Page 34 of A Cougar's Kiss
“Let’s meet downstairs in fifteen minutes,” Nick told them. “Ary can brief us on Cole’s condition on the jet.”
“Sounds good,” Bas said with a nod.
He walked out the door behind X. Jace followed them out, closing the door to the suite slowly. X and Bas went down the hall in different directions. Rome had reserved the entire floor for them, with guards at the stairway, elevators and in the lobby as an extra precaution. Jace used the key card to enter his room and immediately dialed a number on his comlink.
“I think we’ve got a bigger problem. Check the status of Keller Cross. If he’s missing, Shya’s missing and Mackey’s dead, Rome is going to lose his fuckin’ mind.”
Eli answered from the other end of the comlink. “And after what we saw on the tape of the cougar and Shya in that conference room, if he’s the one who took Shya out of Oasis Nick’s gonna make Keller Cross regret the day he ever set foot in Headquarters.”
* * *
Miami
3 p.m.
“Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?” Decan all but roared at Keller the moment he closed the door to the room Keller was using as an office.
Gold sat in a folding chair that they both prayed would not collapse under his bulky build, but no furniture had been delivered for this room yet.
“Not any more than you were when you brought Rome’s daughter to my bunker and was almost attacked by rogues when you were trying to fuck her during an unapproved above ground excursion,” Keller snapped back.
Decan fumed, his lips were drawn in a tight line, fists balled at his sides as he glared at Keller.
Keller wouldn’t say Decan’s fury was unmitigated, but the guy really was in no position to judge him considering all the things he’d done just three months ago with the Assembly Leader’s daughter.
“We had a plan, Kel. Bringing Shya Delgado into this was not something we discussed.”
“I wasn’t aware that we were discussing our personal lives now.”
“Our personal lives are what got us to this point,” Decan countered. “I was out to get Mackey for what he did to me in the SICs. You wanted his blood because of the way he caused you to lose part of your fortune. Gold wants any of the Ruling Cabinet because he blames them for having to move to Oasis after attacking that cop. This is personal for all of us!”
“And yet, you went and found yourself a mate and didn’t give a damn how that would affect me or Gold.” When Decan didn’t immediately respond, Keller continued. “So, don’t come up in my house now, Decan, with your high and mighty FL badge and think you’re gonna tell me how to run this show. That announcement’s going down in two hours and we’re gonna be there to do exactly what we planned.”
Decan turned away. He walked across the floor and slammed a fist into the wall before circling back to where Keller stood.
“Mackey’s dead.”
Keller heard the words but couldn’t speak.
“What do you mean he’s dead? I thought he was in the Oasis prison,” Gold said as if this was now the part of the conversation where he could join in.
Decan scrubbed his hands down his face. “Yeah, he was. But apparently just before Rome and his crew came above ground, they found Mackey’s body, or rather pieces of it, in the room where he was being held.”
Keller stared at Decan. “The locked and heavily guarded room.”
“Yeah, Nisa and I thought the same thing when we heard. The security tapes have been removed from the Holodeck so we couldn’t view them to see just who was doing the heavily guarding. At any rate, that tosses a wrench in our plans.” Decan sighed heavily.
Keller shook his head. “No. Tavarus and the Ruling Cabinet had no idea where Mackey was, or if he was even still alive. That’s why they’re moving to replace him today. And there’s no way they’re going to find out he’s dead unless one of us tells him, which we are not.”
“I see what you’re saying, and I thought that at first too, but what if that idiot Lial that we killed months ago wasn’t the only shifter on Mackey’s payroll. What if there’s someone else who was working from the inside to betray us?” Decan asked.
Gold stood, the chair beneath him creaking with the motion. “Nah, if there was someone else inside working with Mackey, wouldn’t they have told the Ruling Cabinet where Mackey was by now? Or better yet, wouldn’t he have tried to break Mackey out of the prison?”
Keller nodded in Gold’s direction. “He’s got a point there.”
Decan folded his arms over his chest. “Yeah. He does. So okay, say we go through with what we planned, there’s still Rome’s announcement to consider. How are we going to handle that?”
Keller thought on those words for a moment. He’d thought about them all last night because it had been one of the many points he and Shya had argued. He’d spent the night on the very uncomfortable sofa in his room while Shya slept in the bed. Following the exchange after the cop left, she’d gone to the room first and he’d gone to help Gold and the others. By the time he returned she’d showered and gotten into bed and he’d gone in the opposite direction, taking his place on the sofa. During which time he thought about how she’d defended Rome’s position and how her words had hurt him deeply because he’d taken them as her being against him.
