Everything in him went still. His heart beat in his ears, thundered there. Of course. Why hadn’t he even thought of it? Why hadn’t Timur or Gorya? Elijah or Joshua? Drake should have considered the possibility. All of them should have. A cop. A dirty cop. One on the payroll of a mobster.

All three had been in and out of the bakery nearly every day. They had surveillance set up. It would be easy enough to interfere with the outside alarm. To tamper with the little bell over the door. To shave the lock so that it was no longer functional. Who else hung around watching Alonzo and his men? The undercover cops frequented the bakery more than he did, so much so that he hadn’t thought much about it beyond that Brice was attracted and making a move on Evangeline.

“Damn you anyway,” Brice raged at him, taking another step toward him, his fists balled tight. “You stand there like she doesn’t matter. Like none of this touches you.”

The male leopard switched his attention from the dirty cop to the man who cared for Evangeline. His two friends caught at his arms, pulling him away from Alonzo and toward the door.

Just then the double doors opened and a woman came out, her scrubs stained with blood. She looked tired. “Who is here for Evangeline Tregre?”

“She’s my fiancée,” Alonzo said before Brice or anyone else could interfere. The doctor beckoned to him and he followed her over to a corner of the room, his bodyguards behind him.

“She’s doing fine,” the surgeon hastened to say. “She lost a lot of blood, but her wounds were surprisingly not life threatening. One bullet skimmed her head, took a chunk of skin. Head wounds bleed but that one only required a few stitches. She’ll have a headache for a few days.”

His belly knotted. She was giving him the good news first, he was fairly certain of it. He braced himself. For the first time in a very long while, not since he was a boy, he felt the soothing stroke of his leopard, trying to ease his fear. On the outside, he was as cold as ice. On the inside, he was as terrified as he’d been when he’d held the gun in his hand and pointed it at a man’s head for the very first time at age six.