by Amy Star
Nadine nodded, accepting the precaution. She knew very well that of the three of them, she was the biggest liability. If she was going to join Matthew and Dylan in the field ever again after they settled their current problems, she was going to have to become much tougher than she already was.
She followed them into the overgrown tangle, looking around and trying to detect anything that would hint at the place being a hiding spot. Dylan and Matthew ranged the space, taking their time, stopping occasionally to sniff at the air, or to examine something in the grass more thoroughly. In the environment, Nadine thought it would be an oblivious person indeed who didn’t realize that there was something inherently animal about the two men. Nadine swatted at her arms and legs as she followed the two men’s progress, trying to keep up and stay in their line of sight; there were few places in South Florida that were ever bug-free, and in the scrubby underbrush, it was even worse.
“I’ve got something!”
Nadine paused, turning towards the sound of Matthew’s voice. Dylan hurried from the spot he’d stopped in a few yards away, grabbing Nadine and almost effortlessly lifting her up into his arms to help her get to Matthew faster.
“It’s been dug,” Matthew said more quietly.
Nadine stepped back as the two men put their whole attention on the spot Matthew had found. She bit back a gasp as they both dropped to their hands and knees, clawing at the soft, marshy ground with single-minded focus. Just when she had begun to come to terms with the idea of what Dylan and Matthew were—with the fact that they were animal as much as human—to see them moving like the animals they were still managed to startle her. She pushed aside the reaction, watching the dirt and sand fly up behind the two men, and looked around to make sure that no one else had arrived.
“Got something,” Nadine heard Dylan say.
Out of the hole they’d dug, she saw Matthew and Dylan tug a damp backpack free. She shook her head, unable to believe that out of all the places she had looked at, the last one on the list was the one that had—hopefully—borne fruit. Matthew unzipped the top of the backpack and Nadine saw bundles of bills. She shook her head again.
“Well, that’s one problem solved,” she said, staring at it. “At least—if we assume this is the money that the guy wants.”
“There is that issue,” Matthew agreed, looking at Dylan.
“We have to assume it is,” Dylan said, shrugging. “If it’s not, hopefully it’s more than what Alex took. That’ll make our panther friend happy, at least.”
He closed the backpack up once more and Nadine exhaled slowly, looking away from the two men’s dirty arms and telling herself that the first part of their plan was finally done. If they could find out who they needed to get the money to, then they would be well on their way to getting free of the problem that had initially brought them together.
Nadine followed the two men back to the car, wondering if they were as safe as they appeared to be. She knew that the lions would be trying to catch up to the three of them, that the group would be enraged by the loss of their position—and they were already more than a little angry at Dylan and Matthew for killing their friend and connection.
“You drive,” Dylan told Matthew, handing the man the keys to the car. “I’ll start making some phone calls, see if I can’t get to the bottom of who we need to get this to.”
“I’ll sit in the back,” Nadine suggested. Dylan shook his head.
“Better if I’m in the back, making the calls,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You know, I hope you’re sure you want to be part of our business,” Dylan told her, grinning, “because I don’t think the two of us alone could have gotten to the money so fast. We can’t let you go back to a normal life now.”
Nadine smiled, a warm tingle working through her body at the compliment, a buzz at the knowledge that both of the two men wanted her. What did it matter that they had an animal side? As long as she never had to worry about the consequences of that—at least not directly—why should it bother her at all? Matthew gave her a quick kiss as well before walking around to the driver’s side of the car, leaving the passenger side door open for her.
*
Dylan looked up at the warehouse building, feeling the pounding of his heart in his chest, the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He glanced at Matthew for a fraction of a second before turning his attention back onto the building in front of them.
“I smell lions,” Dylan said, his stomach pitching inside of him at the thought. “And they’re inside there.”
“Yeah,” Matthew said.
“They’re in the building?” Nadine’s voice didn’t sound panicky; instead it sounded only slightly uncertain—and tight.
Dylan glanced at his mate. “They are,” Dylan said quietly.
Nadine met his gaze and shrugged, taking a quick, deep breath. He could smell the fear on her, but as she exhaled, he also sensed the way she was suppressing it. She is getting tougher and tougher every day, he thought with approval.
It had taken them three days to track down the man they wanted; they had changed hotels, hoping to throw the lions off of the scent—it was more important than before, once they had the money that the lions were looking for. Dylan wondered how it was possible that lions could have missed their own friend’s hiding spot.
They’re pretty piss-poor lions at the end of the day, he decided. They weren’t particularly good at tracking—Dylan had expected their hotel to be invaded, had prepared himself and Matthew both for that possibility, but it hadn’t arisen. Dylan sniffed at the scent marks painted in the air and decided that about half of the lions remaining in the group were on something. The other half simply didn’t seem to be very good at some of the subtler aspects of their dual nature.
“Well,” Nadine said, glancing from Dylan to Matthew. “In that case, I guess it’s two birds with one stone, right?”
“Let’s hope,” Matthew agreed. “Otherwise we’re going into a horrific ambush and we might all die.”
