“Hey, put that back.” I caught his arm, and our gazes briefly met, which almost made me forget what the hell I was supposed to do.

He finally lowered the figure back to where it had been. “I thought Meg was taking care of this and you had a huge map of everyone’s territories on all your computers.”

“Well, yeah, we have that too, but this map makes it easier to visualize everything and we can actually bring people here. This makes it easier for them to understand our strategy and we make sure they don’t see any info they’re not supposed to see.” I pointed at the black figures. “I’m sure you’re aware of this already, but these are the Desaltis and all the spots we know they frequent or keep an eye on are marked here. The little towers are potential stash houses.”

“And the horses?”

“Those represent the influential people who help Romeo run his little empire.”

“Horses, huh?”

“Yeah, a lot of them would do things for you if you gave them enough sugar cubes, except you can never be sure when they’ll throw you off their backs.”

Amusement danced in his eyes. “Okay, so why are we here?”

“I want to hear your suggestions for our attack. Show me where you think it would be best to make a move.”

His lips parted in surprise as his gaze settled on mine. “Why don’t you ask your second for that? Isn’t that his job?”

“Who cares? I want your opinion.” I picked up one of the red figures that represented my family and placed it into his hand. His warm fingers brushed mine, and he looked down at the figure in his hand. I thought that he was going to tell me there was no reason for him to help unless I was offering something in exchange or that he’d wait for me to threaten him, but he focused on the map and studied it for a while.

“Here.” He placed the figure down.

“Why there?” I leaned over the map next to him.

“This stash house is closest to the free area. You can pass through here.” He pointed his finger at one of the streets. “And they might be able to see you only from this spot.” His finger indicated one of the buildings near the stash house. “But it’ll be too late for them to organize properly.”

“Hmm.” That wasn’t actually a bad idea, and it wouldn’t be hard to come up with an escape plan. “So you think it should be a stash house?”

“Yeah, because they sent someone else to steal your shipment, and you still don’t know who that was, but when they came for that drug, it was as if they attacked your stash house.”