Getting past the bear’s external security was not much of a challenge for Dee. She’d been sneaking around the bears of Collinstown for years, just like her daddy taught her to. Especially helpful when she was dating the Collinstown sheriff’s son. Her daddy would have been doing a whole lot of different kind of sneaking if he’d found out about that.

So, yeah, getting past those cameras and tree-sittin’ bears—not a problem for Dee. Getting inside the first floor? Also not a problem. But getting to the floor where they had those bodies that the foxes had told Dee still hadn’t been destroyed. . . ? That was the challenge.

The first thing Dee did was strip naked, placing her clothes someplace she could get to them easy if she had to make a run for it. Then she pried off the metal grate covering the vent. She placed the grate on the floor, stepped back, shifted to wolf, and leaped inside. She low-crawled her way through and down, desperately trying to keep her claws from scraping against the interior metal. Bears had amazing hearing. Of course, they also had a shit-hot sense of smell, so she had to get in, get out, and get home before they realized they had a wolf in their midst.

Dee reached the lowest level—about fourteen floors underneath the house—and, after pressing her snout against the grate and sniffing carefully, she eased out into the room. She landed and shifted back to human.

The room was pretty damn cold, but that was probably to keep the bodies from decaying. She unzipped the first body bag. A full-human male, in his forties. In fact . . . Dee’s head tilted to the side. She knew the guy. Ex-SEAL and a real scumbag. Dee leaned in. Although there was burned skin and broken bones, she could see what killed him. The cut across his throat, opening up the arteries on both sides of his neck. Dee moved to the next table, unzipped the bag. Again the throat was cut but not like the ex-SEAL’s. Instead, there were individual cuts at the location of each artery in the throat. Dee moved down and saw the same cuts on the inside of the upper arms and the inside thighs. Very precise and measured cuts. Done by a professional.

Dee thought about the hockey player, Novikov. She’d done a little research. After the death of his parents, he’d been raised by his uncle, a Marine and former Unit member. Although she’d never met him personally, Grigori Novikov had done training with other team members she knew. He was supposed to be really good and could easily have taught his nephew a few things.

Leave it to Blayne Thorpe to land face up, as usual. She gets kidnapped with the one nonmilitary trained male who could protect her. Dee wondered what it was like to be that lucky.

Not bothering to look at the rest of the bodies, Dee moved over to the desktop computer set up in the corner. She tapped the keyboard and the screensaver vanished, revealing a log-in screen. She turned her arm over, the information that male fox had written there in black ink clear and brightagainst her skin. Leave it to bears to use a twenty-two code password. She had a great memory but for random numbers and letters? Uh, no.

She quickly typed in the password and zipped through the system, finding what she needed faster than she thought she would. Yet as she delved deeper, looked closer, she began to realize that, as usual, Blayne had found her way into more trouble. Honestly, how did that poodle manage to live so long?

Realizing the Group would need to move faster than she originally thought would be necessary, Dee logged off the PC and stepped back—and right into a rather large wall.

“Find what ya needed?”

Dee looked over her shoulder and up. Way up.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Good. Hope it was worth it.”

And when Dee’s head collided with that wall, she wasn’t really sure she could say it was.

Bo stared out the big picture window of the police chief’s office while his uncle and Adams discussed Blayne.

He didn’t understand it. Three days ago, after a call like Adams had just gotten from the bears out of Brooklyn, they would have pushed Blayne to the outskirts of town with the force of every deputy they had. And that would have been if they were in a good mood. But now? Well, now things were different, weren’t they?

“They say the Van Holtzes are really pushing to get her back,” Adams said. “And they wanted to see the bodies of those full-humans. Even sent some polar to ask.”

“And?”

“Told ’em to fuck off.”

“Good. They’ll get her back when she’s ready to come back.”

Mouth open, Bo again wondered how the woman did it. She’d only been here three days!

“Anything else?” Grigori asked.

“Yeah. We’re sure it’s because they’re attracted by Blayne but, uh . . . I’ve been getting complaints about all the strays running around town the last couple of days. They’re gettin’ into trash, shittin’ all over the place. What do you want to do?”

“Have Ben Chambers catch ’em and put ’em down. We have it in the town budget.”

“Okay. I’ll put in a call and—”

“You’re going to kill them?”

Bo could actually feel the boars behind him cringe at the sound of Blayne’s voice coming from the open back door. Biting back his grin, he looked over his shoulder. She stood there in her gray and pink winter running outfit, one of those “strays” sitting patiently at her side, big brown dog eyes—from both canines—staring at the males.

“You . . . you can’t just kill them.”

“Blayne—” Grigori began and, right on cue, Blayne Thorpe burst into devastated tears.