Rogue

  Ethan drained his cup, then stared at it, clearly trying to figure out how he wound up with one of our mother’s rose-patterned china teacups instead of his own oversize Cowboys mug. “I’m awake,” he said, rubbing the dark stubble on his chin. He poured a mound of Cheerios into his bowl, then doused it in milk and dug in, eating with the appetite of a two-hundred-pound cat. Which he was.

  “Wes insisted on driving here from the airport, to save you all a trip to the car-rental place, so if his flight lands on time, he should be here in less than an hour. Make sure you’re packed and ready to go. Charge your cell phones and take an extra battery, just in case. And, Ethan, make some more coffee.”

  Having started his morning off with a list of orders, our Alpha opened the basement door, flipped up the light switch, then descended into the makeshift prison without another word.

  When my mother padded in wearing a pale gray silk robe, I loaded my plate into the dishwasher and plodded down the hall to my room, to avoid the sympathetic looks as Ethan spread the news about me and Marc. I collapsed facedown on my bed, on top of my rumpled covers, and was asleep in seconds.

  Twenty-Five

  I woke up at ten minutes to nine, after almost three hours of sleep, to the sound of someone pounding on my door frame. “I’m awake,” I mumbled, raising my face from the pillow just enough to be heard. I had no real intention of getting up until Jace called out to me from the hall.

  “Well then, come on out. Your dad wants to see you.”

  I flopped over onto my back, staring at my ceiling. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”

  “You’re not dressed?”

  I smiled in spite of myself at the lighthearted quality of his jest. Until my broken door began to move. “Jace!” I shouted, trying to keep from laughing as I vaulted off the bed and scrambled to stop him. He wasn’t seriously trying to sneak a peek; if he had been, he wouldn’t have made any noise. But if I let him get away with a joke today, he’d try it for real tomorrow.

  Jace yelped as I ripped the door from his grasp and leaned it against the frame. Then he sulked, his eyes roaming just far enough south to see my tank top and shorts. “Liar!” he accused, the smile in his eyes ruining his pout. “You’re not naked.”

  “I meant I wanted to change.”

  He grinned. “So, go ahead.”

  “Nice try.” I patted his left cheek, smooth from a recent meeting with his razor. The revival of Jace’s former easygoing demeanor told me two things without a doubt: he knew Marc had dumped me, and Marc was currently away from the ranch. If either of those statements had been false, Jace would never have indulged in such comfortable, meaningless banter with me. At least something good had come out of the previous night’s disaster.

  “Tell my dad I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  I dressed quickly in skimpy denim shorts and a snug red T. After brushing my teeth and pulling my hair into a quick ponytail, I grabbed my cell and headed for the office, already dreading my upcoming call to Andrew.

  My father was on the phone when I arrived, so I sat on the love seat next to Jace. Other than Vic, alone on the sofa, and Owen, at my father’s desk, the room was empty. “Where is everyone?” I whispered to Jace, glancing around.

  “Michael and Ethan left with Wes Gardner about an hour ago,” he said, leaning over to whisper into my ear. His breath against my skin gave me chills, but it also made me think of Marc, and the way he liked to whisper to me in Spanish while we…

  My father cleared his throat, and I looked up to see him drop the phone into its cradle. “Marc and Parker arrived in Henderson twenty minutes ago. They’re scouting for signs of the tabby.”

  He didn’t mention my fight with Marc, and as badly as I wanted to tell him, I didn’t. Surely he’d heard what happened by then. Surely someone had told him.

  He sat on one corner of his desk and fixed me with a hard stare. “What happened to your door?”

  Or, maybe not.

  “Marc.”

  “Oh.” My father nodded, and that was it. No more questions, at least for the moment. “In a few minutes, you’re going to call Andrew and try to find out his whereabouts, and his current company. But first, let me say that I verified the information you got from Ryan, and I think you might be on to something with this theory about Luiz.”

  Dad sank into his armchair. The white streaks at his temples caught light from the fixture overhead, and made him look tired, and…kind of old.

  “Who was that on the phone?” I asked, uncomfortable with the thought that my father would ever be ready to retire. He was the strongest, most stable thing in my life—especially now that Marc had opted out of it.

  “If you and Jace hadn’t been whispering—” his voice was thick with disapproval “—you would already know that I was speaking to my source in Venezuela.”

  I perked up in spite of the less-than-subtle censure of my familiar manner with Jace. “What did he say?”

  “She had some interesting information that may or may not be of any help to us.” He took a moment to enjoy my surprise over his informant’s gender, then carried on. “Camilla doesn’t know of any tabbies who have gone missing recently, but she said that four and a half years ago there was a rash of disappearances across the area.”

  “All tabbies?” Vic asked, and I went still, half afraid I’d miss part of the answer if I moved.

  My father nodded. “They disappeared one at a time over a period of six months, from four different countries. For the most part, the Alphas were not on good terms with one another, and it never occurred to any of them to ask for help, or even to alert their neighbors, until it was too late.”

  “How many did they get?” I asked, my fist pressed into my abdomen as I tried to ease the knot forming in my gut. The connection was obvious. Luiz and Miguel and their recruits had snatched three American tabbies—including me—before we were able to catch them. The chances of them not being involved in an apparently identical plot in their own corner of the world were almost nil.

