Project Trouble X Three

A/N: Thank you to all my wonderful friends and readers. I appreciate all your comments, some funny, some informative. I love all of your imaginations. N.Y.O.B., oddball, and PenumbraMINE, y'all are the best.

Recap

My mom stared at me as I ducked my head down. Hey, my mom was one scary woman. She could hold her own against the Shadow Cats. She had taught me how to fight, but I had learned other moves that she didn’t know about, and one I wasn’t going to let her know about. I was saving the move until I met the cat-nappers again.

She took her eyes off me and smirked at Dragon as I stood up straight and huffed. So, she was testing me, was she? I would never back down now.

Not ever.

As though she could hear my thoughts, she turned back and around, staring at me, but I didn’t duck down or change the look on my face. My face was a blank canvas, no smile lit up my eyes, they were flat. She stared at me for a full minute until she nodded her head once. She turned around and walked over to the table as if I didn’t stare her down. I was confused but then realized she was testing me and she got her answer. I wasn’t one to duck and run for cover anymore. She knew I was ready to carry out my mission.

“Uh-oh, I think they are on to me,” I heard Martim whisper through his mic.

Cats POV

“Uh-oh, I think they are on to me,” I heard Martim whisper through his mic. I looked up quickly and noticed the twins were running to get his house. “Coming to you now, I’m blown.”

I saw Martim throw a switch up and quickly set the cameras back into the wall. He approached Hollywood and pulled him with him as he exited down one of the tubes I didn’t know he had. As soon as the twins hit the porch, a fire ball exploded, sending shock waves out and into the twins, knocking them off the porch and down to the ground below. They were trying to put the flames out as they were screaming. I hoped they burned to death. I didn’t want to meet them later, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. They were going to be pissed now even more than they were.

I heard a sound to my left and swiftly positioned myself in front of everyone as I ducked into my fighters stance. Hollywood and Martim both tumbled to the floor. Martim was cursing, telling Hollywood to get his heavy ass off of him, something I had said to Dragon and Digger. I walked over and gave him a hand up, pushing Hollywood to the side and chuckling.

“I’m not fat. Every ounce of body is pure muscle,” I heard Hollywood whine. I shook my head and stayed quiet, letting the men work it out for themselves.

“What happened to make the twins question your loyalty?” My dad asked Martim, his hands on his hips, Madrid standing beside him.

“I’m not sure. They were talking in the woods about me and my ways, about finding out who Hollywood was and then it was as if a light switched turned on in their brains. I heard the enforcer say something about maybe I wasn’t working for them, but the cartel leader said, ‘there’s no way I was working for anyone else’. But, they looked at each other and started racing for the tree house. You could tell they had come to a decision to take me out. I’ve read their body language enough to know what they were thinking, even without words.”

“I can’t figure out how they knew-” Hollywood tried to say.

“-maybe they had a flashback, Martim. You know how it was for me, but I didn’t think they would unless they had met their mate. Plus, we don’t look the same as before,” I cut in as everyone looked at me, not that I noticed.

“It could be that or I made a mistake somehow. They have extraordinary hearing. They could have caught our conversation about the cameras, but I don’t think we will ever know.”

I nodded my head and smiled, an idea coming to me. “Well, we are going to have to mess up their hearing before I battle and I have just the thing to help us with it.” I smirked and turned towards my brother as he laughed.

“Oh, yes, we have something to help with hearing loss,” my brother agreed.

“Not here, Cat and Cruz, you can do it outside when we get closer and everyone has their earplugs in,” my mom scolded as we nodded, knowing it would hurt our hearing too.

“Now, I’m curious,” Madrid and Martim said in tandem, causing the rest of us to laugh. I shook my head and looked at Cruz, a grin showing on my face. I wasn’t going to let anyone know what our secret weapon was until we were ready to use it. I could already hear the begging of my mate to find out what it was, but there was no way he was going to hear it from me.

I walked over to the table, my mom smirking at me. I knew she was excited for us to show the men. I knew she wouldn’t say anything, too. My mate walked over and sat down beside me, trying to get me to talk about our secret weapon, but my lips were sealed.

