To Tempt A Tiger (23 page)

His practical side knew he couldn’t do that. This had to be settled, here and now, with the entire community watching. The way the elders dealt with Rose and Zoe would set precedents going forward, even more so than the rules already established for Nila, which was why the process was so damned convoluted and drawn out. But once settled, the two people he loved most in the world would be safe. That hope was worth staying and fighting for.

He watched Zoe as he cradled Rose in his arms, overwhelmed with how easy it was to love his daughter, how easy it was to love Rose again. His soul belonged to them completely now. What would he do if anything happened to them?

Against Rose’s ear, he said, “Should we leave so we don’t disturb her? I’d like to talk a little before we have to go back, but I don’t want to wake her.”

Rose hesitated and he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t want to leave Zoe alone either. But they needed to talk.

“I’ll hear if she needs us,” he said. “We’ll just be across the hall in my room.”

“After what went on in there, I’m afraid to leave her alone.”

“We’ll keep my door open and watch the room. Will that help? We won’t be saying anything other tigers can’t overhear. In fact, it might be better that everyone here knows where we stand.”

“They wouldn’t be able to hear us with the door closed?”

“There’s some soundproofing on the guest rooms, but not enough to prevent a tiger from eavesdropping if he wants to. It’s not like the meeting hall. That’s designed to keep even tigers from hearing what’s going on inside.”

Zoe flopped into a new position, making a little grunt of irritation, and a frown creased her brow.

Rose whispered, “If I can watch the door, it should be okay. You’ll hear her?”

“I’ll listen closely. We can be back in here the instant she wakes.”

Rose nodded and they moved across the hall. She stood in his doorway, staring at Zoe’s closed door while he brought out two chairs from inside.

“That meeting was…” She sighed. “Those bastards can argue. I swear some of them kept playing devil’s advocate just to be contrary. Most of them contradicted their own arguments at different points.”

“They’re all old enough to have seen a lot, and most of them love the debate. They like fighting and discussing and one-upping each other.”

“How the hell do they get anything done?”

“Eventually, they hold a vote and come to a consensus. I’ve been told the vote is usually a lot more straightforward than the debates preceding it. Most of them have made up their minds before the debates even start.”

“Then why all the fuss?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, they like it.” Vlad felt Elizaveta approaching, her scent reaching him well before she turned down the corridor.

Rose followed his gaze. “What?”

“Elizaveta is coming. Alone.”

“That’s…not normal?”

She turned the corner, all quiet, deadly grace as she approached. Vlad wouldn’t have admitted it to his father, or anyone else for that matter, but he’d always found the female elder magnificent and terrifying. It was impossible to read her body language or her scent for clues to her state of mind. She was gruff and serious, her expression often set in severe lines, and she didn’t pull punches when she spoke. She was probably the most outwardly undiplomatic of the elders—besides maybe Pavel—but she didn’t have to be diplomatic because she was so damned powerful.

Yet, there was always a spark of mischief in her gaze. And he knew from his father that Elizaveta’s machinations were deep and complex, impossible to fathom.

She was both intimidating and compelling in a way Vlad had never been able to define precisely.

She and his father had been at odds for years, so Vlad mostly avoided her, but now he needed her support.

“It’s not normal,” she said, answering Rose’s question when she was near enough to talk comfortably. “In this place, my assistant and his aides are usually trotting at my heels, ushering me here and there. It is a nuisance.”

Her Russian accent was still strong, despite the fact that she spent as much time in the US as she did in Russia these days, maybe more. The accent reminded Vlad of his father’s mother, who’d passed away when Vlad was only eight.

“Why are you here alone, then?” Rose asked.

“I came to offer a personal apology. That nonsense about taking your baby from you was an abhorrent suggestion. You should know it was not a serious one. It was designed to provoke reaction and cause argument. As Vlad said, we like to argue. But some of us occasionally take things too far. Your daughter is not under threat here. And neither are you.”

