The scariest thing about hosting two former Army Rangers and a tiger shifter was how fast they could lay waste to fifteen pounds of barbecued meat.
I surveyed the carnage in my kitchen and sighed. Aunt Ruby would have been shocked, but I was ready to order my guests to clean up their own darn mess. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how I chose to look at it, Dallas and Austin Fox were also computer geniuses, and they were currently huddled over their fancy, shiny laptops with Jack, investigating the Darken. I wandered into my living room to see what progress they’d made (and, let’s face it, to escape the kitchen).
“I think I found something,” one of the twins said. “I wouldn’t have noticed it, because it’s hidden very, very well, but this pathway is labeled LGF, and those are our sister’s initials, so it caught my eye.”
I decided the kitchen could wait, and I plopped down on my couch next to the twins. Jack made a weird rumbling sound, but I ignored him.
“You have a sister? Is she older or younger? What’s her name? No, wait. Let me guess. Dallas and Austin, so she must be El Paso, but with the initial, so L Paso.”
Even with blank looks on their faces, the Fox brothers were pure eye candy. They had enormous muscles, high cheekbones that belonged on super models, and skin so dark it gleamed. Put that together with the crisp white shirts and khakis, and it was a wonder every woman for miles around wasn’t lining up at my door.
“No, ma’am,” Austin—or Dallas—said. “Her name is—”
“Lubbockina? It has to be a Texas city name, right?”
Dallas—or Austin—sighed. (Really, when twins were this identical, they should wear name tags all the time. It’s only fair to the rest of us, right?)
“Louise. Her name is Louise.”
Jack cleared his throat. “You were saying? Did you find something about the banshee murders?”
“No. Unfortunately, nobody is talking about those, even in the Darken. I thought we had a shot, because sometimes the psychos like to brag about their kills, but no joy.”
“Well, thanks for trying, Dallas,” Jack said.
So the one closest to me was Dallas. Got it. Although how Jack could tell was beyond me, unless it was some mysterious shifter thing.
Austin tapped a finger on his screen. “I did find a lot of buzz about a new assassin, which might have been what those Russians were talking about. But why they were here, I still don’t understand.”
I jumped up off the couch. “Russians? The bad guys we confronted at Beau’s were talking about Russians. This is it. A clue, at last!”
Dallas and Austin both gave me wary looks, but Jack knew what I was talking about. He grinned at me, but then Lou leapt at him and he had to focus so he could catch her. When he started to scratch behind her ears, my heart did a squishy gurgle at the sight of the big, tough man cuddling my sweet little cat.
I told my heart to shut up.
“I agree. I think it just might be a clue,” Jack said, oblivious to all squishy heart dilemmas. “Where did you guys see Russians?”
“At the Pit Stop, when we were getting gas,” Austin said. “They were talking about how piss—annoyed they were at having to come to such a, um, rural town to look for such a high-level assassin.”
“Ha. Like we care what a bunch of killers think of our town,” I scoffed, but inside I was miffed. Hometown pride, and all. “But how did you know they were Russian?”
Dallas stopped peering at his computer screen and glanced up at me, his forehead furrowing. “They were speaking Russian.”
“Oh. Right.”
I sometimes forgot that people who could get out of Dead End and see the world might know more than one language. I gave myself exactly three seconds for self-indulgent wallowing and then moved on. “So if everybody is looking for some high-tech assassin who they think is based around here…”
“And the banshee killer’s last known victim’s phone ended up here…” Jack continued.
“Then we might have one killer doing two different things,” I said. “Killing strangers for profit, but killing banshees out of some twisted personal agenda.”
Dallas and Austin were following our conversation by turning their heads back and forth like they were at a tennis match. “But why Dead End?”
I threw my hands in the air. “Who cares? What matters now is catching him. Is there a way to put out a fake call for a hit man on the Darken, and see if we can catch this guy in a cyber trap? I mean, I don’t know anything about any of this, but—”
Jack put Lou back on her perch and grabbed my hands. “Tess, that’s brilliant.”
“No problem,” Dallas said, his fingers already dancing across the keyboard. “We need an amount that will make him take notice.”
“Five million,” Jack asked.
“You’ll need proof of deposit,” Austin said. “Trust me, anybody at this level will check your bank accounts first.”
“I have it,” Jack said grimly, leaving me wondering exactly how much Atlantean gold he really had.
“Done,” Dallas said, hitting the ENTER key with a flourish. “At that amount, we should hear back in seconds.”
Seconds passed. Then minutes.
An hour later, we still hadn’t heard anything.
“Maybe he’s too careful for this kind of trick,” I said, dropping my head into my hands. “Maybe we’ll never find him.”
“We’ll find him, Tess. But for now you should get some sleep.”
He stood up and ushered Dallas and Austin—I could never think of them as the boys again—out to their truck, where they stood talking for a while. By the time Jack walked back inside, I was three-quarters of the way asleep on the couch, dirty dishes or not. I didn’t even open my eyes when I felt the dream-soft sensation of Jack carrying me to my room. I just drifted on a cloud of exhaustion into a peaceful sleep.
Until the roar of a tiger in my room yanked me into instant, terrified, wakefulness.