Bite Me (20 page)

Vic looked over the other cats, waiting to see if they would challenge him.

For some unknown reason, the tiger raised his front paw, suggesting he was about to walk toward Vic. In response to the tentative move, Vic took in a breath. When he released it, the breath came out as a roar. A roar that shook the ground beneath Livy’s paws, tossed the smaller cats back, and had the tiger carefully putting his paw back down on the ground.

When the roar finally ended, everything was silent. The birds. The Africanized bees in the hive above Livy’s head. Everything was silent. Except Livy. Who gave out a hissing laugh that her full-human friends often called “Livy’s evil laugh.” And it was even more evil-sounding when she laughed like that in her honey badger form.

Vic chuffed at her and Livy walked around to his back leg. Using her claws, she climbed up onto his back until she realized that her paw was tangled in his mass of fur. She tried to get it free, but she was getting to the point where she was afraid she’d have to cut her way out.

That was when Vic’s tail swung around. Compared to the rest of him, it was a very unimpressive tail. Barely any fur on it and extremely thin considering his overall size. But long like a tiger’s tail. So, yeah, unimpressive. At least that was how Livy felt until that unimpressive tail dug into the fur around her paw and untangled the mess. That was when she realized that Vic had a prehensile tail.

How cool was that!

She’d always heard that shifter grizzlies, polars, and black bears had prehensile lips just like the full-bloods, but because Vic was a hybrid, it seemed that prehensile addition had landed elsewhere.

When Livy was comfortably secure on Vic’s back, he turned his nearly fifteen-foot-long body around and slowly made his way back into bear territory. He didn’t seem to have much speed at what was nearly two thousand pounds, but then, he didn’t really need it.

They made it back to the rental property without any problems and Livy quickly shifted to human.

“Don’t shift,” she ordered Vic. “Not yet.”

She jumped off his back, shocked at how long it took her feet to touch the ground. She walked around until she faced Barinov. She studied him closely, then walked up to him and pushed a mass of stringy fur off his face. That was when she finally saw his eyes. And they were human eyes staring back at her. The one physical part of him that didn’t change.

Livy grinned and stepped back. She walked all the way around him, and when she was right in front of him again, she finally announced, “You look . . . so . . .
cool
!”

No. That wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. Not that he minded. It was nice to hear someone say something other than, “Uh . . . oh . . . my . . . um . . .” upon seeing Vic’s shifted form. Or screaming and running away at the sight of him.

Livy didn’t do that or react as anyone else had when he was in this form. Instead, Livy stepped close and ran her hands down the fur on his muzzle. Vic lowered his head and she pressed her face against his snout. He felt the sigh she let out to his very bones.

When she moved away from him, Vic knew something was very wrong. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with the bitter cats in the next county or his shifted form.

Vic shifted back to human and waited. After nearly a minute, Livy said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry.”

Livy nodded and walked into the house through the back door. Vic followed and found her looking into the refrigerator. There was a little Chinese food left, but neither of them wanted that. So they called in an order to the local diner and had it delivered.

Vic had showered and put his jeans on by the time the food arrived. He was setting it out on the table when Livy came downstairs.

She carried a cell phone and wore a bathrobe that was several sizes too big for her. She finger-combed her wet hair off her face and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Looks good,” she stated.

With all the food out, Vic sat catty-corner from Livy and reached for the bacon.

“My father’s dead,” she suddenly announced.

Vic pulled his hand back, focused on Livy. “I know. And I am sorry.”

“No,” she said softly. “You don’t know.” She rested her arms on the table, hands clasped together over the plate he’d put out for her. “I just assumed his funeral was probably one of my parents’ schemes. Another way for them to somehow make money. That in four or five years Damon Kowalski would suddenly pop up and say, ‘Why do you get so upset,
troch
rage.
Always sensitive . . . like your mother.’ ”

“ ‘
Troch
rage
’?” Vic repeated, with a small laugh. “Your father called you Little Rage?”

“Since I smacked him right across the mouth when I was six months old.”

Vic leaned down a bit so he could look in her eyes. “But now you’re sure your father’s gone. Why?”

Livy let out a big breath before looking directly at him and replying, “Because I found his stuffed carcass in Allison Whitlan’s apartment.”

Vic blinked those gold eyes at her, his entire body jolting in surprise. “Wait . . . what?”

“She had him by her fireplace. Someone went to a good taxidermist. You could barely tell he’d been shot in the back of the head.”

“Livy . . . I . . . um . . .”

“Please don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear sorry.”

“What do you need from me?”

“You gave me what I needed. Time. I needed time to figure out what I should do.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Now we know that Allison Whitlan must be in some kind of contact with her father. Dee and Cella can take it from there.”

“It’s not that easy, Vic.”

“It’s not?”

“Not for me. It’ll never be that easy for me.”

Vic placed his hand over her forearm, his fingers warm and dry. Comforting. “I can’t even imagine how hard all this must be for you. I really can’t. But what I do know is that you need to let the people paid to protect our kind do their jobs.”

“They may be paid to protect your kind but not mine. The honey badgers have always been on our own. We always will be.”

