His hackles prickled with suspicion. He was about to stalk out of the sitting room to look for the old woman when she toddled in carrying a silver service tray.
Issuing hasty apologies and excuses in French, she set the tray on the edge of the coffee table and began to pour the tea. She seemed nervous, casting uneasy glances at Razor as she hurried to deliver the refreshments to the women.
Her hand caught the edge of Willow’s filled cup and tipped it, spilling the tea across the table. “Oh, no! Sorry, sorry!”
“It’s okay,” Willow assured her. “Here, I’ll help you.”
Razor took a step forward, his muscles tense as the old woman continued uttering apologies in French while she hastened to clean up her mess.
Madame Gauthier let out a sympathetic sigh. “It’s all right, Estelle. Just a little spill, although there went most of the pot.”
“I make more,” the old woman said in broken English. “I will hurry.”
“No.” Razor’s stern interruption made all three female gazes swing toward him. The idea of a further delay made all his battle instincts clang with alarm. “No more tea. Willow, we need to leave. Now.”
Something wasn’t right. He’d had that feeling even before Madame Dupont dumped half the pot of tea over the table. Now, he was certain.
The serving woman’s anxious glance at her wristwatch only confirmed his suspicions. As did the beads of perspiration gathering above her lips.
He lunged for her. “What the fuck are you up to?”
“What is the meaning of this?” Madame Gauthier gasped, aghast as Razor bore down on her employee. “Take your hands off her at once!”
“Razor,” Willow said, her eyes wide with shock. “What’s going on?”
“She’s done something.” He glowered at the gray-haired woman in his grasp. “You’re trying to keep us here. Taking forever to bring the tea, then conveniently spilling it so you need to make more.”
“Non! Non, sil vous plais!”A string of panicked denials spilled off the old woman’s tongue in French. Terror filled her face, but all it did was fortify her guilt.
If Willow hadn’t been sitting there to witness his fury, he would’ve let his talons convince the woman to tell him what he wanted to know—right before he tore her head off her shoulders.
“You called someone,” he guessed, zero room for doubt in his mind. “Tell me who you’re working with.”
Madame Gauthier looked thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about? Estelle, what is the meaning of this?”
Her colleague continued blubbering excuses and lies, vigorously shaking her head. At the same moment, the muffled sounds of someone infiltrating the townhouse from the back brought Razor’s head up sharply. Multiple someones.
“Fuck.”
He knew the rear alley access point was a vulnerability as he’d looked down at it from the window upstairs. Now, his dread was confirmed.
With no further use for Madame Dupont, he gave her skull a violent twist in his hands. Madame Gauthier let out a horrified scream as the lifeless body dropped to the floor.
The boots that had been stealthily moving into the house rushed inward at full tilt, accompanied by the sounds of weapons jangling.
Four or five heavily armed men by Razor’s guess.
He grabbed Willow’s wrist. “Stay behind me. If they want you, they need to come through me first.”
He knew more than a hundred different ways to kill a man with his bare hands but he wished to fuck he had a gun on him too. Feeling Willow at his back and knowing any one of the intruders’ rounds could have her name on it made his blood boil with battle rage.
His talons erupted from his fingertips. In his mouth, his fangs punched out of his gums. His gaze burned red even before the first gunman in black fatigues stepped into his line of sight.
The bastard came in shooting. Except he wasn’t firing regular bullets.
The man leading the charge was armed with something even worse.
Ultraviolet rounds.
