As I was a happily drugged secretary who absolutely wanted nothing more than to be taken into a murder cabin, I got out of his car, grabbed my purse and laptop bag, and stared up at it, marveling that a log cabin could be so large or elegant. “I didn’t even know they made cabins like this. This is so nice.”
“It’s custom built.”
Of course it was. Custom meant prestigious, which also meant it appealed to the rich, the famous, and those wishing to become rich or famous.
What a nice place to kill people, and what a nice evening for my dirty, bloody work. I sighed, and I smiled. “I love the outdoors.”
“Why don’t I show you inside, and then if you’d like, we can take a walk in the woods.”
No, there was nothing at all creepy about an invitation to walk in the woods near a cabin at night. Nothing creepy about it at all.
Thanks to the pixie dust, I couldn’t even crack a snide joke about it, as someone that happy wouldn’t behave like that. I would just unleash the bad jokes on Sebastian until he found some sinfully sexy way to shut me up.
Once I finished my job, I would have to inquire with the CDC if it was normal to fall into a severe state of lust. Then again, perhaps the idiot had dosed me with more than just pixie dust.
As far as I knew, their device didn’t detect aphrodisiacs.
Poor Sebastian, destined to be ravished.
“That sounds nice,” I replied, smiling until my face hurt. At least the pixie dust helped on that front. I could handle smiling, especially when I thought about the various ways I could tenderize my target.
“Don’t mind the staff. I have two maids right now, and they stay here during the week. They’ll probably be upstairs.”
I bet the maids were pregnant, and when I took a sniff, they’d smell of fear, especially if they were being forced to pretend they were maids. What I smelled in the cabin would determine my next steps. “Oh, sure. It must be hard for them to get here.”
“It is, and their husbands travel for work, so they’re almost never home.”
How convenient for him. “I see.”
Loureni led me into the cabin, which had a rustic decor, and not a speck of dust marred anything, lending credence to his story he had two maids in residence. A spacious kitchen took up one side of the space, and a huge sitting room with a fireplace dominated the rest of the first floor of the cabin, with a curving stairwell leading upwards. “Lori, Yvonne, we have a guest.”
I kept behind him, taking note of the shoe rack, which had several pairs of women’s shoes in three different sizes, which matched the theory of a female accomplice and two victims.
Two heavily pregnant women waddled down the steps to the second floor, and they reeked of fear.
Like me, both women had scarred faces, although they’d gotten off lighter than I had.
When they caught sight of me, the stench of fear warped to worry.
It made me want to sneeze.
“Yvonne, you will prepare a room for her while I give my brother a call. She has medications that need to be monitored, and Kenard will want to meet her immediately. Lori, make a pot of tea, and keep our new guest company. Vanessa, why don’t you go with Lori and make yourself comfortable? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Both women looked stricken, but they covered their dismay with admirable speed. One went upstairs, and the other joined me, wringing her hands in front of her.
“This way,” Lori whispered. All-in-all, outside of her being a few inches taller than me, we were interchangeable, right down to a slight overabundance of mammary material, slender builds, brown hair, and scarred faces. Stefan headed up the stairs.
I waited until he was gone to lift my head and sniff the air. The whole place reeked of fear and pregnant women, and I thought I caught a faint hint of old blood. “You don’t want to be here,” I stated in a low tone, soft enough only she could hear me.
She sucked in a breath, her eyes widened, and she glanced up the stairs. “Run while you can.”
I smiled. “Oh, don’t you worry your pretty head about me. I’m your guardian angel today, sent courtesy of the FBI and the CDC. If you want out of here, just play along.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious. Did he kidnap you?”
“Just like he kidnapped you. But you should be drugged. With pixie dust. He grabbed me first, then he took Lori. He usually keeps us drugged, but we’re now late enough in our pregnancies he doesn’t want to risk it.”
“Is he the father?”
“No. His brother. That’s why he’s calling him.”
“Will you verify this with an angel?”
“Without hesitation.”
“Are there any children?”
Lori grabbed a kettle off the counter, filled it with water, and set it on the gas stove before lighting it. “There are, but they aren’t here. They’re with Stefan’s woman. She’s caring for them right now. If they don’t get along well with their father, he dumps them somewhere.”
What a fucking asshole. “Alive?”
“We think so. We don’t know what happened to their mothers. They weren’t right for Stefan’s brother or something. Or they outlived their usefulness, I guess. They disappeared.”
“How long does it take for his brother to get here after he calls?”
“No more than an hour, but you’re the first time he’s brought a woman over. It’s usually some business associates of some sort, or Stefan’s woman. She doesn’t like us all that much.”
I bet, and I could guess why. “Does the woman have family that comes to visit?”
That would cover the minimum I needed for the implicating her politician relative—or not.
“No, I don’t think so. She’s standoffish. I think she’s estranged from her family.”
“And Yvonne?”
“She cries all the time because she wants to go home.”
Well, she’d be going home if I had anything to say about it. “Where are the knives?”
Lori pointed at a magnetic rack on the wall, which had a collection of nice knives.
“Do you sew? Or, more importantly, got a good pair of sewing shears?”
“We do. I mean, we aren’t all that good at it, but we have shears meant for sewing. I don’t know if they’re any good.”
I’d settle with one of the knives or my claws. Or both. I set my purse and my laptop bag on the counter, pulled my shirt over my head but left my bra on, which wouldn’t be destroyed when I went from human to infuriated lynx hybrid on a mission to murder. I kicked off my shoes, opted to sacrifice the pantyhose, and decided the rest of my attire would either survive or it wouldn’t. She stared at me with wide eyes, and I embraced the wild side of my virus, who wanted Sebastian and wanted him right now. Fur sprouted from my skin, my muscles expanded and contorted, and my bones creaked and popped as they took on mass and altered shape. I flexed my hands, which had turned into a blend of human and lynx paw armed with long, lethal claws, which I retracted and extended.
I allowed myself a purr and gave myself a shake, pleased the skirt Sebastian had picked for me had survived. I held a claw to my lips to indicate Lori should be quiet. She nodded.
I grabbed the largest knife of the lot, which would do an excellent job of killing a defenseless human man who expected a docile little lady of a secretary rather than a hybrid lycanthrope.