Chapter
4
Chloe
She stood by the door to the little room her sister was holding Lulu Ivanov in and rolled her eyes at the horrible bad cop impersonation Elena was doing.
“Where were you the night of October twenty-eighth?”
“Really? You have me handcuffed to this raggedy-ass armchair in a dark room with a light in my face, asking me ridiculous questions? You’ve watched one too many shitty cop movies, haven’t you?” Lulu huffed in annoyance at Elena.
Chloe really wanted to give the woman a high-five for calling her sister out like that.
The whole reason they were doing this was because Elena had this burning need to exact revenge on Gage, who happened to be one of Lulu’s brothers. When the opportunity came up through the Amazons Inc. to go after Gage’s sister on a murder charge for killing her demon lover, Elena had jumped at the chance to stick it to Gage by delivering his sister to the demon’s Ninth Circle Council for judgement. Problem was: Chloe wasn’t so sure the woman was guilty.
Only earlier that day, Chloe, her two sisters, and her two aunts had gone over both the coroner’s report and the crime scene photos of the demon who had been murdered. And while it did look like the man had been killed by a shifter’s claws, Chloe wasn’t so sure that Lulu Ivanov had been the one to do it.
Had Lulu run and hid out at her brother’s house? Yes, which didn’t make her look good. However, it didn’t escape Chloe that the person who had implicated and charged Lulu was the deceased demon’s brother, who happen to also sit on the council. Something that just seemed a little too convenient to Chloe.
Did the brother to the deceased demon know who the real killer was and was trying to cover up for them? Or perhaps he was just blinded by his rage and the pain of losing his brother and jumped to conclusions about who had murdered the man. What Chloe did know was that there was just something about the tiger-shifter that didn’t scream “killer” to her.
While Chloe liked to run with her gut about situations, her sister, on the other hand, liked cold, hard facts. Hence why she was standing there, watching Elena question the tigress.
“Answer the question, Lulu,” Elena gritted out between her teeth.
“And why should I answer your question, Amazon? Why should I do anything that could possibly help you when you have me detained here without telling me why? And what kind of fuckin’ handcuffs are these?” She rattled the handcuffs against the chair to make a point.
“I’m here to help you, Lulu,” Elena answered, the lie rolling off her tongue like she was ordering her favorite breakfast.
Chloe had to hold in her snort at that. Her sister wanted to roast her former lover over an open fire. There was no way in hell Elena was there to help the tigress, something the other woman was not oblivious to, if her next statement had anything to say about the matter.
“How the fuck are you helping me right now? I didn’t sign up for some kinky slap and tickle classes, so un-cuff me, skank!”
“I’m not going to take the handcuffs off until we get a few things straight.”
“Yeah, like what?” Lulu snapped.
Elena crossed her arms over her chest. “Like, where were you on October twenty-eighth?”
Baring her teeth, Lulu snarled, “I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Good.”
“You’re a twat-waffle; that’s what I know.” The tigress tried to lunge at Elena, but Chloe wasn’t worried in the least. The titanium handcuffs covered in a ridiculously expensive strengthening spell cast by one of the most powerful witches of this century kept the tigress hostage in that chair. It also prevented the tigress from being able to fully shift into her animal form.
No, Lulu Ivanov was well and truly stuck.
Her sister sighed in frustration then glanced at her watch. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that her sister was thinking about how they were running out of time.
Chloe wanted to jump into this little interrogation and try being the good cop, but Elena, the twat-waffle, had specifically told her to stay out of it before the interrogation started. As if she didn’t think Chloe was capable of questioning someone. The knowledge of how little her sister thought of her stung. Yet, there she was, standing at the ready in case Elena needed her.
Or, maybe it was because she knew that anything involving handcuffs and Elena would end up in a disaster. Either way you looked at it, she was totally there like a good sister should be!
