passion, and she didn’t understand where they were going with it. “Flambé,” he persisted, keeping his tone as gentle as possible, using his low, authoritative voice that she responded to the most. “What changed with this particular woman? Shanty Jacobs. Who made the initial contact?”
“We first were contacted by a source at National Geographic. They had to run with their story and the photographs they had, but they sent word to us. Our extraction team immediately deployed into the field and were able to make contact fairly quickly with Shanty and the children. Her lair had been destroyed. There were so few left that there hadn’t been a way to protect them when they were attacked and those left were scattered and on the run.”
“Did your investigation team have time to do a thorough investigation before your extraction team picked her and her children up?” Sevastyan pushed.
Flambé hesitated. She set the water bottle very carefully on the table as if she was afraid of spilling it. Her hand didn’t shake. She looked perfectly in control, but that slight pause was unlike her. She was always sure when it came to her business. The hesitation added more knots to Sevastyan’s gut.
“No. We had to deploy our extraction team fast. Once we made contact with her and determined she wanted to leave, we realized it wasn’t safe for her to stay there. She was being hunted, not only by the government, but by poachers as well.”
“If you turned her over to the government, would they have protected her?” Ania asked.
“As a leopard,” Flambé said, “she would have been subjected to tests and separated from her children. They wouldn’t have known she was a shifter or that her children were.”
“But she could have escaped easily,” Ania pointed out. “If there was an immediate risk . . .”
“True, but our extraction team was right there and they provided her with an alternative.”
“But you told me she didn’t want to leave with them,” Sevastyan objected. “You told your workers that Shanty refused, at first, to leave unless you came personally to South Africa to escort her back to the United States.”
Flambé frowned again and rolled the bottle of water over her forehead. He knew her mind was puzzling out the steps that she normally would take on a rescue. This one had been different from the start. They had been contacted right before the photographs had gone public, putting the remaining strawberry leopards in jeopardy. The shifters had scattered, driven from the lair by poachers and now hunted by the government and tourists as well. They were frightened, not knowing where to turn.
There wasn’t time for a thorough investigation, everyone understood that, Sevastyan included. It was also the perfect time for a setup if someone was in a position to get there first. The questions were, how? And why?
“How would she even know your name, or for that matter your face, Flambé?” Sevastyan persisted gently. “It isn’t attached in any way to the extraction team. Why would she fixate on you and insist on you coming to South Africa instead of getting her children to safety as fast as she could? You said yourself you haven’t been going with the extraction team for close to two years now.”
Flambé didn’t answer. She closed her eyes, her long lashes, two thick crescents fanning down, making her look more vulnerable than ever.
“Could the extraction team have mentioned her name?” Ania ventured. “She’s a woman. If Shanty was frightened, she may have wanted a woman to reassure her.”
There was a small silence while the wind tugged at the loose dirt in the yard, whirling it into little eddies, making small dust devils, sending them bouncing and dancing in a wild display.
“That was the exact excuse I used when Etienne and Rory asked me why she had insisted on me meeting her in South Africa. They thought it strange as well. I said that very thing. She was a woman and she was frightened. I never thought to ask how she knew me. No one on the extraction team would ever mention me.”
“But you had acquired a reputation,” Mitya pointed out, playing the devil’s advocate.
“So had Drake Donovan. A much bigger one than mine. His security company is very well known all over the world. Why ask for me? Why not him? It’s true he mostly goes after hostages, but he’s been known to bring out shifters from troubled areas,” Flambé said with a small sigh. “He would have gotten