Chapter
11
Chloe
If a cat supposedly had nine lives, how many lives did feline-shifters have?
This was the question rolling around Chloe’s mind as she stared at the case information spread out over her bed in front of her, trying to ignore her worry over Delta. Or, perhaps she should say, the lack of information. If Amazons Inc. didn’t discover something more substantial than pictures of a demon’s cheating mate with her lover, then Lulu Ivanov was going to be convicted. That would be a death sentence.
Chloe shook her head. So far, this case was not looking good for Lulu, and she seriously hoped the tiger-shifter had some of those nine lives left to spare. Otherwise, Elena and Gage were going to be devastated at losing Lulu.
This situation had shitty stamped all over it. But Chloe wasn’t one to dwell on the negative. There had to be something she could find to prove Lulu was innocent.
Her mind boiled all the information in front of her down to the facts.
Lulu Ivanov had been in love and having an affair with a mated demon, Andrew Holden. Andrew’s mate, Marissa, had been having her own affair with a man thought to also be a feline-shifter.
Seemed the Holdens had a preference for pussy … cats.
Chloe snorted at her own joke as she stared at the pictures of Marissa and her lover leaving a hotel room together.
According to Lulu, Andrew had refused to leave Marissa after being shown the pictures because Marissa was pregnant with his child. That made Chloe wonder why Andrew was so sure the baby was his and not his wife’s lover. Did demons have some sort of extrasensory power that allowed them to divine that sort of information?
Luckily, from reading so many of her aunts’ files, she already knew demons didn’t have the same sort of sensory abilities that shifters had. Demons couldn’t smell, see, or move as fast as shifters, meaning either Andrew Holden had had some sort of other extra sensory ability to know the child his wife carried was his, or he had been a delusional fool.
She would bet her lucky panties on the delusional bit. And she never bet her lucky panties on anything. They were that damn precious to her. They might not have super powers, but some of her greatest schemes had been pulled off while wearing those undies, like when she won the bet with Kent.
That thought made her envision Kent pulling off her lucky panties as he gave her a smoldering stare with those gorgeous eyes of his …
She quickly shut the thought out, reminding herself of how Kent had disappointed her on their last phone conversation. There would be no fun hanky-panky happening with the sexy demon, which she found really sad. The man was just that good looking. That was probably why he was the manwhore that he was.
Pushing thoughts of Kent aside, Chloe decided she needed to go check on her laundry before one of her well-meaning aunts put her delicates in the dryer.
If her family thought she was rabid about her Jimmy Choo heels, they didn’t know her at all. It was her underwear she was deadly serious about. Not because she wanted to look pretty for a man, but because she wanted to feel pretty. It was something her mother had taught her years before she passed away.
“You have to put your armor on,” Agatha Demos used to say.
It took a teenage Chloe a while to realize that her mom wasn’t talking about real armor. Nor was she trying to encourage her daughter to look sexy for someone else. It was about doing the little things that made you feel pretty and self-assured. Having the lacy intimates on her body helped her feel like a strong, confident woman who could take on anything. It might seem silly to others, but to Chloe, it was her armor. And God forbid if her aunts shrunk her beloved armor, because she would go totally psycho on them. No one messed with her undies!
Grabbing her glass off the nightstand, Chloe looked at the contents and frowned. All of her ice had melted, dammit! And she liked to chew on ice while she was thinking. She would just have to get more ice after she checked on her laundry.
Making her way down to the main floor where the laundry room was, Chloe heard the front door open then slam shut.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her sister Elena came into view, sans mate.
“Where’s Gage? Isn’t he supposed to be glued to you or something now that you’re carrying his spawns?”
Elena shot her a withering stare as the front door opened and slammed shut again, only to be followed by what sounded like angry stomping coming in their direction.
“ELENA!” an enraged male voice roared before Gage came into view and walked over to Elena, standing right in front of her, their noses almost touching they were so close. “If you slam a door in my face one more time today, I’m going to—”
“What, Garfield?” Elena cut him off. “You’re going to, what? Take my mouse toy away? Refuse to give me fresh kitty litter? What exactly is the big, bad alley cat going to do to little ol’ me?”
A growl sounded, a clear warning. This was no tiger-shifter to fuck with. He was obviously pissed off.
Anyone else might have been concerned for Elena’s safety after that angry growl, but not Chloe. No, she was totally fine with her sister’s mate getting mean with Elena for two reasons. One, she knew Gage would never really hurt his mate; he adored her beyond reason. And two, more than likely, this was all Elena’s fault. Therefore, Chloe sat on the bottom step, wishing she had some popcorn while she watched this fascinating show. She also wished she had a camera to record whatever was about to happen. America’s Funniest Videos was always accepting new submissions, and these two idiots were totally show-winning material.
