Rogue

  I glanced at Marc in amusement, and he smiled back. My father probably didn’t even realize his mistake; he truly never thought of Marc as a stray. He thought of Marc as a son.

  Michael came forward next and actually took Jamey’s hand in his own. I knew in seconds that he hadn’t recognized the scent, because when his breathing resumed its normal rhythm, he didn’t offer us any information. Yet he stayed with Jamey for almost a full minute, staring down at his friend’s face as if he were lost in some distant memory.

  Eventually, Michael shook his head and retreated silently to a spot near the door. To avoid looking at anyone, he cleaned the wire-rimmed glasses he only wore for show. Marc and I stepped into the space he’d vacated. Marc inhaled deeply, and I did the same.

  Then I froze.

  Son of a bitch! My fingers clenched around Marc’s, and his knuckles popped in rapid succession. He yelped in pain and tried to pull back his hand. I barely noticed. When my hand relaxed, his fingers slipped from my grasp. He rubbed his bruised knuckles, smiling broadly at me. He’d identified it, too.

  “You recognize the scent?” Michael asked, his voice sharp and clearly skeptical.

  I nodded, and Marc’s smile widened even further.

  My father arched both eyebrows, already impatient with the suspense. “Well?”

  “Dan Painter,” I said, excitement making a breathless whisper of my voice. Things were finally starting to make sense. Some things, anyway.

  Ethan shook his head. “What the hell is Painter’s scent doing on Jamey Gardner?”

  I indulged in a gloating smile, thrilled to be more in-the-know than he was for once. “Clearly Painter is the anonymous informer.”

  Owen frowned, shifting his hat back and forth on his head. “That’s not quite as clear as you seem to think it is, sis,” he drawled. “At least not to me.”

  “I second that.” Parker’s gaze flicked uncertainly from me to Marc.

  “Let me see if I’m understanding this correctly,” Vic began, propping one arm on top of the nearest stall door. “Greg’s been getting anonymous phone calls, all from the same man, reporting the rogue tabby’s kills and telling us where to find them.”

  “So far, so good.” I winked at him for good measure.

  “Thanks.” He glanced at my father, then continued. “Presumably, this caller has been following the tabby around, watching her. And now you think he’s this Dan Painter fellow. The same stray you guys caught and released in Arkansas, what? Three days ago?”

  “Right.” Marc nodded.

  Yet I felt compelled to correct one minor misunderstanding. “Actually, I caught Painter. Me. All alone.”

  Vic grinned. “My mistake.” I smiled in acknowledgment, and he continued. “So, we think Painter is spying on the tabby, then ratting her out. But do we think she had something to do with the missing stripper, too?”

  “The tabby couldn’t have killed her. Or taken her, or whatever,” Jace said. “Tandy went missing on Thursday night, around the time the tabby was busy killing Bradley Moore. In Arkansas. She didn’t get to New Orleans—that we know of—for two more days.”

  “So what does the missing stripper have to do with the dead strays? Or toms?” Ethan frowned, looking at the body laid out on the bales of hay. “I guess they’re not just strays anymore.”

  “Maybe nothing,” my father said. “But maybe…” He turned to face Michael, tired eyes now bright with unspoken ideas. “When we get in, I want you to do a search for missing strippers in Arkansas and Louisiana. Mississippi and Texas, too.”

  Michael nodded. “No problem. You’re thinking there may be more missing than just the girl from New Orleans?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I think your mother’s right. The tabby’s looking for something. Someone. Maybe she’s looking for whoever took Kellie Tandy.”

  Marc reached out for me, and I let him pull me close. “That would explain why she’s two days behind whoever took Tandy,” he said. “She’s tracking him.”

