Total pages in book: 172
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
“You recognize any of them?”
In the dark, it might be considered impossible, but leopards recognized one another and often shifters did as well, just by movement. By body language. They might be a good distance away, but Sevastyan could see these men were professionals. It wouldn’t be long before most of them were dead, but he wanted to know where they came from. Where Rolan was recruiting.
Kyanite nodded slowly. “Worked with two of them when I was down in Panama. They kept to themselves. Good trackers, both of them. The other three are from Borneo. They were from a lair several miles from the one Drake grew up in. Sorry to see them here, but not too surprised.”
Rolan knew about the shifters training in the rain forests. The internet made advertising so easy these days. Shifters wanted work. Action. They were predators and living in cities didn’t appeal to most of them. They were born to hunt so quite a few preferred mercenary work.
Sevastyan turned his attention to the team coming from the main road straight to the front of the house. Team two was coming on foot, spreading out, five men, using the low shrubbery for cover as they approached the house. That looked like the easiest entry point, when it was actually the most dangerous of all.
He’d designed the renovations himself when Mitya had moved in. The roof lines on the house and garages were completely made over, giving him places for his snipers to have higher ground but also cover when they needed it. He’d set his snipers at various locations and they were just waiting for his word to take out the first wave of Rolan’s men.
Team three came in from Sevastyan’s property, using a fast-moving truck without lights and then abandoning that before running to converge with the others, making their way on the ground through the thicker woods Flambé’s father had planted years earlier.
Team four came in from the opposite side, running also to cover the distance. They had the battlegrounds to cover, where Sevastyan trained his men daily in simulated wars, in hand-to-hand combat, in taking apart bombs. He left nothing to chance with Mitya’s security, and that included keeping the leopards in fighting condition. The open fields were there for a reason. There were gently rolling hills, downed trees and shallow caves dug out so his men could train for every possibility. Sevastyan and his men knew every inch of those acres where they trained.
The last team had the responsibility of covering the others, hanging back to be in position to break into the house and kill Sevastyan and Mitya when the others made their entry. Sevastyan shook his head. Rolan had always insisted he could plan his battles. He’d always sucked at it. Even at fourteen and fifteen, Sevastyan had listened and then changed everything the moment he’d left Rolan with the others to actually go into combat. The men had learned to listen to him instead of Rolan. It was what had kept them alive.
“Do you have sights on team five and team one?” Sevastyan asked. He narrowed his gaze, looking closer at the screen, trying to peer behind those members of team five in the trees. Was something moving?
“That’s affirmative,” Logan Shields responded. “Give us the go.”
“It’s a go,” Sevastyan confirmed. He didn’t look to see if his snipers took out their ten intended victims. He looked beyond the five mercenaries dropping like stones in the trees to the shadows suddenly going still behind them. Something was definitely there, but he couldn’t make it out. Suddenly, he was uneasy.
“Christophe, can you bring up the images in the trees team five was in? Right behind them, following them on the branches. Ambroise, you’re very quiet over there. Did you see anything?”
“I don’t see anything,” Christophe said, leaning forward, forcing the screen image larger and larger until it was nothing but gray pixels. He turned in his seat to look at Sevastyan. “All five team members went down hard. Those were kill shots.”
Sevastyan ignored that. He knew his snipers had scored kill shots. That wasn’t the point. The point was, someone besides Rolan had put together this assault on Mitya’s home and team five weren’t the only ones in those trees.
“Bring up team one again now. The earlier screens of them.” He’d been looking at the men. Seeing what they wanted him to see. Seeing what he expected to see. Thinking he was the smartest damn man in the room. Those men were a sacrifice, pawns to test his defenses. He’d known that, but he hadn’t known they would already be utilizing what they learned. They knew the snipers were on the roof of the house, but now they knew they were on the garages.
“Hurry, Christophe. Ambroise, answer me. What the fuck am I missing? What’s out there? What’s behind these men coming at us?”