Dylan rang the doorbell. "Cross your fingers. Hell, say a prayer while you're at it."
A housekeeper appeared a moment later and politely informed them that they were expected. Meanwhile, Jenna studied the two sketches a bit closer ... and her heart dropped like a stone into her stomach.
An image of a young woman with sleek dark hair and almond-shaped eyes stared back at her. The delicate face was familiar, even in the pencil drawing that didn't quite capture the full impact of her exotic beauty.
Corinne.
Brock's Corinne.
Could it really be her? If so, how? He had been so certain she was dead. He'd told Jenna he'd seen the Breedmate's body after she had been recovered from the river. Then again, he'd also mentioned that it had been months since she'd vanished before her remains had been found, and that all they had to identify her was her clothing and the necklace she'd been wearing when she disappeared.
Oh, God ... could she actually be alive? Had she somehow ended up in Dragos's hands and been held captive by him for all this time?
Jenna was too astonished to speak, too numb to do anything more than follow her friends into the house after the housekeeper invited them inside.
One part of her was squeezed tight with the hope that a young woman presumed to be dead might, in fact, be alive.
Yet another part of her was gripped with a dark, shameful fear--the fear that this new knowledge might cost her the man she loved.
She had to tell Brock as soon as possible. It was the right thing to do--
he had to know the truth. He had to see the sketch for himself and determine if Jenna's suspicions might be correct.
"Please, make yourselves comfortable. I'll go tell Sister Grace that you're here," said the pleasant little woman as she left Jenna and the others alone in the front parlor.
"Alex," she murmured, giving a little tug of her coat sleeve. "I need to call the compound."
Alex frowned. "What's wrong?"
"This sketch," she said, glancing at it once more and feeling utterly certain now that Claire Reichen had seen Corinne during her dreamwalk into Dragos's lair. "I recognize this woman's face. I've seen it before."
"What?" Alex replied, taking the folder to look at it herself. "Jen, are you sure?"
Renata and Dylan moved closer, as well, all three of Jenna's companions huddling around her in the quiet front room of the house. She pointed to the delicate face of the dark-haired young woman in the sketch. "I think I know who this Breedmate is."
"By all means, dear," said a cool, female voice. "Do tell."
Jenna's gaze snapped up and clashed across the room with a pair of calm gray eyes that stared back at her from a lined, outwardly kind-looking face. With her long silver hair caught in a loose chignon, Sister Grace Gilhooley's pale blue floral housedress and white cardigan made her seem like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
But it was those eyes that gave her away.
Those dullish eyes, and the prickling of Jenna's new senses, which lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as the woman entered the room.
Jenna held the sharklike stare, realizing in an instant just what the good sister was.
"Holy shit," she said, recalling the same peculiar look in the eyes of the FBI men who'd tried to kill her and Brock in New York just days before.
Jenna glanced over at Renata. "She's a fucking Minion."
Chapter Thirty
That's about the tenth time you've checked that thing since we came down here." Brock smirked at Dante as the warrior--the anxious, expectant father--broke away from the group in the weapons room to look at his PDA.
"Damn, my man, you're about as jumpy as a cat."
"Tess is napping in our quarters," Dante replied. "If she needs anything, I told her to text me."
Apparently finding no messages since his last look about five minutes ago, he set the device back down on the table and returned to the firing range where Brock, Kade, Rio, and Niko waited to resume their target practice.