“What’s that?” Luther yelled, hovering just behind his head, under the low cockpit ceiling.
“It’s the system telling me we’re off-course.” He turned the wheel and pulled the throttle back. His heartbeat skyrocketed with the altitude and he watched the flight display lose its angry, red warnings. “There.”
“When did you learn to fly, man?” Luther put his hands under Sasha’s armpits and tugged at her.
Vadik sighed and hit the auto-pilot controls, flipping switches like rote memory. “Carry fire in one hand and water in the other, like—”
“I know, I know. Babushka.” Luther pulled the dead woman out of the Captain’s chair. “Fine, be cryptic, then. Whatever.”
Dani reached for Sasha’s feet, lifting them out from under the console, and her mouth fell open. She took the headphones from Sasha’s lolling head. “Hang on, Air Traffic Control is trying to get us.” She slipped into the vacated seat, sliding the headset over her ears. She pressed a button for the VHF radio and said, “Negative, ATC. November…uh…64071… temporary mechanical malfunction.”
Vadik looked for the second set of headphones, but they were nowhere in sight. Sasha flew the plane alone? And no staff waited on the billionaire oil mogul? What the hell?
Luther laid the dead woman on the small patch of ground leading from the cockpit to the cabin. Her limbs crumpled to fit, but he began checking her body over.
“N71 received climb and maintain… Level…one-seven-four.” Dani punched something into the nav computer and sat back. “That was more bracing than it should have been.”
“What the hell happened to her?” Vadik looked between the small cockpit windows and the dead woman. Even though Air Traffic Control had okayed their path, he couldn’t help watching for other traffic. Who knew how many seconds they’d been without a pilot.
Luther’s hands went all over Sasha’s body. He looked up with wide eyes. “Nothing. She doesn’t have a wound anywhere. I don’t see an obvious cause of death.”
Dani turned in the seat. “She was crumpled over in the chair like she’d been shot. She didn’t have hands on any controls, nothing.”
“Could this be sabotage?” Vadik swiveled around. “Like, we kill her boss, she gets us all in the air and tries to kill us.”
“But how did she kill herself?” Dani pulled the headphones down around her neck and looked around the cockpit. “There’s no gunshot, no syringes visible, no pill bottles.”
“So she didn’t kill herself?” Luther rested one arm on his bent knee. “Who killed her?”
“We need Hannah.” Dani pressed a button on the console. “We’re still four and a half hours from Choaca.”
“What we really need is Hannah’s dad.” The pixie girl popped up in the hallway, with the blonde behind her. Both stared at the dead woman. “He helped us with Faye.”
“I can call my brother again.” The blonde reached in her pants pocket.
Brother. Vadik felt a strange sense of relief at that word. She’d said alpha and that she loved him. He’d assumed the same thing he assumed about Ilya and Sasha—that they were into kink.
But to call her brother her alpha. Was that some American euphemism he didn’t understand?
“We can’t get rid of her, Andrea.” Niko put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to find out what happened to her first.”
“Hannah’s dad, it is, then.” Luther dragged the body out of the low hallway and into the cabin.
“We can’t call from here,” pixie girl said, picking up Sasha’s feet.
Vadik glanced at the controls, then at Dani, who seemed perfectly content in the Captain’s chair. He patted the round head of the throttle. “You okay here?”
“Yup. I fly my dad’s Gulfstream all the time.”
Of course her dad had a Gulfstream. He could always smell money. She had the air of money.
“I want to see what they’re planning, since it’s my ass on the line.”
“Go right ahead.” Dani waved him off and turned back to the controls, slipping the headphones back over her ears. “Someone will need to stay in touch with radar as we pass over the border, so I’ll do that from here.”
Vadik made his way into the cabin and it got quiet. Half of them looked at the ground, and half of them looked at the ceiling. Only the blonde looked him in the eye. He gave a small shrug and she made an almost imperceptible nod.
“Right, then. Someone has to do it,” she said.
“Do what?” he asked.
