She took a shuddering breath and smiled at Hunter gratefully, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on Maxim, intense, watchful. It was then that Kylie realized with a sinking feeling that the taste, the smell of violence was still very much present. She stilled, almost afraid to even breathe, as the two alpha predators stared at each other, each as still as a marble statue.
Then Maxim blinked, and the suffocating tension in the air seemed to dissipate all at once.
“I’m okay, now,” he said roughly, though his eyes still smoldered with anger.
Hunter nodded. “Your tiger’ll get his chance. Both of us will get our taste of blood soon.”
Although his words should have disturbed her, something deep inside of her understood them well, wanted to join them, even. Kylie hastily pushed those feelings to the side. It was best to deal with them later, when she wasn’t so on edge and in danger of losing herself to her jaguar. Hunter and Maxim had enough to deal with without having to chase after a rampaging Returner.
Maxim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Call the bobcats and the wolf Elders and have them come to the club. I think it’s time to plan an infiltration of our own.”
***
Still reeling from the discovery that Molly, minus Ty, was now a prisoner in a place that had done unspeakable things to God-only-knew how many others, Kylie sat silently beside Hunter on one of the many couches in one of the VIP sections of Southern Glacier and listened while the large group of assembled shifters strategized.
“One of my guys has managed to learn the identity of one of their scientists, a geneticist from the LA lion clan,” Maxim said, bringing up a photo of a blond man who looked to be around sixty onto the flat-screen on the wall before them. “He’s also learned where the lion stays within Amarillo when he is not at the ranch.”
“I recognize the bastard,” one of the wolf Elders from Parker Grove spoke up. “He was in the news not too long ago—something about analyzing the mitochondrial DNA in some recently discovered Denisovan bones.”
“If they’re mucking about with DNA, do you suppose they are trying to develop some kind of biological weapon at that ranch?” another wolf asked. “Something that is only affective on shifters?”
Maxim’s expression hardened. “That’s the very reason why this needs to be an infiltration rather than an all-out assault. We need to do this as quietly and covertly as possible to not only give us a chance to rescue our loved ones unharmed, but to also steal as much of their data as we can get our hands on. The last thing we want is to go in guns blazing…” He leveled a look at the group of bobcats. “…and risk them killing all their captives and destroying all their data. We need to be inside the complex and down in the lower levels before they even realize they’re being invaded. We’ll back them into a corner of our choosing. While rescuing our people will be our priority, we need to find out what the bastards are up to just as badly, especially now that we’re finding more and more of the bastards in our city.”
“We can use the geneticist as our distraction,” Hunter said, looking meaningfully at Kylie, “catch him as he’s heading back to the ranch and use his vehicle. We can have the bobcats take out all the perimeter guards simultaneously with tranqs while their attention is turned to the geneticist’s arrival.”
Maxim nodded. “I can also have some of my guys hack into their security system. It should buy us enough time to get a couple of rescue teams inside. I wasn’t able to locate any schematics, so we’ll be moving pretty much blind from that point on. We only have the intel Jack Bray has provided us of the interior and its personnel. We’ve constructed a partial floorplan based on what Jack’s recollected.”
The picture of the geneticist was replaced with the ranch’s partially constructed floorplans. Kylie frowned as she noticed several underground floors. How in the world were they ever going to find all the captives, much less rescue them from such a structure, especially when they had such a small window of time to do it?
“One last thing.” Suddenly a picture of Molly Maxim had probably swiped from one of her social media accounts appeared on the flat-screen next to the ranch’s floorplan. “This woman’s name is Molly Johnson, one of the lions’ most recent victims. Although human, she is a friend of Kylie Moore’s and was taken, we think, to use as a bargaining chip.”
Suddenly all eyes were on Kylie. She could feel her back stiffen as she struggled not to fidget. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to remind everyone that she was a Returner. There were a lot of different clans present, most with shifters she had never met. She didn’t want a repeat of the awkwardness she’d had to endure last night with the wolves once the meeting was over.
“As you well know,” Maxim continued, capturing everyone’s attention again to Kylie’s relief, “the lions have always coveted Returners. Thus, it’s crucial that we relieve the bastards of such a precious coin. Also, before Molly was taken, she wasn’t aware of the existence of shifters, so use caution when approaching her should her ignorance still be true. The last thing we need to throw into the mix is a terrified, hysterical human who thinks the tiger or wolf trying to save her is there to eat her.”
“Which city and location are our various groups to meet up?” the wolf Elder, Glen, asked.
“Lubbock,” Maxim replied. “I will be flying in ahead with a few people as soon as our business here is concluded in order to meet with my contacts who live in the area and to start coordinating our attack. One of my cousins has an estate on several hundred acres on the western outskirts of the city. It is remote and will draw no attention as it’s located on a private hunting range and often hosts large groups. We’ll discuss our final plans in more detail once everyone has arrived at the estate.”
“Are we going with Maxim?” Kylie whispered into Hunter’s ear as several people began to ask Maxim a few more questions.
“Yes,” Hunter whispered back. “He has a private plane, a six-seater Cessna.”
“He has a pilot’s license?” she asked, impressed.