Elena pointed her finger in her mate’s face. “I’m tired of you bossing me around. I’m moving back in with my aunts.”
“The hell you are!” Gage roared. “You’re my mate, carrying my cubs, and your ass will damn well stay with me where I can protect you.”
Planting her hands on her hips, Elena snarled back, “Protect me? Who are you going to protect me from? Huh?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Gage solemnly told her, “Yourself,” which only served to enrage his already hormonal mate.
“ME? You’re going to protect me from me? That’s just ludicrous.”
Gage shook his head. “No, what’s ludicrous is you trying to flambé your brother with a flamethrower. What’s crazy is that I had to fight you tooth and nail to get that flamethrower out of your hands when you know damn well you should be taking it easy because you’re carrying our cubs. And what’s absolutely insane is the fact that you threw a temper tantrum like a two-year-old when I took the flamethrower away.”
Elena spun away from her mate, crossing her arms over her chest, and stared at the floor as she sniffled. That sniffle was followed by a second, and then Chloe watched as an actual tear rolled down her sister’s cheek, followed by another tear, and another, until Elena Demos was silently sobbing with her back to her mate.
Looking at Gage, Chloe could tell that he didn’t need to see his mate’s face to know she was crying. He could both hear and smell her salty tears. That didn’t stop Chloe from being amazed. Not because she thought her sister was putting on an act. No, that was a total Chloe move all the way, one her sisters had never perfected. No, what disturbed her was the fact that Elena was crying at all.
Elena never cried!
Hormones must have been making a mess of her tough as nails sister. That was exactly why Chloe was never, ever going to have kids. They caused havoc before they even popped out of your body. Then they ruined your precious vagina and ran you ragged for the next eighteen years.
Staring at her sister’s tears, Chloe knew one thing—this just would not do.
She got up from the steps, walked over to stand in front of her sister, and did the only reasonable thing a loving sibling did when they saw their usually hard-ass sister bawling like a spoiled brat. Chloe threw the water in her cup straight at Elena’s face and smirked when her sister gasped at the cold liquid hitting her. Then, when Elena glared at her, Chloe told her, “Suck it up, buttercup,” and walked away.
Chloe made it exactly one step when she heard shuffling from behind her and looked over her shoulder.
Elena had her hands outstretched, trying to grab Chloe, while Gage held his mate back by her hips.
Being the mature person that she was, Chloe gave her sister a wink and said, “In case you couldn’t tell, I agree with Gage. Have a great day!” She then walked toward the kitchen and laundry room, holding her now empty cup.
Chloe couldn’t help thinking that she couldn’t wait until her future nieces or nephews got here. They were going to drive Elena absolutely nuts, and that would be almost as good as Black Friday at her favorite department store.
A few minutes later, after Chloe had checked on her laundry, she was in the kitchen, refilling her glass with cubed ice, when a masculine voice cleared behind her.
Looking back over her shoulder, she saw that it was Gage. Worried that her sister might be trying to sneak attack her, Chloe looked around to see if she could see Elena, but didn’t see her at all. However, Gage was still standing there, staring at her.
Surprised that he seemed to be there to talk to her, Chloe’s eyebrows rose as she hesitantly asked, “Yes?”
Gage cleared his throat again, as if he was nervous. Chloe didn’t believe that for a minute. Or, at least she didn’t until he uttered the one sentence she had never expected to hear from him in a million years.
“I need your help.”
Never one to miss an opportunity, Chloe gave him brutal honesty. “Yes, you do, starting with that shirt. It doesn’t match those pants at all. And we’re not even going to talk about those horrendous boots you wear. I get that they’re supposed to be all special tactical schmactical for your super-secret spy group projects and stuff, but they are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. I think you should go for more Bond and less Bourne Identity.”
When Gage growled in a menacing tone, Chloe decided to stop while she was ahead.
“That’s not what I meant, smartass.”
Confused again, but playing it off, she propped a hip against the counter, and then popped an ice cube in her mouth to melt while she waited for him to say something. It didn’t take him too long to spit it out.
“I need your help with Lulu’s case.”
Chloe had a feeling this conversation was about to get extremely interesting. If only the tiger knew that she had already taken Lulu on as one of her “Chloe cases.” She wasn’t about to share that information with the man, though. Instead, she played nonchalant by asking, “And why would you think I can help you?”
Gage put his hands on the counter between them and leaned forward. “Your sisters may underestimate you, but I’ve figured you out. You’re not the airhead you want everyone to think you are, are you, Chloe?”
Feeling the need to yank his metaphorical tail, she played with him a bit. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I like high-end clothes, designer shoes, and occasionally a rich man. I don’t worry about much else.”
