“But she doesn’t know she’s going to mate a werewolf. Or two.”
“No, but”—Louis shrugged—“she’s probably figured out she’s going to get turned into one. All the same, we can’t tell her or we risk changing something.”
Melinda sipped her tea, letting it all sink in. Her mind circled back to her unspoken question. To what the implications were for her. Would they risk telling her all this, revealing their true nature if she wasn’t…? “Does it hurt?”
Louis dropped his head, and Pierre pushed himself back on the sofa, his expression shuttered. She focused on Pierre. If anyone was going to deliver the bad news, it would be him.
He cleared his throat. “The turning lasts for three days and is…” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Painful.Butwe have medication to temper the pain now. No one would suffer needlessly. We’d sedate them.”
Them. No one. Abstract terms. Not her. Not you. Was this his way of telling her she wasn’t their mate? She resisted the urge to rub at the burn in her chest. Did she want to be their mate? “And the bite?”
Louis raised his head and smirked. “We’re focused on other things when it happens.”
She gaped at them. “You do it when you’re havingsex?”
“Oui,” said the twins in unison, Louis openly grinning, Pierre determined.
The trill of a phone interrupted them.
“Ignore it,” said Louis.
Pierre stared at his phone. “I can’t. It’s Maxime.”
Louis face palmed. “He has the worst timing.”
Pierre levered himself off the sofa. “It’s our alpha, Melinda. I have to take this.”
His phone to his ear, Pierre paced by the window, talking in low tones. Louis focused on his key lime pie. He wouldn’t tell her anything more without Pierre. Was there anything more to tell? They’d said she’d have all of them, they’d called her theirs, butthat didn’t mean… She’d known them all of…what…two weeks? It seemed like a lifetime ago she’d suspected them of stalking her, only to discover they were her new neighbors. Two weeks wasn’t enough time to develop anything serious. Was it? But Gabriel had said…
Pierre ended his call. “We have a new lead. Regis Veilleux is the leader of the men with the fancy F tattoos on their necks. Five days ago, he flew into San Francisco.”
“Does Maxime have a photo?” asked Louis.
Pierre’s phone dinged. “He sent it through.”
Melinda set her tea down. “I guess we better get onto that, then. Find this man. Wherever he is, that’s where my client will be.”
Both Louis and Pierre looked pained.
Pierre pinned her with his gaze. “This conversation isn’t over, but—”
“—we’ll track down this Veilleux and find your client first,” finished Louis.
Melinda nodded. “Okay. Let’s get to work. I’ll just…” She pointed at the stairs. “Too many cups of tea.”
She dashed up the stairs, hyper-aware of twin gazes following her. Melinda had her own thoughts about finding her client, and perhaps this Veilleux guy.
The malware.
With everything that had happened in London—the break in, the assassin in her apartment, their desperate flight to San Francisco and the craziness that had happened since—she’d forgotten all about it. She’d once suspected Pierre and Louis were behind it.
After using the bathroom, she fished around for her purse and pulled out the USB drive. On it, a nasty little virus. If she could trace the malware, she might be able to get a location. Or at leasta region. Then she’d let the virus do its work and shut down their tech. A little payback was in order.
The soft rumble of male voices filtered up the stairs. She popped the USB into her pocket and headed back down.
Pierre had set her key lime pie beside her laptop, and she ate a few more bites as she ran a thorough diagnostic check on her firewalls. Then she amped up her security, before opening up the identity she’d created. The one that had triggered the cyber-attack. Using every skill she had, she teased apart the malware, looking for weakness, for hints of who might have created it. It was an elegant piece of code. And she was going to use it against its owner. It’d been used to track her. If she could reverse it, turn it on itself…
There. Yes!
