ria blew out a breath. "i can't ask him. you know that."

"why?" miaoling asked.

"because then he'd think i was hinting at something!"

her grandmother gave her a gimlet-eyed glance. "if you don't hint, how's he going to know?"

ria's mind flooded with the memories of her pressed up against that gym door, his hand stroking over her, his tongue in her mouth. "he knows."

"yes," amber said. "changelings have a better sense of smell than humans. he can probably scent your you-know-what."

ria stared. "amber, what's come over you?"

her sister-in-law picked up another piece of cake. "i'm going to blame it on the pregnancy." a slow grin.

seven

emmett's blood was at fever point. returning to the restaurant, he caught the scent of the shooter and began tracking. dorian and clay had both picked up the trail while he escorted ria home, but this was his hunt.

his fingers remembered the soft feel of ria's skin, the delicate roughness of the scratch that shouldn't have been on her face. the leopard paced

inside his skull, wanting out, wanting to do damage, but emmett held on to his humanity. for now.

minutes later, he found both dorian and clay standing frustrated at a busy intersection.

"fuck," emmett said, sensing what they had. the shooter's scent simply disappeared.

"probably someone waiting to pick him up," dorian muttered, looking around. "no cctv

cameras in this area. we need to fix that."

emmett narrowed his eyes, making a slow circuit of all four points of the intersection. it was clogged with people. "can't have been a pickup. it'd be too hard to make a quick getaway," he muttered almost to himself . . . and looked up.

the old-fashioned fire escape ladder hung a few feet off the ground, just far enough up to confuse the scent trail with this many people around. landing on the ladder with a single powerful jump, he began to follow the fading trail with the fluid grace of the leopard he was. no human could ever hope to match a predatory changeling moving at full speed.

making it to the top of the building in seconds, he pursued the scent to the other side.

another ladder, this one looking down into a small parklike area thronged with elders playing what looked like a combination of mahjong and chess. ignoring the ladder, he jumped straight to the ground, making several people scream. his cat ensured he landed on his feet, his body perfectly balanced.

again, the scent was muddied by the number of people in the park. but worse, a few meters later it was overwhelmed totally by the strong disinfectant used to sanitize the nearby automated public toilets. swearing under his breath, he did a circle of the park and came up with nothing. frustration clawed at him. he was certain this was where the shooter had been picked up-on one of these narrow streets.

thrusting a hand through his hair, he was striding back the way he'd come when an old man waved him over. "here-he left his motorcycle parked on

the footpath. very rude." a piece of paper was put into his hand.

opening it, he found a license plate number. hot damn. "thanks." his cell phone was in his hand an instant later. the elderly man waved away his

thanks and went back to his game even as emmett fed the tip through to the darkriver techs. changelings had made it their business to be up-to-date on all technology known to man-because if the coldly powerful psy had a weakness, it was that they relied too much on their machines.

but that technical knowledge also came in handy when darkriver needed to hack into enforcement databases. emmett had an address to go with the license plate five minutes later. assembling a team took only a further three minutes-lucas, vaughn, and clay, with dorian holding a surveillance

position. the young soldier was turning into one hell of a sharpshooter.

"how're we doing this?" lucas asked as they got out of their vehicle a short distance from the shooter's home, his eyes cold.

"i want the bastard alive," emmett said through gritted teeth. "we need to get vincent's location." he glanced at lucas. "we're skating way past the edge of the law here." changelings had jurisdiction over crimes that involved their kind, but this shooter was most likely human. "it's daylight-we'll be seen."

his alpha shrugged. "let me handle that."

trusting his word, emmett gave the signal and they fanned out, coming in at the suspect's dirty trailer from all sides. the bike sat near the back-and it was sticky with the scent emmett had detected at the restaurant.

even that close, no one shot out at them, and a couple of seconds later, emmett's leopard picked up a new scent. blood. fresh and thick.

"goddammit," he muttered under his breath, knowing what they'd find. he was right.

the shooter lay slumped over a rickety table, the back of his head blown off execution style.

