Yet she would never come at him directly. That was too easy. No, she’d find another way to get to him. Or, as she’d put it more than twenty years ago, she’d find a way to “make you hurt.” Since he knew she wasn’t one for idle threats, he felt pretty sure she’d make good on that promise. Especially now.

Still, Crush wasn’t worried about himself too much. Not that he wanted to suffer or anything, but it was what it was. Yet there were others who had now crossed her, too. MacDermot. Van Holtz, Smith, Malone. Even those two hybrid girls. They’d all unknowingly crossed a line with Baissier. Crush had warned Van Holtz and Gentry, who’d shown up at the Group offices an hour after everything went down. They understood, and when he and MacDermot had left, they’d been meeting with Smith and Malone, and Van Holtz had promised to ensure the girls would be protected.

But Crush couldn’t shake the feeling that ...

He heard the knock at the front of his house, and Lola raised her head from the kitchen floor. She snarled and Crush stood, removing his .45 from its holster and heading to the door. But one sniff had him lowering his weapon and pulling the door open.

“It’s you.”

“Is that any way to talk to your pretend girlfriend?”

Rolling his eyes, the adrenaline practically pouring out of his body, Crush said, “You are such a strange feline.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” She lifted her hands. “You going to let me in or what?”

“It’s late, Malone. And I’m just not in the mood to—”

“Great. Thanks.” She pushed past him and walked into his house. Gritting his teeth, he followed her into his kitchen.

As soon as Malone stepped in, Lola barked at her, running around Malone and sitting down at Crush’s feet. Still barking.

Crush reached down and picked up the fifty-pound dog. “I know, girl. I know. No one wants these nasty cats in their home. Worse than rats.”

“I can’t believe you buy into that canine-media propaganda.”

“For someone so anti-dog, seems you’re kind of close to them.”

“Well, Smith and Van Holtz aren’t like those other dogs. You know, they don’t talk like ’em or strut like ’em. They’re different.”

“I’m becoming completely uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation,” he said, ignoring her laughter.

Crush kissed Lola’s head and walked into the kitchen, going right to the cabinet where he kept all her treats and taking out an extra-large bully stick.

“Here.” He placed Lola on the floor with her treat. “I think you deserve this, baby-girl.”

“Why don’t you just accept that she’s your dog?” Malone asked, dropping into one of the chairs around the kitchentable.

“She’s a foster. One day I’ll find her a nice family with kids.”

“Why can’t she just stay here with you?”

“No one for her to play with.” Crush opened the refrigerator, glanced in, then closed the door again.

“You’re restless,” she observed.

“It’s been an ... interesting day.”

“More like average for us.”

“Great. Wonderful to hear. And good to know that I have more to look forward to. Next, I guess Gentry will ask me to ...”

“Kill someone?”

Crush shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and hunched his shoulders.

“Doubtful,” she said. “Usually MacDermot’s department is busy just cleaning up my mess and Smith’s. And Smith and I sure are messy.”

“Are you saying I’ll have to clean up corpses?”

“Oh, God, no. We have specialists for that sort of thing. I just mean that you’ll probably spend a lot of time keeping me and Smith out of prison.”

“That’s what I’m reduced to? Keeping you and your wolf friend out of prison?”

“Trust me. There will be more to it than that. In some ways our world is much more difficult than the full-humans’.”

“I understand their world. It’s easy. Dangerous, but easy.”

Malone threw her legs up on the kitchen table like she owned the joint, crossing them at the ankles.

“So you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s see. First off, you went after your two replicas—as I like to call your brothers—as if they were covered in whale blubber. And then those two grizzlies at the office—”

“They kicked a child, threatened my partner, and went after that full-human girl. What was I supposed to do? Just stand there?”

“First off—”

“Again with the first off?”

Malone scowled at him and Crush raised his hands, knowing he was snapping. “Sorry.”

“First off, what happened at the meeting—totally righteous. But you challenged them before the meeting, too.”

“So there’s no ‘second off’? You have all these first offs, but no second offs?”

Malone folded her hands over her stomach.

“What?”

“Are you going to keep playing this game to avoid telling me what’s going on? Or are you just going to talk to me?”

“About what? Because something tells me you already know.”

“That Baissier was your foster mother? That she had you quietly outed as a cop? Yeah. I know. But I still want to hear it from you.”