Elena crossed her arms over her chest and glared down at the pissed tigress. “Look, I don’t give a flying fuck if you don’t believe me when I say I’m trying to help you out here. It’s in your best interest to let me know where you were the night of October twenty-eighth or I guaran-damn-tee you’re going to regret not telling me.”
Snarling, Lulu exposed her lengthening fangs and snapped them in Elena’s direction like she wanted to take a bite out of her. “What is one little Amazon going to do to me? You’re not strong enough or fast enough to take me on before I rip your throat out.”
“Speaking of ripping things … that’s why we’re here.”
“Because you want me to take a bite out of you? Really, Amazon? You’re pretty and all, but I don’t swing that way.”
Chloe had to hold in her laughter, while Elena snorted. “Don’t worry; you’re missing a few vital parts for me, too. No, I was referring to you taking a bite out of Andrew Holden, your lover.” When Lulu’s face turned to confusion, Elena added, “You know, the dead one.”
Lulu’s confusion melted away to a blank mask.
She could tell her sister was seriously getting irritated at the obstinate woman when she snapped, “Holden’s brother sits on the Ninth Circle Council, Lulu. He’s the one who hired us to hand you over on murder charges. If you don’t start talking, giving me something to help you out here, you’re as good as dead by torture. Is that what you want?”
The tigress shook her head. “How are you going to help me? There’s not a damn thing you can do. You’re almost as weak as a human in our eyes. Mind your business, Amazon, and let me go. I was exactly where I needed to be to get help when you kidnapped me.”
Ouch. Score one for the tigress, Chloe thought to herself as she watched her sister glare at the woman.
She was just starting to think that perhaps she could jump in to play the good cop, when Elena looked down at the floor as if she saw something and gasped, “Holy shit! That’s a big one!”
Suddenly, her sister sprinted out of the small room as if she were in a panic. Whatever Elena was up to, it wasn’t good by the devious look on her face. Chloe started to worry for the tigress. Not that she thought her sister would kill her, but accidents could happen, and then you suddenly had to bury a body in the backyard.
When Elena headed back her way, walking at a brisk pace, Chloe gave her the stink eye when she saw the hammer Elena was holding.
“What are you doing? You’re not supposed to hurt her.”
Elena smiled. “Oh, I’m not going to hurt her.”
Chloe walked quickly behind her to catch up. “You’re not supposed to kill her, either.”
“Not planning to.”
“Then what the hell are you doing with that hammer? Decided to hang a picture of your ugly face where she could see it as a new torture technique?”
Elena ignored the insult. “Nope again. This is so much better than that.”
As she watched Elena enter the room with the hammer held low behind her so the other woman couldn’t see, Chloe started to truly worry. It was one thing to joke about bodies in the backyard. It was another thing to actually have to dig holes.
Picking up her pace until she was sprinting into the room, pretending to act hysterical, Elena ran in front of the table so Lulu could get a good look at her wild, crazy eyes and the hammer in her hand.
“Where did it go?” Elena yelled, pretending to look at the floor around the table.
The tigress fidgeted in her chair, trying to push it backward away from Elena. “What the fuck is your problem, Amazon? Did you forget to take your crazy pill today or something?”
She watched as her sister feigned an exaggerated fear while searching the floor then under the table. Abruptly, her sister screamed, “There’s the big bastard!” Elena smacked the hammer harshly on the table leg closest to Lulu’s leg, causing the tigress to try to jump away from her.
“Jesus, you crazy bitch, you almost hit me!” Lulu roared at Elena.
Unsure of what to do, Chloe looked down the hall to see if her aunts could hear the commotion. Perhaps one of them would be able to talk Elena out of this madness.
“DAMMIT!” her sister screeched. “I missed the big, furry monster. That’s got to be the largest spider I’ve ever seen! Where did he go? I fuckin’ hate spiders! Do you see him?”
This crazy-ass charade went on for a few moments longer as she watched her sister pretend to look for some make believe spider, all the while getting just a tad too close to actually hitting Lulu with the hammer in the process.