Hunter nodded. “Everyone in his family does. It’s a tradition.”
Movement in the corner of her eye had Kylie instinctually turning her head. A young, blonde girl that could have been anywhere between sixteen and twenty was striding towards Maxim, a harried look on her face. Kylie caught the scent of tiger as she passed by their couch with a curt nod to Hunter and a curious glance at her.
Maxim instantly stiffened when he caught sight of her. She stepped right up to him and began whispering into his ear.
“Who is she?” Kylie asked.
Hunter’s smile was half amusement, half worry. “That’s Sasha, Maxim’s little sister.”
CHAPTER TEN
Kylie felt Sasha’s stare like a physical touch as she and Hunter approached the tiger siblings after the rest of the shifters left to make preparations to travel west. Blatantly sizing her up, it made the jaguar in Kylie want to growl in warning. To distract herself from inadvertently doing something embarrassing, she focused on the warmth of Hunter’s hand around hers and tried to make her expression as friendly and open as possible.
Maxim glanced at his sister, probably sensing the slight tension between them, and said, “That’s right. You two haven’t been introduced yet. Sasha, this is Kylie Moore, Kylie, this is my little sister, Sasha.”
Kylie held out her hand with a small smile and was relieved when the girl’s scrutinizing gaze melted into a grin as she accepted Kylie’s hand for a shake. “Nice to meet you, Kylie. I’m glad to see Hunter has finally found a strong woman that’ll cheer his brooding ass up. Except for the night he brought you here and you started that brawl, he hasn’t been in the club except to talk business with Max in ages. I haven’t seen him that animated since he and my brother used to pick fights with the Bengals or the bears back in high school.”
“Um…” Kylie had no idea how to respond to that, looking at first Hunter and then Maxim with a raised eyebrow. “You picked fights?”
Maxim’s grin was nearly identical to his sister’s. “No, we just finished them.” Then his expression sobered. “And we sure as hell will finish this one.”
Sasha’s eyes suddenly became fierce. “We’ll get Anna back, Max. Ryder and Kylie’s friend, too. We’ll make those bastards pay for even thinking they could touch our own without severe consequences.”
“You’re coming with us?” Kylie asked.
The blonde girl nodded, then threw a challenging look at Maxim. “I’ll be flying the plane. The last thing Max needs is to be exhausted once we reach Lubbock. Our older brother and my mate can run things here just fine while we’re gone.”
Maxim threw up his hands. “Fine. You can fly us there, but, I don’t want you anywhere near that damned ranch.”
“I don’t have a death wish, Max,” Sasha huffed. “I’m not nearly as good a fighter as any of you, but I want to do my part in helping Anna. I love her, too, you know.”
Kylie shifted uncomfortably, suddenly feeling as if she was eavesdropping on a conversation not meant for outside ears.
“Hey, we’re going to head out, you two,” Hunter said, breaking the awkward mood, to Kylie’s relief. “We need to grab a few things for the trip.”
Maxim nodded. “Meet us at the airport in an hour, same hanger as always.”
“We’ll talk more later, Kylie,” Sasha said, something like a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. Kylie could well imagine the stories she could tell her about Hunter.
A slow smile stretched her lips. “I look forward to it.
“I just knew the two of you would get along,” Hunter said with a heavy sigh as they drove away from the club. “She loves to tease, so expect to hear plenty about all our past exploits at the oddest times.”
Kylie chuckled. “I could tell, though the way she was looking at me in the beginning, I half-expected her to go for my throat.”
Another sigh. “She can be very protective, too. She’s always treated me as one of her brothers. In this instance, I’m glad she insisted in coming along to take over pilot duties. Maxim needs the rest badly whether he’ll admit it or not.”
Kylie poked him in the side. “So do you. I can’t imagine that you got more than a couple of hours yourself last night.”
“It’s only around an hour and a half flight from here to Lubbock, so I doubt any of us’ll get much sleep on the plane, but I promise to sleep once we get to Maxim’s cousin’s estate. We’ll need to be as rested and alert as possible should we decide to move on the ranch as early as tomorrow.”
“This whole thing is almost surreal,” Kylie said, shaking her head. “Last week I never would have thought I would be taking part in a military-like rescue operation.”
“If we didn’t need your ability to shift into a lion,” Hunter said unhappily, “you wouldn’t be getting anywhere near that god-forsaken place at all.”
“My best friend is in there and probably my mother,” Kylie said heatedly. “Even if I couldn’t shift into a lion, there’s no way I would’ve let you leave me behind.”
“Which brings us to the problem of your father,” Hunter said. “Should we tell him what we’re doing? I can’t imagine that he’d be thrilled about you going directly into the lion’s den, even if your mother is there.”
“The condition he’s in, I’d rather not upset him, but if something happens to me, I don’t want him to blame you, either. He needs to at least know about what Jack said about the cougar shifter that looks like me.”
Hunter reached over and squeezed her arm. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Kylie matched his determined expression. “We’ll look out for each other.”
