. “Fine. He’s all yours. But I get the ghost.”

“Duff will be all yours when we’re finished with him.”

“Hell yes,” he said. Pleased with that, he disappeared.

I followed Dutch out the door, wincing at the soreness I still felt from the fight with the Twelve. That one had me stumped. They seemed impossible to kill, but there had to be a way. I had to find a way. For Dutch and the kid. Our kid. I just needed a few more pieces to the puzzle. Once I figured out who’d summoned them, the hellhounds, I could take that guy out. They’d be more vulnerable then. Easier to crush.

I had yet to figure out the part that the Daeva Osh’ekiel played in all this, but I’d use him for now. If he so much as blinked wrong, I’d sever his spine. It was the least I could do.

I stepped into the ink-like night. Dutch sat in her Jeep, the engine idling, her expression hard. I walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. Her emotions hit me like a freight train, and I felt her fight tooth and nail to hold back the grief that threatened to consume her.

“I have to call Gemma,” she said.

“You can call on the way. I’ll drive.”

After a moment, she turned to get out. A tear pushed past her lashes and slid down her cheek. She brushed it away angrily, the incredible energy radiating out of her rumbling the ground beneath us.

I didn’t dare stop her as she pushed past me to walk around and get in the passenger’s side. The emotions roiling inside her were like at that stage of a nuclear bomb when the first atom has been split and the rest are on the verge of exploding. She had unlimited power and no means to control it. Not yet. She could destroy so many in such a small span of time and not even know what she’d done until the deed was complete. It would devastate her beyond anything she’d ever felt before, so I stepped aside, not wishing to be responsible for the damage she could inflict, for the immeasurable loss of life. And I didn’t want to be eviscerated myself. Not just yet. I wanted to see our daughter. I wanted to see, if only for a moment, the being destined to destroy my father once and for all.

Then I could die knowing he would suffer for his crimes against humanity and I would spend eternity with the only creature in the universe who could bring me to my knees with a mere whisper.