Luther was kneeling on the floor beside the black-clad, collared slave that was to have been Vadik’s companion on the mission. “Someone has to tell you what this mission is really about.”
Vadik pursed his lips. “I know what the mission is about.”
“No, you don’t.” The pixie crossed her arms.
“Mags.” Luther narrowed his eyes. “I said I’d do it.”
Andrea unbuttoned the top button of her jeans and Vadik’s senses perked up. She unzipped them and he found his gaze traveling to her hands and locking on to them. Was she… getting naked?
All kinds of horrible one-liners floated through his brain. Let’s get a room, first and Don’t worry, girls always take off their pants when they meet me and Did you fall from heaven, because…
Shit. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t that guy. He was the guy who let girls throw themselves at him or at other people, without a care. Why did it make his blood race with each inch Andrea’s zipper lowered?
And in front of other people.
But Niko put his hand on her elbow and the zipper stopped.
Fuck you, Niko, and the fucking horse you rode in on. Fuck. Why did he care? He didn’t. He never cared.
“No, Andi.” Niko’s flat nickname for her stuck in his head. She wasn’t an Andy. Andy was the name of a flannel-wearing tomboy. Or Andi was a high school Kardashian type. Neither of those were Ahn-dray-ya. He wanted to purr the name out loud.
Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Let me do it.” Niko released her elbow and went behind one of the big chairs. Vadik heard the zip of Niko’s jeans and put up his hands.
“Wait a second. No one needs to undress in front of me.” He couldn’t take his eyes off Andrea’s zipper, even as he spoke to Niko. “Everyone keep your clothes on.”
“Just… We have to do this.” Andrea’s voice was pliant and reassuring, and it made him look up at her sparkling blue eyes. She offered a bleak smile. “We’ll explain in a minute.”
“Before, or after Niko undresses?” Vadik said, trying to hold her gaze. “This is highly irregular, Luther.”
“Give it a second,” his old friend said in a calming tone.
Vadik shifted from side to side. “It’s obvious you’re into some freaky shit, right? No-judgment zone, here. I mean, I’ve dabbled myself. But public nudity isn’t high on my list of mission parameters.”
“Freaky shit?” Luther and his little pixie exchanged a hard glance.
“What’s he talking about?” Maggie asked.
“The…” Vadik gestured at the dead woman. “BDSM stuff. The whole Master thing and the collar. I understand. All your soccer moms are doing it now, but if the boundaries are supposed to be safe, sane, and consensual, then you don’t have my consent.”
The air shimmered and shook behind the seat Niko occupied and his head disappeared.
Out the side of the seat, Vadik spotted a thick, furry apparatus of some kind. A hairy flogger?
“This isn’t BDSM,” Andrea said, her tone urgent. “Niko is shifting into a wolf.”
Vadik’s jaw dropped and the hairy flogger moved with an unnatural agency. Like it was being wagged of its own volition…
No. Fucking. Way.
The snout of the animal peeked up over the high seat back, then two paws smacked the leather, and the head rose. A thick tongue lolled out one side, and Vadik could have sworn the thing grinned at him.
Niko’s grin.
No. Shitti
ng. Way.
Nausea crept into his throat and he gasped. He hadn’t been breathing. Not that anyone should blame him. If he didn’t know precisely everything he’d put in his body over the past twenty-four hours, he might assume he’d been drugged. Vadik had too many friends who’d been drugged or poisoned, and he never ate anything he hadn’t washed, prepared, or seen prepared. Or that hadn’t come in tamper-proof packaging.
Nope. He was stone damn sober. And there was a wolf leering at him, while he stood over the corpse of a Chechen billionaire’s dead sex slave.
What a fucking Saturday.
The wolf’s face disappeared and Vadik heard a strange whoosh noise. Then a few rustles of fabric slipping, and Niko’s head and shoulders reappeared over the chair back. A zip confirmed that he was no longer naked.
Everyone stared at Vadik, but he couldn’t focus on anyone.
“Why so silent?” Niko grinned. “Most people flip out.”
