They would drive the corpses back to the ranch to be destroyed in the industrial incinerator—the type most farmers used to dispose of dead livestock.
We used it to get rid of evidence. Though we’d never had quite so much to dispose of at once before.
Marc arched both brows. “Only seven unconscious? Several must have wandered off on their own.” And two more had died since we’d left them.
“Sounds about right. Damn, that was some brawl.”
“It was a fucking ambush.” Marc dropped into the chair opposite mine and pulled the bottle of Absolut forward. “In the ten years I worked for your dad, I never once saw that many strays in league. This gang was several times the size of Radley’s, and they meant business.”
Ethan flipped open the pizza box and picked up the largest remaining slice. “So you think they were after Manx?”
Marc glanced at me before nodding, and his eyes lingered on mine in concern as he twisted the top from the bottle. “And probably Faythe, too. Did you see her ankle? One of them tried to drag her off in the middle of the fight.”
A growl started in the back of my throat, and my hands clenched into fists in my lap. It was always the same old song and dance with most strays, and frankly, I was getting pretty damn tired of the whole snatch-and-grab routine.
Marc gulped from the bottle, not bothering with a chaser. “I mean, how often do two tabbies travel through the free territory together? We may as well have painted a target on the back of the Suburban.”
“It’s not like we had another option.” I chose a slice of cold pizza at random. “Manx can’t fly, and avoiding the free zone would have added several days to the trip.” And I would never have even gotten a glimpse of Marc that way.
“I know.” Marc sighed. “Where’re Jace and Brian?”
Ethan swallowed his bite and twisted the lid from a half-empty two-liter of Coke. “Covering the cargo in the back of the van of a thousand corpses.”
Which meant Jace wasn’t up for seeing me and Marc half-naked together. He could accept how I felt about Marc—grudgingly—but drew the line at seeing it in person. Which we all understood.
Ethan closed the soda and met my eyes, his own oddly solemn. “Mom can’t get Kaci to cooperate with you gone, so I’m going to drive the van back with Jace, and Brian will go on with you guys.” Which was no doubt why they’d risked driving the corpses back into the free zone. “Okay?”
“Sure.” Other than me, Kaci was most comfortable with Jace and Ethan. For some reason, the wonder twins could always make her smile, even when I would have sworn she didn’t have the strength. “Tell Kaci I’ll call her tomorrow. And please be careful. What would happen if you two got pulled over with eight bodies in the back of the van?”
Ethan grinned, green eyes sparkling. “We hope the cop’s a cat lover.” He took another bite, then gestured with the crust of his pizza. “But we won’t get pulled over. It’s not like we’ve never driven home with a body in the back before.”
Unfortunately.
Two short, sharp knocks sounded on the door, and we all turned as Ethan yelled, “Come on in, Jace. They’re not doin’ it. Yet.”
That was my brother. Mr. Sensitivity.
Jace opened the door and stepped inside, then quickly shoved the door closed and leaned against it, pushing brown waves out of his bright blue eyes. “Hey, how’s life on the outside?” he said, greeting Marc first out of respect, even though he no longer had any rank within the Pride. Most other toms wouldn’t have done that, especially considering that I’d chosen Marc over Jace. But Jace was a good guy. My father didn’t hire any other kind.
“Can’t complain.” Marc stood to shake Jace’s hand with just a hint of formality. “How’s everything at the ranch?”
“Not the same without you, man,” Jace said, and I smiled as Marc exhaled deeply, and nodded in acknowledgment.
“Thanks.”
I knew better than anyone else how much that sentiment meant to Marc, and I could have kissed Jace for it—if that wouldn’t have made everything infinitely worse.
Finally, Jace’s eyes found me, and concern washed over his face as he stepped forward. “Your dad didn’t say you were hurt.”
“I don’t think anyone’s told him yet.” I clutched the arm of my chair to keep from self-consciously touching my wounds. “I’m fine, though. One Shift should take care of the limp.”
“Well, do it soon,” Jace said, then turned to Ethan, his jaw tight with whatever he was not saying. “You ready?”
