Fire is the biggest danger at sea, so most ships are built to avoid it. It took some suggestions from Jaq and a bit of improvising, but we managed to get enough of the yacht on fire to satisfy both Cecilia’s need for destruction and my desire to erase evidence. I’d dragged all the bodies onto the top deck and piled them with anything that looked like it would burn. The final step was to bring up the anchor, letting the yacht drift. It would be found, but that was the Cross family’s problem now.
Cecilia sat in the back of the zodiac, wrapped in the wool blanket. The flames from the burning yacht reflected in her eyes and off her pale cheeks as she stared behind us. I did not look back.
Once we were close enough in for phone signal, I contacted Cora. The marina was quiet as we arrived back where we’d been instructed to leave the zodiac. I carried Cecilia over her protests, since we’d been unable to find her a pair of shoes on the yacht. I’d changed my shirt, leaving the bloody one behind in favor of one of Marcus’s designer teeshirts. It smelled faintly of human sweat and expensive cologne that even the laundry detergent smell couldn’t quite overpower.
Benita was waiting outside the marina in the parking lot next to a gold sedan. She ran to us and I let Cecilia down. There was a lot of hugging and questions being asked and answered as they clung to each other and talked over one another.
“Maybe save the mushy reunion and questions for home?” I said. I rolled my shoulders. I was tired and I still had a very long night ahead of me.
“Thank you,” Benita said to me. She let go of Cecilia and walked to me, tentatively offering her hands.
“Go home,” I said after I squeezed her hands gently. “Work on your alibi story. Keep a low profile for a few days.”
The Crosses had known their son took Cecilia. Now their son was dead and Cecilia was home. The report of her kidnapping wouldn’t make it into the police books, but that didn’t mean the Crosses wouldn’t retaliate on their own. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, knowing I was going to have to talk to Judith one more time. Later.
With the Rivers safely away, Jaq and I got on my bike and headed back to RV-HQ. My mind turned from human problems to the shifter asshole who stole Daniel’s gun, and I drove with a snarl on my face and in my heart. Any exhaustion faded in the face of my wrath.
Death was coming for him, and she was riding a Harley, and all hell would come with me.
Dani and the twins had been productive while I’d been away. The wolf pack had their den north of the docks, where they’d taken over an abandoned building next to a defunct air strip. By the time we returned to the RV, Cora and Alma had blueprints and satellite images for me to study.
Jaq, being the saint he was, went for more coffee. He returned as Dani was filling me in on pack politics and anything she thought could work for our advantage.
“Is that steak?” I said, taking a deep breath of the delicious cooked meat smell wafting from the bag of take-out in Jaq’s hands.
I chewed my steak off the bone and stared at the screen with the satellite image of the den as everyone took a break to refuel.
“Too many exits,” I said. “Smoking them out and waiting with a rifle won’t work.” That was the latest of Cora’s suggestions.
“We have to separate and confuse them somehow,” Cora said. “We can’t take on ten or more shifters. Especially since we know they have automatic weapons.”
She was right. And even if Dani hadn’t given me a patented teenage eye-roll when I’d asked if Russel would honor a one on one challenge, I’d already known the answer. I’d sized him up during our face to face in the RV. Russel didn’t appear to care for fair fights any more than I did.
“What about the air strip there?” I waved a greasy hand at the screen and then licked steak juice off my fingers.
“Looks like open ground, I think those are old shipping containers there and there. Lot of low brush and weeds, but not enough to hide in,” Alma said. Her skin had lost some of its pallor and I hope that meant she’d gotten some rest while I was out on the murder yacht.
A glimmer of an idea woke in my brain.
“He’s not going to honor a challenge, but that doesn’t mean I can’t issue one,” I said. “How many grenades we got left?”
“Hand thrown? One. For the launcher? Three. Need to fix the launcher though, tweak a couple things. Might take an hour?” Cora raised her eyebrows as she took a deep drink of coffee.
“Grenades? That’s going to get messy and loud.” Alma pressed her lips together, thinking. “Not great for killing shifters unless we get a direct hit, either.”
“Just going over options. And there’s no kids in that building?” I looked at Dani.
She shook her head. “I am, I was, the youngest. Nobody with a family is left.”
Dani had explained that her mother, Penelope, used to be the Alpha and that the pack had been a lot bigger then. Russel had swept Dani’s mom off her feet, but after Dani was born he’d gotten meaner, started dominating anyone who argued with him in the pack, and eventually killing them. Dani’s mother had challenged him when Dani was still barely more than a toddler and he’d killed her. After that, the pack had started doing deals with humans, getting into illegal animal smuggling, and finally moving to the docks here where Russel built his dream—a gladiatorial arena that would attract the rich and powerful and let him showcase shifters might right in the open with humans none the wiser as they thought it was all a show. By that point only about twenty of his pack still remained.
