“By the way, I told Kevin to expect a call from you, Greg,” Marc said. “Very soon.”
“Oh, he’ll get more than a call.” My father’s hand paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “When this is over, he’ll get an escort to the Mississippi border and instructions to wait in the free zone until his father decides what to do with him. I’ll be on the phone to David Mitchell as soon as we finish here.”
At the other end of the table, my mother cleared her throat politely to get our attention. “What about this missing dancer?”
“Her name is Kellie Tandy, and she goes to Tulane on a partial scholarship,” Marc said. “A couple of years ago she was looking for a better-paying job to help make up for what the scholarship doesn’t cover, and her roommate convinced her to audition at Forbidden Fruit.
“When Kellie disappeared before her second set, her roommate—Ginger—called the police. They showed up at the club a couple of hours later and asked questions, and took a picture of Kellie for their file. But that was it. They seemed to think Kellie would show up in a few hours, and they told the roommate to go back to their apartment and wait.”
“I assume she never showed up?” Ethan asked around a mouthful of fish.
“Right. The next day, when the police said they were doing everything they could, the roommate made up the missing person poster on her own and took up a collection from the other dancers and the Forbidden Fruit management to offer as a reward.”
“What about her family?” Parker asked. “Can’t her parents put some pressure on the cops?”
“She doesn’t have any parents,” I said, because Marc was busy chewing.
He swallowed and took a drink to clear his throat. “They died when she was sixteen, and she spent her last year and a half of high school in foster care, because her two remaining grandparents were too old to take her in. She’s a favorite among the other dancers.”
Marc’s expression was professionally detached, but I knew him too well to believe what I saw on his face. Hearing about her parents had made Marc determined to find out what happened to Kellie. He had a soft spot for orphans, because when he was fourteen, his mother was killed by the same stray who’d infected him.
“Okay, let me see if I understand everything correctly.” My father pushed his empty plate forward and leaned back in his chair. “Kellie Tandy goes missing from Forbidden Fruit in New Orleans on Thursday—the same day Bradley Moore is murdered in Arkansas—but the police won’t look for her. On Saturday, Robert Harper is lured out of that same strip club by the rogue tabby, who breaks his neck in the alley and leaves the body buried in garbage. Less than two hours later, Parker and Holden find the body and bring it back to us.” He glanced around the table, waiting for a response.
“Sounds right to me,” I said.
“Me, too,” Jace spoke up, while everyone else nodded. Except my mother. She pushed back her chair and disappeared into the kitchen without a word. Seconds later she was back with a homemade strawberry cheesecake, which she began cutting on the oak sideboard against one wall.
“So we’re just supposed to believe it’s all coincidence?” Ethan asked, taking the dessert plate my mother handed him and passing it to Jace, who passed it to Parker, who passed it on to my father. “All this happens at one strip club in New Orleans, but we can’t figure out how it’s related, if it even is. But it has to be, doesn’t it?”
I shrugged, watching as they passed down another plate. “Well, it didn’t all happen at Forbidden Fruit.”
“What do you mean?” Jace asked.
Marc answered for me, placing a slice of cheesecake on my place mat. “Bradley Moore died four miles or so from another strip club in Arkansas. He had a stack of ones in his wallet.”
Ethan glanced from him to our father. “So this is about strip clubs?”
“No.” My mother set her knife and pie server in the empty half of the glass pie plate, frowning at her youngest son as if he’d just told her the earth was flat. “I would bet the location is largely irrelevant. At least to the tabby. She started in eastern Arkansas—as far as we know, anyway—then moved down to New Orleans, and in both cases she seems to have lured a stray from a strip club to kill him. But why would she go into a strip club? Why would a woman go to a strip club alone? Not just a tabby, but any woman?”
Her gaze swept up and down the table, looking at each of us in turn, including my father. No one answered, and in the silence, the low growl of a car engine rumbled from outside; Owen and Vic were back with the van.
“Faythe?” my mother asked, bringing my attention back on track as she narrowed her eyes at me. Why was she picking on me? No one else knew the answer, either. “Why would you go to a strip club?”
I frowned, trying without success to follow her logic. “I wouldn’t.”
“You went to one today,” she pointed out, her voice infuriatingly matter-of-fact, as if her statement were perfectly logical rather than a distortion of the truth.
“That doesn’t count. I was working. I went in to question the bartender.”
She nodded, apparently pleased with my answer, and picked up the silver pie server to gesture with as she spoke. “So you went into a strip club looking for a man?”
“Not like that,” I insisted. “I wasn’t looking for a date.”
“Did these men die of romance?” she asked, mercifully shifting her attention away from me. “Were they killed with too much wine and candlelight?” No one answered, but my father sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, glowing with pride as he watched his wife at work. “No, because this tabby wasn’t looking for a date, either.”
“She was working, too,” Marc said. “Looking for someone.” He was the first to catch on, though my father was nodding, as if he agreed. “Maybe Moore and Harper, or maybe someone else. Either way, she was hunting.”
In the foyer, the front door creaked open and Owen’s boots thumped on the tile.
