Z knew she wasn’t supposed to wake him in the middle of the night. The girl had practically demanded to be his night guard, claiming that she could handle anything that came up as well as he could, and he had seen the tenacity in her eyes, the shrewdness in a deceptively young face.

So he’d let her. So far she’d proven her worth, and her fearlessness impressed him beyond words. It was a scary lot that came looking for him, especially when he was sleeping and marginally more vulnerable, but Z was as much from the streets as he was, and she didn’t bat an eye at the ill-tempered, gun-loaded characters that came looking for money or revenge or his head on a plate. In fact, the plucky brunette was responsible for apprehending three Serpents that had made it inside the building undetected.

Her ability to clone herself in the blink of an eye wasn’t a bad perk either.