"She also captured the gunfight." Finn's voice tightens. "Captured us killing Russian mob enforcers. Captured Kian transforming mid-combat and tearing throats out with tiger claws. That footage is a liability."
"She won't use it against us." The certainty in my voice surprises even me.
"You sure about that?" Finn moves closer, his gaze tracking my reaction with predator intensity. "Because I'm not. She's a cop. That footage could bring down the entire brotherhood if she decides duty matters more than whatever connection she feels toward you."
My tiger snarls at the implied threat. I shove him down. My jaw clenches hard enough to make my teeth ache.
"She won't. She risked everything to help us tonight. She crossed lines cops don't cross. She's in this now whether she wants to be or not."
"That's what worries me." Finn gestures toward the bodies. "Dimitri and his crew are dead. When they don't report back to the syndicate, someone will come looking. Someone will want answers. Someone will investigate what happened here tonight."
"So we clean it up. Make it look like rival crew violence or a deal gone wrong." I've done this before. The brotherhood has protocols for sanitizing crime scenes and disappearing evidence. "They won't know we were involved."
"They already know Catriona was involved." Finn's voice cuts through my denial like a blade through flesh. "They could have known she was present during the operation. Even if we destroy all the physical evidence, that information exists in whatever reports they sent before we killed them."
The realization cuts through me cold and sharp.
Dimitri received a phone call during the transaction. Someone from the syndicate was reporting a problem, warning him something was wrong. The call made everything go sideways and forced my tiger to break free in silver mist and thunder.
They know she's investigating their trafficking network. They know she's a threat.
"The safe house won't hold forever." The admission tastes bitter. "Once they connect the dots, they'll come for her with resources we can't match."
"Then we make sure they don't connect the dots." Grayson doesn't look up from searching the loading dock area. "We control what they find here. Control the narrative."
"Surveillance sweep complete?" I force my mind back to operational concerns.
"Almost." Finn gestures toward Rafe, who returned from the harbor transport and now emerges from the warehouse's interior with equipment designed to detect electronic devices. "I cut power right after the shooting stopped. Should have killed any surveillance feeds. But we're checking for cameras, bugs, anything the Russians might have planted."
The possibility hadn't occurred to me. The Russians trusted me enough to conduct business without supervision, without guards watching my every move. But trust in the syndicate only extends as far as profit margins and survival instincts. If Dimitri suspected I was the leak bleeding their operations dry, he'd have taken precautions.
Rafe works methodically through the warehouse space, scanning walls and corners with handheld devices that detect radio frequencies and electronic signatures. His panther instincts supplement the technology, predator senses honed to notice details humans miss.
He freezes near the north entrance. Catriona positioned there with Finn and Grayson during the operation. We evacuated three traumatized selkies from that same location while I kept the Russians distracted at the loading dock.
Her scent hits me when I move closer. The fragrance is heather and determination, Scottish steel wrapped in practical efficiency. It clings to the window frame where she stood, to the floor where she knelt documenting the transaction, to the air itself like she branded this space as hers simply by existing in it.
My tiger surges forward with violent hunger, wanting to track that scent back to her, wanting to complete the claiming that's been building since the moment we met, wanting to sink teeth into her throat and mark her as ours in ways that leave no doubt about ownership.
The claiming urge manifests in physical symptoms I can't fully suppress. My pulse hammers too fast, too hard. Heat spreads through my chest, down my arms, pooling in my hands where claws want to extend. My vision sharpens until I can see individual dust motes floating through the beam of Rafe's flashlight. Every breath pulls more of her scent into my lungs, and the tiger interprets each inhalation as proof that she belongs to us, that we should be tracking her down right now and finishing what instinct demands.
I grip the window frame hard enough that wood creaks beneath my fingers. The violence from earlier still rides too close to my skin, and Catriona's scent pushes me toward actions I can't take while the brotherhood watches. My body wants to shift, wants to let the tiger take over and hunt, but I force thetransformation back with effort that makes my muscles lock and my jaw ache from clenching.
"Kian." Finn's voice cuts through the spiral. Sharp, commanding, pulling me back from the edge. "Focus."
I force myself to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose. The tiger snarls protest, wanting that scent, needing it, demanding I stop fighting instincts older than civilization. My hands shake slightly when I release the window frame, splinters embedded in my palms from where I gripped too hard.
"Found something." Rafe's voice tightens with tension. "Camera. Small, professional grade. Positioned to monitor the north side of the warehouse."
My blood goes cold. "Russian surveillance?"
"Has to be." Rafe carefully removes the device from where it's mounted behind structural beams. "This isn't brotherhood equipment. This is external monitoring. Someone wanted eyes on the entire operation, not just the transaction at the loading dock."
Finn crosses to examine the camera, his expression darkening. "They were watching their own people. Checking for exactly what happened at the warehouse."
"Does it have footage?" The question tastes like ash.
"Recording device is separate. Probably wireless transmission to an external receiver." Rafe turns the camera over in his hands, examining the technical specifications. "But if they were monitoring in real time, they saw everything. They saw movement at the north entrance during the extraction. They saw us loading the selkies into vehicles while Kian distracted Dimitri at the loading dock."