Jace glanced from Marc to my mother, lowering his fork to the table with a bite of cheesecake still speared on the end. “She’s hunting strays?”
“Not exclusively,” Owen said from the dining-room doorway, his worn cowboy hat hanging from one fist. He leaned against the door frame, and Vic stopped just behind him, his expression grim, his cheek streaked with dirt.
My father pushed his chair back and glanced at his watch. “I didn’t expect you back for at least another hour.”
“It’s amazing how much time you can save by not burying the body,” Vic said, pushing past Owen and into the room. “This time she got one of ours. Jamey Gardner. We brought him back for a proper burial.”
The dining room erupted into a frenzy of questions and angry exclamations as we vented rage at the murder of one of our own Pride members. My father didn’t bother trying to speak over us. He simply stood and walked calmly from the dining room into his office across the hall. The racket around the table faded into silence as we all hopped up to follow him.
Marc and I sank onto the love seat and everyone else settled into place around us. No one said a word. We knew better than to start shouting questions in our Alpha’s office, no matter how upset we were. Instead, we listened as he spoke on the phone, hoping the answers to our questions would be revealed in the course of the overheard conversations.
The first phone call went to Michael, my oldest brother. Michael hadn’t worked as an enforcer in nearly eleven years, but during times of crisis, my father never hesitated to call him home to help. Michael was a genius at organization and resource management, and much more comfortable than the rest of us were with toggling multiple phone lines and scouring the Internet for information. Having just been made partner in a local law firm, he was also our eyes and ears in the legal community.
The phone call to Michael was predictably short and to the point.
“What’s wrong?” my brother asked in lieu of a greeting.
“Call your boss and tell him you need a personal day tomorrow. Th
en come on over. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Give me half an hour.”
“Good.” My father dropped the phone back into its slim black cradle, then sank into his desk chair, already flipping through his leather-bound address book for the next number. As he dialed, Ethan curled up on the floor at my feet, playing with the frayed edge of the rug, his head resting on my knee. Jace sat on his other side, leaning against one leg of a heavy oak end table.
“Wes? It’s Greg.” My father leaned forward in his chair, the phone pressed to his ear again. He paused as a disembodied voice greeted him from the earpiece and asked about his health. Wesley Gardner was Jamey’s older brother, and Alpha of the Great Lakes Pride. “I’m fine,” my father said, staring at his desk blotter as he rubbed his forehead. “But I have some bad news about Jamey.”
For a long moment, there was only silence, broken by the occasional crackle of static on the line and the creak of leather as Owen shifted on the couch across from me and Marc, his hat in his lap. When Wes finally spoke, the pain in his voice was obvious, even over hundreds of miles of wire. “How did it happen?”
My father sighed, still staring down at his desk. We all knew how much he dreaded this part of his job, and I was grateful he hadn’t delegated the responsibility to one of us. Namely me.
“I’m not sure yet. We got an anonymous tip about a body near Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana. It turned out to be Jamey. I’m so sorry, Wes. We’re doing everything we can to catch the…one responsible.”
I glanced at Marc, surprised by my father’s failure to mention the killer’s gender—the most noteworthy aspect of the case by far. But Marc didn’t even seem to notice. Withholding information during an ongoing investigation was standard procedure, but Wes was the victim’s brother, for goodness’ sake, not some random Pride member.
“How do you want us to handle the burial?” my father asked.
Wes sighed. “We’ll come get him. I’ll call you back with the flight information once I make the reservations.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I will. Thanks, Greg.”
My father hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, hands crossed over his stomach, eyes closed. He looked angry. And very, very tired. “Okay, Vic, Owen, tell us what happened.”
Vic looked at Owen and shrugged, so Owen started, shifting again on the couch to face our Alpha, who didn’t even open his eyes. “There’s not much to tell. The body was just where the caller said it would be. He was covered in leaves and loose dirt, so we couldn’t see his face at first, but we knew it was Jamey right away. From his scent.” Owen glanced at Vic again before continuing. “We could smell her, too. This time we knew what to look for from the scent. And it was fresh.”
“Injuries?” my father asked, his eyes still closed.
Owen curled the brim of his hat in both hands. “Nothin’ but the broken neck, just like the others.”
My father nodded, acknowledging the information, but before he could say anything else, the clicking of my mother’s heels sounded in the hallway, accompanied by the rich aroma of good coffee.
Seconds later she appeared in the doorway, carrying a silver tray full of steaming mugs. Without a word, she crossed the room and set the tray on one corner of my father’s desk, then began passing out individual cups.
In that moment, as I accepted a fresh mug of coffee—loaded with sugar and vanilla-flavored creamer, just the way I liked it—I could have kissed my mother. Even though she’d finished cleaning the kitchen before joining the important meeting. Even though she’d just served drinks from a silver tray to a room full of mostly men. And even though she’d done it in a demure skirt and two-inch heels.
At the moment, I was too grateful for the caffeine to ruin her nice gesture by telling her we were perfectly capable of getting our own coffee. So, I just smiled and thanked her. And gave myself a mental pat on the back for passing up an opportunity to argue with my mother and gloat over the fact that I hadn’t grown up to be just like her.
