Chapter Seventeen
Declan
Knowing Lily and Emelise had reached the halfway point to Phoenix with no trouble let Declan focus on the job he’d taken on to deal with the jaguars. He and Nikolai were at the warehouse outside Baton Rouge where the jaguars were storing a small arsenal. If they thought they were on the same level as a gang or the mob, they were sorely mistaken. It was like they were playing at being thugs. They had no security on the building at all, not even guards, and Declan’s instincts weren’t screaming that it was a trap. They really were this stupid.
Nikolai slipped the earpiece, that would allow him to hear anything Declan said, into his ear canal, then disappeared into the shadows. While Declan stayed outside with a view of the warehouse and surrounding area, Nikolai would slip into the warehouse and do his thing. If anyone approached, Declan would see them and warn Nikolai with plenty of time for him to get out.
Declan scanned the area continually. It was times like now that he wished he had a pair of heat-sensing goggles like he’d had back in ops. Those came in real handy in helping to pick out heat signatures. He kept his guard up and stayed on edge until, sometime later, Nikolai appeared next to him.
“It is done,” Nikolai breathed. “The fight will be just claws and teeth.”
Declan nodded. “Let’s get back and catch up with the others. If everything’s gone as planned, Steele should have received an email from Sasha and Echo by now letting us know how their meeting with the Jaguars went,” he said once they’d put some distance between them and the warehouse.
“With luck, when the fighting starts, they will be short some lieutenants,” Nikolai growled. Decan could see that his tiger was itching to get out, and the coming fight would give him some much needed release of tension.
“Maybe, but there will still be plenty for us to sink our teeth into,” Declan assured him as they headed back to New Orleans. If he was honest, he was itching for a fight too. The jaguars had targeted his mate and the people she cared about; they’d fucked up when they did that.
“Da, there will be, and it is a good thing. You are still enraged over them targeting your mate; this fight will help.” Nikolai studied him. “She makes you a calmer man and eases some of the darkness. I can see it in your eyes. Your woman is good for you. You’re a lucky bastard, Declan.”
As a Siberian tiger, the chances of Nikolai finding his mate were even less than it was for most other species of shifter. There weren’t as many of his species as there were of some of the others, including big cat shifters, like leopards and lions. If he and his family were welcome back in Russia, he might have had a chance to meet another of his kind on the hopes that she would be his mate, but they’d not been welcome since the Cold War.
“You could always take a trip to Russia,” Declan pointed out to him.
“Nyet,” Nikolai replied. “My family defected; none of us are welcome back among our kind.”
“You could do what your brother Kaz did—find a nice human girl and get married.”
Nikolai gave him a dark look. “I am not interested in settling down with a woman, any woman.”
Declan laughed. “Yeah, I wasn’t either until I met Lily.”
“Let’s just focus on the job.” Nikolai’s voice was gruff.
An hour after leaving the warehouse in Baton Rouge behind, Declan and Nikolai stepped into the building they’d set up as their headquarters. It was a huge warehouse Declan had purchased, and he was already making plans for once the fight was over. Remy and several other leopards were there with Holden and Steele going over a map of the area to pinpoint the most likely place the jaguars would come at them from.
“I still say the most obvious place is through Chalmette,” Holden rumbled as they studied the land masses surrounding the area where the leopards lived.
“Maybe, but come on, Holden, how often does the most obvious route actually get chosen?” Steele pointed out. He spotted Declan and stood. “Heya, Boss, how’d it go?”
“Smooth as glass,” Declan replied. “The fight will be on even terms tomorrow.”
“Are we sure it’s going to be tomorrow night?” Steele countered.
“From everything I recorded, yeah. Have you heard from Sasha and Echo yet?”
“Got an encrypted text half an hour ago. They were taken to the Alpha and he seems to have bought their story.”
“Good. If there’s any doubt when this will go down, they’ll be able to tell us.” Declan shared a look with Nikolai. “After what we saw at the warehouse back in Baton Rouge, I want to say Holden may be onto something. The guns they had weren’t secured in any way. No guards, no alarms, nothing. I don’t know if that means they’re just that cocky, or if they’re stupid. But experience has taught us all that if we set our minds on a single course, we’re likely to get fucked six ways to Sunday.”
“Could be they’re a bit of both, Boss: cocky and stupid,” Steele agreed. “But if we’re talking about a fight strategy, coming at the leopards from the most obvious direction would be suicidal even if they did have guns. It’s more easily defended.”
Declan moved to study the map. “I think you’re right.”
“Where do you tink dey’ll come from, den?” Remy asked.
Looking at the map, Declan pointed to a spot a little northeast of New Orleans. “Here. They’ll come down from Waveland, through Fort Pike State Historical Site. It won’t be expected because it brings them through the swamp. They’ll come across the bayou silently—no motorboats and a mix of human and jaguar forms.”
Steele, Holden, and Nikolai looked at each other before they nodded. “Dec’s right. It’s the riskier option, but if they weren’t expected, it would also net the greater win for them,” Holden finally agreed.
