Disgusted, Ricky returned his attention to Toni. She stood straight, shook her hair. The curls were shorter now, getting curlier as her hair became drier.

“Okay. I’m ready.” She threw the towel back into the bathroom and grabbed a small backpack and thick file folder from her bed. She walked to the door, pulling it open with her free hand.

“What happened to the back of the door?” Ricky asked her.

“Huh?” Toni asked, eyes wide as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. She continued to keep moving, saying nothing more.

“Going to say it now?” Vic asked him.

“No. I’m not.” He pointed at the hybrid. “I know it’ll be impossible for a bear-tiger freak of nature to understand, but although every dog may be a canine, not every canine is a dog.”

“Did you get that from your college Logic one-oh-one class?”

“Maybe.”

“Come on, guys,” Toni called from the hallway. “Let’s go. I’ve got a lot of work to get done today.”

“Just leave it,” Ricky warned the hybrid. “She’s fine.”

“If you say so.”

“Watch that tone, son.”

Vic chuckled and walked out of the room; Ricky followed.

Still disgusted.

She saw the girl, Delilah Jean-Louis Parker, sitting on the steps in front of that church. She couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, but Miss Parker was strikingly beautiful.

It was extremely late when she sat down beside the girl. Glancing over her shoulder, she realized that Parker wasn’t alone. At least three men, probably members of the church—or cult, depending on whom you talked to—were standing in the shadows, there to protect Parker.

That was all right. She had her own backup.

“Hi,” she finally said to the girl. She knew she had a “warm way about her” as it said in her evaluations. It was something she used to her benefit.

“Hello.” Parker looked at her. She had a soft smile and dead eyes.

“I got your message through our mutual friend and we are definitely interested.”

“Okay.”

“We’re willing to pay you—”

“I want a million. In this account in the Cayman Islands.” She handed over a piece of paper with numbers on it. “Get me that and I’ll give you what I have.”

“A million? That seems . . . substantial. For something we’re not even sure will work.”

“A million or you get nothing.”

“Look, Miss Jean-Louis Parker—”

“Gasp,” Parker said flatly. “How do you know my name? Oh, no. If you know my name . . . you know where I live. What will I do now? The horror. The horror.” Parker leaned in a bit.“Is that what you wanted to hear? Was that the reaction you needed?”

A girl this one might be, but smart. And cold. Ice fucking cold.

“I’ll talk to my superiors, Miss Parker.”

Parker gave a little shrug, her small, misleading smile still in place. “Okay.”

Tucking the piece of paper into her jeans pocket, she stood and walked down the steps and out onto the street. She walked a block until her team picked her up. She got into the Town Car and closed the door.

“Well?”

“Snotty little slit.”

“We know where she lives.”

“Strong-arming this girl isn’t going to work. Not with this one.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“We’ll see if we can find it on our own.”

“And if we can’t?”

She thought back on her superior’s excitement when she’d shown him the information one of her contacts had sent her. “Then we give the bitch what she wants.”

Although Toni had been to Russia before—several times, in fact—she’d never been this far outside a major city. She’d never been to Siberia.

And Siberia was, in a word, astounding.

So lush and green. Not at all what Toni expected.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Barinov asked as he glanced at her in the rearview.

“It is. I guess I expected—”

“A snow-covered wilderness?”

“It’s Siberia.”

“There’s summertime here, too. It’s actually kind of extra hot for this time of year. Nearly sixty-five Fahrenheit when I checked this morning.” Considering Toni had just left what she considered the oppressive heat of the East Coast, she had to chuckle a little.

The drive took a good thirty minutes until they reached the location where they’d be meeting with the bears. A ridiculously large . . . well . . . palace. Yeah. It was a palace. Not a mansion. Not a castle. A palace.

“Good Lord,” Ricky muttered.

Barinov chuckled. “This is the house—”

“House?” Toni asked, incredulous.

“—that belongs to whoever is currently running this town. And for the last century and a half, that’s been the Zubachevs.”

“Why do I know that name?” Ricky asked, yawning and taking off his cap to scratch his head.

“Lots of Zubachevs in the States, a bunch of them in Maine. Like my mother’s family, they’re from Kamchatka.”

“Lovely.” Ricky put his hat back on his head. “Just lovely.”

“What’s wrong?” Toni asked.

Barinov shrugged. “Kamchatka bears kind of hate—”