Alone is quiet. You have to have faith in both Wraith and me. I trust you to take care of your end of things. I’ve been hunting these people a long time. Albert Krylov spent quite a lot of time in Houston giving those parties, and eventually he convinced the men we were with to use the women in sick, depraved ways. When I was able to, I tracked him and found he went from lair to lair doing the same thing. At first I planned to kill him, but then I realized he was acting as an emissary for someone else. That’s when I decided to follow the trail back to the head of the entire organization. Leo’s daughter isn’t safe. She’s been in their hands too long. Right this minute something bad is happening to her.
She said it with conviction because she was certain of it. The longer she looked at the misery on Leo’s face, the more convinced she was. An ominous feeling had been spreading through her since Leo had shown up. She willed Gorya to understand that this was something she had todo. More, shewasgoing to find the girl whether he gave his blessing or not.
She felt Gorya’s sigh, yet his expression gave nothing away.You’d better keep me informed every minute. And don’t do anything rash. If you need reinforcements, I’ll get to you.
Maya didn’t wait.
The trail wasn’t so difficult to follow once she knew each of the scents. She visited Leo’s home first and familiarized herself with both Yelena’s and Alicia’s scents. Then she went to the residence of George and Vera Morozov. She didn’t make the mistake of hurrying, because her warning system was shrieking at her. She knew part of her fear for Alicia was from that door in her mind cracking open and the terrible trauma of her childhood spilling out. She knew what these men did to women when they had them helpless in their possession. She couldn’t allow that to cause her to make mistakes. That wouldn’t help anyone.
Maya pushed the past from her mind and concentrated on the female leopard. Surprisingly, it was always the females who were the hardest to take over. Most were strong and independent—if they were healthy. The moment she connected with Vera’s leopard she could tell the animal was groggy, disoriented, repressed even. She was barely able to detect Maya’s presence.
Maya flowed into her mind very slowly, careful not to alert the leopard’s mate or her human partner. This was the most important moment, when everything could go wrong. The female leopard couldn’t fight her presence or become agitated in any way, warning the others there might be an intruder in their home. She matched the rhythm of breathing and brain waves perfectly until she was sure she had the right path and then she simply took the leopard from her human counterpart and mate. She did so carefully and subtly, but the animal retreated far back, leaving Maya completely in charge.
Next she examined the animal’s memories. They were very ugly in regard to her human counterpart’s actions against young Alicia, Mindy’s friend. The leopard had always liked Alicia. The accusations Vera had leveled against her were lies. No matter what the leopard said, Vera ignored her and insisted to Mindy that the young girl had attempted to seduce her husband. She slapped her repeatedly and called her names. In the background, two young men smirked and leered as Vera ripped at Alicia’s clothes and thrust her toward them. She demanded that if Alicia wanted to be a whore, they teach her a lesson she’d never forget.
Mindy had been frozen in the corner, her hand covering her eyes as the two men jerked the sobbing girl to them, laughing and assuring Vera it would be taken care of. Alicia begged to be taken home to her family. Vera slapped her again and told her she was never going home, that there was no home to go to. Her stuck-up parents should have been friends with the right people.
Maya recognized the two young men. One was Raul Escabar Alba from Panama, and the other was his college friend, Derk Malcom, son of Braum. It didn’t surprise her in the least that they were the ones Alicia had been turned over to. She was certain Albert was staying in the Malcom home or at least in their guesthouse. She instructed the leopard to sleep peacefully.
The male leopard was a little more difficult, only because he was confused and angry with his human counterpart. Like the female leopard, he showed signs of drugs in his system, but the drugs were slightly different. Where the drugs in the female had caused her to be more compliant and submissive, whatever the human male was taking and passed on to his leopard ramped up his sexual needs, removed all natural constraints, bringing out the worst traits shifter or leopard could have. That left the leopard in a continual state of arousal and confusion, as his humancounterpart had ceased being faithful to his wife and was using many women who had been brought in, women the leopard found itself despising and wanting to take part in the violence against. He longed for his own mate, yet at the same time hated her for her subservience. She no longer felt the same to him, adding to his confusion.
Maya was doubly cautious as she entered the male leopard’s mind. She didn’t want to trigger violence when he was confused and on edge. She took longer to merge with him, but once she did, she was able to examine his memories. Even confused, the parties hosted at Braum’s home and put on by Albert Krylov were more than perverted. Each party had seemed to take those attending further down a depraved path of drugs and deviant behavior. Apparently Braum, with Albert, was holding a meeting much later that evening with his trusted members to put the finishing touches on their plan to get rid of their presentpakhan. They would also reestablish the transports they had from the gulf on freighters, the light planes going out from their small airport and the trucks that would haul cross-country to the eastern states. She got the time of the meeting from the male leopard and sent him to sleep as well.
It was easy to move through the house knowing the leopards wouldn’t alert the humans to her presence. Wraith would let her know if either of the humans woke, but she doubted they would. They were feeling safe and smug. She quickly found her way to Mindy’s room, where Alicia’s scent was everywhere. Fear permeated the rooms and hallway. Fear and the sexual excitement and what Maya had come to think of as the depraved scent of men who enjoyed hurting women.
She inhaled to take all three scents deep into her lungs.Can you find them, Wraith, even if they use a blocker?
