“You want me to find this Libby’s cousin?” Gedeon guessed. He was grateful Meiling had her silky black hair and dark chocolate eyes, where Libby had been tall and blond. They hadn’t been cousins by blood, but the two of them hadn’t ever made a big deal of it.
Lubin nodded but looked mournful. “You do the impossible, Gedeon. This is the impossible. These people have threatened to kill my only remaining son. Miguel had nothing to do with Libby’s death. He ordered her taken to them, but Frankie didn’t comply with that order. You knew him. He changed his mind or forgot. Still, the order is there. These people don’t play games. We must deliver something to them, or Miguel is dead.”
Lubin and Miguel didn’t give a damn that Libby had been kidnapped and murdered. Neither gave a second thought to her. They were concerned that the men making up the powerful Dragon Throne Justice would order them killed. They wanted Gedeon to fix it for them by finding Libby’s cousin and delivering her into the board’s hands. They didn’t care what the board wanted with her, or even if they killed her. They simply wanted to be left alone.
“Do you have anything to go on, Miguel? Frankie must have cleaned out the hotel room when he took her. Did yousave her things? Personal items? Cell phone? Anything at all I can use as a starting point?”
Miguel nodded. “I have all of that bagged for you. I knew you’d need it. It’s already loaded in your vehicle.”
“I’ll pay your regular rate,” Lubin stated.
“Frankie was my friend,” Gedeon said, waving away the idea of taking money. “I’ll see what I can do. Miguel, lie low. Stay close to the house and watch over your father.” He stood up. He didn’t know how much more he could stomach, or how much longer Meiling could be in their company without telling them what she thought of them.
He kept his body very close to hers as they followed the servant down the hall to the heavy front door. He let the servant open the door. It was a habit not to touch more than he had to anywhere he was. He didn’t like to leave evidence behind that he’d been there. Meiling didn’t look at him as they made their way to the car. She didn’t say one word as they got inside, closed the doors and he started the vehicle up.
Once they were back on the road headed toward the airport, Gedeon glanced at her. She stared out the window, her soft features set.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can talk yet. The two of them, talking like that. They’re evil, Gedeon. You know that, don’t you? They didn’t give Libby a second thought. Miguel saw her. He raped her. He didn’t give a damn about her. She was too much trouble, so he wanted her sold to the other men who had been looking for her. He didn’t mind that she was dead, that they’d killed her, only that that got their family in trouble.”
Her voice hadn’t risen. Her tone remained the same. Soft. Too calm. On the outside she appeared stoic. Strong. But inside, where no one could see, he felt tears dripping down her heart. He felt them in her soul.
She didn’t take her gaze from the window, but shecontinued speaking. “Do you know why I called out to you about the bomb when I despised shifters? When I knew you might even kill me for witnessing you killing all those men who trafficked those women? I watched you come out of those cabins and your grief and rage were genuine. You can’t fake something like that.” Her tone was still strictly neutral.
Gedeon nearly pulled the little utility vehicle over, but they couldn’t afford to miss their flight. They’d chartered a plane for home. Why was it he never seemed in a position where he could comfort her?
“Lotus,” he murmured gently.
“That last cabin, you came out of it, and you put one knee to the porch and covered your face with your hand and wept. I’ll never get the sight of you like that out of my mind. You cared about those women. You cared enough to kill for them. No other shifter that I’d ever come across would have taken risks like that, or even thought twice about the women. I thought you were magnificent.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Being with you all this time, nothing has changed my mind. If anything, I think it even more.”
A lump crawled up his throat and lodged there. His woman. His Lotus Blossom. He glanced at her. She looked very small and fragile, as only Meiling could look. He reached out and took her hand, uncaring that she had huddled as far from him as possible. He didn’t say anything, just ran his thumb over the back of her hand. What was there to say?
“When this is over and we’ve managed to find these Dragon Justice people, I want to make certain we revisit those two smug bastards.”
She’d never once asked him for anything. Not one time.
“Consider it done, Lotus,” he assured. He’d been planning on it anyway. He’d almost instructed Meiling to go to the car and wait for him. He would have done it right then,but there were too many guards and servants who could identify them.
Once at the airport, he’d text Rene to find out where the members of Dragon Throne Justice were and who they were. He wanted to have that information by the time they landed in New Orleans. He wanted to have as much information on each member as possible.
***
THANKFULLYWhisper’s heat was over, giving them a respite. Rene had gathered as much information as he thought possible on the board members calling themselves Dragon Throne Justice. As Lubin had said, five made up the board. They were older now, much older, which to Gedeon meant they were the original members calling for the deaths of his family and Meiling’s. Three members were from a lair in southeastern Russia, the other two from China near the Russian border.
It was rumored the three men from Russia were members of thebratyaand, like most of the lairs in that area, refused to mate with the woman who would be their true mate. This drove their leopard insane. No male heirs had the same gifts their fathers had. Gedeon thought it was most likely due to the fact that the men hadn’t mated with the right females. The same was true of those men in China. They had also chosen not to mate with their true mates. That seemed to weaken their genetics, and no heir was born with the gifts their father had. The one son insisting he wanted on the board was a shifter, but had no special talents that anyone had ever seen.
Meiling and Gedeon built a replica of the very large palace, which was really a fortress the Dragon Justices retreated to with their army of soldiers. The structure was built on the border between the two countries and was heavily guarded.
They studied every entrance and exit, the roof, the outside walls, the gates and the guard shacks. They memorized the changing of the guards, every routine from the kitchen to scraping ice from the walkways. The palace, with its extensive grounds, had been built to withstand an army. The Dragon Justices expected to have to fight off soldiers attempting to take over their territory. They wouldn’t consider that two motivated assassins might slip inside their domain, kill them where they found them and leave without ever being seen.
Meiling and Gedeon packed to board the plane that would take them to Russia. They crawled into bed, Gedeon wrapping his arms around her. As Meiling placed her cell phone on the nightstand, sudden fireworks seemed to explode.
Startled, she lifted the phone so both could read the screen.
Email now. Urgent. E.
Meiling’s eyes met Gedeon’s and there was open fear in hers. Both could feel the urgency in Etienne’s text. Meiling opened her email and then the program with the key so she could insert his email into it.
