Bad Cat Baby Blues (Shifter Squad Six 3) (10 page)

Cut one head off and he’ll grown two new ones,
she thought grimly.
 

Ari made sure to secure the locks behind him, giving the door a quick tug to make sure. Not that it mattered much, seeing as she had just invited the worst person that could possibly walk in there right into her home.

Invite is a strong word,
Ari mused, rolling her eyes at herself as she stalked in after Spade.

“What do you want, Spade? Did I forget a report and you’ve come to collect my shame for it?” Ari snipped, finding Spade in the living room.

She breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t gone straight for the kitchen, though the noises and giggles that Ro was making there had to be evident to his sharp ears. For a second, she dared to hope that maybe he hadn’t noticed, but Spade turned to face her, his head tilted upward a bit, sniffing the air like a wolf would breathe in the crisp forest night before tearing the throat out of his victim. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Don’t you want me to meet Roman, Ariadne? I do so enjoy seeing the offspring of Squad Six, the collection of shameless whores that they are. But I thought you were better than that, Ari. Couldn’t do any better than Dutch, huh?”

Spade paused, tucking his hands behind his back. Ari was almost paralyzed, her sharp tongue shoved back into her throat; the only noise she could make was a little gurgle. Spade wasn’t just any intelligence officer. He ran the game with an iron fist and while he seemed to know everything about everyone, no one seemed to know a damn thing about him. And while he had always filled Ari with this sense of dread whenever he was around, she’d thought it to be mostly in her head.

Yet here he was now, leaving her no doubt that he knew absolutely everything. The tone of his voice was almost playful, like he enjoyed watching her squirm. She should have known that he would have found out about Roman. If he’d taken the time to come and see her, it had to be something big. But how the hell did he know about Dutch? She’d told no one, not even the ferocious sniper himself. Listening to Spade, it almost seemed like the whole freaking world knew, like someone had shoved it on the front page of the damn
Times
and it was common knowledge like global warming and falling gas prices.

“How’d you… never mind,” Ari said, biting her tongue. It didn’t matter how he knew. “No, you cannot meet my son. Tell me what you want or I’m going to drag you out of here by your teeth and I swear to fucking God, you will not enjoy it.”

Her voice was a growl now and her hands were rolled into fists, ready to strike. Spade stood tall, quirking a brow, his strong body at ease. A slight smile played at the corner of his mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which were as emotionless and void as they always had been. As a mother, she was ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone for her baby, but her rational side told her that while she’d never witnessed Spade go hand-to-hand with someone, he was probably a lot more dangerous than his stoic, rail-straight form would allow her to guess.

“Feisty. I like it,” he purred, letting the smile spread over his thin lips. “But you shouldn’t make threats you can’t deliver on, kitten. Don’t forget, I know you
very
well, and you’re being reckless for no reason. After all, I’m your friend in this. Your confidant. Your shoulder to cry on.”

He licked across his lips and it was almost lewd, like being stared down by someone who is considering how to cut you up in sizable chunks and shove you in a freezer while hiding it behind crude flirting. It made the hackles on the back of her neck stand up and she felt more like a mouse being primed for a cat’s dinner than ever before. Ari didn’t say a word, refusing to let him goad her into getting angry, getting reckless.

“That’s better,” he said, his face a stern mask of functionality and rigid order again. “I’m here because you need to come back in. We have a job for you.”

“I quit. I’m out. I’m a trainer now and I’m done killing people for you, Spade.”

“You never did it for me, kitten. You did it for the common good. The hope of mankind’s everlasting reign. For the betterment of shifters everywhere. So on and so forth,” he said with a flourish, sweeping his hand around her modest home. “Look at all the comfort it has brought you. Don’t you think you owe us a bit of gratitude for it?”

Ari resisted the urge to lunge across the room and choke the shit out of the self-involved asshole. Her teeth were bared in a snarl and the jaguar flashed in her eyes, deep gold replacing the green for a moment. Spade didn’t move a muscle, leaving her without a single clue whether or not her little outburst mattered to him at all.

“Regardless, point remains. I am out.”

“You’re not out unless I say you are. We allowed you to go off of active service because of your…
predicament
. But the bundle of joy is old enough to exist without Mommy and it’s time to come pay your debt, Ari. Your old friends are back and you need to deal with them.”

“My old friends?” she asked, confused.

“Yes. Soyo, and his merry band of misfits. Jola and that big lug I hear you kicked the ever-living shit out of. They’ve shown up in Detroit of all places—which is just the happiest coincidence, don’t you think?”

The way his face didn’t move a muscle when he said that made her have no doubt that it was the furthest thing from a coincidence, let alone a happy one. Cold sweat dappled her back and her breathing hitched for a second. If Soyo or any of his men came across Ari, by accident or not, she’d be dead in a second and Ro right along with her. She’d betrayed them in the worst possible way and she’d had plenty of witnesses to say as much. And now they were in Detroit?

Shit.
It was no time to be eloquent.
 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ariadne

“They want me dead at best and tortured to hell at worst. I don’t know anything about them that I haven’t told you and The Firm already. So why me?” Ari asked, crossing her arms over her chest to keep them from visibly shaking.

He had that smile again that made the pit of her stomach ice over. The fact that she hadn’t figured out what Soyo was up to had plagued her, ruining her sleep and cutting into her otherwise happy, mellow new existence. When he dropped Soyo’s name, her jaguar growled, hissing with desire to finish what they started.