“I love how cheerful you always are,” Dylan told the other man sarcastically. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to sort through how many scent marks there were, trying to guess at what they would be going up against in a matter of moments. “We pretty much don’t have a choice in this,” Dylan said, opening his eyes once more. “Everyone ready for this? It’s going to get pretty intense.”
“By ‘everyone’ you pretty much mean me, right?” Nadine gave him a wry smile. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for this. We might as well get it over with, right? Either we’ll win and get them off our backs or we’ll lose and die and won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Dylan snickered. “Pretty much,” he agreed. He took a quick breath and nodded to himself. “Okay, let’s go.”
Dylan knew for a certainty that he and Matthew would end up having to transform at some point during the confrontation in front of them; with so many lions, as well as whatever else Johnny Rosen had to counter them with, it wouldn’t make sense to keep to their human forms if they wanted to survive. That isn’t even the only problem—we have to keep Nadine safe. Dylan could only hope that after seeing the worst, the most brutal aspects of life for shifters, Nadine would still be as willing as before to stay by his and Matthew’s sides.
They stopped at the door and Dylan gave Matthew a nod; his best friend knocked. Dylan glanced around and saw that there were a few different security cameras aimed at the door they stood in front of. At least, Dylan thought, there could be no confusion about who they were.
They had finally tracked down Johnny Rosen the night before, after trying a few different potential contacts. Not all of the members of the shifter community living in South Florida were “out”—they didn’t all participate in the forums and sites that shifters tended to use to communicate and organize. Dylan and Matthew had had to check through their few connections as well as the different sites they got work from. By the time Nadine had come up wi
th the locations for them to check, they had a list of about a dozen potential people—some of whom were known shifters, some of whom they only suspected due to their connections in the underground. After this, we should probably think about becoming as legitimate as possible, Dylan thought as he waited for someone to answer the door at the warehouse.
Rosen hadn’t seemed surprised to hear from them, and Dylan realized that the kingpin had somehow found out who they were—he was expecting their call. The lions that had been pursuing him and Matthew for more than a week, trying to avenge their fallen comrade and get to the money he’d left behind, were almost certainly acting on Johnny’s instructions. How much Johnny might have known about them, Dylan wasn’t sure. Rosen had answered the phone, and when Dylan had mentioned that he and his partner were the ones who had killed the man’s errand boy, Rosen had simply let out an interested “hmm.”
From there, Dylan had negotiated the meeting; in spite of the fact that he no longer had the element of surprise, he did still have the money that Rosen wanted. That gave him—at least for a short window of time—the power in the situation. Rosen had given Dylan the address to what he called his “headquarters,” a warehouse out in Plantation, and Dylan and Matthew had begun planning as soon as Dylan had gotten off of the phone.
The specific complication of the lions wasn’t something they’d thought much of—Dylan had known it was possible, but he had thought that it was more likely that a man like Rosen would want to cut the lions out, rather than give them a chance to kill the messengers that brought him the money he was missing. He’d been more prepared for the possibility that Rosen would be heavily guarded with other shifters—wolves, potentially other bears.
The door to the warehouse opened, and the woman on the other side of it looked to Dylan like one of the lions that had attacked them less than a week earlier. He looked closely at her face and decided it was one of their attackers. She was healing up from the mauling that he had given her, but he could tell she was a little warier than she’d been before, a little more careful around him and Matthew.
“What are you doing with a plain Jane like that?” The woman nodded in Nadine’s direction, almost sneering at her.
“If you think she’s a plain Jane, you’ve got no taste,” Dylan said. He resisted the urge to take up a protective posture in front of Nadine, knowing that it would serve his mate better to come across as an equal—not a subordinate to anyone. “Are you going to let us in, or do I give this money to someone else who wants to put Rosen out of business?”
The woman snarled at him, and Dylan smelled the spike in Nadine’s fear pheromones. He let out a low, warning growl to the lioness in front of him, holding her gaze until she finally broke off, stepping back from the door.
Another were-lion waited for them, and Dylan wondered just what Rosen had in mind. If he had the lions there as his security force, was it as a punishment for failing to get the money that he’d sent them after? Or was it just a setup, so that Rosen could get rid of the three thorns in his side all at once? Dylan looked around him as the two lions flanked him, Matthew, and Nadine, taking in as many details as possible. Somewhere along the way, Rosen had converted the warehouse into a kind of office—with a labyrinthine hallway leading to the center of it, where Dylan assumed the man himself waited. He followed the guard detail, making sure that no one tried to grab for the backpack in Matthew’s hands. There had to be a way to find out what the purpose of the lions in the warehouse was. Soon enough. You’ll meet the big man and give him the money, ask him what the story is.
A few more turns, and they emerged from the hall and into a clearing in the warehouse, just as Dylan had expected. His heart beat faster in his chest as he saw all of the lions ranged around the room, in different positions, guarding the man seated at a big, sprawling desk in the center of the building. Their contact—their target—Johnny Rosen was a tall, muscular man, with broad shoulders and a faintly feline face framed by long hair. He looked more like a lion than like a panther, but the scent that came from the man told Dylan unequivocally what it was they faced.
