Chapter Eighteen
Melinda couldn’t fathom a little old lady using this derelict warehouse as a hideout.
She rubbed at her sternum. That bad feeling was back again.
Could her client’s husband have paid his hacker to infiltrate her IRC?
Not beyond the bounds of possibility. She hadn’t forgotten the malware.
If his efforts hadn’t been directed at her, if it hadn’t ended with a tattooed hired killer breaking into her apartment, she might have admired his skill.
Lord almighty, what was she doing here? Skulking around abandoned warehouses, playing out a scene from a thriller movie?
She stared down at her empty hands. Weaponless.
If Pierre and Louis were carrying any, they hadn’t drawn them.
What were they thinking? She was so out of her depth she might as well be at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Despite her qualms and her mind screaming at her to retreat, she stayed put, crouched beside Louis and Pierre, glad of their comforting presence. Her self-appointed bodyguards. That she was paying. Probably huge sums of money.
Was her client here at all? Oh, God. What if…
What if her client’s husband’s goons had been and gone, taking his wife with him?
Melinda’s mother had never attempted to leave her father.
The shame of it, the fear of how the community would view her for not being the dutiful, submissive wife expected of her.
Raised in a different era, her mother had clung to the old ways, her tradition, her culture.
If her mother had left, had escaped from the hell of her marriage, Melinda could only imagine being dragged back into it would have been devastating.
Movement caught her eye—a shape, small and hunched, edging out of the shadows.
The tap-tap of something on the cement floor.
Melinda squinted. There, a woman bent over, using a cane for support.
Shit. The woman was frailer than she’d thought.
Yet she’d had the strength and the courage to leave her abusive husband, dive into the dark web, and hide out in this place.
If Melinda were in her position, would she have done the same?
“L-three-six-four-CY. Is that you?”
L364CY. Legacy. Her username. That MysticMage spoke the numerals—didn’t understand what the numbers signified—confirmed Melinda’s suspicion that she wasn’t a regular user of the dark web.
She was lucky she’d found Melinda. No other hacker would go to these extremes to protect their client, or make certain the new identities they’d created held.
“Is anyone there?”
The voice was frail, with a nervous quiver. The poor woman. Melinda half rose to go to her, but Pierre held her back.
“Wait,” the words whispered against her ear. “Not alone.”
She nodded, and as one, the three of them stepped out from behind the barrels, Louis and Pierre using their bodies as a shield.
The old woman squinted at them. “L-three-six-four-CY? Is that you?”
“Yes, MysticMage. It’s me. Legacy. L-three-six-four-CY.” She tried to shoulder her way to the front, but Pierre growled at her.
The old woman smiled. “You’ve brought your friends with you.”
“Yes, these are the friends I told you about. They’ve come to help me get you to safety. Don’t be afraid. You can trust them. It’s your husband you’re running from, isn’t it? I know you didn’t say, but…” The signs were there. She knew them well.
“Oh, thank goodness.” The woman clutched a hand to her chest, edging forward, leaning heavily on her cane. “I’ve been so frightened. I— Oh!”
Eight men slunk out of the shadows. Louis growled low in his throat, a sound more animal than human. He pressed closer to her. They both did.
“Are these men with you, dear?”
Melinda swallowed. They were surrounded by men in tactical gear.
Armed men, their guns pointing at them, and at MysticMage.
On each of them, the dark hint of ink on their necks.
In better light, she’d no doubt she’d find the tattoo was an elaborate F with crossed swords.
The same as the one on the intruder in her apartment.
“No.” Melinda clutched at Pierre. “These men aren’t with us.”
Then something happened that would forever live in her mind, in her nightmares. With a roar loud enough to bring down the rusted tin roof and send all the birds roosting in the rafters into panicked flight, Pierre changed. Right before her eyes. So did Louis.
Their clothing ripped and their bodies contorted. Fur sprouted, and within a blink of an eye, the men she knew were gone, replaced by two very large black wolves. Melinda screamed.
What had been Pierre but was now a beast launched itself at an armed man, taking him down, ripping his throat out.
Guns went off, and a large weight knocked her to the ground.
A beast with wicked teeth and a gaping maw.
Through her haze of terror, she glimpsed MysticMage being dragged away by two armed tattooed men, her cane falling to the floor. No!
She tried to get to her feet, to go after them, but the beast grabbed her clothing in his teeth and dragged her back toward the barrels as bullets whizzed by.
The wolf let go of her, letting out a roar filled with pain and fury.
Those eyes. Hazel, with a hint of mischief despite the situation.
Louis, but not a Louis she’d ever expected to encounter.
What the hell was he? She scrambled backward.
He nodded once then, bleeding from a wound to his shoulder, he joined the fray.
Melinda scampered between the rows of steel barrows, the ping of bullets against them sending her deeper into their midst. Another roar.
Another injured wolf, or the same one? Louis and Pierre.
Wolves. Beasts. Not human. And MysticMage gone.
Taken by the men her husband had hired. Oh God.
Oh God. Oh God. She’d be lucky to get out of this alive.
More bullets pinged off the barrels. Melinda crouched between two of them, her hands over her ears, her body shaking and tears streaming unchecked down her face.
The job she did was dangerous. She knew that.
Her clients, all of them, were hiding from something, or someone, but never in a million years had she imagined it would lead to this.
To a shootout in an abandoned warehouse.
Highly trained and well-equipped men facing off with two… two…werewolves.
She rocked, her choked sobs drowned out by the battle around her. Until they weren’t. Until her keening was the only sound in a silent warehouse.
Melinda clamped her mouth shut. What was happening? Were they all dead? Louis? Pierre? Would they turn on her now? Her chest was so tight she struggled to breathe.
Melinda listened. Not a sound. She peered through a gap between the barrels.
An arm, flung out, unmoving, lay at the very edge of the stack of barrels.
A human arm, not covered in fur. A hand, not a paw.
Above the wrist, a watch. Not a Roger Dubious Excalibur.
Her relief at that discovery had her wanting to flee. But she had to know.
She crept forward, one silent step at a time, to the next barrel.
Her hands flush against its cool surface, she peered around it.
Vacant blue eyes stared at her, unseeing.
She jumped back, her breathing shallow and her heart racing.
She snuck another look. The hand belonged to one of the tattooed men, dead now.
She didn’t focus on his throat, the blood and gore.
She could barely look past his sightless eyes.
Melinda moved to the next barrel. Another body in tactical gear came into view, a gun beside his leg. She’d never fired a weapon. Never held one, but it seemed like a good idea to have one in her hands right now.
Melinda inched forward. In the silence, strange cracking and popping sounds. Oh, God. Could the werewolves, the beasts she’d once known as men, be…be…devouring their kills?
A door slammed behind her. Melinda gave up on stealth and dove for the gun. Her shaky hands locked around the grip and, on legs wobblier than Jell-O, she rose. She swung the gun from one threat to the next.
What the actual fuck?
Not a single tattooed man remained standing. From the amount of blood, she was sure none of them had survived. What she faced, what her brain was having trouble comprehending, were the three naked men standing before her. Louis, Pierre and Gabriel.