What would his old friends back in Boston tell him to do about Nova?

He had half a mind to call and find out.

Then again, he could predict most of their reactions without consultation.

Leave the female alone.

Mind on duty, not your dick.

Find another distraction--one that wasn’t a person of interest in a homicide.

Of course, there were no less than ten of the most seasoned Order members who wouldn’t have been able to follow their own sage advice. Mated warriors, each with their own blood-bonded Breedmate that they loved more than life itself. Some of the Order had even fathered children in the twenty years Mathias had known them.

All things he’d never aspired to, never paused long enough to consider he might want.

Not that he wanted any of that now.

And certainly not with a difficult, secretive woman like Nova.

What kind of name was that, anyway?

Who was her family?

She’d been living with Ozzy at least since she was seventeen, according to what little she’d divulged. Mathias guessed she’d been under the old man’s wing for longer than that. He just didn’t know the how or why of it.

Just as he didn’t know who had been responsible for the hurt she’d shown him--however briefly--when she’d admitted to him that nothing could be done to her that she hadn’t already endured.

Who the fuck had wounded her so deeply?

Christ, every time he thought about her, it raised new questions. Stirred more curiosity in him to peel back the endless layers of secrets and camouflage she seemed to hide behind.

Mathias didn’t want to think about what he would need to do if peeling back any of those layers proved her guilt in the killing of the man who confronted her in Ozzy’s shop.

He would be duty-bound to surrender her to JUSTIS and let the system decide her fate.

Somehow, he didn’t think she’d stand by and wait for that to happen.

Nova’s headstrong, defiant gaze in the shop last night had told him that much. No, she would run before she’d let herself be shackled. But would she do anything more desperate?

Mathias dreaded being the one to find out.

His head was still churning on that troubling scenario when his comm unit buzzed with an incoming call. He grabbed it off the counter, recognizing his friend Gavin Sloane’s number.

“Don’t tell me you fished another scarab out of the Thames,” he murmured by way of greeting.

“No,” Sloane said. “But we may have a lead on the seven on ice down at the morgue.”

Mathias’s senses went taut with attention. “How so?”

“They had a visitor early this morning. Coroner’s got surveillance video of a woman being admitted into the morgue by one of the graveyard shift employees. She seemed to know at least a few of the victims, held their hands for a couple of minutes before rushing out of the room like she was going to lose her shit.”

The blood in Mathias’s veins started hammering hard with warning. He’d told Nova about the bodies in the morgue. She had seemed shocked, even troubled. But could she have known those men? Could she be mixed up in not just one slaying, but all seven of them?

Ah, fuck. Everything Mathias stood for demanded that he voice his suspicions to his friend, here and now. Yet there was a part of him that wanted to shield Nova from that kind of trouble.

He wanted to be certain before he tossed her into the fray.

“Do you have a description of this woman?” he asked, his voice sounding wooden, even to his own ears.

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