honestly, I wonder if both might have been better off buried with those men.”
There was silence. Mitya frowned, going over Joshua’s short rendition of the encounter, trying to find something that didn’t add up. “Only those in that village knew you went after the girls, is that correct?”
Drake shook his head. “There were men in my organization who knew I sent him. The villagers certainly knew. As for those leopards’ families, we didn’t know where they came from. We had no idea. Questions weren’t asked. They were killed.”
Mitya was watching Joshua when Drake was explaining. Those blue eyes held so much rage that Dymka reacted. Those leopards hadn’t just been killed. There was more to it than that. Five men to his one. Joshua was no pushover. He appeared cool and easygoing. He had a killer inside of him that struck when called on. Mitya hoped the others realized that.
Jake drummed his fingers on the table. “That doesn’t give us a lot to go on. Drake, can you make inquiries as to what happened to those girls? What happened to the families of those girls? Where is everyone now?”
“This is fuckin’ thin,” Mitya said. “You have no idea where those five men came from, whether they were related, or anything about them.”
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