“I thank you for the apology, though you already gave one in the meeting hall, so this one isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, it is. My colleagues are a bunch of idiots. Pavel is not a father, so he doesn’t fully understand what he said. If you had our sense of smell, you would have known that most of the tigers in that room were appalled by the suggestion. And they admired you for your threats. Like one of our tiger mothers. While the suggestion was poorly done, your reaction and the reaction it caused among our people were actually a good result. Things will go easier for you and your daughter among our kind if they believe you are strong. And dangerous.”

“I am. When it comes to my daughter, I am.”

Elizaveta smiled at her, closed lipped and tight, but a smile.

“I still feel under threat here,” Rose said, “despite your assurances. And I’m not sure I like the idea that you elders think you can dictate Zoe’s life.”

Elizaveta gave a tiny shrug. “I understand. But she is a tiger—hybrid or no—and that makes her subject to our laws. It is important she is integrated into the community. For her own safety. Without the protection of tiger law, there is nothing to stop a desperate male from trying to take her.”

“There’s the rifle and handgun I intend to keep close by from now on.”

“That would be wise. But having the protection of our laws will make the precaution less necessary. I promise you.”

“So Vlad keeps telling me. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take that promise as gospel.”

“I expected nothing less.” Elizaveta finally looked at Vlad. “You’ve chosen a strong mate. I like her. She will do well in our community.”

“The threats to her,” Vlad said, “what of those?”

Elizaveta frowned. “You mean the debate over how she should choose a mate?”

He nodded.

Elizaveta waved a hand. “That is a debate we will have to take to the community at large for future reference. But she is fully human and outside our jurisdiction. As you said. We cannot demand a human adhere to our rules simply because she is capable of producing a hybrid. It’s not practical or enforceable. Unfortunately, some of the other elders are not practical. So the debate will happen. But it will not affect Rose.”

“Why not?”

“She is already mated. It is not an issue.”

“The comment that I forfeited my claim when I left her?”

“Might have been a problem if you hadn’t returned to her, and if she didn’t want to keep you. If she doesn’t keep you, then other tigers might attempt to woo her. She will have the choice. She could leave you for another human, too. That’s the way with relationships, no? But she is not ours to order about.”

“You think Zoe is, though,” Rose put in.

“Ah. That is a different and more complicated issue. She is, in fact, one of ours. Her ability to shift makes her situation easier to fit into our current laws. She
is
a tiger shifter—unlike her aunt who is a human hybrid. But because she is a hybrid, the absolutes of her position are debatable.”

Rose shook her head. “This is too much. I just wanted her out of pain. I didn’t want to throw her into this…world.”

“Such is the way of life. We must deal with situations we would rather not, and people we might not like.”

Elizaveta opened her mouth to say something else, then paused, frowning. Vlad turned his full attention to Zoe’s room just as Elizaveta glanced at the door. The sound of shuffling steps brought him to his feet. He could
sense
a tiger in that room.

He was across the hall, slamming through the door in a blink, Elizaveta just behind him.

The window was open. The room was empty.

Zoe was gone.

Chapter Fifteen

Panic gripped Rose so tight she thought she might throw up. “Where is she? What’s happened?”

Vlad glanced at Elizaveta, who was staring out the window. “A tiger was in here. He took her.”

Rose’s voice went to full screech. “How did this happen? Who was it? How did he get her so fast? Where have they gone? Was it one of your brothers?”

Elizaveta stormed into the hall past them, her voice booming down the corridor. “Trackers! Now!”

Vlad took Rose’s hand. “Not one of my brothers. I don’t recognize the scent. He moved at tiger speed, very fast to get in and out before we noticed.”

“You did notice, though. You both felt something wrong.”

“I heard shuffling and felt a tiger in here just before coming through the door.”

A group of four large men stalked into the room and began sniffing around. Behind them, an actual tiger walked in, going right to the window. The tiger looked about, sniffed at the sill, and then leapt out the open window.

Rose gasped. “That’s a three-story drop.”

“Not that difficult for us.”

“How did the kidnapper get in? The window was bolted from the inside…” She paused. They’d locked it before the meeting. She hadn’t checked it again when they’d put Zoe down to nap. But they were on the third floor. It should have been impossible to get in here that way.

