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Why so fucking early?
Do you think they found Mosa or Justine?
Kalchik took them, I told you that already…
But Kalchik’s dead, isn’t he?
Fuck, Henric’s whore is heading this way.
A fresh wave of malicious glee washed through me to hear Kitka so named. I was all for girl power and sisterhood, but the bitch had driven a long, wicked blade all the way through my eyeball to scrape against the back of my orbital socket.
The room went silent. I guessed Henric had entered and I was correct, his far-too-fucking-comfortable voice clear and smugly satisfied as he called everyone to order. I craved the moment he realized his pissy little reign was over.
“Today is a trial,” he shouted, the tone stripped thin like the rest of him. “A trial of my traitorous wife and daughter in absentia. Two thieves who made a deal with Ilya Kalchik to depose me, to steal our territory.”
Clover’s voice came over the earpiece. “I can’t listen to his shit. We’ve reached critical mass and that sadistic bitch’s phone is pinging almost on top of Henric’s—like she’s practically humping his leg. They're both within striking distance of the other.”
I closed my eyes, old memories of Henric and Kitka humiliating me with their oversexed public displays ricocheting inside my head. It wasn’t the affair that caused me shame. I wanted no part of the man. No, it was—
Mallory’s hand landed gently between my shoulder blades, a push of his alpha energy settling into my chest to both warn and warm me.
“I’m going to increase the chaos factor in the hall by playing it over the intercom and their phones,” Clover said before giggling the command we had all been waiting for. “It’s go time, my darlings.”
The delighted laugh was followed by a recording of Henric’s voice playing over the intercom and dozens of phones. The replay wasn’t in sync. I doubled over, holding my gut and trying not to laugh. If I couldn’t control it, Mallory would think I was hysterical.
And maybe I was.
That stupid cunt…Her psychotic little…stupid cunt…stunt is going to get us all killed.
Deliver them…psychotic stunt…not alive…
Confusion spread through the room. More whispers asking if that was Henric’s voice? And Mammad’s? And where the hell was Mammad?
“Oh, he’s dead,” Kitka tittered, her voice wildly uneven. “So is Pohl. Your fearful leader is too stupid to know that you never send a rat to do an assassin’s job. Can’t say they went down easy. Not like Pohl’s simpering bitch daughter or Mammad’s rent boy Xander.”
Nearly every damn shifter in the room started demanding answers, some shouting, some whispering, but all wanting to know why their phones had started playing at once and what the hell Kitka was talking about. Was she admitting to four assassinations of leap members?
The shouts and accusations were a glorious symphony playing in my ear, but they couldn’t drown out the sound of Mallory starting his beast of a motorcycle. I looked over at him and caught the jerk of his head directing me to climb on. With the same agility that marked my panther, I pounced into place behind him, the MP7 unslung and ready for action as we roared out of the woods and toward the meeting hall.
The leap didn’t know the surprise it was in for.
Neither did we.
CHAPTER35
MOSA
“I’m rampingup the volume they’re getting inside the meeting hall,” Clover announced, the same devilish delight filling her voice as when she had first discovered that my passcode worked for more in the building than the PA system. “Should give everyone on a bike some sound cover. I’m also engaging the electronic locks on all building entrances until our teams are in place.”
“This is really going to work,” Doone said, a pleased flush warming his flesh as he shifted from coasting on the motorcycle to picking up speed. Riding her own bike behind us, Onyx matched our pace.
The meeting hall came into view, its two stories a square monolithic tribute to the Brutalist style of architecture my grandfather had reportedly favored. I think more than anything, the man had gone for affordable and quick. The rough concrete exterior with few windows—all of them narrow vertical slits—only added to how the building vibed more like a prison than a place to build consensus among the leap’s shifters.
“It’s even uglier than you described,” Doone said.
As we slid behind a transport van owned by the leap’s resident plumber, I hugged Doone tighter for agreeing with me about the dreadful aesthetics I had found so depressing as a child. With a row of cars in front of us and another behind, the big vehicle provided cover while we waited on the bike for everyone else to get into position.
Parking for the hall was layered two rows deep on all sides, not just where we were on the south entrance. The extra spaces had been mapped out and paved with asphalt in the early sixties—when the pack wars were still a distant threat and my grandfather’s claw had been at its most robust. Many renovations to the hall had been made since then. The auditorium’s size had been reduced, the leftover space broken into small conference rooms later made unnecessary by the Rockford office building the leap rented.