Just when Chloe was about to step in and tell Elena to knock it the hell off, she watched in horror as her sister once again brought the hammer down, this time smashing into the table less than half an inch from their captive’s hands.
Lulu let out a god-awful shriek, her body frozen like a statue. She was staring at the head of that hammer embedded into the wood of the table she was clutching for dear life.
Chloe watched in disbelief as Lulu eventually, oh-so-slowly, moved her gaze up to meet Elena’s slightly crazed but determined one.
With an angry whisper, Elena said, “Now I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you don’t answer me, the next time I see my invisible spider and swing this hammer at it, it’s going to just so happen to be on you. Where were you on the night of October twenty-eighth?”
She heard the tigress gulp, and then, in a wary, hushed tone, she answered, “I was at home by myself, crying into a pint of ice cream.”
Elena didn’t move a muscle. “And why were you crying into a pint of ice cream?”
The tigress sniffled. Her skin paled drastically, and her pretty, green-gold eyes watered. “Because Andrew and I had a fight.”
Chloe could tell Elena was getting annoyed about having to pry the questions out of Lulu as she asked between gritted teeth, “Why did you fight?”
“We fought because I brought him photographic evidence that his wife was cheating on him. I wanted Andrew to leave her for me.”
It was then that Chloe saw Lulu Ivanov for what she truly was: a woman in love. Unfortunately, it seemed like she was in love with the wrong man.
Elena prodded her again, “And he said no?”
Lulu nodded. “He said no.”
“Why?” Elena asked.
The first tear leaked out of the corner of her eye and slid down her cheek. “He wouldn’t leave her because she’s pregnant, and he was sure he was the father.”
“Did you kill Andrew Holden, Lulu?”
Holding her breath, Chloe waited for the answer. Some small part of her didn’t want Lulu to be the guilty party. She might be a woman scorned, but Chloe knew a hundred ways to get back at a man without killing him. She could have totally helped Lulu do it!
Shaking her head, her breath shuddered in her chest as she tried to suck in air. “NO! I loved Andrew! They’re framing me, Amazon! I didn’t kill him!” A ragged sob escaped Lulu before she hoarsely whispered, “I c-couldn’t kill him …”
“Who’s framing you? The wife? The Ninth Circle? Be more specific,” Elena murmured as she stood up, walked over to the open door where Chloe stood with a Kleenex box, and then took the tissues to the weeping woman.
Lulu grabbed a tissue and tried to wipe her face off. “His w-wife and h-her lover.”
“And how do you know they killed Holden and are framing you?” Elena asked.
Lulu blew her nose into the tissue so loudly it sounded like a warped elephant mating call in the wild. “Because they both know I saw them. They know I would’ve told Andrew.”
Elena nodded. “So, one or both of them probably confronted Andrew, and when it went bad, they tried to pin it on you.”
Chloe walked over to Elena and softly requested the key that would unlock the spelled handcuffs that still held the tigress immobile. While her sister was lost deep in thought, she unlocked the tigress and gave her a soothing pat on the back.
“Honey, I promise you that she would have never hurt you. She’s a total freak of nature, but she’s not a killer of innocent women,” she tried to placate the woman a little.
When the tigress gave her a disbelieving look, Chloe knew it was time for Elena to get a dose of her own medicine. It would do the tigress good to have a little chuckle.
Hearing a rustle from the doorway, Chloe looked over to see that Lulu’s grandmother, who Chloe now knew was definitely not some little, old lady stood in the doorway, watching the scene with Delta and Aunt Thea. Chloe snorted at their perfect timing as she turned her head back to look at her sister who was still lost in thought.
“Hey, Elena.”
Shooting Chloe an irritated glance, Elena snapped, “What?”
Chloe’s mouth spread into an evil grin right before she said, “There’s a giant spider on the wall behind you.”
