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Shaking her head, she whistled through her teeth. Those hooves had to be DNA-engineered into some kind of iron. Ordinary hooves did not do that to reinforced metal.

On the third strike, the door buckled and swung inward.

Stevie stood beyond it, one hand braced on a table. She blinked at Blythe, then at the goats crowding around her legs and a grin spread over her face.

“Fuck’s sake, Blythe, I can’t even leave you to get interrogated by a homicidal maniac crime boss right, can I?”

“Apparently not.” She lowered the crowbar as Stevie picked her way over the wrecked door.

“And who are these beauties?”

“This is Boss Goat and his friends,” Blythe said, surprised when Stevie crouched down and instantly got butted by big, furry bodies. Stevie was an animal person. Who knew? “I found them in the hold. Joe’s assholes have been beating them.”

Stevie’s hand stopped beside a raw patch of skin and her expression darkened as another goat pushed its wounded muzzle under her fingers.

“Fucking assholes,” she hissed.

“So we’re getting payback,” Blythe said brightly, resting her hand lightly on the back of Boss Goat’s neck. “Do you know where the others are?”

“Some of them, yeah. Layla’s just down there.”

Stevie straightened carefully and led the way. Too carefully. Blythe’s eyes narrowed as she watched her friend walk. Stevie was moving stiffly, favoring her left side. Obviously, she hadn’t made things easy for Joe’s guards either.

“Okay, this is the one I saw them take her into,” Stevie murmured, stopping in front of a door two down from where she’d been kept. “There’s only the two of us in this corridor.” Her expression tightened as she looked back at Blythe. “They took the others somewhere else.”

Blythe nodded and stepped aside as the goats lined up in front of the door. This time they had the method down pat, and Layla’s door only lasted two kicks.

The first buckled it around the lock. The second kick drove it inward, sending torn metal screeching across the floor. Blythe stepped up behind the goats and nearly got a chair leg through her forehead.

“Whoa! Watch it!”

Layla checked her swing, the splintered wood still raised above her head. Her gaze jumped from Blythe to Stevie, and she grinned. Then she looked down.

“Goats! I fucking love goats!” she squealed. Actually squealed. “Where did you get them?”

Blythe stared as the blonde crouched to welcome a pair of horned heads, setting the chair leg against her shoulder so she could scratch behind their ears. There was blood on those horns. More on their hooves, leaving sticky prints across the deck.

Blythe shook her head. She had serious reservations about Layla’s mental state. If she’d met this lot in a dark alley, she’d have run the other way, not wanted to hug them.

“Cargo hold. Heavy-grav goats,” she warned. “You really don’t want to get on their bad side.”

“Don’t plan on it.” Layla grinned, climbing through the remains of the door, chair leg still in hand. “So, Boss, what’s the plan?”

“I want you to find the others,” Stevie said and looked at Blythe, who shook her head.

“Uh-uh. Not happening. You two can go find them, but I’m tracking down that asshole Joe. Then I’m gonna rip his spine out his asshole and beat him to death with it.”

Both women raised an eyebrow.

“Speaking as someone with medical training,” said Layla. “I’m not entirely sure that’s anatomically possible.”

Blythe shrugged. “Call it research then.”

Stevie grinned as a goat butted her leg. “That’s what I like to see. A can-do attitude.”

Blythe chuckled. “Always got to look for the silver lining.”

The sound scraped her throat. She hadn’t had much cause to laugh lately, and doing it here, bruised and surrounded by bloodstained livestock, was probably evidence that Layla wasn’t the only one with a problem.