“Bullshit.” He squinted at her. “You’re not the only one who likes to collect information. It’s come to my attention that you were the one who discovered Adam McPhee’s bar so that Elena could track me down.”
Interested in what else he knew about her, Chloe set her cup down, swallowed the small piece of ice in her mouth, and then mimicked his stance with her hands on the counter, leaning forward. “I got lucky with that information, that’s all.”
“Bullshit again,” he growled. “I also know that you go through your aunts’ files and read anything you can get your hands on.”
The hair on the back of Chloe’s neck stood up. How in the hell could he know that?
The question must have been written all over her face, because he answered it with, “Your aunts and I talk.” He grinned. “Let’s just say that they’re impressed with your motivation to gain knowledge.”
Lifting a hand, she waved her finger in the air in front of him. “Nope, nope, nope. All that knowledge shit is for Delta and her research. You want to know the truth since you think you know me, anyway, Gage? I like dirt. I want to know about the skeletons in your closet.” Cocking a seductive eyebrow at him, she murmured in her best phone sex operator voice, “Or, maybe it’s the secrets you hide underneath your bed?”
When Gage turned bright red, it took everything Chloe had not to laugh at him. It wouldn’t surprise her one bit if Gage and her sister had sex toys. Her sister was a total freak, in more ways than one.
Just then, Gage gave her a shrewd look. “That’s exactly why I need your help. You’re good at getting dirt on people. I need you to get the dirt on Anthony Romano.”
“Who’s he and why?” she continued to pay stupid.
“He’s Marissa Holden’s lover. As you know, he’s who I think killed Andrew Holden, since I know my sister didn’t.”
“And what makes you think I can do this?”
He held up his fingers. “Two reasons. One, I don’t think there’s an unmated man alive who won’t fall at your feet. And two, you’re one of the best players I’ve ever met.”
Suddenly, she was just as disappointed in her would-be brother-in-law as she had been in Kent.
“So, you think I’m a whore?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not for hire.”
Gage was shaking his head before she got the words out. “Not how I meant that, and if you’d get off your high horse, you’d know that. I mean, you’re one of the smoothest operators I’ve ever met. You’ve all but knocked Kent on his ass and danced circles around any obstacle you come up against. You’re a hell of a lot smarter than you let anyone think you are. You’d be the ultimate undercover operator for this. And, most importantly … I trust you.”
“Now, why would you go and do something silly like that?”
Gage stood back up to his full height and looked over his shoulder. When I followed his eyes, I saw Elena coming. That was when I heard him say, “Because you know what it’s like to have a sister you would do anything for.”
~~~
Kent
Two hours ago, Kent had gone to his desk at the police station and printed background checks on both Marissa Holden and Anthony Romano. Then he had stepped into Captain Nelson’s office and requested time off from work. His captain hadn’t been too happy about the request, but he also hadn’t denied it for one simple reason: Kent never took time off.
Now Kent was sitting down the street with a perfect view of Anthony Romano’s townhouse. Staking out the suspect’s place of living, he hoped to get something, anything, that might lead Kent to some evidence that Romano was guilty of killing his lover’s husband.
Lulu Ivanov was running out of time, and Kent was determined the innocent tigress wouldn’t pay for a crime that his instincts screamed she hadn’t committed. And he liked listening to those instincts because they had done a pretty damn good job of keeping him alive as a police officer.
He had been sitting in his car, waiting for a sign from his suspect for about three hours when he finally emerged. Kent didn’t know if Marissa was living with Romano, but she was coming out of his place now, hand in hand with the shifter and one hand held low over a small, burgeoning baby bump. It seemed Lulu Ivanov’s tip that Marissa Holden was pregnant was true. Now the question was: who was the father?
He took out his cell phone and took pictures of the couple as they walked down the sidewalk toward a green Jeep. Then Kent watched as Romano helped Marissa into the vehicle, bending in to buckle her seatbelt before giving her a kiss. Then he closed her door. Kent took pictures of all of it.
For a man who was suspected of murder, Romano was awfully fucking gentlemanly when it came to his lover. Of course, if Romano thought Marissa was his mate, one might argue he would be more than happy to kill her demon mate to have her all to himself.
After Romano got into the vehicle and started to back out of his parking spot, Kent slid down in his seat so he wouldn’t be seen as they drove by him a minute later. He debated leaving to get some lunch, but something told him to stay. And it was a damn good thing he did, or he might have missed what happened next.
Approximately forty-five minutes after Romano and the former Mrs. Holden left the townhouse, a black sedan pulled up and backed into Romano’s parking space. Kent tried to see who was in the car, but the windows were tinted black. Seconds later, a man wearing khaki pants; a non-descript blue, button-up loose shirt; a dark blue baseball cap slung low on his head; and oversized sunglasses got out of the car with a good-sized box in his hands that was wrapped up as a gift. The only thing that Kent could tell about the man as he walked to Romano’s front door was that he was Caucasian and possibly had brown hair with an approximate build of five-foot-nine and a slender build.
