long as he was in the tree, so he stayed very still, not moving a single blade of grass.
Time passed. Gunfire had long since ceased. The sound of trucks starting up could be heard in the distance. Dymka didn’t so much as twitch his tail. His hot gaze never left his prey. The man took his time, studying the terrain around him, looking with more than human senses, relying on his leopard to find any enemy close.
Dymka was downwind and never moved a muscle. He just waited with the patience taught to him by the lessons those terrible leopards had given him as he’d grown up.
Eventually the man began to climb down from the tree. Mitya studied him, trying to place him, but he could swear he’d never seen the man before. He had darker skin, as if he spent time in the sun. He looked weathered, although he was on the younger side, perhaps in his late twenties. This was not a man he had any kind of feud with. He wasn’t Russian. He slipped once, scraping his backside on the bark and swearing in a language often spoken in Bolivia—Aymara. That shocked him.
Drake Donovan definitely had ties in Bolivia and throughout all of South and Central America. He had ties practically all over the world. Was the vendetta against Drake? If it was, it didn’t explain why after Ania’s grandfather was killed, her father was shot and she was targeted.
Dymka didn’t move as the man jumped the last few feet, landing in a crouch and going still, looking all around him. Dymka lay about ten feet from him, concealed by taller grass, blending in with his surroundings.
Other than the pack he wore around his neck, the man was naked, and he didn’t seem in a hurry to dress. Clearly, he intended to shift and travel as a leopard across the Bannaconni ranch. He took a cautionary step in Dymka’s direction, still grasping the gun.
Dymka kept his eyes on the weapon. The man took another step, still looking around him, the gun dropping almost to his side. The big leopard charged, exploding from the grass, crossing the short distance in half a second, swiping one paw at the gun, nearly severing the arm as he sent the weapon flying.
Immediately, the man tried to shift, his body contorting fast, jaw elongating, fur beginning to burst through skin. Dymka took him all the way over, his heavy body pinning his enemy, teeth closing on the throat.
Mitya tried to back him off. He needed a prisoner to question, but there was no stopping Dymka once he went for the kill, not when he was so enraged and frustrated in the midst of the Han Vol Dan. He killed the man and then dragged his body over the hillside, back to the group of men waiting for him.
Mitya waited until Dymka released the body, dropping it almost at his cousin’s feet, and then he shifted. “Prisoners?” It was the first word out of his mouth. He needed a prisoner. Just one. Two would be better, but one would do. He needed to get to the bottom of this mess.
Fyodor shook his head. “Sorry, Mitya. They’re all dead.”
Mitya caught the jeans Timur tossed to him and stepped into them with the ease of long practice. “What the hell, Fyodor? Not one alive? That’s bullshit.”
Fyodor shrugged. “There were two left alive. No one shot them. One surrendered. He put his hands into the air and we all ceased fire. The other one shot his friend in the back of the head and then shot himself. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot we could do.”
“We’ll need their identities. Someone has to know them.”
“They’re definitely from out of the country,” Fyodor said. “South America, I’d guess. None of them have identification on them. Their clothes are new. None of them had anything on them that would give their identities away.” As he spoke, he was eyeing his cousin’s shoulder, where blood leaked down his arm in a steady stream. “You might want to take care of that.”
Mitya glanced down at his shoulder, a little surprised to see the blood. The pain had faded as he’d fought the second leopard, and he had regarded the slice through his skin as nothing more than a nuisance.
“You look like hell, Mitya,” Timur said as he tossed a towel to his cousin. “Sevastyan is royally pissed. I don’t think your woman was very cooperative either, so that made him