“I’m afraid so.”
He had told her about his sister and Arabella. She had to meet him halfway. That was fair, and fair was important.
“They took the cub from us. They took her, and Celeste is grieving. She cannot hunt the thief, so I must hunt in her stead.”
“Hunt?”
“Yes. I cannot delegate this. It must be me.” There was so much more there, but this would do for now.
Augustine sighed. “Very well.” His fingers flew over the keyboard.
She had an urge to cross the room and lick the candle.
Augustine tapped his laptop. Her phone chimed. She checked the new contract. Adequate.
“Would an electronic signature suffice?”
“Of course.”
She signed. He countersigned and sent the executed copy back to her. She opened her banking app to wire the retainer. MII was not cheap, even with their preferred friend status.
“Let’s wait on the payment,” he said. “There will always be time for that later, and I have no doubt that House Harrison pays their debts.”
She wondered why but decided not to ask.
“How did Kitty disappear?”
Diana flicked her fingers across her tablet. “I have a video.”
He pushed a card toward her with a password. She paired her tablet to the system and tapped play. The screen on the wall came to life, and the recording played across it, the sky awash with pink and lavender and a dense forest blanketing the ground, filmed from above. The familiar pines, mixed with occasional oaks and maples.
“What is this?”
“The Den. Our private lands near Sam Houston National Forest.”
The woods parted, flowing around a circular clearing with a large stone building in its center.
The screen blinked and switched to a stationary security camera mounted in a tree, with the back of the structure firmly in focus, showing a reinforced gate in the center of the rear wall and a steel door next to it. The time stamp said 19:34. Dusk, just before the sun set.
The door swung open, and two people emerged.
“Aleah and Kayson,” Diana said. “Our best guards.”
Both of her people carried Ruger semi-auto rifles. They looked around. Aleah punched a code into the lock on the wall. Kayson took a key from his pocket, inserted it into the center bar of the gate, and turned.
“Double lock?” Augustine said. “One guard has the combination, and the other carries the key?”
She nodded.
Metal clanged. The gate swung open, and Celeste emerged onto the grass. The tigrionex moved like water. She raised her gorgeous head, her periwinkle fur rippling, and inhaled, tasting the dusk air.
The guards stood still.
The muscles of Celeste’s frame contracted. She ran into the woods, bounding through the undergrowth like a teenage kitten.A moment and she vanished into the gloom pooling between the tree trunks.
“If you keep a tiger in an enclosure and feed her meat, the tiger will survive,” Diana said. “She will not be happy. She may suffer from boredom and develop unchecked aggression. She could become restless and irritable. But she will live. If you confine a tigrionex and feed her the best meat in the world, she will die.”
“Why?” Augustine asked.
