He swallowed as his eyes once more danced around the room. “9587.”
“Thank you.” Havana entered the PIN. The screen flickered, and the phone let out a weird bleeping sound. Then the screen went utterly black. She pressed button after button, but nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bailey, peering down at the phone.
“It clapped out.” Havana narrowed her eyes on the fucker in front of her, who was looking rather pleased with himself. “Let me guess, you gave me the wrong PIN so it would set off some sort of tripwire that wiped the phone clean.”
He only smirked.
“Oh, you’re thinking that makes you clever.” Havana shook her head sadly. “No, Hyman, it makes you stupid. Like really stupid. Because now the only way we can get answers about who you are, why you came, and who was with you earlier … is by making you tell us. You might not enjoy that part.”
He snorted.
Aspen pushed away from the wall and slowly came closer. “You know what? I think he doesn’t believe we’ll harm him. To be fair, most of the people we’ve ‘harmed’ made that mistake. They just saw some harmless-looking loners and completely underestimated us. Which, incidentally, is how we landed our old job. Our ex-boss knew people would overlook us, and that suited him.”
Bailey arched a brow at the cougar. “Would you like to know what our old job was?”
The dumb shit rolled his eyes.
“I’ll take that as a no,” said Havana. “All right, we won’t bore you with details you have no interest in. But you will tell me why you came for me tonight. Really, I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to want to know why you shot me four times.”
A line formed between his brows.
“You’re wondering why the tranqs didn’t knock me out,” she sensed. “Devils are immune to those sort of drugs—we don’t advertise that, of course. Why make it easy for those who’d get the silly idea to target us? People like you, for example. Now, tell me why you came for me.”
He notched up his chin and stared at her.
Havana sighed. “Bailey.”
The other female shifted in a flash. The slender mamba slithered out of the puddle of clothes, a stunning gunmetal gray with oblique dark bars down her sides.
Hyman’s eyes went wide. He tried inching backwards and twisted within the confines of the ropes that were wrapped around him. But the chair didn’t budge, and the binds didn’t loosen.
The mamba raised three parts of her body off the floor, spread her narrow neck-flap, opened her inky-black mouth, and let out a furious hiss that sounded like a damn pressure cooker.
“Last chance, Hyman,” said Havana. “Why did you come for me?”
His panicked gaze shot back to Havana. He opened his mouth but then just as quickly snapped it shut.
She sighed. “All right, if that’s how you want it …” She nodded at the snake.
The mamba struck lightning fast, biting his thigh.
He jolted, letting out a small cry of pain. “Fuck.”
Havana lightly scratched her cheek. “I’d say you probably have somewhere between 120 and 150mg of venom pumping through your bloodstream right now. Not enough to kill a shifter, but enough to put you through a world of misery.”
His breaths coming quick and fast, he stared down at the punctures wounds in what looked to be disbelief.
“You’re no doubt feeling a tingling sensation near the bite wound. The other symptoms will set in pretty fast. Your eyelids will get all droopy, and you’ll get a metallic taste in your mouth. There’ll also be blurry vision, vertigo, puking, severe stomach cramps, and more—I’ll let some of them be a surprise for you.
“It’ll all go on for, oh, about fifteen hours. But your body will recover, the effects of the venom will wear off, and you’ll be back to normal. Then we can talk again. Yay. Of course, you could decide to stick with the whole telling me nothing plan. Bailey won’t mind biting you a second time. Or a third. Or even a fourth. She’s awesome that way. So you might want to think about that before you decide to be stubborn again. It won’t go well for you.”
He gaped at Havana, as if stunned.
“You really should have shown more interest when my friend tried warning you about our old job,” said Havana. “If you had, she would have told you that we used to work for the Movement.”
His face blanched.
“Yes, yes, the group only deals with human anti-shifter extremists. Members are defenders of our kind. A national treasure, even. So shifters have no need to fear them. But, as I can see you’re considering, it would never be wise to piss off an ex-member. Because we have no qualms about using all the dangerous skills we learned. And we’re no strangers to making someone suffer. If I’m honest, I’ve actually missed it.”