  “No way.” I shook my head and felt my hair rub against Marc’s shirt. “There’s no possible way she could have tracked anyone that far.” It was incredibly difficult for one cat to track another across long distances. In the forest, it wasn’t so bad—our ears are very sharp, and the slightest sound can give away your position. However, over long distances, it’s virtually impossible. Cats can’t track with their noses like dogs can. And even if we could, we’d lose the trail the moment our prey got into his car. “Besides, that doesn’t explain why she’s killed three toms in less than a week.”

  My father clasped his hands behind his back, frowning in thought. “No, it doesn’t, and such long-distance tracking does seem pretty far-fetched, but without more to go on, I can’t see how else Kellie Tandy could be connected to the tabby.”

  “Well, shi—!” Ethan shouted, snapping his mouth closed abruptly when he realized he’d almost cussed in front of his Alpha.

  “What?” our father asked, waving off the social gaffe.

  “I just realized that if Marc and Faythe had brought Painter back with them for questioning, instead of releasing him, we’d probably have known who the rogue tabby is three days ago.”

  Well, hell. I could feel my cheeks begin to burn. Ethan was right.

  Excuses tumbled around in my brain, and several jumped immediately into the spotlight, ready for use. But my father beat me to it.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, taking in both Marc and me with his gaze. “I told you to release him. You did the right thing.”

  I nodded, thankful for his reassurance, but couldn’t help feeling like I’d made a big mistake. Another big mistake. Which only reminded me of the one I hadn’t yet disclosed to either him or Marc.

  “Did Painter say anything…I don’t know…important, while you were driving him to the border?” Parker asked.

  “Um, no.” Marc held me tight against his chest. “He was unconscious.”

  Michael pushed his glasses—which I suspected were just to make him look smarter—farther up on his nose. “Unconscious? How did he happen to lose consciousness?”

  “I…kind of knocked him out.” I shrugged sheepishly when Michael frowned. “He got vulgar, talking about chasing a piece of…tail. So I…” I swung my arm up, in imitation of my prize-winning right hook. But my fist froze in midair and my words trailed off, as what I’d been saying finally sank in.

  Chasing a piece of ass. He’d said he was chasing a piece of ass.

  “He meant the tabby,” I whispered, too surprised to manage any real volume. But it didn’t matter. They all heard me. “Painter was chasing the rogue tabby, and I knocked him out before he could tell us about her.”

  Outside, cicadas chirruped, filling the silence as everyone but Marc stared at me in complete disbelief.

  Then Ethan snorted. “Isn’t that a bitch?” He grinned, his expression one of dark amusement—as if he appreciated the irony—rather than actual anger. But I would have understood anger. I’d screwed up the entire investigation, before I even knew there was one.

  “I swear on my life that I do not do these things on purpose,” I said, letting my head fall back to rest on Marc’s shoulder as his arms wrapped around me. I hated feeling like my fellow Pride members spent most of their time cleaning up my mistakes. I was better than that, and I wanted them all to know it.

  “Of course you don’t,” Jace said. I lifted my head to look at him, encouraged by the understanding in his voice, and was even more relieved to find sympathy in his eyes. “You had no way of knowing all this was going on. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “She didn’t do anything right, either,” Michael mumbled, still staring at the body of his childhood friend. I wanted to snap at him but resisted the impulse. I wasn’t the real source of his anger; that much was obvious.

  “Jace is right,” my father said, eyeing Michael in compassion, rather than irritation. “She couldn’t possibly have known.” Bending, he reached for the plastic
hanging over the bales of hay from beneath Jamey Gardner’s body. He pulled up first one side, then the other, until Jamey was completely and respectfully covered.

  Standing, my father headed for the door, motioning for Michael to join him. “You can use the computer in my office to run a search on missing strippers. I want names, locations, dates they went missing, ages, and anything else that might be relevant. Get pictures, if you can find them.”

  Michael took off through the western field at a jog, headed toward the main house.

  “Ethan, you and Jace go fill your mother in on what we have so far, and see if she’s thought of anything else we can use.”

  Ethan nodded, and he and Jace took off down the dirt path, behind Michael.