Taking his phone out, Kent brought up the video function and started to record the suspicious man. He watched curiously as the man set the box on Romano’s front doorstep then quickly walked back to his car, getting in then hightailing it out of the parking lot as if he were afraid someone might see him.
Kent made sure to slide low in his seat again as the man drove by, but then turned his phone and camera so that it would catch the car’s backend and possibly the license plate.
Kent then quickly debated following the car to see where it went, but when he looked back, it was already out of sight and he had no idea which way it had turned at the four-stop intersection leading out of the community. Instead, he waited a few minutes, watching the box on the doorstep, wondering why the man had acted so questionable, racing off after he had dropped the box off … Unless there was something in the box that he didn’t want anyone to see and associate him with?
Kent’s gut was churning, and his instincts were screaming that he needed to see what was in that box, so he cautiously got out of his car and slowly walked up to Romano’s doorstep. Kent had no idea how long Romano and Marissa would be gone, so he needed to be quick without being careless. There was no telling what was in that box.
Once he reached the doorstep and the medium-sized box that was wrapped in baby-themed wrapping paper, Kent bent low to see if he could hear anything coming from inside, like ticking. He didn’t exactly want to open the damn thing if it was a bomb.
What he heard next made him think it wasn’t a bomb. It was something a bit more confusing.
There was movement inside the box, as if something alive was in it.
What the ever-loving hell could make that noise?
A shiver went down his spine, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. No toy made noises like that. There were random subtle scraps and thumps.
Standing back up, Kent looked around the small front yard of the townhouse for something he could lift the lid with while keeping some distance between himself and the box. He found a small limb that had fallen off a tree a couple of yards over and jogged to go get it. He didn’t want to spend a lot of time out here, possibly attracting neighbor’s attention.
After picking up the limb, he jogged back over to Romano’s doorstep and carefully, oh so slowly, placed the end of the limb under the edge of the box’s lid and started to lift it off.
He hadn’t lifted it far when whatever was inside helped push the lid off, and then hissed at him.
Snakes. There were fucking coral snakes in the baby box.
As they slithered around and over top each other, Kent quickly counted four of them, and then noticed a flash of something silver in the center, in the midst of them—a baby rattle. Whoever had placed this box here had known who and what Marissa and Romano were.
The silver rattle was probably a warning about Marissa’s offspring being a shifter baby.
The snakes’ deadly bite wouldn’t kill them, but it would make them deathly sick for days. More than one bite to Marissa could even possibly cause her to lose the baby.
Kent jumped into action when one of the snaked started to slither its way toward the edge of the box. He couldn’t let these highly venomous snakes get out and bite some poor unsuspecting human; it could kill them.
Giving a quick look at his surroundings, Kent noted there was no one around. Then he brought his concentration back to the box.
Pulling electrical energy from the lines around him, he forced a high voltage of electricity through the limb that was now touching the baby’s rattle and watched as the snakes sizzled and trembled from being electrocuted. After he had shocked them for about two minutes and they started to smoke from the charge hitting them, Kent pulled his power back and walked over to the yard to let it dissipate into the ground beneath his feet. Then he walked back over to the box that now stank of burnt animal, put the lid back on it, and took it back to his car.
This was evidence he needed to hold on to while he tried to figure out who wanted to torture or possibly kill Marissa Holden and Anthony Romano. Did this have anything to do with the death of Andrew Holden?
The plot was getting deeper. Now all he could hope was that it didn’t get too deep before Lulu Ivanov drowned under the weight of the investigation.
Once Kent put the box of dead snakes in the back seat, a thought hit him. Julian Desouza had hinted at something when he had told Kent that Councilman Holden was a snake in the grass. Did this have any connection?
Pulling out his cell phone, Kent dialed Julian’s number and waited for the other man to pick up. When he did, it was an ominous greeting.
“Run into any snakes today, Kent?”
Poleaxed as to why the other man would say that, Kent questioned warily, “I did. How did you know?”
“You’d be surprised by the things I know.”
That set his teeth on edge and made him wonder if Julian was somehow behind this. “Did you have anything to do with the box of snakes I just found on Anthony Romano’s doorstep?”
“No.” The answer was short and to the point. Very much like the man himself.
“Then how would you know about it when it just happened and no one besides myself and the person who dropped off the box would know? Are you psychic or something?”
“Or something,” Julian answered then disconnected their call.
Kent had asked the question sarcastically, but now he had to wonder: was Julian psychic? Or was he somehow involved in what was going on?