Gowan stepped back by the door and stood there, waiting.
That’s when Junior realized that no other C.O. had ever taken him anywhere without a partner. Usually more than one.
What was going on?
Curious, but Junior didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask Gowan what was going on. Mostly because he didn’t care.
Finally, after about fifteen minutes or so, the door opened and three people walked in. One was another really big guy. He looked like a biker Junior once knew. Maybe. Another was a female. Really pretty. Long black hair with some red and white streaks in it; tall; big tits that sat high on her chest. He bet she had a tight pussy, too. Man, would he love to find out. The third person was a woman, too. She had short hair, but wasn’t really pretty, and had lots of scars, but it was her weird eyes that he noticed first. Her eyes reminded him of a pit bull he once used for protection. That dog had the same colored eyes.
The three strangers walked into the room, and the hot one sat in the chair opposite Junior. The biker stood behind her with his back against the wall, and the one with the dog eyes sat kitty-corner from the hot one.
“Mr. Barton?”
Junior didn’t answer, just stared, waiting to see where this was going.
“I won’t bother with introductions,” she went on, a smile on that pretty face. That pretty face just begging to be destroyed. “Instead I’ll get right to it. We’re here for information. About one of your old cell mates.” She studied Junior a moment, then said, “Frankie Whitlan.”
So that’s what they wanted. They wanted good ol’ Frankie. Junior didn’t have friends, but neither did Frankie. But they both understood the world they lived in and how the barter system worked.
“I haven’t seen Frankie Whitlan in a lot of years. Not much I can tell you about him.”
“We’re not looking for anything recent. Just some details that perhaps no one else would know but the man who once shared a cell with him.”
“And what do I get out of giving you information?”
“What would you like . . . within reason, of course?”
“You could start by getting on your knees and sucking my cock. Then we can take it from there.”
The biker’s entire body tensed and he growled. A low, rolling growl that made Junior laugh. Guys always thought they sounded scary when they growled.
The hottie smiled. “That’s not going to happen, sweetie. Sorry.”
“Then I don’t know what you’re hoping to get.”
“You’re really not going to help us, are you? I can see that in your cold, dead little eyes.”
Junior didn’t answer because there was no point. The hottie seemed to understand him perfectly.
She looked over her shoulder at the biker, and Junior prepared himself to get slapped around by the guy.
The biker pushed away from the wall and walked toward Junior . . . then past him and to the door. The hottie got up and followed him, leaving Junior alone with the plain girl.
That one waited until the door closed behind her two friends and the guard, then she brought one long leg up and dropped it onto the metal table.
“That’s a mighty big foot you’ve got there, princess,” Junior remarked.
The plain one didn’t say anything, just brought up the other leg, crossing them at the ankle, and folding her arms over her nonexistent chest.
Junior stared at her and waited. She stared back.
And she kept staring . . . and staring . . . and staring . . .
Cella sat on Crush’s lap and rested her head on his big shoulder. “Mom invited us for dinner this weekend.”
“Okay.”
“Are you coming for me? Or are you coming because you get to hang with my dad and hear more stories about the good old days of shifter hockey?”
“Why does it have to be one or the other with you?”
Cella laughed and snuggled in closer.
“How long should we leave them in there?” Pete Gowan asked. He was beginning to look a little nervous.
“Give them a few more minutes.”
“Yeah, but . . .” The leopard male shifted from one foot to another. “I’ll have to explain if anything happens to him.”
“Would I leave you hanging, Gowan?” Cella asked her fellow feline.
“Yes.”
Crush laughed. “At least he’s not delusional.”
“Quiet, you.”
After another fifteen minutes, there was a knock on the door. Gowan quickly opened it and then, just as quickly, all three of them choked from the smell and turned their heads.
Once Smith was out of the room, Gowan slammed the door shut. “Before I go back in there,” he snarled, “what did you do, canine?”
Smith shrugged. “Nothin’.”
“Then why,” Cella demanded, “did he shit himself?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. He suddenly pissed himself and then took a shit.”
“No way, Smith.” Gowan shook his head. “The man has been clinically diagnosed by three separate psychiatrists, including the one working for his defense team, as a sociopath. So you must have done something to him because”—Gowan opened the door, looked in again, and closed it—“he’s in there sobbing. Sociopaths don’t sob, Smith. They don’t know how to sob unless it’s to get what they want.”
“Maybe he’s faking it,” Cella suggested. “Sociopaths can fake anything.”
“No,” Smith said. “He’s not faking it.”
Try to help a canine and this is what I get . . .
“Then what did you do?” Gowan pushed.
“Nothing,” Smith insisted. “Just stared at him.”
“You didn’t hit him?” Gowan asked. “Cut him with that knife of yours? Shoot him in the knee cap?”
“No.”
“Any reason I need to rush him to the infirmary?”
“No.”
“Did you at least find out anything?” Crush asked.
“Yep.”