  “Four.” My father wore his business face, which told me how bothered he was by the new information. “They got one tabby from Colombia, one from Ecuador, one from Peru, and one from Venezuela.” He paused, watching me carefully. “None of the girls was ever found.”

  For a moment no one spoke, and I assumed that, like me, they were paralyzed by horror and outrage. Four girls taken, and not one of them found in more than four years. Could they still be alive? And if they were, what kind of hell had they endured at the hands of their captors?

  I couldn’t bring myself to voice the questions we were surely all thinking. I couldn’t even see past the black fog drifting around in my brain, obscuring reason and logic in a cloud of rage and indignation.

  Jace cleared his throat, and the sound broke through my shock. “Okay, if Faythe’s right, and Luiz is still alive, Camilla’s information could be pretty important. Although now he’s taking human women, not tabbies. But what does any of that have to do with the tabby we’re after? I don’t see the connection.”

  I didn’t see it, either, but an image was forming in my mind as the fog began to thin. It was still hazy, large parts sketched with a frustrating lack of detail. But one part of the image was clear. “It’s Luiz,” I said, staring absently at the rug as I tried to organize my thoughts. “I’m not sure how or why, but he’s the connection. The tabby’s hunting him and killing tomcats along the way. She has to be after Luiz, because I don’t see any connection between her and Andrew, but she and Luiz are both from the same area of the world.”

  Okay, that was a flimsy link at best—just because they were from the same continent didn’t mean they’d ever even set eyes on each other. After all, how many Canadian cats had I never met? But I was more than ready to grasp at straws.

  “Maybe she’s the mother of one of the missing tabbies, out for revenge,” I suggested.

  Vic laughed. “Yeah, you gotta watch out for those renegade mommies. They’re the worst.” br />
  I glared at him. “You ever heard the phrase ‘one bad mother’?”

  “Let’s focus on the topic at hand, please,” my father said.

  “Sorry.” Vic tried to stop smiling but couldn’t quite manage.

  “We have to find Andrew, before he makes trouble too close to home. It’s time to call him.” My father frowned, his attention narrowing in on me, and I struggled to concentrate in spite of encroaching exhaustion.

  My father cleared his throat to catch my attention. “Do you know what you’re going to say?”

  “Yeah.” I clenched my phone in one fist. “I’m going to tell him how he was really infected and apologize. If there’s any of the old Andrew left in him, he’ll respect that.” And frankly, I didn’t know what else to do.

  “If he still doesn’t know you’ve told us about him, don’t enlighten him. He’ll be more willing to play into our hand if he thinks he can get you alone,” my father said. I nodded, and he gestured toward my phone. “Dial.”

  No pressure, I thought, acutely aware of every pair of eyes on me, ready to judge my burgeoning enforcer skills. My fingers shook as I pressed the appropriate keys. Holding my breath, I pressed the last button and held the phone to my ear. It rang, a synthesized bleating sound that grated on my already-frazzled nerves.

  I heard a click, then the soft hiss of an open line when Andrew answered his phone. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’re nervous about seeing me again.”

  It was a typical Andrew-style greeting—not so much as a hello. But that little glimpse of the man I’d known left me hope that there may yet be more of the old Andrew in there somewhere. “Should I be nervous?”

  “In my humble estimation…yes.”

  On the couch across from me, Vic rolled his eyes, unimpressed by Andrew’s high opinion of himself.

  “Why?” I asked, plucking at a thread dangling from my shorts.

  Clothing rustled over the line. “We have something special planned for our little reunion.”

  “We? Who’s with you?” I glanced at my father, asking wordlessly for permission to voice my suspicion. He nodded, so I continued. “Is it Luiz?”

  I held my breath, fully aware that if Andrew wasn’t with Luiz, he would have no idea what I was talking about. But his sudden silence said that I was almost certainly right.

  “How did you know that?” Andrew muttered.

  My pulse jumped, and I sat straighter, both thrilled and terrified to have my guess confirmed. “Is he with you right now?”

  Something crashed over the phone, a sound like wood breaking. “How the fuck did you know about him?” Andrew demanded, and all traces of the kind, gentle man I’d known were gone.

  Too nervous to sit, I shot up from the love seat and began to pace, uncomfortably aware that my father did the same thing when he needed to think quickly. “Andrew, listen to me. You have to get away from him.”

  “Why? So you can turn me into some kind of pet on a leash? Don’t you already have one of those?”

  Suddenly unsure, I paused in midstep, glancing at my father for guidance. “Say something,” he mouthed, and from the corner of my eye, Vic used his hand like a talking puppet to reinforce my father’s order.

  “Andrew, you have to trust me.” I started pacing again, fast now, my bare feet whispering on the rug. “Whatever he’s telling you, it isn’t true. He’s lying.”

  “What, like you did?” His voice was shrill with fury, then for a moment it was gone altogether, buried beneath what sounded like more furniture breaking. “—turned me into a monster, then left me to die. He saved my life. He taught me…everything.”