Yes. The men stink and she is terrified. They will never be able to hide from us.There was a purring satisfactionin Wraith’s tone, in her images. She was no longer the sex kitten. That leopard had disappeared, and in her wake, the predator had come alive. Like Maya, Wraith was more than eager to hunt and kill the men who had taken the young girl.
Maya reached for Mindy’s leopard next, seeking to find whether the teen had one. She did. The leopard was there, not even close to emergence, but disturbed by the events of the day. Mindy had protested, yelling at her parents that Alicia had been with her the entire time and couldn’t possibly have done the things her mother had accused her of. Her mother had slapped her viciously and then proclaimed she knew Mindy had coveted her father. She’d seen her trying to get his attention.
Mindy was horrified at the accusations, clinging to Alicia, trying to prevent the two men from taking her while warding off her mother with one hand. Vera’s rage increased while her husband looked on with a smirk, and the two men offered to take Mindy with them to teach her manners.
In the end, Alicia was dragged away, Mindy was thrown into a corner of the room and her mother was wrapped in her father’s arms while he cooed to her how proud he was and assured her he would take care of her and said she could go with him to the next party and participate with him. No one comforted Mindy or even looked at their daughter crumpled on the floor, not understanding how her family had gone from happy to torn apart. She was isolated, terrified, and knew it was only a matter of time before she would suffer the same fate as Alicia had.
It was all Maya could do to leave the girl there. She desperately wanted to comfort her, tell her things would be all right, although she knew this child’s family would never be put back together. Her parents were too far gone. It seemed as if the drugs given to them had createddamage to their brains, almost as if they’d been hit head-on in a car crash.
Resolutely, she left the house and began to follow the trail through the back streets of the small town leading toward the outskirts and the swamp. She was nothing more than a small shadow within the darkness, making no sound, giving off no scent. Maya and Wraith had perfected the art after years of practice. They’d started trying to “disappear” when Maya was a child, merging into the shadows of rooms and buildings, desperate to escape notice of the men coming to rape and torture.
Abruptly, the scent lessened considerably, nearly disappeared altogether. This was where Alicia and the two men had been sprayed with scent blocker. She was familiar with the use of it. It was odd that it had never hindered her ability to scent-track when it did for other leopards. Despite the blocker, she could still detect that trail. It was faint, but it was there.
Heat images in the form of splotches of color rose and she followed the path unerringly, jogging, not sprinting. She knew better than to waste energy. She would need it. There were two men to deal with, and no matter how depraved they were, they were young and strong and leopard. She was a huntress and fully in control. Fully determined to find and kill her prey.
The trail twisted around the edge of the swamp, looped into it for a few yards and came out near the building Theo Pappas had taken her prisoner in. She should have known. It was the perfect place to keep a prisoner. They would be able to do whatever they wanted to young Alicia and no one would hear her screams. If they brought her mother to the same torture room, they could easily dispose of her body if they killed her outright, or they could make her see and listen to her daughter’s agony. Maya wouldn’t be surprised if Braum’s son, Derk, and Raul were that cruel.
The basement appeared to have only the one entrance,which might present a problem if the two men had anyone else with them or if they were watching security cameras. The doors locked from the outside. In this case, she knew the two men wouldn’t have locked themselves in. Maya had seen this scenario dozens of times. She was certain they would be secure in the knowledge that they had the upper hand with their fifteen-year-old prisoner and wouldn’t bother to monitor the cameras.
Even though she had that alarming urgency driving her, she took the time to secure the building. She didn’t want anyone unexpected spotting her and coming up behind her. When she found the controls for the cameras, it was easy enough to disrupt the feed throughout the building.
Maya approached the door to the basement with caution. As she expected, it was unlocked. She didn’t hesitate to open it just enough to allow her slender form to slip inside. Immediately she glided into the shadows and froze, letting the sounds and scents feed her the information she needed.
Two men, Raul Escabar Alba and Derk Malcom, nearly swamped the long rows of rooms with the musty odor of their arousal and the adrenaline flooding their bodies. Alicia gave off waves of terror. Maya smelled another woman, detected a heartbeat, but she was unmoving, perhaps unconscious.
Raul seemed to be instructing Derk in how to view Alicia. “It doesn’t matter that you grew up with the bitch, Derk.” Raul reached down and casually caught Alicia by her hair, jerking her to her knees. Ignoring her sobbing, he caught her jaws between his fingers and pinched ruthlessly, forcing her mouth open. “See that? That’s all you need. That’s all she is to you. She’s nothing but that hole right there. She’s got two more for you to take your pleasure in. You want this job—training the bitches, keeping them in line and selling them to the highest bidder—youhave to control them. To do that, they gotta respect you. They gotta know you mean everything you say. They obey your slightest wish. They got no rights, Derk. Youownthem. You want to cut them into little pieces just because it amuses you, that’s your prerogative. Why? Because you’re the fuckin’ man and she’s nothin’ but a doll for you to play with.”
How often had Maya heard that speech? Nearly word for word. It had been said far back in the Amurov lair when she was a child and Gorya’s uncle had come in with his men and their sons, training them how to treat women and little girls or boys. Hatred rose for just a moment. Rage. Deep inside, Wraith snarled. Maya breathed away the emotion. Emotion had no place here. That way could lead to mistakes. She had to stay distant, completely removed from what was happening, so she could kill these two men and free this young girl.
You aren’t much older than she is.Gorya’s voice was soft in her ear. Calm. Steady. Sure of her. He had been there to save her when she was a child in this same position. Rogue had been there to save Wraith.
