Unfortunately, by the time Peg had figured out what Whitlan was up to, he’d already hunted, killed, and stuffed one of the sons of Jebediah Meirston, patriarch of the Meirston bear clan, a very old and very powerful jewelry merchant family. Jebediah himself had come to Peg asking her to help him find the hunter who’d killed his boy, and considering how much money the Meirstons gave to BPC, her assistance was not in question. Yet the more Peg had dug into what happened, the more terrified she’d become, because she soon realized what a fool she’d been. Just like the FBI and the NYPD. Only when the news got out that she’d let some full-human play her, there’d be no trial, no newspaper headlines. She’d be lucky if there’d even be a grave because bears didn’t really tolerate stupidity. And God, she’d been so stupid.

Even worse was that as soon as she’d finally gotten a true lead on Whitlan, so had that goddamn boy. Anyone but Crushek. If it had only been one of the Group or those ridiculous cats, she wouldn’t have worried. But Crushek ... he was one of the few who could convince Meirston of her involvement because everyone knew Lou Crushek was “old-school honest.” Whatever the hell that meant.

The door to her office opened and Gray and Chazz walked in, ignoring her assistant’s requests for them to wait. Well, she’d known this would be coming....

“How could you?” Chazz demanded. “How could you do that?”

Considering that neither of these idiots knew what was really going on, she could see why they didn’t understand how Lou could bring her down. And although killing their brother would do nothing but make matters worse for her, she’d had to do something and she’d gone with crippling him. Not hurting his arms and legs because that wouldn’t stop him, either, but his little feline girlfriend? That was his weakness. So she’d done what she’d had to do.

“Look, boys, I’m sorry about your brother—”

Chazz scowled. “Our brother?”

“Forget our brother,” Gray snapped. “What about the goddamn team? How could you do that to the Carnivores?”

Peg sighed. Yeah, she’d been right from the beginning. Of the three, the contrary one got all the brains.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Three days after her career-ending injury, Cella returned to the Sports Center. Crush drove her over and walked in with her, but let her go into the locker room by herself to get the rest of her stuff. And she was grateful he was being so understanding because Cella just wasn’t ready to face her old team yet. Her knee might be healed but her life still felt a little shaky.

But Crush ... well, he was being amazing. So she’d rush through these five stages of grief thing that her family kept talking about and get Crush back to the hotel. There she could use some“sex treatment” to recover from her trauma. An excellent plan as far as she was concerned.

Yet as she stood there, staring at the old training jersey she held in her hands, she really wondered if she’d ever be “over” all of this. If she couldn’t work for KZS anymore, she wouldn’t shed a tear. Would she miss it? Yeah. She would. She loved hanging around cats. But hockey ...

“Cella! Cella!”

Hearing her name bellowed, repeatedly, outside the locker room, Cella tossed her jersey to the bench and walked to the door, yanking it open.

“What?” she demanded, seeing that Crush had been doing his best to keep Reece Reed from shoving him out of the way. Shame the bear really was a mess on skates because he seemed to have a healthy grasp on the rest of hockey’s basics. “What the hell’s going on?”

“You have to come to tryouts. Please.”

Cella dropped her hand to her hip, lips pursed. “Are you trying to hurt my feelings? Are you trying to make me cry or something? Because if I cry, I’ll make sure you cry with me, Reed.”

“No, no. You don’t understand—”

“Because I know that it must be fuckin’ high-larious to you guys that big-mouth Malone is out of the league and now you can say all that shit to my face that you had to say behind my back, but let me tell you—”

“Novikov is handling the tryouts.”

Cella’s words stopped in her throat and she began blinking too much. Because she must have heard Reed wrong. She must have.

“I’m sorry. Did you say—?”

“He took over the tryouts. Insisted on it. Said you were the only one he trusted to do it and with you gone ...” Reed took off his baseball cap, ran his hands through his hair. “I heard from one of the maintenance guys that you and Crush were in the building. I know you want to pack up your stuff and go, but you need to understand ... he’s destroying people’s will to live. He made a hyena cry. A hyena. They laugh at everything, but this one was sobbing in the girl’s bathroom and one of the lion male football players felt so bad for him ... he went in to comfort him. Lion males don’t do that.”

“Why was he in the girl’s bathroom?”

“Probably because that’s where Novikov said he belonged. Because he was such a girl.”

Cella’s eyes narrowed. “That mixed-breed, misogynistic motherfucker.”

“No one knows what to do and Van Holtz has already swung at him twice.”

“Where the fuck is Reynolds?” The Carnivores’ increasingly useless coach.

“In his office ... drinking.”

“It’s eight in the morning.”