that supposed to happen?”
“I doubt it.”
“Wait . . . it’s starting again.”
Gwen was right. The process repeated itself, ripping apart her shifter DNA and replacing it with—
“Oh, shit!” all three of them exclaimed.
“Your shifter DNA ate that shit.” Blayne grinned. “That was awesome!”
“No, it wasn’t.” Stevie looked at the two women on either side of her. “He’s not going to like this.”
“What do you think he’s going to do?”
“Nothing good.”
Gwen stood. “We need to get out of here.”
“There’s only one air vent,” Stevie pointed out. “It’s very small and very high. The walls are either lined or made out of titanium. Or a combination of steel and titanium. We are fucked.”
Blayne stared at Stevie. “Are you having trouble breathing?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Are you lying?”
“Probably.”
“Oh, shit.”
“No, no. I’m okay. I’m okay.” She took in a deep breath, let it out. “I’m okay.”
“What are you two talking about?” Gwen asked.
“She panic-shifts,” Blayne explained
“So?”
“We do not have that much room in here.”
Gwen crouched in front of Stevie. “Look, I don’t know you, sweetie. But all this is for you. To keep the rest of us imprisoned, they just had to put us behind iron bars. That’s why when one of us goes to prison, we usually stay in prison.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“Why did they build this for you? What do they think they’re stopping? And I’d also like to point out that they thought their little DNA thing would shut you down. But that didn’t work either.”
Stevie gazed at the woman with the ridiculously long fingernails.
Scrambling to her feet, Stevie faced the wall and unleashed the claws on her right hand, which didn’t affect the width of her wrist, didn’t cause her any problems with the titanium cuff she had on.
She pulled her arm back.
“Are you sure about this?” Blayne asked.
“Nope,” she replied. Not wanting to see her claws mangled and destroyed, Stevie closed her eyes tight and swung her arm forward with all her strength.
“Holy shit,” she heard Gwen whisper and Stevie opened one eye, then the other.
Her claws had torn a giant gash through the titanium-steel walls.
Carefully, slowly, Stevie pulled her claws out of the wall and examined them. Her hand was shaking but her claws were undamaged. Thick and strong and lethal.
She looked down at her wrists, studied the titanium bands.
“Stevie?” Blayne said softly. “They’re coming.”
Blayne was right. Stevie could feel the vibrations through the floor.
She faced the women. “I’m about to do something,” she informed them, “that is probably very, very stupid. But I think we’ve run out of options. So . . . yeahhhh . . . I’m sorry in advance.”
“If we survive this, Gwenie,” Blayne said to her best friend, “I’m going to tell you very loudly, I told you so!”
chapter THIRTY
The trucks and SUVs pulled to a stop in front of the single-story building.
From the outside, it looked like a small office building with reinforced doors and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. But that was only because the real doings were going on in the floors underneath the ground. The floor on top was just the entrance, and it was heavily guarded, according to the Wells Pride, who eventually told them everything just to get the crazy MacKilligans out of their house.
Like the Group members, Shen and the Dunns were dressed in black body armor. Shen had his weapon unholstered and a round in the chamber as he stepped out of the SUV and walked around to the front where he met up with the Dunns and Dutch Alexander. The MacKilligan cousins had wanted to come, but their uncle had ordered them back to their hotel. Probably a good idea. This was more a job for professionals, not guys who just enjoyed terrorizing cats.
The sun was barely coming up when Ric Van Holtz, who was leading this raid, stepped in front of his people.
“Everybody knows what they need to do. Stay calm. Move fast. Don’t forget we’ve got at least four civilians in there. Maybe more. So be careful.”
Charlie, dressed just in jeans, a blue T-shirt, and sneakers—not looking tactical at all—had a gun in each hand, and the back pockets of her jeans were stuffed with fully loaded clips. She listened silently to Ric’s unusually gruff speech. Her expression was blank until Max stepped in beside her. The smaller MacKilligan also had on jeans, a black T-shirt, and thick work boots.
They looked at each other and something passed between the siblings. It felt like an entire conversation in one glance.
Max went back to the