Stray

  “Did you at least try to stop them?”

  “You can’t stop Miguel,” he said, frowning at me as if I should have known better.

  “Shit, Ryan, you didn’t even try?” I slammed my fist into the ground and regretted it almost instantly. The rough surface of the concrete skinned the outside edge of my hand, leaving it raw and slowly oozing blood. Wonderful.

  “What was I supposed to do, suggest an alternate choice? Would you really have wanted me to trade you in for someone else, maybe even younger than Abby?”

  Of course not. I let silence answer for me, but my anger at him didn’t fade. Ignoring him, I dug through my fast-food bag for a napkin, and used it to dab at my raw skin.

  “Besides, I thought they’d never get another shot at you once you went home.”

  My head snapped up, my hand forgotten. “Another shot?” He knew about the stray on campus?

  “Yeah, Miguel had someone watching you at school, waiting for an opportunity that never came.”

  Never came? He didn’t know I’d been attacked? Apparently they weren’t the best-organized criminal cartel. Or maybe Miguel hadn’t been sharing information with his toadies.

  Ryan shrugged, as if none of that mattered. “And if you’d stayed put, like you were supposed to, they never would have gotten a second chance.” He smirked, accusation clear in the curve of his mouth. “But you couldn’t, could you? Dad puts you under house arrest and round-the-clock supervision, so you sneak out just to prove you’re still up to the challenge.”

  Enraged, I jumped to my feet, and he mirrored me from the other side of the bars, automatically taking a defensive stance. “So it’s my fault I’m sitting in a cage in some filthy basement in Mississippi?” I growled, throwing the blood-smeared napkin at him because I had nothing else to throw. But then I froze, staring at him as the growl faded from my throat. Wait. What was that he’d said?

  Ryan caught the napkin in his palm and crushed it, his fist hanging in the air like an unspoken threat. He came a step closer, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “How’d you know we’re in Mississippi?”

  “How did you know about the house arrest and babysitting?” I countered.

  He dropped the napkin, and it rolled to rest against one of the bars. “You first.”

  “Deductive reasoning. It’s a perk sometimes available to those of us on the top rung of the evolutionary ladder.” And you just confirmed it, I added silently.

  He cleared his throat, glancing away. “Deductive reasoning for me, too.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Bullshit, Ryan. You couldn’t deduce your own name if it wasn’t written in your underwear.” I lunged at him, smashing my chest into the bars. My fingers grazed the front of his shirt, and he backpedaled quickly out of reach. “Who have you been talking to?” I demanded, stepping back from the bars to glare at him.

  “No one,” he insisted, but I’d already figured it out. Of the enforcers, only Marc was privy to privileged information about the council’s plans, and he would never talk to Ryan. But there was one other person who had a history of involvement with the council and in whom my father confided…

  “How long have you been in contact with Mom?”

  Ryan flushed, and at first I thought he’d refuse to answer. Then he hung his head in defeat, a gesture left over from childhood. “Almost eight years.”

  “So you’re still Mommy’s boy.” I couldn’t resist a satisfied grin. For years I’d dreamed of being just like Ryan, gutsy and independent. And he’d been faking it the whole time. Mom had been secretly helping him out. No wonder she wouldn’t talk about him. She was afraid of incriminating herself.

  Furthermore, my brother’s admission brought up a disturbing new question: Had Mom known what Ryan was doing? There was only one possible answer. No. She hadn’t had a clue. Mom was no doubt doing what she thought best for the whole family, trying to convince her second-born to come home. Unfortunately for us all, it hadn’t worked.

  Ryan glowered at me. “She sends me money. And she talks, mostly about you and the golden boy.”

  I blinked in surprise, caught off guard by the depth of his anger and resentment, still thriving after all these years. “You’re doing this because of Marc?”

  “Marc.” Ryan laughed bitterly and for a moment I thought he’d barked at me. “This has nothing to do with Marc. It doesn’t even have anything to do with me. I didn’t do this to you.” He leaned forward, overpronouncing each word to make sure I got the picture. “I’m not in charge.”