When the wolf said nothing else, Cella began rubbing her eyes so that she didn’t get into a fistfight with Smith.
“How about you tell us what he said,” Crush prompted, because the bear had way more patience than any cat.
“Whitlan’s got a kid. A daughter.”
Cella sat up in Crush’s lap. “A daughter? Are you sure?”
“He wasn’t lying to me,” Dee said about Barton.
“Where is she? Did you get a name?”
“He didn’t have the kid’s name, but he had her mother’s.”
Crush stood, carefully placing Cella on her feet. “Good work, Dee.”
“Thank you kindly.” She looked up at Gowan. “Sorry about the mess, hoss.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He pushed open the door and entered the room. Smith looked in at the convict and said, “Bye now, darlin’. Thanks for all your help!”
Cella cringed when she heard a sound familiar to any Malone who’d attended a St. Patrick Day’s parade.
“Jesus, Smith!” Gowan exploded from the room. “You made him throw up! God! He’s throwing up all over the goddamn place!”
Smith shrugged and came over to Cella and Crush. Another shifter, a black bear, waited to lead them out, the security cameras conveniently and temporarily turned off.
“What did you really do to him?” Cella had to ask her.
“Nothin’.”
“Smith,” she said, stopping by the bear. “The man shit, pissed, and vomited after spending less than thirty minutes with you. There has to be a reason.”
“Got me. All I did was stare at him until he told me something I could use.”
The bear looked Smith over. “Did you stare at him with those eyes of yours?”
“I have my daddy’s eyes.”
“Annnnd, we now have our answer,” Cella announced before they made their way out of the maximum security prison and headed home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As soon as Toni stepped off the small plane in Siberia, s
he remembered to turn her cell phone back on and it immediately began to go off with texts.
Toni had turned off her phone before she got on the plane in Long Island. She always turned it off when she got onto flights. She didn’t use it for entertainment like most of the universe. It was strictly for communication. Usually, this wasn’t an issue. But that’s because she traveled with most, if not all, of her family at the same time. However, right now, her family was back in New York and eight hours behind her current time zone, which meant that by now . . . they were just starting to get the full Novikov organizational treatment.
And after reading the first couple of texts, she knew that they were not enjoying it.
Toni stood in the middle of the tiny airport and quickly responded to Oriana, then Cooper, then Kyle. She was about to respond to Troy when a hand pressed against her back. Without thinking, she spun and swung her right fist.
Shocked but instinctively blocking that wildly swinging fist, Ricky quickly stepped back, his eyes wide.
“Oh,” she said, pulling her hand back and scratching her neck. “Sorry.” She turned away from him and began typing again on her phone.
“Are you all right, Toni?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Just . . .” She got a reply from Oriana and ended up shaking her phone in her now-sore fist and gritting her teeth. “Ridiculous, demon children!”
“Ooookay.” Ricky stepped closer to her but didn’t touch her this time. “We have to go.”
“Go?” she snapped. “Go where?”
“We’re taking a helicopter to Lake—”
“Christ! Now we have to get on a helicopter?”
“Well, to get to this particular location—”
Fed up, “Oh, whatever!”
She stormed off, just expecting Ricky to follow.
Ricky watched the She-jackal march off as Barinov eased up behind him.
“What the hell—” the hybrid asked.
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen her like this before.”
“Well, she needs to calm down, Reed. If she goes at the bears like that . . .”
“I know. I know.” He shrugged and started to follow. “Maybe she’s just tired. We were on a fourteen-hour flight, then that six-hour flight on a smaller plane.”
“Should we get a hotel tonight and wait before we meet with the bears?”
“They’re expecting us tonight, I think. Plus, I’m afraid what she’ll do if we try to stretch this out the tiniest bit.”
The males arrived at the row of glass doors where people came and went. Toni stood on the other side—screaming.
“Are you two coming or what?”
Ricky glanced at Barinov. “Maybe a good night’s sleep is what she needs.”
“Or some puppy Prozac.”
“Stop.”
The helicopter flew them to a small full-human city just an hour or two outside a little-known and never discussed shifter-only territory.
“I have a car waiting,” Barinov told them. He carried a small bag in his hand and led the way to a Range Rover that looked as if it could handle all sorts of terrain.
Ricky held the door open for Toni and she got inside, leaning back into the comfortable seats and resting her bag next to her.
“How are you holding up?” the wolf asked her.
Toni texted Kyle back, informing him that it was definitely illegal to put anything in anyone’s food that “might make them, ya know . . . kinda sick.”
Making someone “kinda sick” was not okay!
She reminded Kyle, once again, that if he ever went to jail for anything, no one in the family would pay to have him bonded out. No one.
Hitting SEND, she finally looked up at the wolf and asked, “What?”
“I said how are you holding up?”
“How do I look like I’m holding up?” she snapped, because it was such a fucking stupid question. “I’m exhausted. I’m stressed out. And I just want to get this stupid trip over with.”
