“Why would this woman want to set you up?” Ania said. “She doesn’t know you.”
Flambé shook her head.
Knowing she wasn’t used to physical comfort, Sevastyan still couldn’t help offering it to her. He leaned toward her, sliding his arm around her shoulders. “Come here, baby.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not. Come sit on my lap.”
She gave a little shake of her head.
He kept the pressure on her shoulder and didn’t say anything else. He simply waited. Flambé took time to work it all out. To make up her mind. She had committed to him. She was still in the process of deciding just what that meant to her, what their relationship would be. She did derive comfort from him after being in the ropes. They’d established that over the last few weeks. He had that going for him.
With a soft sigh, Flambé capitulated, sliding from her chair to curl up on his lap, pulling her legs up the way she did, making herself small, cuddling into him. He wrapped his arms around her, giving her firm pressure. His arms were like the ropes, binding her, making her feel safe.
“Most people will betray others for money, power, revenge or if their loved ones are in jeopardy,” Mitya supplied into the silence. “This woman could have any of these motives.”
“Not power or revenge,” Sevastyan ruled out immediately, nuzzling the top of Flambé’s head with his chin. “She doesn’t know Flambé, and what kind of power would she achieve? So, money. Someone could be paying her a good amount, or her mate is being held hostage. Where is her mate? What’s the story on that, plamya?”
Flambé had begun to relax into him by slow increments. Her body was used to the feel of his from all the nights they slept together so close, Sevastyan refusing to allow so much as an inch between their skin. She had been shivering, but even that was slowly dissipating. She rested her head against his chest, her palm pressing into his thigh.
“According to the extraction team, every time they asked about her mate, she became hysterical. She would cry and talk about guns and poachers and everyone being dead.”
“Others escaped the massacre because at least nine other strawberry leopards were caught on separate cameras in various areas, isn’t that correct?” Ania asked.
“Yes,” Flambé said. “As far as I know, the teams are trying to find them. You know as well as I do, shifters are notoriously difficult to find when they don’t want to be tracked.”
“How does it work on your end?” Sevastyan asked. “You don’t use your private cell phone. You said someone at National Geographic gave you the heads-up. How?”
“I was working at the club when the call came in. There are only two of us who can answer that phone. Blaise Brodeur, my foreman, or me. He’s worked for us for years. My father brought him over years ago, when I was starting into my teens. He went to college, really excelled and came back to work with my father. He loves the landscaping business the way we do. My father gave him enough money to start his own business, but he wanted to stay on as the foreman and has. No one else has been there that long and knows both sides, the rescue and the landscaping.”
“So, Blaise took the original call and he set the investigators to work,” Sevastyan said.
“Yes, right away. He called me as well. I told him to alert the extraction team and put them in the field as they might have to track the leopards and get to them very fast. We didn’t know what was happening. Blaise called me back a few minutes later and told me about Shanty and the children. At that time, we didn’t know her name. He just said the contact at National Geographic had her picture and a location and she was separated from the others.”
Sevastyan exchanged a long look with his brother over Flambé’s head. He didn’t like the way this was beginning to shape up.
“Sevastyan?” Flambé’s voice sounded tired and worn. Hurt and betrayed. “Do you remember the day we were working on the property and I was talking with Rory, Etienne and Blaise? You came up behind me? That was when Flamme was really showing herself.”
“I remember.” He kept his voice strictly neutral.
“They were all looking at a picture of Shanty. Blaise acted as if he’d never seen her photograph, but he had to have. He