“Anything else?” my father asked Vic, nodding at my mother in thanks as he took the mug she offered. She nodded back and accepted the seat on the couch that Parker—ever the gentleman—gave up for her.
Owen nodded as Parker settled onto the floor at his feet. My father’s armchair was empty, but none of us would have dared sit in it. “There was a third scent on Jamey’s body. A stray. Neither of us recognized it.” He glanced around the room, taking in our individual reactions. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything. He probably just came into contact with a stray at some point today.”
Marc frowned and set his mug on the end table to his right. “Are you sure it wasn’t Harper’s scent?” he asked, and I knew what he was thinking. Instead of reporting Robert Harper’s indiscretions, Kevin had helped cover them up, and as much as I hated to consider it, we couldn’t ignore the possibility that Jamey had been doing something similar. Maybe that was why my father had withheld information from Jamey’s brother.
“We’re sure,” Vic said. “We all got a good whiff of Harper last night, and this definitely wasn’t him.”
My father sat up straight, listening to the crunch of Michael’s tires on gravel out front. A dark frown settled over his face as he stood and set his half-empty coffee mug on his desk blotter. “This is the third time this rogue tabby has killed someone in our territory in as many days, and now that she’s gone after a Pride cat, the council can no longer pretend she’s doing us a favor.”
He popped the knuckles of his right hand, and the resulting crack seemed to echo throughout the room. “I can get enough votes for a combined effort now. The other Alphas will have to do something to prove they care. But the council will resist being forced into action, and every minute they spend dragging their heels and pointing fingers is another minute added to the tabby’s head start. She’s hunting in our territory, and we can’t afford to wait on the council to find her.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “So…we’re going to apprise them of the situation, as we’re obligated to do. Then, while they twiddle their thumbs, we’re going after her on our own.” He paused, glancing at each of us individually, determination etched into every line of his face. “Does everyone understand?”
Hell yeah, we understood! Our Alpha was going vigilante. As the tips of my fingers began to tingle with excitement, I realized that for the first time in years, I was truly pleased to call myself my father’s daughter.
Fifteen
Outside, my father and Michael marched down the gravel driveway side by side, their backs illuminated only by the front porch light because the moon and most of the stars were hidden by a thick covering of clouds. The rest of us trailed behind them. Except for my mother, who’d stayed behind.
Clad in his typical off-work uniform of khaki slacks and a navy polo shirt, Michael listened without a word as our father went over the specifics of the case for him. His pace never slowed, and his step never faltered—until he heard about Jamey Gardner. The instant he heard Jamey’s name, he seemed to trip over nothing, regaining his usual grace and poise an instant later. He and Jamey had been childhood friends, not quite as close as Jace and Ethan, but more than just acquaintances.
“You’re sure it was a woman?” Michael asked, his stride once again smooth, but noticeably quicker and more determined.
My father nodded. “We have a working description, but no idea who she is or why she’s targeting toms in our territory. Or where she came from, though we’re guessing somewhere in South America, based on the scent.”
The barn rose before us at the end of the dirt path running down the center of the western field. In my childhood, it had been my secret retreat, but instead of afternoons spent in the company of Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre, I now associated the smell of fresh hay with death and decay, because for the second time in as many days, we were using the barn as a makeshift morgue.
With a stoic heave, and not so much as a g
runt, my father pulled opened the big double barn doors. Again. And again we filed in after him. But this time, as Owen and Vic unloaded the plastic-wrapped bundle from the back of the van, my father gave directions to Jace and Ethan, who scampered up to the loft to push down the only three hay bales left over from last season. We weren’t going to put the body of a Pride member—a man who’d spent several childhood summers on our ranch—on the floor.
“The most obvious starting point is the unidentified stray scent on Jamey’s body,” my father said in his Alpha voice, as Owen carefully peeled strips of duct tape from the plastic. “I’m willing to bet this stray is our anonymous informant, and that he saw Jamey with the tabby. With any luck, he’ll have some useful information for us—like her name, and where she’s going. So the first order of business is to identify this stray.”
When the sheet of black plastic draping Jamey’s body fell open, a limp hand fell with it, hanging to brush the side of the hay bale. It looked for all the world like an image from a cheesy horror movie, and was every bit as surreal.
Owen clomped forward in his boots to gently lay Jamey’s hand over his stomach. As thoughtful as the gesture was, it didn’t really help. There’s only so much you can do to make the sight of a dead companion easier to accept. Especially under such gruesome circumstances.
My father came forward first, while the rest of us stood watching him with our hands in our pockets. He stood silently at Jamey’s side, as if to say his final goodbye, but I could tell by the rise and fall of his chest that he was breathing deeply to take in the scent. He would no more lean down and blatantly sniff Jamey’s corpse than he would lay him on the floor. Or leave him exposed as a meal for nature’s scavengers.
Finally, he stepped back and shook his head. “I don’t recognize the scent, but that’s not really surprising. I can’t remember the last time I saw a stray in person. A live stray, anyway.”