“You guys don’t understand,” she said. “You think you know Blayne . . .” Gwen again shook her head and speed-dialed Blayne’s cell. She did it two more times, knowing her friend’s phone always ended up at the bottom of her bag. But after the third time of not answering, Gwen knew it was time to worry.

“Well?” Lock asked.

“She’s not answering.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“You don’t know Blayne!” she yelled in Ric’s face. She paced away from the men. “You don’t know her at all.”

Christ, they were in so much trouble. Somehow, someway, they’d lost that damn wolfdog. Dee-Ann, also referred to around the Group office as “That Bitch” was going to have their collective asses for this. It would be especially hard to explain away considering Bo Novikov’s truck was the size of a small tank and really hard to miss. But they got caught in New York traffic. It wasn’t their fault!

“Turn here,” she told Tommy. He did, and after less than a mile, he pulled to a stop.

“Fuck.”

Gemma got out of the car. She pulled her weapon from the holster and quickly advanced to a damaged van and a full-human missing part of his head.

“This one got off a shot,” Tommy told her.

She nodded and walked over to Novikov’s black truck. The driver’s side window was broken, both front doors open. She heard House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and knew someone had it as a ringtone. As she stood beside the passenger’s side, she could tell it came from the backpack. Blayne Thorpe’s backpack, which still had her wallet and credit cards. Nope. Not a robbery.

“I’ll call Dee—” she began, but stopped when she saw the look Tommy gave her. Or, should she say, that Tommy gave whatever was behind her.

Gemma sniffed the air and unleashing her fangs, the She-leopard spun around, her claws out. The grizzly caught her by the head and lifted her off the ground. She hissed and snarled, slashing at him with her claws. She heard Tommy roar and then she was flying, right over the truck and right into her tiger partner. They hit the ground hard, rolling on impact. She got up first, and that’s when she saw the black bear and the polar lumbering toward them.

Tommy was up, too, but he was about to launch himself at the grizzly. She caught his arm. “Run,” she said. And when he only stared at her, she screamed, “Run!”

They took off, getting back to their car in seconds. She got in the driver’s side, slamming the door and putting the still-running vehicle in reverse as Tommy got into the passenger side.

The car jumped back several feet, but the polar had it by the front, lifting the vehicle off the ground.

“Shit! Get him off!”

Tommy pulled his weapon and opened the window. He leaned out and started firing,hitting the polar in the shoulder and upper chest. It didn’t kill him but it sure did piss him off.

He roared and yanked, tearing off the hood. But it freed up the vehicle long enough for Gemma to reverse down the street half a mile. She shifted to drive and spun the car around, heading back the way they came. Tommy relaxed back into his seat, panting, his eyes shifting from gold to brown as he tried to calm down.

“Bears?” she demanded. “Goddamn bears?”

“Not our bears.”

She knew that. Although the Group had bear team members, the bear nation, as they liked to call themselves, still did their own thing. It was a very weird and very dangerous relationship between all the breeds. Yet as long as they were left alone, bears never bothered the other shifters. But piss them off or go after one of their own and all hell could break loose.

And, at the moment, it looked as if hell was running free in Brooklyn, New York.

Yuri Novikov looked up as one of his men stood in front of him. A fellow polar, bleeding from gunshot wounds. “Full-humans?” he asked as he crouched beside a dead one.

“Nah. Cats. Military issue weapons.”

He knew it couldn’t be the Unit. They didn’t get involved inside U.S. borders. That left the Group.

“What does the Group have to do with this?” Yuri asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Did you ask or just attack?”

The polar sniffed. “You know I hate cats.”

And wolves and coyotes and hyenas and anything else not bear.

“Your cousin?” the polar asked Yuri while trying to dig out the bullet in his shoulder with his own fingers.

“Heading home. They’ll take care of him. And leave that alone.” Yuri slapped the idiot’s hand away from the worsening wound. “You’re worse than my grandkids.”

“Those cats may have been looking for that wolfdog.”

Then the Group could take that up with Ursus County. The wolfdog, and whether she lived or died, wasn’t his problem.

“Look at this,” Yuri said, pointing at the full-human body. The polar crouched down.

“Nice cuts,” he said.

“All strategic. Major arteries only. Neck, inside thigh, upper inside arms. I haven’t seen work like this since the military.”

“Your cousin?”

“The kid’s a hell of a hockey player and a hell of a predator, but that’s about it. Ripped-out throats and torn-out thighs are probably more his style. This . . . this takes skill. And a coldness I’ve only seen among the Unit.”

“The wolfdog?”

“She has no tatts. No serious scars. Kinda tiny. And the Unit doesn’t take hybrids. Especially the canines. Too hard to handle. Too unstable.”