She stepped in front of Ellison and bravely faced Dylan. “If I decide to kiss Ellison, it’s my business.”
Dylan looked past her to Ellison. “Are you making a mate-claim then?”
“I wouldn’t have accepted if he had,” Maria said, raising her chin. She’d decided once she’d climbed out of that basement that she’d never let anyone talk over her again. “It’s only kissing.”
“Maria.” Ellison’s voice was low and warning.
“I don’t care. You all say it is the woman’s choice to accept a mate-claim, and then you talk like it’s decided for me. I’m not mating anyone.”
“Maria,” Ellison said again. He put a broad hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. I’m not in their pack. I’m not about to let them bully me.”
“Pride,” Sean corrected. “Felines have prides. Lupines have packs.”
“Well, no shit,” Ellison said, his drawl broad.
“That was for Maria’s benefit.” Sean gave her a half smile, but Maria’s heart still pounded with the unspoken threats. “I like that she’s choosy. Makes good sense.”
Dylan alone remained silent. He was a hundred years older than the others, which made him more careful.
His gaze was for Maria now, not Ellison. Dylan had looked Maria over when she’d first been rescued, when she’d stood on a hot, dry airstrip in Mexico, understanding that she was to go away with more Shifters. Dylan’s gaze had been calm, holding the weight of ages. He’d not looked at Maria in hunger, as Luis and Miguel and his Shifters had, but in watchfulness.
Now Dylan’s watchfulness returned. But there was something new in his eyes—concern for Maria, and also respect.
She saw the same in Sean. The Morrisseys had watched Maria like the overbearing father and older brothers she no longer had. She was grateful to them for it, but she would not let them browbeat her.
“Are we going to go talk to this Pablo?” she asked.
She felt Ellison tense behind her, his hand still on her shoulder. Dylan, Maria knew, would not get one step closer to her, and neither would Sean.
Dylan looked from Maria to Ellison and back to Maria again. “Yes,” Dylan said, giving her a quiet nod. “Sean, fetch Spike, and we’ll go.”
***
Ellison’s warmth felt fine on Maria’s left side as he drove her in his big black pickup the short journey to speak to Mr. Marquez. Maria sat between Ellison and Spike, Spike’s tattooed bulk squeezed into the cab with them. Dylan’s small white pickup followed with Dylan and Sean and the Sword of the Guardian.
Spike bulged with muscle, his entire body covered with tatts, and he kept his head shaved. In the last six or so months, Spike had relaxed, changing from a man who lived for nothing but fighting to one who had more to love. Discovering he had a four-year-old cub, and finding his mate, Myka, had softened the Feline who’d once been hard as granite.
Ellison drove them to a warehouse district and a large mechanic shop housed in one of the older warehouses. When the two pickups pulled up, Spike and Ellison emerging from one truck, Sean and Dylan from the other, the guys working on cars stopped and slowly straightened. Gazes followed the four Shifters and Maria, with Sean’s sword obvious on his back, as they moved toward the entrance.
The man called Pablo Marquez had an office in the back of the warehouse, shut away from the noise of the men working on cars. Pablo had dark hair and eyes, Latino coloring, wore a business suit, and rose smoothly when they came in.
He was also a criminal. Maria sensed that before she took two steps inside. He didn’t shout the fact—his clothing was tasteful and he didn’t flash jewelry, but she knew. He was too congenial, too courteous, and there weren’t enough cars being worked on to pay for this cushy office and his thousand-dollar suit.
“I saw you coming,” Pablo said, remaining on his side of the desk. “Which means you wanted me to. How are you, Dylan? Sean. Ellison.” He cleared his throat as he looked up at Spike. “Eron.”
Spike gave him a nod, not betraying surprise that Pablo called him by his real name. Only Myka called Spike Eron, but Pablo seemed the kind of man who knew everything.
“Drink?” Pablo asked without moving. “I have plenty of cold beer, stronger if you want it.”
He carefully didn’t look at Maria. Maria saw his curiosity about her, but he was acknowledging that she belonged to the Shifters, and he wouldn’t poach.
Not long from now, Maria thought with conviction, I won’t be treated like a possession. By anyone. I’ll stand up and tell people like Pablo Marquez what to do with themselves. She started to smile, imagining it.
Ellison didn’t see her smile, because he was standing in front of her, a barricade between her and Pablo, but Sean shot her a puzzled look.
“What did you come to ask me to do?” Pablo said, lacing his fingers together. “And why does it take four Shifters and a civilian to ask it?”
“Ellison,” Dylan said.
Ellison described what had happened in the tunnels—how he’d found Olaf about to be abducted by the three men with a net and a tranq rifle, how he’d chased them out of the culvert to see them leap into an SUV. Ellison rattled off the license number, but Pablo held up his hand.
“I don’t have to look it up. High-dollar SUV, professional thugs with top-of-the-line equipment, fake plates. That’s Clifford Bradley.” Pablo shook his head. “He’s dangerous. Very dangerous. Even for you, I think.”
“If he’s so dangerous, why haven’t I heard of him?” Dylan asked.
“He’s a recent arrival. From Atlanta, but he works the entire country. He also doesn’t have his finger in things you’d be involved in—you’ll never see him at the Shifter fight club or throwing back a beer at a local bar. He’s high dollar. The higher the better. He has clients in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris . . .”
“Clients for what?” Dylan asked in his quiet voice.
“Drugs mostly. The very expensive kind that fund wars. Weapons. Diamonds. Anything he can move that’s sought after by the ultrarich and untouchable. I’m too small-time for him—I don’t even think he knows I’m alive. Fine with me. I leave him alone.”
“Why would he try to take Olaf?” Maria asked. “Not for ransom, was it?” She knew that kidnapping was a lucrative business in some third-world countries. Even people who couldn’t pay much for the return of their loved ones would manage to pay something.