She was still feeling more than a little guilty nearly an hour later as Hunter and she boarded Maxim’s plane. She could still see the flash of panic in Paul’s eyes when he had realized she meant to throw herself into the thick of things. He had spent a good portion of his life keeping her hidden away from the lions only to have her willingly enter into their domain in the end and knowing there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop her from doing it, or worse, being unable to do anything about it, even join her, because he was currently stuck in a hospital bed.
“Promise me that you’ll bring my little girl back to me.”
The look in Paul’s eyes when he had said that to Hunter was seared into her soul forever.
“The rest of the group are already on the road,” Maxim informed them as they settled into the rear-most seats while the three wolves he had brought for their security filled the rest. He then gestured to the cell phone clutched tightly in Kylie’s hand. “Has Karen tried to contact you yet? I’m sorry to say my people haven’t been able to locate her or Mitch.”
“No, and that fact really has me worried,” Kylie replied.
“Maybe we should contact her first,” Hunter suggested, “send her the text you mentioned earlier about Kylie and Paul being moved to a more secure location.”
Maxim nodded. “Do it, and then turn your phone off until this whole mess is over. That goes for us, too. We can’t be sure that they won’t try to track them. We can buy a few pre-paid phones once we reach Lubbock.”
“Fine by me. Gaither has already sent me over a dozen texts today,” Hunter said with a grimace. “Needless to say, he’s less than pleased that I’m ignoring him.”
“I hope he doesn’t start pestering Paul,” Kylie fretted.
Hunter leaned over and kissed her forehead tenderly. “Your father took on a lion assassin without hesitation. Compared to that, taking on an Elder, even one as insufferable as Gaither, should be a piece of cake.”
“The Elders are going to be so pissed when they find out we’ve left them out of all this,” Kylie said.
“No doubt,” Hunter agreed, “but we still have no idea about the identity of the gator who kidnapped your friend or even if it was a gator at all. Plus, with all the Sniffers suddenly popping up everywhere, even they will have to admit that keeping our rescue plans close to the chest was the smartest move here.”
“That’s enough yapping out of you three!” Sasha called from the front of the plane in a no-nonsense tone. “I offered to fly the plane to give you a chance to rest, Max, and I expect you to take it! Buckle up. We’re about to take off.”
Maxim sighed and turned to sit down in his seat properly without a word.
Hunter laced their hands together and looked at the back of Maxim’s head with a faint smile.
Score one for Sasha.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kylie brushed her lips lightly over Hunter’s lips, making her lover scrunch his nose adorably as his eyes fluttered open. “We’re here,” she said.
Hunter blinked a few more times, then lifted his head from where it had been resting on Kylie’s shoulder.
“I only meant to close my eyes for a few minutes,” he said sheepishly.
Kylie smiled. “I’m sure that’s what Maxim thought, but I think he drifted off the moment his eyes closed. I wish we didn’t have to wake him up.”
“Sasha will make sure he gets plenty of rest at the estate; I guarantee it. I’m actually glad she bullied him into allowing her to fly us here. She’s really the only one that can force him to take care of himself sometimes.”
Thirty minutes later, Kylie was shaking the hand of Maxim’s cousin, Lev, a blond, handsome man in his mid-thirties and then they were climbing into his black Escalade. She ended up squished in between Hunter and Maxim in the backseat.
“Several of your men are waiting for you back at my place,” Lev said as they left the airport. “Based on the intel I saw before I came out here to pick you all up, we should be able to draw up a pretty great battle map of the area. Josh also said that geneticist you’re targeting left the ranch early this morning and headed into Amarillo. He currently has a couple of wolves staked out
outside what appears to be his current residence.”
“Good. We should probably expect the first people we recruited to start arriving in four to five hours,” Maxim said.
“I’ve got the large hunting lodge on the west field ready to accommodate them,” Lev said. “You all can stay in the main house.” Kylie saw him grin in the rearview mirror. “Even the jaguar asshole in the back, but only because he has a lady with him.”
“Thanks,” Hunter said dryly, but he was grinning, too. To Kylie he added, “Lev’s still sore about losing a friendly fight with me back when I was only thirteen.”
“That’s because I never expected you jaguars to be so sneaky!” the Siberian protested. “I was limping for two days after!”
Hunter snorted. “And whose fault is that?” he shot back, completely unrepentant.
“Really, Lev, give it a rest,” Sasha said from the front seat. Although she could only see the girl’s profile, Kylie imagined she was rolling her eyes at her cousin.
“So what kind of game do people hunt on his land?” Kylie asked.
“Deer, wild boars, some emu, nothing too exotic,” Hunter replied.
“Are we talking about human hunters or shifters?”
“Both, but mostly shifters.”
“My hunting packages are quite popular,” Lev cut in. “Maybe when things aren’t so dire, Hunter can bring you out for a weekend of hunting.”
A surge of excitement washed through her at the thought of chasing down a deer. It was unsettling as she had never had the desire to hunt, even the human way. Now that her shifter side had awakened, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to ever hunt, no matter what her instincts said about the matter. They hadn’t yet revealed to Lev that she was a Returner, so he naturally assumed she had been hunting all her life like most shifters.
Tempted by the Jaguar #4: Infiltration (Riverford Shifters) Page 6