  I stared at him, absorbing the truth of his statement. Ryan, powerless? That was easy enough to believe. “Then help us,” I said, challenging him to take a stand for once. “Open the doors and let us out.”

  He flinched, his expression bitter. “I don’t have a key. Miguel won’t give me one.”

  Damn. “Okay then, tell Mom where we are. Please, Ryan.”

  Behind him, Abby gripped the bars of her cage with tiny, white-knuckled fingers, waiting for his answer just as desperately as I was.

  He shook his head. “Dad would put a price on my head. You know he would. Even Mom couldn’t stop him.”

  “What do you think Miguel’s going to do when I tell him you’ve been talking to your mommy?”

  Ryan just looked at me, but something in his expression was off, something about the tight line of his mouth…

  “He knows, doesn’t he?” I said, my inner lightbulb blinking to life. “You son of a bitch, you’ve been using Mom to spy on the council. And she was only trying to help you, trying to get you to come home.” I rammed the bars again, bruising my shoulder, and Ryan took another step back, farther out of my reach.

  “She’s the only reason I’m alive,” he said, his voice calm, resigned. His shoulders slumped as his eyes traveled up to meet mine. “A couple of weeks ago, I ran into Miguel outside a bar in New Mexico. He was about to kill me when I told him I had connections in the south-central territory and a source on the council. I told him they’d miss me and hunt him down.

  “He didn’t care about that—wasn’t the least bit worried about being caught. But he wanted information. He wanted to know what the council was doing, what strays they were watching and who they had patrolling each territory.” Ryan stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged apologetically. “I had no choice, Faythe. And I didn’t hand you over to him. You did that yourself.”

  He backed toward the stairs slowly as I blinked at him, trying to come up with something to say to convince him to help us. Nothing came to mind. He was right; no matter what he did now, he was dead. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go call Mom. I’m sure she’s had a rough morning, and will need someone to talk to.”

  “Don’t do it, Ryan,” I said, dismayed by the desperation in my voice. “Don’t spy for them.” But I knew it was useless; he’d already made his alliance. He was more scared of our father than of Miguel. And so help me, I couldn’t really blame him for that.

  “It’s all I’m good for, Faythe,” he said. Without another word, he jogged up the steps and into what I assumed was the kitchen, slamming the door shut on the dark, and on us.

  Twenty-One

  Alone with Abby again, I dropped onto my mattress and unwrapped my burger, determined not to dwell on Ryan’s betrayal. I had no doubt he’d get what he deserved in the end, whether from my father or from Miguel. Or from me.

  My burger was tasteless, in spite of the tantalizing aroma of grilled onions, but I ate it anyway. “You should eat that,” I said to Abby between bites.

  “I’m not hungry.” She lay on her stomach on her mattress, her chin resting on one arm. Her other hand hung over the concrete at the end of the mattress, tracing a swirling pattern in the dirt she’d scraped from the bottom of her shoes.

  I drank from my water bottle, still watching her. “Yes, you are. Eat. You can’t fight them off if you don’t.”

  “You can’t fight them off anyway.”

  “The hell I can’t.” I tore into the burger again
, pretending it was Miguel’s throat.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, staring at me with haunted eyes. “If they can’t make you cooperate, make you play their game, you’re no use to them, and they’ll kill you.”

  Like Sara, I thought, finishing her sentence in my head. As badly as I wanted to know what had happened, I wouldn’t ask. I had to wait for her to bring it up on her own. So I said the only thing I could think of to comfort her. “Ryan said we were too valuable.”

  “I don’t care what he said. Miguel will kill you if you push him too far.”

  I plucked a fry from its cardboard carton, miming a sword fight with an imaginary foe. “I’d like to see him try,” I said, lunging to slit my invisible opponent’s throat. Abby didn’t even crack a grin. Tough room.

  “If you die, I’ll be alone with them again.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and tears formed in her eyes.

