Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed by Madelaine Montague Page A

in the same room, but it would take a
hell of a lot more to keep them from hearing with their enhanced
abilities.
    If he’d just managed to get to sleep
before all hell broke loose ….
    “ Poor kid,” Kane muttered
when they heard Lucien leave. “You think it’s true?”
    Basil sighed irritably. “Can we not
discuss it?”
    “ She’s in trouble,” Kane
growled. “You want to just ignore it?”
    “ I’d like to, yes. Because
I know where this is headed and Lucien and Damien are going to kick
our asses if I let you talk me in to doing something I know damned
well Lucien won’t like.”
    Kane sat up abruptly and stared at
him. “How the fuck can you know where this is going? And what has
it got to do with Lucien and Damien?”
    “ You were thinking about
helping her out by going to her place to get her stuff?”
    Kane gaped at him. “Holy hell! You can
do that now, too?”
    Basil frowned at him curiously. “Do
what?”
    “ Read minds.”
    “ You can really be a dumb
shit sometimes, Kane,” Basil said dryly.
    Kane looked indignant. “What the hell
do you mean by that?” he growled.
    Basil rolled his eyes. “Forget it. I’m
going to try to get some sleep. We have to stand watch again in a
few hours. You should try to sleep, too.”
    “ I don’t like her being so
unhappy. She’s right. She’s an innocent in this. Why should she
have to pay for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? I mean,
I don’t see that we can do anything about the job or even the
apartment, but we could get her stuff so the bastard can’t put it
on the trash heap.”
    “ How did I know that was
coming?” Basil muttered.
    “ I don’t know. You said
you couldn’t read minds. You think it’s a good idea?”
    “ Hell no I don’t think
it’s a good idea!” Basil growled. “That’s exactly what I thought
you were going to suggest and Lucien will eat us for dinner if we
jeopardize the mission by doing something that damned
stupid!”
    “ I’m going to pound you
into mincemeat, asshole, if you keep calling me stupid! What’s
stupid about it?”
    “ You don’t think her
apartment is staked out? I mean, they had somebody there before.
You think we just chased them off and they decided to forget about
it?”
    Kane shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t
really think about that.”
    “ Ok so how about this—if
we go to her apartment and move everything out, then the landlord
is going to think she left and he’ll rent her apartment out. So
we’d be making the thing she dreads happen.”
    Kane frowned. “Maybe. I
see your point. But she said he’d been trying to get her out so he
could rent to somebody else. He could still say she’d abandoned the
place and move her stuff out like she said. And then she wouldn’t
have the apartment or her stuff. We could at least save that much for her if we
went over there and cleaned the apartment out. Females get real
attached to their stuff. It’ll be easier to replace the apartment
than stuff she’d been collecting for years.”
    “ You make it sound so
reasonable,” Basil said dryly. “And yet it isn’t. We’ve only got
four men to cover twenty four hours of protection. If me and you go
AWOL then that leaves just Lucien and Damien to cover things. And
we sure as hell can’t take off in the middle of our
watch!”
    “ So we skip down time. How
long could it take?”
    “ A long ass fucking time!”
Basil snapped. “We’re north of Atlanta. She lives four hours south
of Atlanta! We’re talking a bare minimum of twelve hours travel
time plus whatever it takes to pack her stuff up and move it to a
storage unit. We don’t have anything we need to pack the place
up.
    “ And we don’t even know if it would be necessary! Or appreciated!
What if we get down there and pack all her shit up and move it and
the next day she gets called to testify and she goes home? She’s
not going to be happy. She’s going to be pissed off.”
    Kane was silent for a little while.
Just