  My father turned to me and Marc next, and my hands began to sweat from dread that he would put us on another plane. Fortunately, he had something else in mind. “Will you recognize Dan Painter’s voice if you hear it again?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. And Marc’s chest shifted slightly at my back as he nodded.

  “The informant got my machine both times he called, and I saved the messages.” My father paused, looking deeply into my eyes to convey the importance of what he was about to say. “I want you two to listen to them and tell me whether or not the voice on the machine belongs to Dan Painter. We have to confirm the informant’s identity before we proceed any further, because if he isn’t Painter, we’re looking at this all wrong.”

  “No problem,” Marc said.

  My father nodded, satisfied. “Good. Go.”

  Marc and I headed toward the house together, while Owen, Vic, and Parker hung back to hear whatever instructions our Alpha had for them. A warm summer breeze blew through my hair as we walked through the field, bringing with it the scent of summer wheat, dirt, and trees. And Marc, because he was upwind from me, though only by an inch or so.

  “Jace is right,” he said, probably unaware how odd that statement sounded, coming from him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. This is not your fault.”

  “The hell it isn’t.” I refused to look at him, staring straight ahead at the house, rising slowly from the waist-high field of grass around us. “If I hadn’t knocked Painter out, Jamey and Harper would both still be alive right now.”

  Marc stopped abruptly, turning me by my shoulders to look at him. “Maybe. They might still be alive. Or, we might have learned what the tabby looks like, and nothing else. You don’t know that Painter could have given her to us. And you don’t know that we could have stopped her.”

  True. I didn’t know that for sure. But I felt it with every beat of my heart. I’d messed up. Bad.

  I’d made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life—hell, most of them in the past few months alone—but I’d never been responsible for an innocent person’s death before. Not even indirectly. And the guilt from knowing I might have saved Robert Harper and Jamey Gardner was making me sick to my stomach. As in, seriously nauseated.

  And unbelievably pissed off. When we found this tabby, she’d get much more than a piece of my mind. She’d get a piece of my fist—right through her pretty little neck.

  In the office, Michael sat behind our father’s desk, clicking away at the computer with his right hand, and making notes with his left. Ambidextrous freak. He nodded at us when we came in, then went right back to work.

  I made my way straight to the massive oak desk, while Marc settled onto the leather love seat. “Hey, Michael, where’s Holly?” he asked, twisting to face us both.

  “Rome, for two more days,” Michael replied, without ever taking his eyes from the screen.

  “Wasn’t she just there last month?”

  “That was Venice, in July.”

  “Oh.” Marc winked at me. While most of the other guys were predictably envious of Michael’s wife—an actual twig-thin, doe-eyed runway model—Marc let me know over and over again how unhappy he would be with a woman like Holly. She was away far more than she was home, and Michael’s career rarely gave him the freedom to travel with her.

  Marc liked me exactly where I was—in Texas. With him. Away from the eager eyes of millions of men all over the world.

  I tried to take such statements for the compliment he intended them to be, instead of focusing on the underlying hint that my place was at home, with him and our future—thus far purely theoretical—children.

  Perching on the edge of my father’s desk, I pulled the stand-alone answering machine toward me, noting the blinking red light. Someone had called since we’d left for the barn, and my mother hadn’t answered the phone. Why not?

  Then the answer was there—obvious, in retrospect. She was in the woods. By herself. Again.

  “What are you doing?” Michael asked, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth as he read silently from the computer screen.

  “Dad wants us to listen to the messages and make sure Painter’s the guy.” I swung one leg to thump against the side of the desk. “Have you heard them yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, get ready.” I pressed the play button on the machine, a digital model that didn’t actually take a tape, and was first surprised, then pleased to hear my cousin’s voice bubble from the tiny inset speaker.

