Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 127461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
She and Wraith were in a good place. She had a good freelance job, although she mainly worked for three different companies, researching whatever they needed. She was thorough and fast and didn’t mind going places no one else could go if she wasn’t asked how she got her information. She worked from home, avoiding people, which suited her.
She appeared to be an introvert to the outside world. She didn’t interact with anyone other than exchanging emails with her clients. She kept to herself, moving often, always staying on the edge of a city, where there was plenty of room to run her leopard.
Maya took time to hunt down certain criminals. That kept her skills sharp, both on the computer searching for their whereabouts and then physically stalking them. It was important for her and Wraith to always have an edge. They couldn’t ever get complacent because they were living a life away from shifters. Unfortunately, her last investigation had brought her to the coast of Texas and then the swamps of Louisiana.
She had known her quarry, Albert Krylov, was working as a courier for one of the bratva families in Russia. She was looking for his connections in the United States. She found it a little shocking to find not just one territory held by Russians but several. She thought they would have been Italian or American, maybe both. How the Russians had gotten such a foothold in Louisiana and Texas was beyond her. She had been very careful to avoid any contact with them, even though she was tracking Krylov and he had gone to each of those territories.
She had run into Theo in the Café du Monde in New Orleans. There was no way to abruptly leave or pretend she didn’t know him. He had spotted her while she waited in line and came right over to her. She couldn’t make a scene, not with Krylov at a table several feet away. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She blended into the crowd unobtrusively, making certain she was in the shadows as much as possible and blurring her appearance so no one would be able to describe her accurately if asked later. But Theo had noticed her, because the moment he’d arrived at the Café du Monde and gotten into line he’d approached her.
He immediately told her he was in trouble and needed help. Could he call her later? He was being followed and couldn’t stay. The meeting was so brief she hadn’t had time to assess the situation. Instead of giving him her number, she’d taken his number and agreed to call him as soon as she could.
Thankfully, Krylov had moved out of New Orleans, a city that seemed to be crawling with shifters. She’d followed him to the Atchafalaya Swamp, the largest in the United States. With a million acres to choose from, she thought herself safe enough, but to her dismay, Krylov was visiting yet another Russian territory. This one looked as if it had been around for a while and was well established with the locals. It was run by shifters.
The bratva. She had thought herself safe from them in the United States. She’d stayed under the radar, far from anything that remotely resembled shifters. It hadn’t occurred to her there would be leopards in the swamps of Louisiana, and yet not only were they there, but there was also an entire established town of them. Worse, they were Russian.
The pakhan and leader of the lair had been killed recently, and a new one had taken over. He’d been challenged just twice. From rumors she’d heard, he hadn’t spared the challengers’ lives, as was normal. His leopard had killed theirs in seconds. There had been no more challenges to his leadership.
This new leader wasn’t just bratva. He was from the Primorye region of Russia, where the Amur leopards were going extinct and the shifters were the most cruel and brutal of all. Those were the ones reputed to kill the mothers of their children to prove loyalty to the bratva. They demanded the same from all who served under them.
Although the swamp was the best possible place for her to keep up her training, she decided to get out while she could. She wanted to rid the world of Krylov. She already had leads on three others she wanted to track thanks to his travels. She needed an opportunity to kill him and either dispose of the body in the swamp or make certain someone else would take the blame.
She called Theo, intending to tell him she was no longer in New Orleans and wouldn’t be able to meet with him. Unfortunately, he was in the Atchafalaya Swamp as well. He was desperate for a meeting. He kept telling her he was really in trouble and reminded her that when she’d needed help, he had come through for her.