Joshua shrugged. “They had accents that would have put them from South America, but they spoke perfect English to one another. All five of them used those little girls, but two of them were the ones that did the torturing. The others didn’t so much as look up when the girls were screaming, so it was a common practice. Clearly, they’d seen it done before. None minded that the girls were bloody and broken, they used them anyway. That suggested they’d been together for some time, doing similar practices.”
“You didn’t get the impression they were related?”
“They could have been, but I didn’t stop to look to see if they had similar features. I took them apart. To me they weren’t human, shifter, or anything but vile scum. I might have been a little insane,” he admitted, and rubbed at his temples as if he had a headache.
“I would have done the same,” Fyodor admitted. “They would have died slow, and they would have died hard.”
Timur nodded and looked at Gorya. Gorya turned away from them. Sevastyan didn’t make a statement, but he looked at Mitya. Mitya knew Sevastyan would have done far worse to those men than Joshua could ever conceive of doing.
“We aren’t saints here, Joshua,” Mitya said. “Any of us. The bottom line is this: We have an enemy, all of us. He wants to sow suspicion between us, which, I’ll admit, I was buying into. They have infiltrated Joshua’s family. Jake’s as well. We have to be very careful now, because when we bring anyone new in, they could be a potential Amory.”
“Ania pointed out that he doesn’t have an endless supply of shifters,” Sevastyan added.
Mitya nodded. “She’s right. They don’t, any more than we do. We’ll get it out there that we found the notebook. That way, they won’t have a reason for continuing their attack on Ania or her house. I think they’ll back off for a while and then come at us from a different direction.”
“That makes sense,” Drake agreed. “And it gives us some time to investigate. This thing with Joshua is the only tie that is between us that I can see. I did help with the investigation into the Bogomolov family, but I had little to do with it. I can’t see that being a connection, especially when these sleepers have infiltrated a couple of years ago.”
He looked at Jake. “I’m sorry we brought you into this. I thought I could keep you away from the worst of it.”
Jake shrugged. “We knew there was that chance. In any case, we have the notebook, not anyone else. No one’s seen it, so at least for now, my name is still not connected, more than loosely as your friend, to any crime family. Eli is in the clear as well. He’s nowhere in there, because Amory left my house before he came on board. He had a recruit, he clearly states that, but the recruit hasn’t figured out what’s going on.”
“Most likely because you’re a paranoid son of a bitch and you don’t let anyone near your office. Amory was patient and worked his way up to security in the house,” Drake said. “Be careful not to let on that anything is different, Jake.”
“That may not be true,” Mitya said. “There’s a possibility that a copy was made of this notebook and sent to the Caruso family. Antosha drove from New Orleans to Houston and made a delivery. Most likely he glanced at the notebook and didn’t read it. Whether the Caruso family read it or it was stolen before they could, who knows, but we have to assume they read it.”
“Great. We’ll have to figure out a way to do damage control,” Drake said. “Watch your six, Jake.”
Jake gave him a look and then stood up. “Need to get home to my woman. Now I’m really paranoid.”
He took two steps and then the world seemed to come apart. A blast shook the house, hard enough to send nearly everyone to the floor. The sound was deafening. Windows exploded, sending glass in all directions. Gunfire erupted. Sprinklers went off as flames licked up walls. The small meeting room was intact, but no one was going to wait for another explosion.19“GET the women in the safe room!” Fyodor shouted and hit the button under the table so that the wall opened up to reveal an array of weapons as well as gas masks.
Mitya got to his feet, wishing he could see his woman. “Need to know she’s all right,” he said. “Sevastyan?”
Sevastyan stuck his head out of the room. The hallway was pure chaos. Through the doors opening to the great room, they could see a hole in the outside wall. Surprisingly it wasn’t as big as it had sounded, about four feet high and three feet wide. Smoke poured into the room along with dust and debris. Wood splintered, and great jagged pieces pointed toward the inside of the room like giant spears.