Cora, Alma, and I had killed four of them between the grenades and assault at the arena and the one I’d murdered behind the restaurant. Dani was certain that there were at least five who would be at the arena warehouse, since even with the damage, someone would have to oversee the animals and keep an eye on their stuff. Seeing that he hadn’t brought the full pack to attack us at the RV earlier, I was inclined to believe her. It still meant at ten or so shifters and probably a few humans, though Dani said the ones that Russel kept around the den weren’t fighters and she doubted they’d do more than hide.
“Think it is far enough out that the human police will be slow to respond if we cause some noise?” I asked.
“Pretty sure they are paid to ignore everything,” Dani said. “I’ve seen Russel talking to a couple of cops, he gave them a full tour behind the arena.”
“We’ll want to do this as quickly as possible just in case. Also we don’t want him to have time to call in any reinforcements.” I tossed the well-chewed steak bone back into the empty Styrofoam box. “Can you lift at least fifty pounds and run with it?” I asked Dani.
Her copper-gold eyes widened and she nodded, cautious excitement on her face. “Of course,” she said. “You’re gonna let me come with you?”
“Wait, really?” Alma said. She gave me a look. Cora just grinned.
“You planning to betray us?” I kept a straight face, barely.
“No,” Dani said. “I want to make things right. I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Fine,” I said. I looked at Jaq. “Think you can do some shopping for us tonight?” Which was code for using his ability to go almost anywhere to get us things that might not be easily or legally acquired.
“Of course,” Jaq said. The wild look he’d taken on during the sea journey was gone, his face back to being smooth and bland and utterly forgettable.
“Okay, then I have a plan. First, we need to rent a van, cause I’m guessing this thing isn’t going anywhere soon. Something without windows would be best, yeah?”
Jaq nodded, confirming both my statements.
“Let me guess, after that question mark, question mark, question mark, and then victory?” Cora said. She was already typing on her laptop, probably figuring out where to get a van at this time of night.
“Few more steps. We’re going to set some traps. Then we shake the hornet nest, and I’m going to do whatever I can to get Russel to chase me into the traps. Ladies can stand by with grenades for crowd control if it comes to it.”
“There’s a lot of variables in that plan,” Alma said. “Starting with getting Russel to split off from his pack.”
“I’ve been thinking about that challenge thing,” Dani said, her gaze flicking to meet mine and then down, then back again as she summoned her nerve.
“Go on,” I said.
“I think I can get him to come out alone, to accept a challenge.” She wrapped her arms around herself and watched me with wary, huge eyes.
“You?” I tipped my head to the side, wondering what I was missing. “He’ll eat you in one bite.”
“No. He’ll come out. And he’ll chase me. I can lead him to you, to the field. The pack might come out, but they’ll be slower. They might wait to see who is winning.”
“Why would he accept your challenge and not mine?” I had a feeling we were missing a crucial piece. There was no planet on which Dani was strong enough to take on her father.
“Because I’m going to show him what he wants,” Dani said, her voice so soft I almost missed the words. Her nerves seemed to fall away as she lifted her chin and stared me down.
“He was trying to force you to shift into something else in the arena, wasn’t he?” I voiced the suspicion I’d had since I’d realized how similar she smelled to Russel.
“He suspects I can, but I know as soon as I confirm it, he’ll try to make me his mate.” Dani spit the words out, her hands digging into her thin arms as though she could hug herself tightly enough to erase the horror that must have been her life in the pack.
No, the kid wasn’t going to betray us. And I was not going to let her down.
“You’re just a kid,” Alma said, looking at Dani and then turning her head to me. “You going to let her do this?”
I looked at Dani, seeing both the determined girl before me, and the desperate, defiant girl from the arena. She’d been severely injured, surrounded by angry, hungry lions, naked and alone. And she’d stared up at the monster who put her there, a man who was supposed to love and protect her but who had instead thrown her literally to the lions to die for not giving in him what he wanted. She’d stared up at Russel and she had said “I will not beg.”
I met Dani’s copper-gold gaze with my own icy one and read the same message in her now.
“Yes,” I said. “I am. So let’s get that shopping list together. We attack at dawn.”
“Are we really attacking at dawn, or did you just want to say that cause it sounds cool?” Cora said.
“We attack at dawn,” I repeated, emphasizing every word.
And it sounded just as badass the second time.