“Yeah.” Ethan took one last gulp of Coke and snatched a slice of pizza for the road. “You guys be careful.” He pulled me up and into a bear hug. “Mom will never forgive any of us if her only daughter comes home disfigured.”
I twisted out of his grip when the hug got too tight. “After tonight, she ought to be grateful I’m coming home at all.”
“Can I be there when you tell her that?” Ethan asked, still grinning as he headed for the door.
“Yeah, I’m considering a rephrase.” I followed him, hobbling along with my arm intertwined with Marc’s. “Seriously, though, will you tell Kaci I’m fine? We’re all fine. And we’ll be home in a couple of days, good as new.”
“Will do.” Ethan followed Jace outside, to where my father’s van was now parked next to Vic’s Suburban. “Mom said she fell asleep playing PS3 after dinner.”
I frowned, shivering in the sudden cold as I gripped the door frame. “I’ll talk her into Shifting when I get back. One way or another.”
Ethan opened the passenger-side door as Jace started the engine. “I know.” My brother grinned one last time as Jace backed my dad’s ancient van out of the parking space. Then they were gone.
I closed the door and twisted to find Marc watching me with a new heat in his eyes. So we picked up right where we’d left off….
Six hours later, my cell phone rang out from the dark. I sat up, blinking, and reached over Marc to feel around on the nightstand, aiming vaguely for the bouncing, glowing mound of plastic.
I couldn’t reach it, so I levered myself over Marc with my elbow in his chest. He grunted and his eyes flew open, and I gasped when my bad leg twisted beneath me, because I still hadn’t found a chance to Shift. But then my fingers closed around the phone and I eased my weight back onto the mattress, flipping the phone open without reading the name on the display.
“Faythe?” It was my dad, and he sounded infinitely more alert than I was. Which was probably a very bad sign.
“It’s five in the morning, Daddy.” I shrugged when Marc rubbed sleep from one eye and mouthed, What’s wrong?
“I know what time it is,” my father snapped, and his tone brought me instantly awake. “Ryan’s gone.”
Five
“W hat?” I said, as Marc sat up and clicked on the lamp on the nightstand.
I’d expected to hear that Kaci had Shifted, or that Jace and Ethan had arrived home safely with the bodies. Or even that they’d been pulled over on the way home and arrested on some weird murder and illegal-corpse-disposal charge. But I didn’t quite know how to react to the news that my middle—and least favorite—brother, Ryan, had pulled a Houdini. “How?”
“I honestly don’t know. I was up tending the incinerator, and went down to the basement for spare flashlight batteries, and he was just gone. The cage door was standing wide open, and the lock was missing.”
Damn. But why would he take the lock?
Ryan had spent the past six and a half months locked up in our basement prison cell, as punishment for playing the role of spy and jailer in a scheme to kidnap several U.S. tabbies—including me—to be sold to Alphas in the Amazon. When we’d caught him, he was thin and weak. But he’d grown healthier in captivity, eating my mother’s cooking, despite the lack of sunshine, fresh air and exercise.
But that did not explain how he’d escaped. The cage was built to stand up to toms in the prime of life, fueled by rage and fear. He should not have been able to break
the lock on his own, and he had access to nothing with which to pound it off.
“Any idea how long he’s been gone?” I asked, rubbing my forehead in frustration.
“Owen took his dinner down at seven, and everything was normal. So it could have been anytime in the past ten hours.” The weariness in his voice spoke volumes, and had little to do with the early hour or lack of sleep. With my father’s position on the Territorial Council so tenuous at the moment, Ryan’s escape was a blow he really couldn’t afford. Malone would use that as just one more piece of evidence that my father was an incompetent Alpha. Which was not true.
“Did he leave a trail?” Marc ran one hand through short curls he’d probably forgotten he’d sheared.
My father sighed over the line. “Yes, but it did little good. Owen tracked him for about a mile and a half, then lost the trail shortly after he found his clothes. It looks like Ryan Shifted and took to the trees.”