  Damn. Stuffing the fry in my mouth, I watched her expression grow from fear to terror as I chewed. “He won’t kill me,” I said. “I won’t give him a chance. And he won’t touch me, either.”

  Abby sat up, brushing moisture from her cheeks with dust-streaked palms. “Faythe, you can’t fight him. You don’t know what he did to Sara.”

  My heart pounding, I froze, waiting for her to continue. But she didn’t. She wasn’t ready to tell me yet. I took another swig of water, trying to wash down the lump in my throat along with the last bite of hamburger. “Yes, I do.”

  Abby’s eyes widened, her mouth forming a silent circle. “How do you know?”

  I hesitated, but she looked desperate for information, and I knew the feeling. “They took her home and propped her against a tree in her own backyard. Vic found her.”

  Blood drained from her face, and even in the dim light, I saw her bottom lip tremble. “Wasn’t killing her enough? Why did he have to humiliate her like that? Her poor family…Why would anyone do that?”

  “Because he’s sadistic.” I dropped my carton of fries back into the bag, my appetite gone. “He had to know a stunt like that would make the council even more determined to find him. And punish him. But he doesn’t care. He thinks he’s invincible.”

  Careful of my skinned right hand, I rolled down the top of the fast-food sack and tossed it into the far corner of my cage. “So what do you think they really want?” I asked, gently touching my injured skin with one finger. The bleeding had stopped, but the edge of my palm was still an angry shade of red.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This can’t be it.” I waved my battered hand around the basement. “If this was their grand scheme, they wouldn’t need Ryan because they wouldn’t care what the council was doing. They’d have their fun with us, then kill us, like Miguel did with those human girls.”

  Abby’s hand clenched around the hamburger she’d been staring at. “What human girls?”

  I exhaled slowly, trying to decide how much to tell her. “Dr. Carver’s office received the body of a girl raped and killed by a cat. A jungle stray. Owen went to investigate and came across another murder fitting the same pattern. It happened three days earlier in New Mexico.” Where Ryan had said he’d met Miguel.

  “I knew it,” she moaned, squeezing her burger until juice from the beef ran down her arm. “They’re going to kill us.”

  “No, that’s just my point. They’re not. Not intentionally, anyway,” I amended, thinking of Sara. “If Miguel was looking for disposable playthings, he’d have picked a couple of human girls. But he didn’t. He went through a lot of trouble to snatch us. Ryan said we were too valuable to kill, but too valuable for what? Or to whom?”

  Abby frowned, confused. “But Miguel killed Sara.”

  “I know.” I sighed, trying not to get impatient with her just when she was starting to open up. “Maybe he lost his temper.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Which is exactly why I said not to fight him.”

  “If we don’t fight, we won’t get out.”

  “And if we do fight, we might not get out alive.” It was my turn to frown. “Your logic sucks, Abby.”

  “So does yours.”

  I laughed, and it felt so good, I did it again. After a moment of hesitation, Abby joined me, and her smile was radiant, almost bright enough to make up for the tiny, grimy windows.

  Feeling a little better, more from laughter than from the meal, I walked to the center of my cell with my hands on my hips, studying the enclosure carefully. The cinder block basement wall served as one side of the enclosure, and the remaining sides were made of a series of one-inch aluminum bars, welded to a square frame of the same material. The frames were attached to the floor with huge metal screws and secured with bolts more than an inch in diameter. The metal was welded together at the corners and bolted directly into the cinder blocks at the back. Overhead, a nearly identical frame was covered with a sheet of steel mesh, and either bolted or welded to all three aluminum sides and the cinder block wall.

  “What are you doing?” Abby asked around a mouthful of hamburger.

  “Checking for weaknesses.” I pulled on each individual bar, making my way around the cage until I’d tried them all. It was a long shot, but I had to try. Not one bar budged, which wasn’t surprising.

  Next, I tried every bolt I could reach. None of them moved. I stuck my arms through the bars on the front wall and pulled on the lock, wedging my feet against the frame for support. I’m pretty strong, but the damn thing didn’t even creak. It was made of aluminum, too. Great.

