Bringing Adrian and Eddie on this little excursion was safer, because God knew Devina could be anywhere at any moment-plus Jim was still learning all the tricks that came with being a fallen angel, and Eddie was the master at them. Spells, potions, magic-that wizard and wand shit was Blackhawk’s forte.

He’d clearly gotten his PhD in Abracadabra and didn’t that make the SOB handy.

Down on the cellar level, everything was stark and clean, the cement floor and walls painted gray. The sweet smell of embalming fluid drew Jim to the right, and as he strode along, he felt like he’d jumped back in time. Fucking weird. This sneaking-around routine was exactly what he’d excelled at for all those years with Matthias-and precisely what he’d been determined to get away from.

Yeah, well, all the best-laid plans of mice and men, yada, yada, yada…

In his first battle with Devina, he’d required some information-and Matthias the Fucker had been the only place to go for it. Naturally, when it came to that bastard, things were strictly quid pro quo, so if you wanted something, you had to give something and the “quo” had been killing Isaac. After all, there were no pink slips for the fired or gold Rolexes for the retired in XOps-you got a bullet in the head and, if you were lucky, maybe a coffin for your corpse.

And yet he was curiously grateful: Being assigned to assassinate the guy was the only way to help him; otherwise there would have been no way to know that Isaac had taken off and was now a hunted man: Jim was the only one who’d been let out free and clear.

But then his situation had put the “by your short hairs” in Matthias’s “extenuating circumstances.”

He stopped in front of a pair of stainless-steel doors marked STAFF ONLY and looked over his shoulder. “Keep your hands to yourself, Adrian.”

God knew the angel seemed willing to fuck anything that moved-which made you wonder if not moving would be a rate-limiting step for him.