But Ari couldn’t think of just herself and what she wanted anymore. Now with Roman in the mix, his wants, needs, and desires came first and Ari’s firmly second. She couldn’t forget that.

“Because you had an intuition about them, and I think there was something to it. I don’t think this is a drug game anymore and you figured it out before anyone else did. It’s your job,” he said, sounding almost pacifying, like he was giving her something that could pass as a compliment.

Still, she felt very clearly that he wasn’t telling her everything he knew. Not something that surprised her when it came to Spade, not at all.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I won’t risk my kid like that. I’ll take him and disappear and you can deal with your crazies on your own. I’m deactivated, I’m out. I’m not your puppet anymore.”

Spade gave her a look and for a second, Ari expected the ground to open up and swallow her whole. But it didn’t. Instead, he burst into action, walking past her with long, commanding steps. He was in the kitchen before she could stop him and when she caught up with him, Spade had Roman in his arms. Her heart stopped.

He looked almost human like that. The baby boy in his arms was giving him a slightly questioning look, but he was still playing with the lapels of his black jacket. He smiled a toothy smile, cooing at the baby, before looking up at Ari.

“He’s the spitting image of his daddy. Did you know that, Ro?” he asked, using her nickname for him. “I bet you didn’t. You know who else doesn’t know? Your daddy,” he said, his eyes on Ari now.

She made a strangled sound, something roughly akin to a mewl. She was paralyzed.

“You wouldn’t,” she choked, fear brimming in her eyes.

“I would. I will. You know how shifters are about their firstborns. And Dutch isn’t just any shifter. He’s one of the best snipers the SEALs ever trained. He’s deadly from miles away. And what do you want to bet that he wouldn’t be too fucking happy with a bitch who hid his heir from him, huh? I’m thinking that the moment I tell him about how you’ve been hiding his bouncing baby boy from him this whole time, he would lose his cool. Go from that calm, centered soldier you knew him as, to the fucking untamable beast he was when we found him.”

His voice was cold, dead. Deadpan. Ari reeled, a few feet from Ro and Spade, unable to fucking move. She shook her head, feeling tears trying to crawl their way up her throat.

“No! He’s not like that. He’s a good man, he’d understand. You’re fucking with my head, you goddamn psycho!”

But there was no fight in her voice. Truth was, she didn’t know Dutch, no more than she knew Spade, anyway. Hell, she knew the demon in front of her better than she knew the jaguar. And The Firm was made up of psychos, men too fucking broken to work for the armed services, but just twisted enough to do anything they were told for money. Morals were a fleeting notion in The Firm and as much as Dutch and his squad had left her feeling like they were
actual
people, with feelings and emotions, she couldn’t know.

“Maybe. But do you want to know why he got kicked out of the SEALs? Do you want to know what he did to the last person that betrayed him?”

Ari couldn’t make herself speak, couldn’t utter the words. No, she didn’t want to know. And at the same time, she desperately needed to hear whatever he had to say.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Spade said, bouncing Ro up and down and making him giggle. “He had a girlfriend. Pretty little thing. Sort of looked like you, actually. Those green cat eyes and attitude that could burn you if you were careless. He thought she was the one, but she didn’t necessarily agree. So when he caught her cheating with another guy in his unit, do you know what happened?”

He paused for effect and Ari wasn’t sure if she was breathing anymore or if that was one of those things she couldn’t do when conversation veered to the topic of her babydaddy.

“Well, one day, this guy—let’s call him Blake—was walking from her place back to the barracks. He was about halfway there when he felt one leg going out from under him. He didn’t know what hit him before his other knee crumpled in on itself and he was left on the ground, screaming like a stuck pig, .50-caliber shots having shattered his knees and the bones in his shins.

“The fucker never walked again and they had to take one of those legs off mid-thigh because of the extent of the damage. Dutch was supposed to be in training for a week, nowhere around. And he was, but he went missing for a day. They never pinned it on him, didn’t have the proof, but I bet Blake knew who got him. And that girl of his never fucked around on him again, not that Dutch would touch her again. So tell me, Ariadne, is that the kind of man you want knowing about the fact that you stole his child from him?”

Spade deposited Roman into Ari’s arms, snapping her back into reality. Her gut was twisting and her mind had gone blank, though it was vividly recreating the picture that Spade painted. She could see it so clearly. Dutch’s strong, powerful body hunched over that heavy rifle of his, anger and betrayal shining in his eyes as he took aim and ruined a life. Her heart couldn’t believe that he would be capable of such a thing, but her brain sure as hell did. She’d seen too many men like it, heard too many stories.

Spade
booped
Ro on the nose, smiling in a way that could almost be described as warm before looking back up at Ari.

“He looks just like his daddy. I bet you’re so proud. I’m sending you instructions tonight and I expect you there tomorrow morning,” he said, completely at ease in his role as the devil incarnate.

With that, he peeled off, pushing past Ari. She heard him unlock the door and slip out, letting the door fall shut behind him with the softest of thuds. He left her horrified, shaking, and when she heaved a breath finally, she thought she was going to suffocate on it.

That fucking bastard knew exactly how to get her to do whatever he wanted. And she hated him for it. But nothing mattered as much as Ro did, and for him Ari was going to have to do whatever Spade told her to.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dutch

Dutch’s hands were thrust deep into his pockets as he walked through the large, nondescript building that seemed to be made up of gray, faceless hallways in all of its entirety. It was bland and soulless and looked exactly like Dutch would assume one of The Firm’s headquarters would look like.