Chapter One
Eve
“I’ve got news about the Vipers,” Flint said, making Evelina Sincero sit up straighter in her seat. A shiver of revulsion slithered down her spine on hearing the name of the largest street gang in Miami and her attention sharpened on what her team leader was saying.
The rest of the meeting that Eve and the other members of her SWAT team had sat through had been dry and boring, and, in her opinion, largely pointless—as meetings tended to be. Although she’d paid attention to all that had been discussed, at times her focus had drifted in and out. Not now. Now, she gripped the edge of her seat and held her breath as she waited to hear the latest development about the gang she despised with every fiber of her being.
She knew she wasn’t alone in her hatred of the Vipers. After all, their criminal activities were a bone of contention to most of the city’s inhabitants, and every member of her team wanted them caught as much as she did.
Well, almost as much as she did. For the rest of the team, their interest was purely professional. Pride in a job well done, a city made safer.
But every time she thought of what those sick animals had done to Mia, hatred knifed through her and hardened her resolve. Raping a woman, that was one of the worst crimes a man could commit as far as she was concerned. But when the Viper member had been done with Mia, he’d sliced open her cheek as a parting gift, leaving her not only emotionally scarred, but permanently disfigured. And now, every time her best friend looked in the mirror, she had a brutal reminder of what she’d been through.
There wasnothingshe wouldn’t do to see the gang brought to justice.
Just the thought of what her friend had endured left Eve vibrating with anger and with a desperate need for vengeance. Her friend was human, but Eve wasn’t. She might appear small and petite, but she was far stronger than any human woman—stronger even than most human men.
For months after her friend’s violation, Eve had gone out alone at night, visiting the areas the Vipers were known to frequent, hoping that one of them would pull a knife on her or attempt the same thing they’d done to Mia. She’d all but begged them to try something so that she could get payback on her friend’s behalf. Unfortunately, no one had attempted anything, making Eve wonder if the members of the Vipers sensed they weren’t the most dangerous predator on the streets.
Eve would have continued her revenge mission if she hadn’t been stopped by her SWAT team partner Ramon Delgado, or Hawk, as was his team nickname. Eve had made the mistake of telling Hawk what she was doing, and he had threatened to tell Flint. Hawk had said he was worried about her emotional and physical wellbeing, and that had made her even angrier.
It wasn’t as if she was completely stupid, she was well aware that what she’d been doing was wrong and could have got her not only thrown off the SWAT team, but out of the FBI. However, at the time she’d been so consumed with rage, she hadn’t cared. Although she’d been furious with Hawk at first, now that a little time had passed, she’d regained some clarity of the situation and was grateful for his intervention.
But hearing the gang’s name again made her fury resurface, and her lack of retribution rankled. Some crimes could not be allowed to go unanswered, and shewouldfind a way to make them pay.
She drew in a slow breath and shut her eyes briefly. Right now the best way to make them pay was not to go charging out of the door—much as her instincts, and her panther, urged her to do exactly that. The best way to make them pay was to sit down and listen, and that was what she would do.
“There’s been quite the development in the case we’ve been building against the gang at large and particularly against their leader, Silas West,” Flint continued. “A few weeks ago, a member of the gang came forward and agreed to testify against Silas.”
Eve frowned, cocking her head to one side. “He came forward? Of his own free will?”
Flint nodded. “Yep. Name’s Liam Marshall, former close friend and associate of Silas West, so he was able to give us a lot of useful information. Enough, in fact, that we’ve arrested Mr. West and a court date has been set for him.”
“What’s in it for Marshall?” Gray asked.
Flint shrugged. “He said he’d had a change of heart and could no longer turn a blind eye to some of the things the gang has been doing.”
Hawk snorted. “A change of heart?”
Flint nodded, a wry grin on his lips. Eve curled her lip in distaste. Anyone who ran with the Vipers didn’t have a heart.
“Is he clean?” Ice asked.
This time it was Eve who snorted. The words clean and Viper didn’t belong in the same sentence. There was no member of that gang that didn’t have a black mark on their soul.
Despite the fact that the answer to Ice’s question was blindingly obvious, Flint replied anyway.
“I’ve got his file right here,” he said, picking up a manila folder and opening it to the first page. “We’ve got nothing concrete on him. We suspect he’s been involved in a robbery or two, but we haven’t been able to make anything stick. There was a witness to one, but they wouldn’t testify. Unsurprisingly. We do know that for the past couple of years, Liam was working as the Vipers’ loan shark.”
“Sounds like a real stand-up guy,” Eve said with more than a hint of sarcasm.
Flint huffed out a laugh. “Which brings me to my point. We’ve got our witness in a safehouse where he’ll remain until he testifies, and afterwards he’ll be going into the witness protection program. Until then, he needs a babysitter.”
The room went very still, and Eve was pretty sure she was surrounded by half a dozen shifters all hoping they could suddenly acquire the power of invisibility.
“Hawk, Kit, you’ve been lucky enough to snag this assignment.”
“Oh, hell no!” Eve said, the words bursting from her mouth loud enough to make Ice wince.