Elena spun around and immediately spotted a real spider. Shrieking a war cry, she flung herself at the wall with her hammer held above her head. Hitting the wall fast and hard, the hammer buried itself deep in the sheetrock with Elena’s lean body left hanging from it, her feet about an inch off the floor. She tried to pull her hammer out of the dusty rubble to see if she had squashed the disgusting bug, but her hammer was stuck.
With an annoyed grunt, she let go, turned toward her sister, and barked out, “Did I kill it?”
Chloe smiled at Lulu. “Told you she was a freak.”
When Lulu gave her a tremulous smile, it was then that Chloe knew that she wanted to help the woman. The tigress had just become her next little “Chloe case.” And if the Ninth Circle Council was involved, she had an idea about just who could help with this situation. It was time to go learn a little bit more about Kent and his family.
She could have sworn she saw a “classified” section of files that her aunts kept in a locked filing cabinet. If there was anything more to learn about the demon and his family, it would be in there.
Chloe watched as Elena wiped the sheetrock dust off her shirt, then turned her focus on Lulu again. “Do they know you took pictures of them?”
Confused at the change in subject, Lulu gave her a funny look.
“Holden’s wife and her lover; do they know you took pictures of them?”
Shaking her head, she answered, “No.”
“Do you still have the pictures? Or did you give them all to Holden?”
A spark of hope ignited in the devastated tigress’s eyes. “I still have them! Holden wouldn’t even take the pictures from me that day.”
“Go to your house and get them. Bring them back here so we can devise our plan on how to take down Mrs. Holden and prove to the Ninth—”
A thunderous roar shook the house, effectively cutting her off, followed by some foul cursing.
“Oh, fuck,” Elena muttered as Chloe held a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. Gage Ivanov had finally tracked them down and was here for his sister.
Chloe had tried to tell Elena when they had kidnaped Lulu that this plan was nuts and Elena was going to regret it. And, as usual, Elena hadn’t listened. Now Chloe was about to get a front row seat to the tiger circus that had come to town. Or, at least came to her aunts’ house.
If only she had popcorn.
One minute, Chloe was standing there, watching Elena yell at her about getting ready for an attack, and the next thing she knew, there was two hundred plus pounds of pissed off tiger man pinning her sister to the wall.
There was something about the way that Gage Ivanov held her sister that let Chloe know he wasn’t there to hurt her. Sure, he held her immobile, but not in a way that would hurt her sister. If anything, the man was practically rubbing himself all over her, like a cat in heat, as they whispered to each other. For the most part, that was exactly what Chloe thought he was—a big, horny ol’ pussy cat.
Gage might have broken Elena’s heart in the past, but when they had confronted him the day before in the bar, Chloe saw a man who regretted what he had done. She’d had a sneaking suspicion then that Gage still loved Elena. The way he was acting now just seemed like further proof.
Of course, he really needed to stop rubbing himself all over Elena in front of Chloe, Lulu, and everyone else who had gathered to witness the show. It was like watching bad kitty porn, and it was sort of cheesy and gross.
This weird, little heated lovefest went on for a few minutes when Chloe had finally had enough. She had better things to do with her time than watch Gage huff and chuff and rub himself all over her sister.
When Gage buried his face between Elena’s breasts, Chloe finally cleared her throat to get their attention.
Both of them looked up and over at them, and Chloe could see the pure desire and need Gage had on his face for Elena. She wished someone would look at her that way. She found herself muttering, “Lucky bitch,” before she even realized what she was doing, and then clamped her lips down tight.
By now, everyone had joined them in the room: Gage’s brother, Alec; the tigers’ grandmother, Babushka; Chloe’s two aunts, Indigo and Thea; and even her other sister, Delta.
No one was moving, and time ticked by as Gage turned his attention back to rubbing his scent all over Elena, while Elena squiggled and fought him every bit of the way. Then, when he was done, he scooped her up in a fireman’s carry and started walking out of the room. Elena hung uncomfortably over the behemoth’s shoulder, while Chloe giggled at her predicament.