Cats can’t track animals like dogs can, and the same holds true for werecats. We use our keen sense of smell to scavenge and to identify one another, and our eyes and ears to find prey during an active chase. However, we lack the necessary instinct to follow a cold trail on scent alone, and once Ryan was in the trees—no doubt walking the limbs like a splintered forest path—he was beyond our immediate grasp. Which probably infuriated Owen, my third brother.
“So what do you want us to do?” I sipped from the cup of lukewarm water Marc handed me from the nightstand.
“There isn’t much you can do.” My father’s desk chair squealed in my ear, and I could easily picture him sitting in his office in his blue striped robe, glaring at the empty room. “Just ask Marc to keep his eyes and ears open. I’m pretty sure Ryan’s headed your way.”
Because Mississippi was the closest free territory to the ranch, thus the easiest for Ryan to reach. In theory. Unfortunately, we now knew there was an exceptionally large band of very angry strays roaming near the border, and one whiff of Ryan’s Pride-cat scent would likely set them off again.
My idiot brother had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fucking volcano, and I had a sudden bleak certainty that the next body we buried might break my mother’s heart.
Marc exhaled heavily and scowled. He and Ryan hadn’t exchanged two civil words since June, and Marc no longer officially worked for my father. But he would never say no to my dad. “I’ll be looking for him,” he said, well aware his former Alpha could hear him, even several feet from the phone.
“Thanks.” My father ordered us to get some sleep. Then he hung up.
We didn’t sleep.
After the ambush, injuries, and Ryan’s escape, sleeping seemed like a waste of time, especially considering that Marc and I only had a matter of hours left together. So we made other, better use of the predawn hours.
When the first direct rays of daylight glinted through the gap in the faded motel curtains, I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that if I didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. But morning would not be ignored.
Marc sighed and kissed my jaw, just below my ear. “You hungry?”
I shook my head on the pillow, but he only laughed and tossed the covers back. Werecats were always hungry. “Why don’t you Shift while I grab some breakfast. Then I’ll take another look at your leg.”
“Oh, fine.” I sat up naked in bed, hoping to tempt him into putting off the food run. No such luck. His eyes lingered, but the rest of him did not. Ten minutes later he was showered, dressed and headed toward the IHOP across the street.
Alone, I knelt on the floor to Shift.
The usual pain of the transformation was intensified in my leg, especially the flesh over my thigh, which burned and throbbed with an acute agony. The skin pulled and stretched, and for a couple of minutes I worried that the stitches would pop. But when the Shift was complete, my leg felt much better. Still tender, but fully functional.
I stretched with my forepaws extended, rump in the air, tail waving lazily. Then I sat up and groomed the fur over my left shoulder until it lay properly. After that I explored my surroundings. I’d never been in a hotel room in cat form, and everything looked and smelled very different with my feline senses. Which was not necessarily a good thing.
As a human, I’d been blissfully unaware of the traces of whoever’d had the room before us, but as a cat, I couldn’t ignore the lingering stench of strangers’ sweat, stale coffee, old takeout, and seafood-scented vomit in one corner of the bathroom. I was afraid to get too close to the bed, for fear of what I’d smell there.
After a mere five minutes in cat form, I’d had enough. I Shifted back and stepped into the shower, glad I’d brought along my own shampoo—a familiar scent to help wash the others from my memory.
I was drying my hair when a cold draft around my ankles announced Marc’s return. The scents of bacon, eggs, syrup and fruit told me he’d ordered nearly the entire IHOP menu. I was halfway through my first pancake when his cell rang out.
Marc dug in his right pocket and pulled out his cell phone—one I hadn’t seen before. New job, new house, and a new phone, since my father no longer picked up the cellular bill. Everything had changed.
“It’s your dad,” he said after a glance at the display, then flipped his phone open. “Hey, Greg, what can I do for you?” As if he were still on the clock.
