I don’t think we have a choice. We take the job.
Gedeon studied the man across from him. Gorya was brilliant. He’d known that the moment he laid the facts out they would take the job. He sighed. “You have yourself a couple heading your security. Your men aren’t going to like us very much.”
Gorya sent him that flat, cold smile. “They don’t like me mucheither.”
2
MayaAverina paced the length of the very long basement, cursing under her breath with every step. The heat was stifling. There were only slits for windows to allow light in, and those ran along the ceiling, far too narrow for even her small body to escape through.
She meticulously inspected every inch of the prison she’d been trapped in. There was no way out that she could find—yet. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one. She hadn’t given up. She knew cameras had been set up in that long rectangular basement somewhere. She’d spotted a very tiny one near the doorway, but there had to be one or two more.
The moment she’d realized what was happening, she should have fought her way out of the building. She just hadn’t known how many were involved. She’d believed she would be able to find a way to escape the basement.She still believed there had to be a way; she just hadn’t found it yet.
“Not my finest plan, Wraith,” she said aloud. “I got us into a mess this time. And when we get out, I’m going tokillTheo.” She meant it too.
Theo Pappas had helped her escape a bad situation a few years earlier, and she had never forgotten his kindness. When they had run into each other months ago, he was the one needing help. She had a sense about people, and red flags had gone off. He seemed a completely different person. She smelled addiction on him. Not just drugs but other, darker things she had encountered in her past. She hadn’t sensed conspiracy until it was too late, most likely because she hadn’t spent any time with him.
She and Wraith were in a good place. She had a good freelance job, although she mainly worked for three different companies, researching whatever they needed. She was thorough and fast and didn’t mind going places no one else could go if she wasn’t asked how she got her information. She worked from home, avoiding people, which suited her.
She appeared to be an introvert to the outside world. She didn’t interact with anyone other than exchanging emails with her clients. She kept to herself, moving often, always staying on the edge of a city, where there was plenty of room to run her leopard.
Maya took time to hunt down certain criminals. That kept her skills sharp, both on the computer searching for their whereabouts and then physically stalking them. It was important for her and Wraith to always have an edge. They couldn’t ever get complacent because they were living a life away from shifters. Unfortunately, her last investigation had brought her to the coast of Texas and then the swamps of Louisiana.
She had known her quarry, Albert Krylov, wasworking as a courier for one of thebratvafamilies in Russia. She was looking for his connections in the United States. She found it a little shocking to find not just one territory held by Russians but several. She thought they would have been Italian or American, maybe both. How the Russians had gotten such a foothold in Louisiana and Texas was beyond her. She had been very careful to avoid any contact with them, even though she was tracking Krylov and he had gone to each of those territories.
She had run into Theo in the Café du Monde in New Orleans. There was no way to abruptly leave or pretend she didn’t know him. He had spotted her while she waited in line and came right over to her. She couldn’t make a scene, not with Krylov at a table several feet away. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She blended into the crowd unobtrusively, making certain she was in the shadows as much as possible and blurring her appearance so no one would be able to describe her accurately if asked later. But Theo had noticed her, because the moment he’d arrived at the Café du Monde and gotten into line he’d approached her.
He immediately told her he was in trouble and needed help. Could he call her later? He was being followed and couldn’t stay. The meeting was so brief she hadn’t had time to assess the situation. Instead of giving him her number, she’d taken his number and agreed to call him as soon as she could.
Thankfully, Krylov had moved out of New Orleans, a city that seemed to be crawling with shifters. She’d followed him to the Atchafalaya Swamp, the largest in the United States. With a million acres to choose from, she thought herself safe enough, but to her dismay, Krylov was visiting yet another Russian territory. This one looked as if it had been around for a while and was well established with the locals. It was run by shifters.
Thebratva.She had thought herself safe from them in the United States. She’d stayed under the radar, far from anything that remotely resembled shifters. It hadn’t occurred to her there would be leopards in the swamps of Louisiana, and yet not only were they there, but there was also an entire established town of them. Worse, they were Russian.
Thepakhanand leader of the lair had been killed recently, and a new one had taken over. He’d been challenged just twice. From rumors she’d heard, he hadn’t spared the challengers’ lives, as was normal. His leopard had killed theirs in seconds. There had been no more challenges to his leadership.
This new leader wasn’t justbratva.He was from the Primorye region of Russia, where the Amur leopards were going extinct and the shifters were the most cruel and brutal of all. Those were the ones reputed to kill the mothers of their children to prove loyalty to thebratva.They demanded the same from all who served under them.
Although the swamp was the best possible place for her to keep up her training, she decided to get out while she could. She wanted to rid the world of Krylov. She already had leads on three others she wanted to track thanks to his travels. She needed an opportunity to kill him and either dispose of the body in the swamp or make certain someone else would take the blame.
She called Theo, intending to tell him she was no longer in New Orleans and wouldn’t be able to meet with him. Unfortunately, he was in the Atchafalaya Swamp as well. He was desperate for a meeting. He kept telling her he was really in trouble and reminded her that when she’d needed help, he had come through for her.
Maya felt unsettled. Edgy. Moody. Very unlike her. She made decisions with logic. She was decisive. She would never have agreed to meet with Theo if she’d beenherself, but she was all over the place. Her body burned on and off as if she had a fever. She never got sick, and yet she felt as though she were coming down with some terrible flu.
“I should never have agreed to meet with him,” she muttered aloud as she paced the length of the basement. Fortunately, the area was very long and gave her enough space to relieve some of her pent-up energy.
We were burning up with fever,Wraith excused.
As always, Wraith excused anything Maya felt she’d done wrong. That was sweet and made Maya feel loved, but it didn’t help her learn from the mistakes she made. Mistakes could get them killed. They couldn’t afford mistakes.
Theo insisted on meeting her in this building, a sprawling one-story monstrosity of new modern design. The building was located in a town in the swamp just on the coast. Even Maya knew most residences and businesses were built high on stilts to avoid the flooding, especially those close to the water. They certainly didn’t have basements. This basement was below water level, so one little leak and it would flood easily.
The building was too new, and that was her first red flag. Theo sweated; his gaze, instead of shifting to the windows and doors, continually swept along the upper trim of wood as they walked down the hall. She could understand his nerves when he’d said he was in trouble, but he looked as if he were sweeping for cameras. Why choose a building and risk being caught on camera rather than meeting out in the swamp?
“Don’t give me drama, Theo. I don’t have much time.” She’d been curt. Her gut told her to get out of there. The farther they moved away from the main entrance, the more her alarms were going off.
Wraith had gone quiet, very watchful. She made it plain she didn’t like or trust Theo. At the same time, it wasdifficult to think straight, to push down the unfamiliar feelings of burning inside, of needing to rub her skin along every surface and then rake her fingernails like claws down Theo’s face each time he got too close. Those feelings would rise abruptly and, just as fast, leave her.
“I took a job at one of the businesses in town.” Theo’s gaze met hers and then slid away. Another red flag. She should have taken him out right then and left, but he was already talking, and she was listening. “There was so much cash coming in. I’m good with numbers. Really good. I realized each of the businesses, under one premise or another, paid a certain amount to the one I worked under. Small bits of cash were disappearing, and I traced the flow back to three men. They were siphoning money steadily from three different sources and had been for a while.”