  As a last resort, I looked up, studying the steel mesh. The basement had a low ceiling—only about seven feet from the floor—and the top of my cage was maybe six inches below that. I could reach it easily, but tugging on the mesh would do me more damage than good. It was made of a single sheet of steel, punched through with row upon row of vaguely diamond-shaped holes. And each edge of each hole was sharp. Very sharp, from what I could see. Any attempt to grab the mesh would shred my hands, seriously hampering any other escape effort I might come up with.

  Having exhausted all of my options, I sat down on the mattress and took another swig from my water bottle. “So, what happens when I need to pee?”

  Abby wadded up her empty burger wrapper and dropped it into the paper bag. “Do you?”

  “Yeah. Not horribly yet, but yeah.”

  “There’s a coffee can back there by the wall. See?”

  Following her pointed finger, I saw an empty plastic Folgers canister just outside the bars at the back of my cell. “That’s what I was afraid of.” Wiping sweat from my face with my sleeve, I trudged to the back corner of the cage and pulled the canister through. I had to hold it by the bottom because it was too wide to go through with my fingers wrapped around the sides.

  Abby smiled sympathetically. “It takes some getting used to but they come empty it pretty often. They don’t like to smell it when they’re down here.”

  “I don’t blame them.” I stared into the container in distaste. “I’ll just hold it.”

  “Why? They aren’t going to let you out to use the restroom. Besides, Ryan said you were in a cage for nearly two weeks, once. What did you use then?”

  “Something similar to this, actually.” I tilted the can toward my nose and sniffed. It was clean and still smelled like coffee. I could really use some coffee, I thought, uncomfortably aware that the smell of my makeshift toilet was making my mouth water. Yuck.

  “They can’t keep us in here forever,” I said, tossing the can into the corner with my other trash. “They have to know we’ll escape eventually.”

  “Why would we?” She ripped the top edge from a tiny paper packet of salt and upended it over her fries. “You didn’t escape the cage at the ranch.”

  I smiled ruefully, lounging on my mattress with my bottle of water. “Only because no one gave me a chance. But unless I’m wrong, Miguel is going to want to join me in here eventually—”

  “You can pretty much count on it.”

  “—and he??
?ll have to either bring the key with him or leave the door unlocked.” I paused, picturing his face covered in blood. “Every time he opens that door, he’ll be giving me a chance to escape. He must know it’s only a matter of time.”

  Abby plucked one fry from her carton. “He’s probably counting on keeping you too busy to snatch the key.”

  “Then I’ll just have to make sure he can’t.”

  “What if he brings another tranquilizer?”

  I thought aloud, watching her eat. “I don’t think he wants me sedated. He had ample opportunity to do whatever he wanted with me while I was unconscious, but he didn’t. I think he wants me alert and scared.” Sick bastard, I added in my head.

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Last time he had the element of surprise. He’s lost that now, and I’ll be watching for a needle. If he brings one, I won’t give him a chance to use it.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that,” she said, her skepticism obvious as she munched on a limp fry.

  “Thanks.”

  Overhead, the loose floorboard groaned again and my head swiveled toward the stairs before I could stop it. Wow, I thought, I’ve only been here for a few hours, and already I’m acting like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Only my conditioned response was not salivation, but fear.

  “It’s Miguel,” Abby whispered, a thin tremor in her voice.

  “How do you know?”

  The soft whoosh-whoosh of her pulse sped up as she dropped her fries back into the paper bag. “Trust me. It’s him.”

  Wonderful.

  “Carpe diem,” I mumbled, scrambling to my feet as I tried to recall the Latin translation for “Seize the cat by the balls.” Marc had taught it to me years ago. Too many years ago, apparently. “Any advice?”

  Abby scooted backward on her rear. “Think about something else.”

  “Like ripping his throat out?”

  She stared at me in astonishment, then a grim smile spread slowly over her face. “That might work.”

  I had my doubts, but the image of blood pouring from Miguel’s neck was pretty damn appealing.