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)
“I can enter a shifter’s home without detection by his leopard or him. Fortunately, we have the same gifts.”
“Technically, once I’m there, it isn’t that the leopard ignores me; it’s because he’s unaware of me,” Maya explained. “I blend. Like an apparition. A wraith.” She flashed him a small smile.
“I’m capable of the same thing,” Gorya said. He found that strange. What were the odds that both of them would be able to go into the house of a shifter undetected? Had they exchanged a chemical of some kind when he had rescued her all those years ago that allowed her to do the kinds of things he had done? Or was it the other way around? There was no doubt in his mind that she had gifts few leopards had. Gedeon and Meiling had them. He did. He’d never met any others. Some came close, but there were no others with those telling traits that he knew of.
“These men you hunt, these are the ones that you were turned over to when you first arrived from Russia?” he asked, grateful to return to the subject. He’d been trying to find a way to naturally turn the conversation back ever since he’d blown it, but hadn’t known how.
“Some of them.”
“Tell me what happened, Maya. Please. I won’t go berserker on you.”
She looked at him warily. He could tell Wraith was close by the rings of green surrounding the blue of her eyes, but she only nodded and continued her story. “When the freighter got to the harbor, someone told us we were in Houston and we had to get off very fast before anyone saw us. We were taken to a large container and had to stay there for a long time. I had to use the bathroom. It was awful and smelled like onions. I dislike onions to this day.”
“You were locked in a storage container?” He forced himself to repeat her words in a calm, neutral tone. “Who did they send to meet you?”
“There was a man by the name of Blum. He said in order to work we needed papers, and they had to be paid for and were expensive. He would get them for everyone, and a place to stay and work, but it wouldn’t come cheap. I didn’t like him. He was really mean. He snorted like a pig all the time and his eyes were close together and beady. The women hid the money you gave us, but his men found it and took it.”
Gorya sighed. That was the oldest scam in the book. They kept the women working like slaves, owing them money, withholding their rightful earnings on the pretense that they never paid their debt.
“We lived in a small house together and eventually could go to the market and shop. It wasn’t too bad at first until some of the women wanted more of the money they earned. Blum beat them. His men beat them. The women would hide me from them when they came to have sex with them. We were there about two years when Blum brought two other men to the house.”
Something in her voice warned him he wasn’t going to like what she was about to tell him.
“The men said they wanted women to work at a very exclusive party for them. Blum laughed. It was a nasty laugh. I knew it was not a good thing. They acted as if the women would make extra money and maybe even be able to leave, but I knew they would never come back. I tried to tell the women, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They wanted out from under Blum.”
Gorya studied her face. “You were about seven.”
She nodded. “I looked much younger and was able to merge with the shadows. Wraith and I practiced her coming out every chance we got. We didn’t allow anyone to see her, even the other women. I saw too many of them trading favors with men to trust anyone. But I remembered names. I made certain I listened to conversations and gathered as much information as possible. If anyone touched me, I never forgot his name and I promised myself I would track him down someday. If they hurt any of my friends, I did the same. If they made the women disappear—and I always knew the truth, even when they lied and said the women were allowed to leave—I put them into my memory banks.”
Maya’s tone hadn’t changed and neither had her expression, but deep inside, he felt her resolve. Her determination was every bit as strong as his. Her killer instincts had been developed at a young age. She didn’t forget those who had shaped her into a vengeful, relentless hunter.
“I learned so much very fast in those early days. I studied my enemies, following them through the streets. At first, with the cars driving so fast and the maze of freeways and alleys and neighborhoods, it was daunting, but I have an excellent memory, and after the first couple of times, I could follow them to their bosses’ offices and businesses and then to their homes. It wasn’t that difficult to familiarize myself with their residences and the surrounding landscape as well as their guards and their schedules.”