Vic leaned back in his chair. “What’s your plan, Livy? Track down Whitlan by yourself? Take him down by yourself?”

“Honey badgers are a lot of things. We’re mean. We’re rough. We’re mostly felons. We take shit from no one. But the one thing we’re not . . . is stupid. I have no intention of going after Whitlan by myself.”

“Then what are you planning?”

“The only thing I can.” Livy picked up her cell phone, pulled up an important number she’d never used before, and sent out a quick text before she focused back on Vic and said, “Vengeance.”

Baltazar Kowalski pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and looked at the text he’d just gotten.

One of the men breaking into the reinforced safe in the basement of the bank—a safe that held millions in diamonds—glared at Balt over the ski mask he wore.

“Do we really have time for you to chat with your pretty girlfriend?” the man whispered in French.

Balt ignored the man and studied the text.

“What is it, brother?” Kamil asked, his gaze straying from the guards they’d secured and drugged so that they were out cold during the job.

“It’s from Damon’s girl.” Damon. Their brother was supposed to have been with them on this job. They all did their own individual jobs, of course, but several times a year, the Kowalski brothers worked together. Especially on these kinds of jobs where a lot of money and risk were at stake. And Damon had been the best at organizing and pulling these jobs off without a hitch. So his loss was felt most at this time.

“What does she say?” Edmund asked.

“She wants us to meet her in New York. Now.”

The five brothers stared at each other. Olivia wasn’t like any of their children. She never contacted them for anything. Had never involved herself in the family business. Before Damon’s funeral, they hadn’t seen her for a good seven years or so. When they did see her, she did no more than wave at them before disappearing with Balt’s boy, Jake. For waffles, Balt had been told later. Although he could never understand why anyone would go out and get waffles when they had perfectly delicious cobras slithering around the backyard of Damon’s old house.

No. The Kowalski men had never understood Damon’s girl . . . including Damon. But Olivia was still family. She was a Kowalski. A strange Kowalski, but still one of them. Which meant only one thing to Balt, Edmund, Kamil, Gustav, Otto, and David.

The brothers locked gazes and, without another word between them, stopped what they were doing and packed up.

The full-humans they were working with looked up at the brothers. “Where the hell are you going?” one of them asked.

Balt zipped up his black bag, and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t answer the man; there was no point.

Another full-human pulled his .45 and aimed it at Otto. Baltazar stepped in front of his brother and walked up to the man until the gun pressed against Balt’s chest. He gazed at the full-human and waited. After several seconds, the man looked away. Balt reached over and took the gun from the full-human’s grasp.

“Nice Glock,” Balt said in French. “I have one at my house.” Then he used the weapon to beat the man who’d pointed it at Otto until he was bleeding and sobbing on the ground.

Balt tossed the gun to the ground and motioned to his brothers. “Come,” he said in English, trying to get used to the difficult language again since they were going to America. “We have plane to catch.”

C
HAPTER
18

T
oni stepped away from the Russian bargaining table and walked out into the hallway before answering her phone. It was Livy, which was strange. Livy wasn’t really a fan of talking on phones. She’d been known to text when necessary, but that was about it.

“Hey, Livy.”

“Hey.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I need to ask a favor, though.”

“A favor?” Toni frowned. “You?”

“I’ve asked for favors before.”

“Yeah. I guess. Can’t really remember one, though.”

“Can I ask a favor or not?”

“Okay, okay. No need to get testy. What do you need?”

There was a pause, then Livy asked, “I need to borrow the brownstone.”

“The brownstone?” Toni wasn’t quite sure what Livy was talking about. “What brownstone?”

“The one your parents rent from the wild dogs.”

“Oh! You mean the wild dog house.” At least that’s what Toni’s family called it. It was a beautiful piece of real estate that the wild dogs could sell for a fortune but instead chose to rent out for an insane amount of money. Of course, Toni had thought her family was only renting it for that one summer when Toni’s mother was “stalking” the Alpha Female’s adopted son, Johnny. Not literal stalking. Her mother, thankfully, was not interested in Johnny as anything but a music student. A prodigy training a prodigy. But the wild dogs were as protective of their pups as jackals, so it had required a lot more work. Still, Toni thought her parents would stop renting the house once that summer was over and they’d returned to their lives on the West Coast. But her parents were still renting the place, whether they were in it or not, with the logic that they could crash there anytime they were in Manhattan. The wild dogs loved this plan, as well, because they still received their rental payments without having to worry about out-of-control neighbors or squatters.

“Yeah. Sure. But are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“Nothing you have to worry about. A family thing. But I swear, any damage done to the place, I’ll make sure it’s fixed and perfect before you get back to the States. Okay?”

Toni was annoyed Livy had even felt she had to say that to her. Livy had always watched out for Toni’s stuff like she was protecting her own. Even more so.

But that was the least of Toni’s worries from what Livy had said. “A family thing? What family thing?”

“My family thing. Nothing you have to worry about.”

“I know which family you meant, Olivia. But you only
deal
with my family. So I’m sorry if I’m questioning—”