The first bodyguard went into the house through the front door, the second signaling Pablo to follow. Pablo stopped, saying something, and the bodyguard pointed a gun at him.
Maria turned around, planting her feet, and started talking to Bradley. And talking and talking. She gesticulated toward Pablo and back to the limo, but she didn’t look afraid.
“What’s she doing?” Ronan whispered.
“Giving us a window,” Ellison said. Goddess bless her. “The bodyguard’s turned off the alarm. Let’s get inside before it’s on again.”
***
“Pablo’s the only one who’s ever wanted to help me,” Maria said to Bradley as they stood on the wide brick doorstep. The door to Bradley’s vast house lay open behind her, the bodyguard who’d opened it waiting impatiently inside it.
“So why don’t you leave the Shifters and work for him?” Bradley asked. He sounded mildly curious, not annoyed.
“Because he’s a criminal, and you can imagine what he wants women who work for him to do. I must get away from the Shifters, but not with him. I need money to do that. That’s why I’m here.”
Bradley watched her, again with little change in expression. Pablo had been right to say the man had no emotions.
“Let’s go inside, Ms. Ortega. My bodyguards get anxious if I’m out in the open too much. Mr. Marquez will be given something to drink in the living room, while we talk in my office.”
Pablo raised his hands, conceding, and walked inside. He’d balked at the doorway, pretending to be too scared to enter, and Maria had taken the cue. If she talked enough, and the door was open long enough, Ellison, if he’d gotten into position, would be able to slip inside. If not . . . well, she was back to hoping Pablo’s girlfriend had given them the right codes.
She walked into the house, Bradley came behind her, and the last bodyguard shut the door. The interior was vast, the foyer rising two floors straight up, with a wrought-iron railed balcony encircling the second level. Doors opened out from this balcony, which flowed in a circle around the twisting staircase.
The first and second bodyguards peeled Pablo off to a room beneath the balcony, while the third and fourth bodyguard led Maria upstairs following Bradley. Bradley ushered Maria into a room that faced the rear of the house, its window overlooking a meadow studded with bluebonnets, which were bursting into full spring ecstasy.
Bradley motioned for Maria to sit in front of a long empty desk, and went to a wet bar, where he poured cold bottled water into a glass with ice and brought the bottle and glass to her. The bodyguards took up positions on either side of the doorway.
“All right,” Bradley said, resting one hip on his desk. He looked almost congenial, except for the chill nothingness in his eyes. “You say you want to help me obtain Shifter cubs for my clients. How would you do it?”
“They make me watch the brats,” Maria said, wincing inwardly at the word, but telling herself to play it out. “I could bring one or two to a location where you could easily pick them up. If I had known you were coming when I was with Olaf yesterday, I would have kept the other Shifters away.”
“Hmm,” Bradley said. “You could get away with that once, maybe. What happens when the next set of cubs you’re supposed to be watching also get taken? They’ll be suspicious, don’t you think?” His tone held faint scorn.
He didn’t believe her. Maria shut her eyes, bunched her fists, and tried to look helpless and desperate. “If you pay me enough, I only need to do it once or twice. Then I can take the money and leave town—leave the country. I can guarantee three, maybe four cubs. The Shifter families don’t have that many kids, so you won’t get much more than that anyway.”
Her heart burned. If those precious cubs were lost, the entire community would be devastated.
“Might work,” Bradley conceded. “You’d have to make sure the cubs weren’t anywhere near any of the adults.”
“I could. They watch me pretty carefully, but they also consider me only a servant.”
“They’ll punish you if the cubs you’re looking after go missing.”
“They will.” Maria drew a breath and took on a resigned expression. “But they won’t kill me. I’d be ready to go after the second drop.”
“And you want—what? Maybe ten grand a cub?”
Ten grand. If Bradley was willing to pay her that much to lure cubs away, how much more must his clients be paying to receive them? She felt sick.
“I think that will work.” Now to have him let her and Pablo out of the house so Ellison could continue with his plan. She rose. “Adios, Mr. Bradley. I’d better have Pablo drive me back, before the Shifters punish me for staying away too long. It’s my one day off a month.”
“You can go, certainly.” Bradley’s mouth turned up at the corners. “But I’ll have Mr. Marquez stay a while as my guest. You give me the first cubs tomorrow, and I’ll let him go home then.”
Maria contrived to look worried, then she gave him a nervous smile. “He won’t like that. But all right. I’ll do it. I can . . .”
Shouts cut off her words. The bodyguards came alert and hurried out the door, and Bradley’s half smile vanished.
The cold he’d exhibited before was nothing to the iceberg he became. All humanity left his eyes, and he came off the desk, walked back to the wet bar, and calmly took out a pistol.
Maria’s heart stopped, certain he was about to shoot her dead.
“Get under the desk,” he said in clipped tones, then walked past her out of the room.
Maria heard the unmistakable snarl of a wolf, then the roar of a bear and the uncanny, breathy growl of a tiger. Then shots firing, the chug, chug, chug of a semiautomatic.
Her heart pounded in fear. But the animal snarls only escalated, and one of the bodyguards cried out. Maria raced out of the room.
Below the balcony, two wolves fought to tear a gun out of one bodyguard’s hands. Ronan rose to his full Kodiak bear height, bringing his paw down on a second bodyguard. He didn’t even have to use his claws.
The man collapsed, and then a puddle of blood spread out from under him. Ronan blinked his bear eyes at him in surprise, then at Pablo, who stepped out from the living room, a large gun in his hand.
A giant Bengal tiger was flowing up the stairs. One of the bodyguards at the top, face paling, shot him. Once, twice.
Tiger came on. The man stepped back. “Mother fu—”