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Tate locked eyes with Havana. “Call us if anything happens out here that we need to be aware of,” he said, so that they’d feel that they had something to do.
“Okay,” they again said at once.
All right, now they were just being creepy.
“Let’s get moving,” said Tate.
As a group, he and his pride mates slipped out of the SUV. The street was empty, so no one saw them as they silently hurried over to Farrell, who stood in the gap that separated the house from its neighbor. Tate heard muffled voices coming from inside, but nothing else.
Noticing an open window at the side of the house, Tate headed right to it. He signaled at Vinnie and Farrell to cover the rear of the building and then gestured at Alex to watch the entrance. It was important to have every exit blocked, because the men were bound to run.
Tate and Luke stealthily climbed through the open window and then found themselves in a small dining room. They stood still for a moment, familiarizing themselves with their surroundings. The place was shabby. Peeling wallpaper. Sparse, worn furnishings. Stained carpet. The scents of dust, charred meat, mold, and …
“Cheetah,” mouthed Luke, his nostrils flaring. He clamped his mouth shut, fighting a smile.
Yeah, cheetahs, just as Havana had predicted. Fuck, she would never let that go.
Footsteps hurried around upstairs. Someone was definitely in a rush. The only other sounds seemed to be coming from the living room—cursing, heavy breathing, a zipper shutting.
“Goddammit, Vern, hurry up!” yelled the shifter in the living room, who had to be Malcolm Taggart.
“Two minutes!” Vern bellowed.
Tate pointed from Luke to the ceiling, gesturing for his brother to handle the shifter upstairs. As Luke disappeared up the staircase, Tate headed for the living room.
The cheetah was standing in the middle of the small space, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes, muttering beneath his breath. The guy was so lost in his thoughts that it took him a few moments to sense that he wasn’t alone.
Taggart’s head snapped up. He froze. Then his eyes fell closed as he cursed. Shoving a hand through his tousled dirty blond hair, Taggart let out a shaky breath. “I think I can guess by the look on your face that paying you to walk away ain’t going to work.”
Clenching his fists, Tate moved to stand directly in front of him. “Good guess.”
“What I did … it wasn’t personal, all right,” Taggart told him. “I just did what I was paid to do. I have no beef with you.”
“You do now.” Targeting Tate’s mate was very personal to him.
The cheetah rubbed at his nape. “Look, I get that the loner is under your protection … although I didn’t know that at first—not until the boss ripped me another asshole over the phone for failing to kill her. He said something about the Olympus Alpha being a smug fucker. I asked what he meant. He said the devil had your protection.”
“She very much does.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“But then you did, and you came after her again.”
Taggart winced. “It was either I killed her for the boss, or I be killed by him. I chose me.”
“And that was your mistake.”
Taggart flew into motion, leaped onto the sofa, launched himself off the piece of furniture, and landed in the doorway. Fuck, bastard cheetahs were fast.
Tate pursued him as Taggart rocketed through the dining area toward the kitchen—
A mamba lunged out of nowhere and twined herself around the cheetah’s leg. Her weight tripped him, making him fall to the floor. He kicked out, trying to shake off the mamba with absolutely no success.
A bearcat leapt off the bannister and landed hard on his back, making something crack. He twisted with a sharp cry, ramming his elbow into the animal. Snarling, she scuttled up his back and sank her teeth into his nape. He growled a sound of pain, but then he froze … because a blood-curdling shriek came out of the shadowed hallway just before a goddamn devil raced toward him and clamped her jaws around the arm that had batted the bearcat.
Tate could only stare. This shit was … yeah, he hadn’t seen it coming. At all.
The females hadn’t simply aimed to subdue and take Taggart down. They’d swarmed him and held tight to ensure he wouldn’t let his inner cat surface. No shifter would change forms in this situation, because in that moment when a person transitioned from human to animal, they were extremely vulnerable.
Tate cleared his throat, amused. “Thank you, ladies. Your help was most appreciated. I’ll take it from here.”
Only once the three females had backed away did Tate roughly pull Taggart to his feet. A single uppercut knocked the fucker unconscious. Tate let out a loud whistle, signaling for his pride mates to come inside. And then a bullet fired upstairs.