“All right then.” He gestured out the front window. “Vic here tells me we’re almost at the hotel.”
“Hotel? Why are we going to the hotel first? I thought we were going straight to meet with the bears.”
“Nah. Not tonight. It’s way too late. A good night’s sleep and—”
“You’re not listening to me,” she told the wolf. “I want to see the bears. I want to see the bears tonight!”
Ricky stared into the backseat at the She-jackal he was beginning to believe was losing her dang mind. And whether she was or she wasn’t, for safety reasons, there was no way he could let Toni meet up with those bears tonight. It would have to be tomorrow after she had a shower, some sleep, and maybe some valium if he could get his hands on any.
“That’s not in your or the team’s best interest, Antonella.”
Toni dropped her phone in her lap so she could ball her hands into fists. “I want to see the bears now. Now! Do you hear me? Now!”
“Not going to happen, so you might as well just suck it up.”
“I hate you!”
“Well, I’m not liking you much right now either, darlin’, so that only seems fair.”
Frustrated, Toni tried to roll down her window by pushing on the button. Ricky didn’t know what was going on, but the window didn’t go down. That’s when she started punching the window with her fists.
“Hey,” Barinov said low. “Reed.”
“What?”
“You know what’s going on here, don’t you?”
“No,” Ricky quickly shot back. “That is not what’s going on here.”
“Are you kidding? What else could it be?”
Ricky shook his head. “It’s something else. Exhaustion or sudden onset of mental illness. That’s it.”
“You’re serious?”
“I’m very serious. I’m telling you, it’s not . . . that.”
Ricky glanced into the backseat to see Toni pawing at the window with her hands because she still couldn’t get it to open.
“I’m trapped,” she snarled at the air. “Trapped!”
“Nope,” Barinov muttered. “It couldn’t possibly be that.”
They reached a large hotel that straddled the border between full-human and shifter territory.
Toni stepped out of the vehicle and looked up at the building. “Here?” she asked. “We come halfway ’round the world and you bring us to a chain hotel? We might as well have met them on the Jersey Turnpike.”
Ricky looked at Barinov. “Could you get us checked in?”
“Sure.”
Once the hybrid had gone inside the hotel, Ricky faced her. “Look, darlin’, I’m tryin’ desperately not to get real cranky with you. But you are pushing my last redneck nerve.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means we’re in a foreign country and in a hostile part of said foreign country, at least where our kind is concerned. My whole goal is to get you home safe and sound. Your father made it clear that he would accept nothing less. And getting you home safely means that you don’t piss off bears. And the way you’re acting right now . . . you’re gonna piss them off.”
“Fine.”
Ricky frowned. “Fine?”
“Fine.”
Maybe she was being a little . . . terse. Toni was willing to admit that. She probably just needed some sleep. It had been an excruciatingly long trip and dealing with the texts from her siblings hadn’t helped.
Ricky nodded. “Then let’s go.”
They entered the hotel and Toni was pleasantly surprised to find that the interior had a wonderful look and feel to it. Like a hip, sixties apartment, but nothing felt dated or old. It actually felt quite modern and European. She loved it.
Not that she’d admit that now to Ricky.
By the time they reached the front desk, Barinov had already gotten their rooms. His Russian was fluent and his accent almost as good as the twins’—although their accent was flawless after watching some Russian languag
e movie on cable one afternoon. More than one person had asked Toni and her mother what Russian adoption agency they’d used.
Barinov handed Toni her electronic key and, without a word, headed toward the elevators. They went to the ninth floor and walked down the hall.
“This is your room,” he said, briefly stopping in front of it. “I’ll be in the room to your left. Reed in the room to your right. If you need either one of us—”
“Oh, please.” Toni used her keycard and went inside. She closed the door in the faces of the two males, not even in the mood to say good night. She stepped farther inside and took a good look around. She was as impressed with her room as she was with the hotel’s lobby. This would be a nice place to stay for the next few days.
Placing her bag on the dresser, Toni sat down on the bed. Her cell phone vibrated and she sighed. She’d gotten three texts at the same time. Oriana informing Toni that she could not “exist under this regime!” Kyle begging her to re-think her stance on his sketching a naked Novikov. And Bo Novikov imploring her to get her little brother to stop asking him about sketching him naked. “It’s beginning to make me uncomfortable.”
Unable to answer any of those texts, Toni tossed her phone on the bed and fell back against the mattress. She could do this. She would do this. All she needed was a little room service and a good night’s sleep.
Vic focused on Ricky.
“What?” Ricky asked him, annoyed although the hybrid hadn’t actually done anything yet.
“Are you going to admit the problem now?”
“She’s just tired,” he said again. “By tomorrow, she’ll be—”
“Even worse.” Vic briefly pursed his lips. “I always thought you weren’t as stubborn as your brothers. Guess I was wrong.”
“No call to get nasty.”
Shaking his head, Vic headed toward his own room. “See you in the morning.”