“Most people?” Andrea snapped, turning around. “I swear to the gods, y’all have no boundaries about showing your wolf to humans. I’ve seen more shifting in front of people on this mission than—”
“Just wait.” Vadik swallowed. “What do you mean, your wolf? All this…you’re going to need to explain this.”
Maggie grabbed his arm and dragged him into a chair. “Most people need to sit down after seeing what you just saw.”
He shook her hand off and stared up at Andrea, who seemed almost as uncomfortable as he was. Squirming, tapping toe, licking lips. Everything but sweating.
“We don’t usually show our wolf to humans,” she said. “And I get that you need to know, because of what you’re going to see on the island, but this is a big risk for us.”
“Big risk?” Vadik scoffed and glanced at the black window. Out in that night, somewhere, there were others of this kind. What were they called… werewolves? “Lycans are a myth. Something Carpathian mothers tell their naughty children to keep them inside on a full moon.”
“I promise. It’s not a myth.” Luther slid in to the seat facing him and set his jaw in a hard line. He looked up at Maggie.
“We can shift again, if you don’t believe us.” Maggie gestured around the cabin. “All of us can.”
Vadik swallowed at the lump in his throat and glared at his friend. “Luther? You’re one, too?”
“I wasn’t when we last met.”
Maggie slid her hand onto Luther’s shoulder. “I had to change him on our last mission.”
“I would have died, otherwise.”
Niko emerged into the aisle, fully clothed, and stood beside Andrea. “We had to tell you, because Ilya knows, and you’re going to be Ilya.”
Vadik forced himself to breathe. This was more complex than he’d been led to believe, and he hated complex missions. They were usually the ones that went pear-shaped. “So, if I’m Ilya, who’s going to be Sasha?” He gestured down at the dead woman. “I’m assuming they’ll expect me to land in Mexico and have a consort. And if this man is anything like what I’ve been led to believe, they’ll know precisely what Sasha looks like and who she is.”
The group all exchanged looks, which eventually landed on Andrea, and Vadik felt something crawling up his insides and latching on to his throat. It couldn’t be her. He knew enough about himself to know he was attracted to the leggy Texan. It wasn’t a good idea to send sexual tension out into the field. It had a tendency to get people killed.
“It’ll have to be you, Andi,” Niko said.
“No.” Vadik stood and dropped his voice, trying to hit forceful. “She cannot go.”
Andrea raised one eyebrow. “And why not?” She pointed around the circle, “Niko’s a guy, so is Luther. They’ve seen Maggie, and these guys probably have pictures of Sasha. I can easily dye my hair.”
“Before we get to Mexico?” Vadik shot back.
“Fine, then we stop somewhere else first, and radio ahead to Choaca that Ilya decided to take Sasha shopping.” Maggie shrugged. “It’s the only workable plan.”
Vadik shook his head. “No. I know someone I can call. If we re-route somewhere, I can have her here in less than a day.”
“A tall, thin woman without a Russian accent, who also happens to be a wolf?” Andrea’s brow shot up higher. “You know someone like that?”
He fumbled for words and finally snapped his jaw shut. All hope of phoning a friend was lost. Vadik shook his head. “You don’t know that they know she’s a wolf.”
“There is no way they’d let Petrov bring a wolf on the island, sight-unseen.” Maggie drew a line in the air with her extended hand. “Absolutely no way.”
“He’s doing things to the wolves on the island.” Andrea crossed her arms and the brightness in her face went dim.
He wasn’t sure what caused the shift in her usually upturned, half-dimpled smile, but it was so noticeable, it almost made him want to hurt someone for causing it.
“Bad things,” Luther added. “You’re better off not knowing.”
“But I can’t take her.” He pointed at Andrea. “She’ll never pass for Sasha.”
“You don’t know how good an actress I really am,” she retorted.
“I don’t care how good you are, you’ll never be able to be Sasha. Her body language, her vocabulary, her every movement screams submissive. She is his slave, in every way, and you don’t have a submissive bone in your body.” He took a deep breath and watched his words land hard on her newly recovered smile.
