Free Romani Armada by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page B

sofa opposite Ryan. It wasn’t next to Deonne, but it put his knee almost in contact with hers.
    Deonne put her nearly-finished coffee back on the table.
    Brenden threw himself onto the only space left; the chair opposite Deonne and across the little coffee table from her. “The last of the media people have left. The Norstedt people are over the moon about the exposure their building got, tonight. I saw some of the live footage going out — lots of long shots of the building from across the river, with the Vasabron Bridge in front of it.”
    “I’m glad,” Nayara said, from her corner of the sofa she now shared with Justin. “They went out of their way to help at the last minute.”
    “We should leave, too, and let them settle down. They’re quite nervous. All human, of course.” He glanced at the shut door. “While it’s all family and you’re still here, Deonne, there’s a question that I’ve wanted to ask you for a while. You’ve been back in China every time I remember to ask it.”
    Deonne picked up her glass of coffee again and wrapped her hand around it. “What would you like to know?” Brenden had given her one of the most intense security screenings she had ever been through, the first time he had given her access to the station. There surely couldn’t be that much more he didn’t know about her. Oddly, it didn’t bother her that the big Spartan knew more about her life than even Justin did. The one thing she had learned about vampires and Brenden in particular, was their in-built discretion. They never spoke out of turn.
    Brenden glanced around the room again. It was clear that he was bothered by having to ask her in front of everyone, but as he had said, his opportunities for asking has been limited, lately, by her living back in twenty-first century China.
    He grimaced. “I wanted to know where you came by your knowledge of the casts.”
    Deonne struggled to keep her breathing at an even rate and not show the tension curling in her gut. There was nothing she could do about her heart rate, but if her external signals didn’t tip them off, they may miss the sudden jump in her pulse. “I don’t believe it’s necessary to provide the names of my sources.”
    Brenden scowled. “You could only have got the information from a vampire. Either one of us, or one who’s passing. If it’s one of us, then I have a severe security breach. If it’s one who is passing, then I still need to know, because the bloody idiot shouldn’t have been spilling his guts to mere slip of a human girl.”
    Deonne sipped her coffee, giving her hands something to do to disguise the shake and to give herself time to think.
    Ryan and Nayara were watching Brenden, thoughtful looks on their faces as they considered the matter from all angles. Justin was watching Brenden too, which meant Deonne couldn’t see his face right now.
    She met Brenden’s hot gaze once more. “Why could I not have got the information secondhand? What makes you so certain it is a man I got my information from? Have you not yet rid yourself of your misogynist upbringing?”
    Christian chuckled. “Mine was the misogynist culture, actually. Spartans let their woman own property, vote, take lovers and do everything but fight wars for them.”
    “Irrelevant,” Rob growled. “The lass has a point. She could’ve got the information from anyone if some vampire had the bad form to spill his guts to another human.”
    Brenden shook his head, his gaze not moving from Deonne. “Not this time. It’s a possibility, sure, but you don’t work that way. I’ve studied your professional profile and nearly every story you’ve ever worked on. You don’t like to rely on secondhand information. You go to the source. There’s no way you’d hold the entire vampire race over a barrel the way you did us, six months ago, based on secondhand information. You knew you had good data. You knew it was pure. So, give. Who is your source?”
    Deonne shook her head,