I watched as Martim got up and quickly walked over to Marid. I heard them talk and for a second time I saw an explosion. The whole tree house came tumbling down, the tubes exploding into nothingness. I hated to see the tree house come down but I understood why he had to do it. There could be no trace back where we were, no trace of all the information we had on them.

“What about all the guns, ammo, and sparkles?” My dad demanded as I thought about what he meant by sparkles, noticing Madrid’s lips lifting into a smirk.

“Well, Martim and I might have or have not made an elevator system that lowered the goodies into another tube,” he said as he walked over to a wall and punched in a code, scanning his eyes. The wall opened and all the weapons were just as they were when I found them.

“Woah,” were the only words to leave my mouth.

“Yeah, woah.” My dad said. “How in the hell did you hide this from me, Madrid?”

“Easy. I just flew one of your trusty birds out to my mates village and worked on the design with Martim. He was the one to put it together and it worked beautifully,” Madrid bragged as I rolled my eyes at my dad. His mouth was agape, his eyes practically bugging from their eye sockets.

I walked over to my dad and closed his mouth, chuckling at him as he narrowed his eyes at me. “I could have let you continue as you were, but I thought you would appreciate not having your mouth hanging open.” I walked past him and sat back down at the table.

I watched as my dad looked at Madrid. “You came up with the plan? I know you aren’t mechanically inclined, so this was all Martim’s doing, wasn’t it?”

“No, it wasn’t. I helped design the contraption and Martim put it together while I was on the base. Plus, I figured out where all your cache’s are at in here,” Madrid bragged as my dad crossed his arms over chest.

“Prove it.”

Madrid walked around the bunker and hit certain places in the wall, confirming he knew where all but one was. “How?”

“You missed one,” I said in tandem to my dad’s words.

Madrid spun around to look at me. I smirked up at him and held one finger up, daring him to try and find the cache, one I knew he would never find. “What are you playing at, Cat?”

“Oh, I don’t know...How about how you grilled me on how to make a pulley system or how you questioned the blueprints?” I smirked even more. “It seems you left out my input in all of this. A lie by omission is still a lie, right, dad?” I asked as I crossed my arms over my chest.

“So, now we are getting to the truth of the matter. She told you what to look for, but she failed to mention one of her own. Knowing Cat it will be hard for you to find, want to give it a go or cry in defeat,” my dad teased Madrid as I rolled my eyes and looked up at Martim. He was staring at me with a small smile on his face.

“Give up now,” Dragon begged. “You know you will never find where Cat hid it without tearing up the whole bunker.”

Madrid shook his head and tore off into the back of the bunker as he went from wall to wall. I was bored, knowing Madrid would be looking all day. I decided I would figure out what to make for tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure if we would be here tomorrow, considering we hadn’t talked about our plans. I decided to wait until my uncle Madrid, well, cried uncle.

I sat curled up in Martim’s arms while my dad hissed every once in a while, my mom slapping him upside his head. It was a never ending cycle, making the rest of us laugh. I couldn’t believe he was acting like an ass, but I knew he wanted to make sure I was safe, something he wouldn’t have to worry about, but him being my dad it wasn’t going to happen anytime too soon.

The Shadow Cat’s were heckling Madrid every time he cursed and headed into another room. He was never going to find my cache, even my dad didn’t know where it was. I made sure to glance around the room. I didn’t want to ignore or pay close attention to where I knew the cache was, not wanting to give away my hiding spot. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t found it by now. Hell, he’d been so close at times but it was as if my cache was magically hidden.

“Okay, I give up,” he said after five hours of looking for my cache. I stood up and walked to the computer monitors and hit a switch, scanning my eyes and thumbprints. The wall didn’t open up as Madrid thought they would. I walked back over to the table and sat down, knocking on the bench beneath me.

I smiled at the confused look in Madrid’s eyes. He wasn’t following what I was trying to show him. I rolled my eyes and stood up, making sure everyone on my side was standing up. I laid the bench over and knocked on a panel in the ground, causing a screen to shoot up from the floor. I voice activated the computer into opening my cache. The locked popped up and opened, showing all the weapons I had hidden.

“No fucking way, Cat,” Madrid breathed out. He was looking at my cache, the weapons I had made on my own. “Where did you get all of this?”

A/N: Time to find out all her secrets, who's ready to see Cat shine?