“I spoke to Bert Di Carlo this morning and reported last night’s ambush. With both Vic and Faythe injured—” Ethan and Jace had obviously reported my condition “—Bert and I would feel much better about this trip if you’d accompany the delegation for a bit longer than we’d planned. You have permission to go as far as Birmingham. If you’re interested.”
Marc grinned and glanced at me. “Of course I’m interested.”
“Good.” I pictured my father nodding, signaling the end of the discussion. “Put Faythe on the line, please.”
Marc handed me his phone, still smiling as he speared a link of sausage with a plastic fork. I was grinning like an idiot, too, thrilled by the prospect of a couple of extra hours with Marc, even if we’d be stuck in Vic’s car along with the rest of the delegation.
“Hi, Daddy.” I dipped a slice of bacon in a puddle of syrup and bit into it, covering the mouthpiece to keep from crunching into his ear.
“How’s your leg?”
“It’s fine. Just three slashes above my right knee, and bite marks around my ankle. I Shifted this morning, and the wounds have closed nicely. I’m not even limping.”
“Ethan said you handled yourself very well. I’m paraphrasing, of course.”
I grinned and speared a tangle of hash browns, more pleased by the compliment than I would have admitted. “So did he. The boy swings a mean ax.”
My father chuckled. “Call me when you get to Bert’s place.”
“I will.”
My dad said goodbye and hung up, and I handed the phone back to Marc, still smiling.
Twenty minutes later we were on the road. Vic drove, and Brian took the passenger seat, with Manx and the baby in the middle row. Marc and I sat in the back, his arm around my waist, my head on his shoulder. His scent and warmth, along with the rhythmic jostle of the van around us, lulled me into a peaceful trance, and I was almost asleep when Vic spoke up from the front, eyeing us in the rearview mirror.
“Hey, Marc, isn’t that Painter’s car behind us?”
Marc twisted, and I turned to look with him. Sure enough, there it was—a grimy white Dodge Daytona, with a fist-size dent in the front bumper.
Marc scowled. “I told you he wouldn’t be that easy to lose.”
“What should I do?”
“Nothing. Let him follow us.” Marc’s jaws bulged in irritation. “I’ll need a ride back from Birmingham anyway.”
The rest of the trip was blessedly uneventful. Even with several bathroom and breast-feeding breaks, the winter sun was just past its zenith when we pulled into a Shell station off the highway, a couple of miles south of Birmingham. While Vic pumped gas, I made my
self say goodbye to Marc.
We’d planned for him to drive me back across the free zone—the guys would stay with Manx for the duration of the trial—but after the previous day’s ambush my father wouldn’t hear of another trip through Mississippi. So I’d be flying back.
“It’s not forever,” Marc insisted softly. But it may as well have been.
My hand lingered on his chest, his on my waist, and only when Dan Painter pulled up behind us in his sick-sounding car did Marc let our foreheads touch. He whispered goodbye and kissed me. Then he pulled open Vic’s passenger-side door, pushed me gently onto the seat and closed the door again.
I rolled the window down and stole one more kiss, then he smiled and turned away.
“Need a ride?” Painter asked, one arm hanging out his car window.
Marc scowled. “Do you think you can resist announcing our whereabouts to any future opponents we may encounter?”
“Dude, I told you that was an accident. I had no idea some asshole was gonna round up the posse and come out guns a-blazin’. What do you want, a formal apology?”
“A little silence would suffice,” Marc snapped, stomping around the car. He jerked open the door and slid onto the seat, just as Vic emerged from the convenience store. Marc waved to him, then turned to Dan. “Let’s get out of here before someone gets a whiff of you. No one gave you permission to leave the free zone.”
With that, Dan stomped on the gas and they roared out of the parking lot and back onto the highway.
The rest of the drive was much less pleasant, but peacefully dull. And if not for several crying spells from Des, I might have made up for the sleep I’d missed the night before. But when the Atlanta skyline came into view, Manx began to fidget. Her foot bounced on the floorboard. Her nails tapped on the armrest. She stared out her window and didn’t seem to hear Des when he began to fuss, waving tiny red fists in the air.