Page 3 of Countdown to Murder
The snake adjusted when I slowed and stopped, but didn’t move to slither off me. She had a fairly tight grip around my rib cage, but she wasn’t a constrictor, she was just holding on while I ran. She was the longest snake I’ve ever seen — at a guess, I’d say fifteen feet long, and most of it was curled around my torso.
And I have to say, having a king cobra head right beside your face while you run is disconcerting. Lionsaren’t immune to snake venom, and while I could probablychangeand heal from the damage, it would still hurt like a motherfucker.
I went outside to test her, though. If she wanted me dead, all she had to do was bite me while I was away from the Drake Security property, where I didn’t dare turn into a lion. If she meant to kill me, I wanted to face it sooner rather than later. She hadn’t though, which meant she’d probably have my back. Or at the very least, wouldn’t stick a knife in it.
I couldn’t pull her off me from inside the shirt, so I ripped it off before carefully unwrapping her. She let me place her on top of the pile of clothes, and I stepped back. Rumor has it that snakes can’t understand verbal cues, but I’d never gotten close enough with one to ask.
Looked like that was about to change.
The shift from snake to human looked painful, though it only took a handful of seconds. Arms formed and grew, the head changed shape, the torso molded into the right silhouette, the tail split into two and the legs formed. It all happened at mostly the same time, and suddenly there was a very naked woman standing before me, one bare foot on the old high-school gymnasium floor, the other on the clothes she’d come out of when she shifted into her snake form.
But it wasn’t the floor I was looking at. In clothes, Mira looked incredibly petite. Naked, she’s like a tiny littlesex goddess, carved from pale granite. She’s supposedly twenty-seven years old and still a virgin, which would put her off limits for my dick even if we weren’t working together.
But wewouldbe working together, whether I liked it or not, and I figured it was a bad idea to piss off a known assassin with her skillset, so I stopped staring and walked away from her, toward the doors. “I’m going to pop some burgers on the grill. Ya’ll should come with me so she can get dressed without an audience.”
Drake Security had bought an eighty-year-old high school building and repurposed it for the company’s needs. The old cafeteria prep room had been fitted with commercial appliances, and I’m adept at cooking the foods I love.
By the time everyone made it to the kitchen, I had buns out and open, burgers almost ready to come off the grill, and fries in the fryer. Ranger grabbed the mayo, mustard, and ketchup from the refrigerator, and everyone started preparing their own buns.
“What did the snake learn about me,” I asked Mira as I settled a burger on her open bun.
“You aren’t the same kind of lion as His Majesty.”
I felt my brows lift. An occasional bear picked up on it, but it was rare.
“I wasn’t aware snakes could pick up on...” I wasn’t sure how to politely respond. On the one hand, I didn’twant anyone knowing we aren’t the same kind of lion, much less what kind of lion I am. I wanted to change the subject to her sense of smell without confirming her statement, but I didn’t see how. “Most shapeshifters don’t pick up on the difference.”
“Jacobson’s organ. More taste than smell, but it isn’t really either, if you want to get technical.”
“Can you pick up on subtle scents in human form?”
She shrugged and walked out of the room without answering, and I looked to Nathan.
“Aaron already knows, and Ranger won’t say anything. Your secret’s safe with us, but Fawn is probably going to know, which means Kendra will. Probably Josef, too.”
Aaron glared at Nathan, and I nearly took a step back when Nathan met his gaze.
“Something I should know?” I asked.
“No,” Nathan said without looking away from Aaron. “We need more qualified female guards. It’s been a problem for a while, and losing Cora for all but the most imperative missions has hit especially hard.”
I grabbed my plate and walked away from them. They’d work it out better without an audience. Mira had sat at a table and was eating her burger when I stepped into the cafeteria.
“There are fries, too,” I told her.
She wrinkled her nose. “The burger is fine. I don’t eat as much as other shapeshifters. Why do you need women guards?”
“Hard for me to follow a woman into a public bathroom,” I told her.
“Who is Cora?”
“The new wolf alpha. She doesn’t have time to work for us full-time anymore. When we call her with a big job, she can sometimes break away to help, but we’re trying to function without her. The alpha wolf job landed on her unexpectedly, and it’s important she succeeds.”
She looked from me to Aaron when he walked in. “You don’t like me. What can I do to fix that?”
He shook his head. “You were specifically trained to use emotions against those who have them.”
“Yes, but I’ve learned that almost every female in this country is taught such things. The difference is that I wielded it from a position of not feeling emotions. That is no longer the case.”
