Meridian led them down the right flank, and Grace shifted left with Mirage drifting behind him. Ex slipped up the center, hood low, posture loose.
Once they were in position, Meridian raised his fist.
Ex and Grace mirrored him. Go on two.
Mirage eased a slim blade from his sleeve and stuck it inside the lock. After a quick twist, it disengaged with a whisper-soft click, and they poured inside.
A big man—who Meridian assumed was the King’s enforcer, Pun—was in the kitchen with his face in a Chinese food carton.
He turned, eyes wide as he reached toward his waistline.
He was too slow, and the Browns were too fast.
Grace drove his boot into Pun’s gut. The impact blasted the half-chewed sweet-and-sour chicken from his mouth and hurled him backward into the glass table, that shattered beneath his weight.
Drea raced into the room with a metal Louisville Slugger raised high over her head. Mirage blurred into motion, materializing from behind his partner, catching her by her wrist mid-swing.
He twisted it gentler than he would’ve anyone else, forcing her to drop the bat.
She didn’t pause as she drew a blade from the depths of her cleavage. Mirage spun her hard enough to throw her off balance and pinned her chest against the wall.
“Stand down. That’s my final warning,” he hissed. “I won’t give you another.”
The third one stumbled in from the patio in a haze of weed smoke, eyes bloodshot, high and confused. He took in the scene and drew his gun sluggishly.
Mirage didn’t take his eyes off the feral fox in his grasp as he flipped a blade from his sleeve and flung backward. It sank intothe wall an inch from Smoke’s left eye, that made him freeze in place.
He dropped his gun, linked his fingers behind his head, and dropped to his knees as if he were under arrest.
Meridian rolled his eyes, walking past the ridiculousness. He didn’t have time for this shit.
He stalked toward the stairs.
“Scar,” he called, voice low and dangerous. “Get your fuckin’ ass down here.”
White Ravens
Scar
Scar had been pacing upstairs all night, ever since one of the runners from the pool hall had called Pun’s phone—voice shaking—babbling about some hooded gangsters who tore the place apart. Said they were men in bulletproof coats, with guns that didn’t sound like guns and blades that went through bones.
And they’d only wanted one thing.
Him.
After Pun ended the call, Scar’s nerves frayed hot and electric. He had to figure out where he could go or hide.
It’d been twenty-two hours, and he hadn’t slept or eaten.
Drea wanted to make love, but he couldn’t have gotten it up even if he’d downed a whole bottle of Viagra.
His friends called him paranoid, saying it was impossible to find him there, and the Kings were just trying to lure him back into the city with that made-up story.
But he could sense death at his door.
Ten hours later…he heard them.
Predatory footsteps moving silently over the frost-hardened lawn. Quiet, but not enough to fool someone who knew the sound of hunters.