“Three stories aren’t beyond our ability to jump up to—even in human form. Someone obviously unlocked the window while we were in the meeting. The rest would have been easy.”

“But Zoe can’t make that jump. What if he hurt her getting back out?”

“She could survive that jump all on her own,” Vlad said. “But she wasn’t on her own. He would have had to hold her. So she wasn’t hurt during the jump.”

“We have to go after him. We have to get her back. Vlad.” Panic made her so desperate she could barely think. She went to her closet and pulled down the borrowed hunting rifles she’d stored there. She stared at the 9mm pistol, then pulled it out as well. She needed everything she could get.

“If anything happens to her…” She couldn’t think it. She couldn’t even allow the idea to form. If she did, she’d fall apart. Zoe needed her strong now.

She was loading one of the rifles when Alexis and Victor came storming into the room.

“Victor got him on video,” Alexis announced. “It was Nick Jameson.” She looked at Rose. “He used to be a Tracker back when I was one. We had a…falling out. He’s been retired for about fifteen years now. When he left the Trackers, he went to work for Elder Zhang Lei. Jameson doesn’t come to the compound anymore, though, not in years. He’s rarely even in the US. His scent would be difficult for most of the active Trackers here to identify. Though I can and so can Victor. He hasn’t actually been inside the compound or Victor would have picked it up. They never really got along.”

Victor signed something to Alexis. She nodded, and said, “He didn’t know about the video surveillance on the window so we got him on tape. Victor hadn’t told anyone outside a few trusted members of his team that he’d set that up in here. Obviously, whoever arranged this with Jameson didn’t know either.” She nodded to the window. “Lei’s assistant unlocked it just after the meeting was adjourned, during the chaos of dismissal. None of the security team noticed at the time as they were watching too many corridors and monitoring too many possible problems in those seconds.”

Victor made a few hard hand gestures, which Rose didn’t understand, but from the look on his face, he was pissed about that breach.

“Lei,” Elizaveta said, her voice low and without any sign of emotion. “Lei is responsible for this?”

Rose’s voice was not so emotionless when she said, “Where is he?” She wasn’t even sure which one Lei was, but that didn’t matter. She was going to kill him.

“Trackers have gone to his apartment. He’s not there. They’re searching the compound now while Victor’s team combs through the video feeds. We’ll find something.”

Rose was about to say more when a tiger leapt back into the room through the window. She spun to face it, rifle raised and poised to fire. Vlad put a hand on her arm. “That’s the Tracker who just jumped out.”

The tiger started to shift, a process Rose was still bothered by, but after days of watching Zoe shift, she didn’t feel the need to look away. She waited with barely held patience and as soon as the man’s head and mouth settled into human lines, she said, “What did you find? Where did they go?”

When he looked at her, his eyes were pinched at the corners and his brow creased. “They left through the west gate. A car was waiting.” He looked at Alexis and Elizaveta. “I got a strong scent of Lei.”

Elizaveta growled, a sound unlike anything Rose had heard a human make. The hair along her arms and on her nape rose in reaction to the threat in that growl.

“Which direction?” Alexis asked.

“They turned off the west road, heading toward the highway. Two from my unit are following. I came back to report.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Rose said, very quietly. Every tiger in the room turned to look at her. She was staring out the window. “He’s a dead man.”

“We need to concentrate on getting Zoe back first,” Alexis said. “Then we can kill him.”

“Not we. Me. I am going to destroy the men who took her. And if she’s hurt, in any way at all, I’m going to kill them slowly.”

She barely recognized her own voice—deep, gravelly, harsh. She was so angry, so outraged, and so scared. Her every instinct screamed to follow the bastards and get her daughter back.

She returned to her dresser and pulled out her backpack, stuffing it with clothes, some things for Zoe, and a few of the snacks left over from their journey here. “I need water.” She finished filling the backpack with all the ammunition she had for the three guns. She set her gear on her bed and went to the closet for her and Zoe’s coats.