“Good to finally meet you,” Dylan called out as they approached the man. He didn’t look at either Nadine or Matthew, holding the gaze of the man they had come to meet.
“You as well,” Rosen said, holding Dylan’s gaze. He blinked and took in first Nadine and then Matthew; Dylan thought, by the lack of expression on the kingpin’s face, that neither of his companions had betrayed even the slightest flinch, or any reaction at all to his scrutiny. “You must be desperate if you’re mating a one-natured girl,” Rosen said, his lips twitching slightly at the corners.
“She helped us take Alex out,” Dylan said, his voice utterly level. “We figured she was worth cultivating.”
“You told me you have my money,” Rosen said. “I want proof.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dylan saw Matthew hold up the backpack.
“This look familiar to you?” Dylan resisted the urge to smile at the brief flicker of emotion on Rosen’s face—something like disgust or dismay, perhaps anger.
“It looks like something of Alex’s,” the man said with a dismissive shrug. “But if it’s not the money I’m not interested in it.”
Matthew glanced at Dylan. Dylan held his friend’s gaze for a moment and then nodded. It was all for show; anyone watching the three of them would know that he and Matthew viewed each other as equals—that they were in charge both in the same measure. But there was a certain need for some kind of status. And Dylan was more than willing to take on the assumed role of ‘leader’—he’d done it so many times when they’d been in Portland that it came naturally.
Matthew opened the backpack and tilted the top of it towards Rosen, showing the bundles of cash that Alex had stuffed into it.
“Now I can’t be sure if this is your money,” Dylan said with a shrug. “But it looks like it’s likely to be. If it isn’t, maybe we can find out who it belongs to and let them have it.”
“Did you count it?” Rosen looked at Dylan sharply.
“It’s about ten thousand, give or take a hundred or two,” Matthew said matter-of-factly. “That sound like your money?”
“It does,” Rosen admitted.
Dylan glanced around the room; the lions were becoming restless already.
“Tell me something, Rosen,” Dylan said, turning his attention back onto the man in charge. “I explained to you on the phone last night that this was in the hopes that you would no longer feel the need to send these cats after us.” Dylan gestured to the lions ranged around the room, occupying balconies and doorways, watching them balefully. “So why are they here?”
“I thought I’d show them how to do their job, if you were right,” Rosen said, shrugging. “And if you were wrong, I figured it would be worth it to both me and them to take you out here and now.”
“And now that you’re getting your money back?”
Rosen glanced around the big, broad room. “What are you asking in payment for my money?”
Dylan smiled slowly. “We want your lion friends here to leave us alone,” he said. “We want you to leave us alone, too. We came here after being exiled from our sleuth. We want to start a new life. That’s all we want.”
Rosen nodded slowly. “Seems reasonable,” he said. “Problem is that I promised these nice folks a chance at revenge on you.”
“I figured as much,” Dylan said. “But you win out on this; no need to give them revenge in exchange for your money, or to give someone a position they haven’t earned.”
Rosen’s eyes widened slightly, and Dylan resisted the urge to smile.
“I think,” Rosen said slowly, recovering his composure, “that it would be best to let you and these fine folks settle the issue between yourselves.”
“You’re in charge,” Dylan pointed out. “If you make it a blood oath that they won’t come after us, as their patron they would have to agree to it—and we would be in our rights to kill any of them th
at violated that oath.”
“Why should I?” Rosen shrugged. “If you die in the fight, I get the money. If I go to the trouble, I have a bunch of disgruntled employees who I might lose any time one of them takes it into their head to come after you.”
“Give him the money,” Dylan told Matthew. He barely glanced at Nadine; her ankle wasn’t fully recovered, but the stitches in her neck had started to dissolve. She was as ready as she could possibly be for the situation at hand.
“Cowards!”
Dylan smirked at the cry from one of the lions above them. We’ll see who’s a coward, he thought. Matthew stepped forward, confident and upright, and laid the backpack down a few feet away from Rosen’s desk.
“How do you think people other than your current employees are going to treat you, Rosen, if you let folks who help you get killed?” Dylan held the man’s gaze, preparing himself for the fight that he knew was now inevitable. “Think people are going to rush to help you when that happens to them?” We may have to go ahead and kill the bastard anyway, he thought wryly.
“I can’t have angry employees,” Rosen said, dismissing the idea of anything other than his corporate interests. “They rise up against me, there’s more of them…it gets too messy. I’m sure you understand.”
A moment later, Dylan heard one thud, and then another. The lions were leaping down from their perches, landing as quietly as they could—but not quite quietly enough. He glanced at Nadine; she was already moving into position, her hands shifting to the weapons he’d given her before they had left for the meeting. Matthew stepped to the side, putting more space between them, and Dylan loosened his clothes, twisting and moving in place. He knew without a doubt that he would have to change at a moment’s notice; he would have to risk alienating Nadine in order to keep her safe—and so would Matthew.