“Oh, honey.” She turned her shoulder just enough that it felt almost like a flirtation. A call-out. A challenge. “You don’t know me.”
“I know someone who can teach her,” Niko piped up. The group did a double-take and he shrugged. “My sister’s into that stuff. Fifty Shades, and all that.”
Vadik cleared his throat. “Fifty Shades isn’t going to do us any good. We need a real Dominant. A real Master. Someone who can teach her the subtle things. If this is going to work, she needs to be Sasha. Pray to God, but avoid the rocks, as Babushka would say.”
Andrea rolled one shoulder back. “I’m doing it.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but he held it back, licking at one of his teeth to hide it. “We’ll see if you can.”
She took a step toward him and met his eyes. “I can.”
The cadence of his heart tripped, a thud-thud went missing, and he laughed to recover. “We shall see.”
Danger ahead, something shouted in his ears. But Vadik just stood, toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with a pretty blonde thing from Texas and waited for her to look away.
I’m in control.
I’m in control.
I’m in control.
She smiled and white flared around those beautiful blues. “As you wish.”
Translation: No. You’re. Not.
Chapter Four
Chicago, Illinois
* * *
Andrea’s teeth rattled. Her body, even with the extra heat the magick generated, was freezing. Everything in the damn city was frozen. They’d been in this damn cab for a half an hour and it was still cold. I hate snow.
Thank the gods she’d at least worn jeans and boots, but the tank top she was sporting left nothing for any guy to imagine. Her nipples stood at attention beneath the thin jersey knit, saluting the world.
“Dr. Lee is on his way. We’ll meet him at the airport in four hours and he’ll do his thing,” Maggie hollered over her shoulder from the front seat.
No need to inform the taxi driver they had a dead body on a jet at the airport.
Andrea turned to look at Dani, seated next to her in the back of the van. The California uptown Barbie enforcer was snuggled up under Niko’s arm. The extra body heat had to be nice. Andrea frowned, wishing she’d gotten stuck sitting next to sexy-as-hell-broody Vadik.
Broody or not, she would totally snuggle that to avoid knocking her teeth loose in this bone-chilling cold.
“Do they not have a heater in this thing?” she grumbl
ed under her breath.
“We’re almost there, Andi” Niko chuckled. “You poor spoiled Texan with your two weeks of half-ass winter.”
“Don’t start with me. I seriously can’t feel my face right now.”
A snort of laughter came from the seat in front of her. Stone-cold-badass-assassin was laughing at her? Really?
The sudden urge to slap the back of his head shot through her arm, but she refrained. He might not take well to her treating him like she would one of the guys back home. Something told her he wasn’t used to ever being told how to behave.
Maybe the big Russian guy would melt as she got to know him. Most people did. She hadn’t met anyone yet who could resist her cheer for long.
“My sister’s place is right up here. I already called and told her we were coming,” Niko said. “We’re dropping you off and then I’m taking the rest of the team to see my Uncle Janosz.”
“I don’t get why we can’t all take a pit stop at your sister’s,” Maggie hollered from the front.
“Because this is my uncle’s neighborhood. No one goes anywhere or does anything without asking permission first—especially the family. We’re lucky he said I could leave these two with Natalja, usually he wants to meet all visitors.”
“Weird,” Maggie muttered.
“That’s the Polish mafia for you,” Vadik said, his voice very calm and relaxed for how much new and unusual information he’d absorbed over the last couple hours. He was handling it quite well in Andrea’s opinion.
“You really are a mobster,” Luther said, more of a statement than a question.
“I just have a big controlling family,” Niko retorted.
“You’re a Lupesco, yeah?” Vadik asked.
“Yes. But you’re Russian, what would you know about my family?”
“I know about everyone’s family,” the big mercenary answered quietly.
Niko harrumphed loudly on the other side of Dani, and Andrea couldn’t help but smile for a second. Men were always trying to outdo each other, no matter where they were from.
Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven Page 3
