The large men in the car jumped and looked out the windows.

“What the hell was that?” one of them asked.

“Jackal,” Irene stated quietly while watching city streets turn to suburb. They weren’t taking her to a main airport but a small airstrip. One built exclusively for private planes.

“Did she just call us jackals?” one of them joked.

Irene grinned, which wiped the smile off the man’s face. “No. I said the howl you heard was jackal.” She looked at Jenny. “They’ll be coming for you.”

Jenny glanced at the men and back at her. She looked terribly concerned that she had a lunatic in the car with her. “The jackals will be coming for me?”

“No. The wolves.”

Jenny sighed. “Why oh why do I always get the nutcases?”

“Oh!” Irene pointed excitedly. “See that spot up there?”

“What about it?”

“That’s where it all started. Where I crossed the Rubicon.”

Exasperated, Jenny snarled, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s feeding time,” Irene whispered.

“That’s it.” Jenny threw up her hands. “We’re so medicating her.”

Irene heard the high-pitched howl again and she moved, bringing her elbow back and into Jenny’s nose. The crunch of cartilage had never sounded so beautiful before.

Jenny screamed and covered her face, blood flowing from between her fingers. Irene slammed her fist into the balls of the man sitting next to her. He grunted in pain but didn’t pass out as she’d hoped. Instead, his hands cupped his groin but she used the opportunity to reach across the man and fling the door open.

The ground flew by and she quickly calculated the speed at which they were moving, the height of the car, her current weight, the weight of her backpack, and the potential car-to-ground impact.

Adjusting her body twenty-six-point-eight degrees, Irene took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and threw herself out of a moving vehicle.

Eleven

Irene’s body flipped forward several times before landing against the unforgiving road. Gasping, her entire body aching, she lifted her head. It took her a second to realize the fingers of her right hand were numb. Okay, so her calculations were off a smidge. Good thing she was left-handed.

The sound of squealing brakes forced Irene to turn her head. The car had spun around and she knew it would be heading back toward her at any second.

Forcing herself to her feet, Irene stumbled into the woods. She ignored the blistering pain emanating from her wrist and the sticky feel of blood sliding down her face. What concerned her more was the way her vision seemed to be dimming. The last thing she needed now was to black out.

Shaking her head and pushing herself to take each step, Irene kept going, knowing exactly where she needed tobe. Exactly where she needed to lead them. It was her only chance and might get her killed in the process. Better to die in her own country, though, than someplace she’d never been before.

They were behind her, closing in fast, although she could hear one of the men telling them not to follow. Irene still had the backpack on and it had become a dead weight. But to take it off now would lose her even more time, so she kept pushing forward.

Her memory steered her, told her where to go. A gift and a curse, her memory. Without it right now, she’d be dead. With it, she might end up slave labor in the Soviet Union. Nice choices.

Irene saw the clearing through the trees and focused her will on making it through those trees to the clearing. She had to.

Big hands grabbed her hair and backpack, yanking her back. Irene swung her arms and slammed her foot into his instep, causing a healthy grunt of pain before he threw her face-first into a tree.

Stunned, Irene used the tree for leverage and maneuvered around it. She stumbled forward, tripped, and hit the ground. But she’d made it to the clearing. She’d crossed the Rubicon.

“You fucking bitch!” Jenny Fairgrove spit at her as she dragged Irene up by her hair. “Where were you running, Professor? Where did you think you’d go? You’ll never get away from us.”

Male hands yanked her from Jenny and Irene waited for it. A slap, a punch. The reminder that they controlled the situation, not her.

Unable to put up much more of a fight, Irene waited. But she knew that if they didn’t knock her out, she’d still fight. She’d fight until they killed her.

Unfortunately that was in her nature too.

Yet the big hands in her hair were the only thing keeping her from falling to the ground.

She looked at the other angry male striding toward her, spitting curses at her in Russian. He was only about five feet from her when they all heard that laugh and he stopped.

Irene grinned. “Welcome to my country, comrade.”

Quickly wiping the blood from her eyes, Irene watched the agent turn toward the sound as one of the Dupris Clan slammed into him, jaws wrapping around his head.

The big Russian screamed, going for his weapon, but he never counted on how large the Dupris family and its Clan were. “They breed like rabbits,” Van would always complain. And she’d never been so grateful.

They grabbed hold of parts of that agent he probably didn’t even know he had, and an ugly tug-of-war started. The whole time, as they ripped the flesh from his bones and the limbs from his torso, they laughed—the sound they made when excited.

Clearly they were quite excited.

The other agent raised his gun and tried to pull Irene back into the woods even as he watched the carnage in front of him. But by then the wolves were there, tackling him from behind.