"vincent knew we'd picked up his scent," lucas said,

taking in the scene from the doorway beside emmett. "i bet that blood is still warm."

they both stepped back out, emmett's frustration making him want to kick something. "think there might be intel in there that could lead us to vincent?"

lucas nodded at the neighbors in the surrounding trailers, a few of whom were openly staring. "we can't risk going in and giving the cops a reason to hassle us. as it is, these folks saw us open the door, stand in the doorway. no harm, no foul."

"i wouldn't let it bother you," clay said, breaking his customary silence. "this guy, he was expendable. they'd have told him squat."

emmett tried to believe that as he circled the trailer.

a hint of movement in his peripheral vision, prey breaking into a run.

he didn't even think about it, shifting into hard pursuit between one second and the next. the skinny guy in front of him didn't look back as he snaked

through the trailer park. not until he passed a group of children kicking around a dusty soccer ball. emmett's gut chilled as the man's hand came up. "get down!" he yelled, thrusting himself into an incredible burst of speed. slamming into the shooter's arm, he pushed it up just as the man fired. the shot was silent, the bullet lost in the sky.

the shooter was already moving, using his body with the fluid grace of an experienced street fighter. his fist hit emmett's cheek with enough force to jerk it back, but emmett didn't let go of the man's wrist, holding the gun pointed up, even as he used his free elbow to hit the assassin's jaw. the bastard didn't go down.

fuck it. emmett squeezed the man's wrist, crushing his fragile human bones.

with a scream, the shooter dropped to his knees, the gun falling out of his hand. "keep an eye on it," emmett ordered vaughn.

the jaguar nodded and made sure any kids who hadn't already scattered got the hell out.

emmett kept his hand around the shooter's wrist as the

whimpering male knelt in the dust. this one, emmett thought, would know something about vincent. dropping into a crouch, he met the man's shiny-wet eyes. "tell me what i want to know," he said very quietly, "or i'll crush your wrist so badly, they'll never be able to put it back together."

the man spat at him. "i'll get a cloned replacement."

emmett heard the faint sound of enforcement sirens and knew he had a couple of minutes at most. leaning close, he deliberately let his eyes go cat, his claws shooting out. then he smiled. "you know, they're not very good at cloning eyes."

he touched a claw to the very edge of the man's right eye.

"funny how a claw can accidentally blind a man during fighting."

fear burned off the shooter, acrid and thick. "you can't do that. there're witnesses."

"really?"

he watched as the man turned . . . to see only closed doors and shuttered windows.

"you threatened their kids," emmett whispered. "who do you think's going to come forward to save you?" he pressed in the claw until the edge actually touched the delicate surface.

the fear turned into sheer terror. "i'll answer your questions!"

emmett asked them hard and fast. by the time enforcement arrived, the crew male was so grateful to see them, he confessed to the shooting just to get away from emmett. the cops looked like they wanted to take emmett in, too, but all of a sudden, there were twenty witnesses who'd seen everything

-and who swore emmett was a hero.

faced with that many enthusiastic supporters, the cops gave up. one older female met emmett's eyes. "you didn't have to crush his wrist." it wasn't censure, more a question.

emmett raised an eyebrow.

she smiled and walked off. right into dorian.

the blond soldier grinned. "how about you let me buy you dinner?"

the cop laughed. "you're adorable. but i gave up cradle robbing a few years back."

dorian was unabashed. walking over to emmett after the woman left, he folded his arms.

"sooooo . . . what happens if i flirt with ria?"

"i use your ribs to make a wind chime."

"that's what i thought."

emmett told the others what the assassin had revealed. "vincent stays out of sight by living in a mobile home-it's a hover-truck, black, with constantly changing license plates. but it's shiny, all tricked out. the bastard likes living in style."

"that'll make it easier to spot him," lucas said. "we'll start circulating the description.

someone will talk."

"he also said vincent has a stockpile of weapons, so we need to be ready for what he might do when cornered." the bastard wouldn't care who he hit.

"he's got connections to one of the big crime families up north-this is a test run. we don't kick him out, we're going to have more problems."