  “Hi, everybody, it’s Abby.” She paused, then sighed and continued. “My mom said that if I was serious about learning to fight, I should really commit to it, so I was calling to ask what kind of punching bag you guys use. The big heavy one. And I know the school year just started, but we’ll be out for fall break in a few weeks, and I’d really like to spend it with you guys, if you don’t mind. Maybe Faythe could teach me some more of those self-defense moves. I really want to learn how to disable a guy with one kick….”

  I pressed the button to save Abby’s message, then began cycling backward through the old ones, glancing at the numbers to eliminate the calls one by one, without listening to them. There was a call from Vic’s cell phone, and another one from Ethan. Next was my own number; I’d called from the airport to tell my father I’d gotten his earlier message.

  I pressed the button one more time, and a fourth number appeared on the display. The time and date looked about right for the second message from the informant. So I pressed the play button.

  “It’s me again. Your friendly neighborhood snitch…”

  We listened in silence as Dan Painter—and it was definitely him—told us where to find the body of a werecat near the westernmost edge of the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana. “And there’s more information where that came from, if you’re interested. But I want something in return, so next time, you’d better answer the damn phone.”

  There was a soft click as the connection was cut, but right before that click there was a single, soft bang, like a gunshot in the distance. And the distinctive air-beating sound of a propeller.

  I sucked in a silent breath as my blood seemed to freeze in my veins. I couldn’t swear that boom was actual gunfire, but I could swear I’d heard it before. That very afternoon, in the message Andrew had left on my phone.

  Fuck.

  I told myself it meant nothing. They were two different gunshots, or explosions, or whatever. Dan Painter and Andrew couldn’t possibly have called from the same town. It was just a coincidence.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t believe in coincidence.

  Sixteen

  “Well, it’s official,” Marc said, his voice light with relief, because he had yet to notice my sudden panic attack. “Painter’s the guy. Our very own overworked, underappreciated anonymous informant. Now we just have to find him.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, still staring at the answering machine.

  “What’s wrong?” Marc eyed me carefully from the center of the love seat.

  “Nothing,” I said, a little too quickly. I didn’t want to tell him about Andrew until I was sure of what I’d heard on Painter’s message. “I was just thinking that the best way to find him would be to start with the number he called from.” Attagirl
, Faythe. Stick to the truth. At least, as much of it as you can.

  “Read me the area code,” Michael said, the disappointment on his face saying clearly that he wished he’d thought of it first.

  Hopping down from the desk, I circled my brother to watch over his shoulder as he opened a new browser window and typed “reverse phone directory” into the Google search bar. When the new screen loaded, I read him the number from the display on the answering machine. Michael added the digits to his search, and sat back while the computer did all the work.

  “Did you come up with any other missing strippers?” I asked, watching as a progress bar began to fill on-screen.

  “Yeah.” Michael extended both hands above his head, stretching like a cat asleep in the sun. “One from Arkansas, and two more from Louisiana.” He paused, tilting his head down to peer over his useless glasses at the information now available on the screen. “Here you go.” He nodded toward the flat-screen monitor. “Painter called from a pay phone in Leesville, Louisiana.”

  And though it obviously meant nothing to Michael, according to the on-screen map, Leesville was less than ten miles north of Pickering, where the tabby had left Jamey’s body.

  “The first call came from somewhere in Arkansas, didn’t it?” Marc asked, finally pushing himself off the sofa to join us at the computer.

  “Yeah. Um…” Michael reached across the disturbingly neat desk and pulled the huge atlas toward him. It was already open to the Arkansas page, and my father had circled two towns in red ink. One of them was Dumas, the small town just southeast of Pine Bluff, where I’d first smelled, then spotted Dan Painter when we stopped for gas. The other was— “White Hall,” Michael said, finishing my own thought. “Isn’t that where you guys found Bradley Moore?”

  “And where we buried him.” Marc ran one hand up my arm, and I struggled to return his smile. “That makes sense. Moore was murdered in White Hall, and Painter saw it happen, so of course he’d call from there.” I twisted in Marc’s arms to face my brother. “You said you found a report of a missing stripper from Arkansas…?”