Then, before the two were out of sight, Chloe called, “Oh, Elena …”
Elena braced her hands on Gage’s lower back and lifted herself up a little so she could see Chloe, who was still standing in the room with a huge smile on her face. Delta, Lulu, Alec, and Gage’s grandmother were smiling at Elena, as well. However, their aunts were both frowning.
As Elena looked back at her, Chloe gave her a little finger wave as she announced to everybody in the room, “He’s doin’ her.”
When Gage and Elena disappeared out of sight, Delta warily asked from beside her, “Think we need to go save her?”
Chloe shook her head. “No way. I’d bet my lucky pair of panties that Gage is madly in love with our sister and always has been. I’m not sure why he hurt her before, but if we go pry Elena from him now, all we’ll have is a giant, pissed off tiger-shifter.”
Ever the cautious sister, Delta questioned her again, “Are you sure?”
“If he wanted to hurt Elena, he could have and would have done that as soon as he came into this room. He didn’t free his sister, didn’t tear Elena apart. No, the first thing that big lug did was rub himself all over our sister like a cat in heat, and then started whispering some dirty talk to her. Trust me; I heard a few words, even though I shouldn’t have. He was being all caveman, telling her that she was his mate and stuff.”
Delta clapped her hands together in glee. “You mean, Elena’s getting married!” she asked excitedly.
“Mated, married—whatever.” Chloe waved a hand, as if it was all the same to her. “Either way, I bet you a hundred bucks that, when she comes back, Gage is part of the package.”
Delta shook her head. “No way I’m betting against you, sister.”
Leaning over, Chloe bumped shoulders with Delta in a loving manner. “And that, sweet Delta, is why you’re the smart one.”
~~~
Later that night, Chloe sat on her bed in her favorite silk nightie, holding a legal file with the word “classified” stamped on the outside. Part of her was proud as hell for having Nancy Drewed her way into her aunts’ Amazon Inc. office and using a bobby pin to open the locked file cabinet. The other part of her felt a smidge of guilt for going behind her aunts’ backs like that.
However, if she would have asked them for the file, they would have wanted to know why she wanted it. Chloe didn’t want anyone to really know that she had taken Lulu Ivanov on as her next “Chloe case.” If they found out about this later, she would say she was sorry. Chloe lived by the moniker that it was better to apologize than to ask permission.
She didn’t have a lot in her arsenal to help Lulu, given the tigress’s circumstances, but what she did have was one marker of a debt owed by a demon who came from a powerful family. It was time to see just what Kent could do for her. Or, more specifically, for Lulu.
Sliding a manicured finger down the edge of the file, she flipped it open and started skimming the contents. Some of it was information she already knew, such as the fact that no one knew Kent’s first name, something that piqued Chloe’s interest immeasurably. Why wouldn’t the man tell anyone his first name? Was he Rumpelstiltskin reincarnated?
Knowing Kent’s name wouldn’t help Lulu, she kept skimming until she hit exactly what she was looking for. The thing that would help Lulu.
Kent’s family held a seat on the Ninth Circle Council, but it had sat empty for twenty years after his father’s death. Kent had refused to take the seat in his father’s place.
A plan started to form in her head. If Kent took that seat, Lulu would have an ally on the council. Someone who would look out for her best interest during her trial while someone tried to find evidence that would clear Lulu’s name. And the demon was going to be Lulu’s ally for one reason and one reason alone: because he owed her.
Leaning back on the bed, Chloe couldn’t help smiling down at the folder. It was nice when things fell into place, and this was one of those moments. Honestly, it couldn’t get any more perfect than this.
Kent’s family had a council seat on the Ninth Circle Council.
A seat Kent didn’t want to claim for some odd reason.
Chloe had a marker due from Kent.
A marker that could be used to make Kent claim his family’s seat, and then help Lulu Ivanov.
Looked like she might be calling in that marker sooner than she thought.