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“She’s right, you know,” said Colby. “Let’s try, however, to keep talk of the resistance to a minimum at the dinner table. We try to keep mealtime conversations to lighter fare.”
Dinner was superb. It always was at Windsong. He had one of the best chefs in the region, and the man believed in providing the best for his people. It was said that although he was alpha, his entire clowder considered him to be one of them and that he put the clowder’s needs before his own.
After dinner, Colby suggested coffee and dessert in his study. Oftentimes when Hutch heard the term ‘study,’ he thought it was pretentious. Not in this case. The room was more library than office, although there was a massive desk as well as a comfortable seating area. Nora walked around the bookcases, trailing her finger across the leatherbound spines of Colby’s collection of first editions.
“This rivals, and even surpasses, the Master’s library. You have some intriguing titles I’ve only read about but never seen.”
Colby sat behind his desk, bringing his forefingers together to form a pyramid in front of his lips. “You are welcome to peruse any you like. I would ask, however, that the ones in the glass cases be handled with gloves. They are very old, and some of them are fragile. I think you might particularly like the illuminated manuscripts.”
“I didn’t know you liked old books,” said Hutch, realizing how little he actually did know about her.
“She also likes knowing if there are any hidden exits and how they might be accessed,” said Colby with a grin.
“I’m out of practice. I thought I was more subtle than that.”
“You are, but I would imagine as the Ghost you had to develop exceptional skills over and above the ones you actually needed to work as the Master’s best assassin.”
“I still find it hard to believe that you were the Ghost,” said Hutch.
“I still am,” she said, softly. “Is that going to be an issue for you?”
Hutch shook his head, “Only in that he manipulated and used you from the time you were a child. You deserved a better childhood. You may have had all the material things money could buy, but you deserved to be a child and to be surrounded by people who loved you.”
She smiled, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek before they each took a seat opposite Colby. “And I love that you would have liked that for me. But there are a lot of children who don’t have it anywhere close to as nice as I did. So yes, he’s a sick bastard for taking a child and molding her into a killing machine, but somewhere along the line, he also helped me become the woman I am—the one who could walk away and get on the right side of this battle that’s coming.”
“Let me assure you that you are safe at Windsong and that no one here would ever betray you…”
“I think you have a mole in Mystic River. The Master knows far too much about what’s going on,” said Nora.
“Which leads me to my first question. Who is the Master?” asked Colby.
“He lives on Lundy Island off the coast of Devon; his name is Abraham Strode…”
“Strode? Damn, that was Deke’s pick for the puppet master. I’m going to have to pony up a thousand dollars as I couldn’t believe it would be Strode. Do you know Deke?”
Nora nodded. “The Finder. He is one of the pieces of the resistance that give the Master and the Shadow League the most concern. You are one of the others, as is Hutch. But mostly he fears what he thinks is a growing and organized resistance movement.”
“As he should. We have formed a quinumvirate we have named the Fire Star Alliance, with Deke at the head. The intelligence group will answer to me; Carson Payne is heading up our research group; his mate Amelia oversees air support; and Mark Hadley is running ground support. Hutch will work directly with Deke but have a dual role coordinating everyone’s efforts—especially in covert ops—as well as supervising the recon group. He has more experience in reconnaissance than the rest of us put together.”
“So that’s why the Master wanted Hutch eliminated. He’s an integral part of the resistance.”
“He is. His value to us as a former military operative is enormous. I think their plan when he was in the Middle East was to try and capture and turn him.”
Nora nodded. “The hyenas he sent went rogue.” She reached across and took Hutch’s hand, squeezing it and purring gently down the link to him. “For what it’s worth, none of them are still alive.”
“I figured as much. It’s one of the few things that lets me sleep at night.”
“When they couldn’t turn Hutch,” continued Colby, “they tried to assassinate him. Two clumsy attempts, and then they sent in the big gun—no pun intended.”
Nora smiled. “None taken.”
She was amazing. He could still feel that part of her that was all fated mate and focused on him, and yet she could participate in a discussion about killing and taking down the Shadow League. No doubt about it, his mate was a badass.
“I do wonder why I’ve been accepted so readily into the resistance,” she said.
“We’ve been watching you—not you as Nora, but whoever the Ghost was. From the beginning, Deke identified the Ghost as a valuable asset. Not unlike Hutch, we thought if we could turn you, it would give us a step up on the League.”
“If you know that, then so does the Master, which makes Nora his number one target.”
