“Not so quickly. I left the money and went wolf.” She swallowed. “I knew he couldn’t go wolf around the town. I on the other hand had been known as my mistress’s black wolf pet. It took him half a day to find me.”
Lev took out a drawing of the tattoo. “Have you seen this?”
Kat gazed at it. “No.”
Lev had only seen it when they stripped so her answer didn’t surprise him. “Do you think the mobster took Svetlana after seeing his daughter’s finger?”
“No. I didn’t find their scent in her villa. Genrikh promised to let her have the cargo with the stolen military grade weapons. I gave him the coordinates where he must do the exchange in person. I sensed he would do anything to save his daughter.”
“Is she still alive?”
“No. Svetlana killed her. It would have been a trap for him. She had ordered her men to kill him and take the cargo.”
Lev swore in Russian.
Kat whispered back in Russian as her eyes moistened.
Rylee furrowed her brow. “My Russian is rusty. What did she say?”
Lev smiled. “Katya said she was not involved with the murder.” He turned back to Katya. “You don’t bel
ieve Svetlana left willingly.”
“My mistress is ruthless, but she would not kill her loyal men. Many of them had served her father and would never betray her.”
Lev and Rylee looked at each other. He sucked in some air to steady his frustration. Rachel’s abductors knew about me. “You don’t know if Svetlana met with other werewolves in the past few months?”
“Since you and the team killed her mate and son, she plotted revenge, but said we should lay low for a few years. Continue pretending she’d been killed.” She nodded to Lev. “Find your weakness, Chernobyl werewolf.”
Rylee paced. “Could be Svetlana brokered a deal with still living members of The Keep to destroy our lycan society.”
The Keep, a global cabal of humans, intent on killing all werewolves was a possibility. Lev nodded. “She would stoop that low.” He glared at Katya. “Did she?”
“No. Never. They were our enemies as well.”
Lev scowled. “Why would she bother telling you, a werewolf?”
Kat conceded. “True. She kept many things from me.”
Lev softened his tone. “What sort of things?”
“She always sent me away before discussing her plans with her men.”
Rylee wrinkled her nose. “Naturally, she’d keep dealings with The Keep from her, but if that’s the case, why take off with them? They’d torture her for information and be done with her.”
Jesper interjected. “Why take her so close to a lunar eclipse, like the others?”
Lev shrugged. “The werewolf abductors would have deemed her too old to bear hybrid children.”
Rylee sighed. “The lunar cycle has to be a coincidence. Even if she was fertile at fifty plus years of age, I doubt the fetus would survive or be normal.”
Unlike she-wolves only fertile in the spring, Stallo women could get pregnant any time of the year with their blood slave. Svetlana often had cosmetic surgery to take years off her appearance, but she had definitely been post-menopausal. Lev turned to Katya. “Who do you suspect took Svetlana?”
Her voice reflected her profound confusion. “I don’t have a clue.”
Lev blew out a long breath. Talking to Katya had not brought them any closer to solving the whereabouts of the mystery rogue pack. He steadied her on the chair, her hands on the table. “Sleep.”
Katya closed her eyes and her head tilted forward. She would have banged it on the table, had Lev not caught her and gently settled her head down. “What do you plan to do with her, ma’am?”