  “No.” I shook my head, though he couldn’t see me. “He’s using you. I bit you by accident, and didn’t figure out what had happened until last night. I swear my life on it. I never meant to hurt you. But he’s been using you all this time, lying to you and twisting the truth to get you to do what he wants.”

  “You have to be in cat form to infect someone,” Andrew snapped, his words clipped short in rage.

  Okay, that was true. But…

  “Which means you did it on purpose.”

  “No!” I shouted, by then oblivious to everyone else in the room. “There’s more to it than that. Just give me a—”

  “You had a chance to say your piece, but instead you left me without so much as a goodbye. Why should I believe a word you say now?”

  “Because I can help you. I want to help you.” I’d never said anything truer in my life. It was my fault Andrew was…insane. And likely homicidal.

  “I don’t want your fucking help!” he shouted into my ear, bitterness rendering his voice a mere shadow of what it once was.

  Time to change tactics. I took a deep, calming breath. “Where are you, Andrew? Let me come get you. I’ll come alone.” I crossed my fingers and held them over my head as I paced, for my father’s benefit. I had no intention of going anywhere near Andrew and Luiz alone. But they didn’t need to know that.

  “Where am I?” He laughed, and in that grating, malicious perversion of joy, I heard a faint remnant of the sweet, delight-filled laughter I remembered from the Andrew of old. The man with gentle eyes and slow, patient hands. He was still in there somewhere. He had to be. “I’m in hell, Faythe. And you’re going to keep me company.”

  Grief rolled through me in a wave of private despair. Grief for Andrew, and the man he’d been. I stopped in front of my father’s desk, leaning against it, my shoulders hunched in sorrow, and in guilt. If I had taken care of Andrew during his transition, he might have been fine. He might have turned out very much like Marc. But I hadn’t taken care of him. I’d left him for Luiz to find, and now the only part of my Andrew remaining was a familiar note in the hollow echo of his laughter.

  What had I done? And could I possibly undo it?

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again, hoping to thaw his heart with my penitence. “I would give anything to change it. To give you back your life. But I can’t.” Pacing again, I reached the corner of my father’s desk and turned. “But I can show you how to live the life you have now. Please let me help you.”

  “Fuck you, Faythe! You’ll be begging me for help soon.”

  My breath hitched in surprise over such an overt threat, and I glanced at my father, who looked almost as concerned as he was angry. “Andrew, I’m telling you it was an acci—”

  “You can explain it to Saint Peter,” my formerly human, formerly kind, gentle, and sweet boyfriend snarled in my ear. “Say hi for me when you see him.” The phone went dead in my hand, and I held it in front of my face, staring at the tiny full-color screen, which now read “end call.”

  “Damn it!” My hand clenched the plastic, and it took several long, slow breaths before I regained enough control to keep from crushing it.

  “Wow!” Vic said, whistling between his two front teeth. “That’s one pissed-off little stray.”

  “Two pissed-off little strays,” I corrected, thinking of Luiz, who was just as much to blame for what Andrew had become as I was. “When we find Luiz, he’s going to pay in full for every finger he laid on each of those girls, and for every single lie he fed Andrew.” Though at the moment, it was the truths he’d told that bothered me the most. He probably really thought I’d infected Andrew on purpose.

  “Indeed,” my father said from his armchair, and for a moment I thought he was reading my mind. “Well, at least we know now that you were right about his involvement.”

  Yet I found that a small consolation, all things considered.

  After that, the day hit a bit of a lull. Marc and Parker had seen no sign of the rogue tabby, and we still had no idea where to find Luiz and Andrew. My father sent Owen, Jace, and Vic out for a run in the woods, ostensibly to burn off some nervous energy and clear their heads for the coming confrontation—whenever that turned out to be. But I think he was actually trying to get them out of his fur for an hour of peace and quiet.

  I stayed behind, out of sh
eer exhaustion. Whether it was the lack of sleep, or the emotionally draining phone call to Andrew, by the time the guys filed out of the office, I could barely hold my head up. So I stretched out on the leather couch for a short nap, just like I’d done as a kid, lulled to sleep by the scratching of a pencil on paper as my father sketched to set his mind at ease.

  Sometime later—about an hour and a half, according to the wall clock—the guys woke me up when they filed back into the office like a herd of elephants on parade. Jace picked up my feet and sat beneath them, and Vic and Owen settled onto the love seat across from us. I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes when the office phone rang out, startling in the temporary calm. My father answered it, and the moment the caller spoke, I sat straight up, instantly wide-awake. It was Marc.

  “No sign of the tabby yet,” he said after a brief greeting. “But we’ve got Dan Painter here, and he wants to talk to you. He doesn’t seem to know anything about the strays we’re looking for—” Andrew and Luiz, obviously “—but he says he knows the tabby personally. And he’ll only speak to the man in charge.”

  Twenty-Six

  The phone still pressed to his ear, my father arched his brows in surprise and dropped his pencil on his desk. “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah!” Painter’s voice was soft from distance to the phone and high pitched from stress, but still easily recognizable. “Fucker nearly broke my jaw, but I told ’em I’m only talking to the main man.”

  “That would be the Alpha,” Parker said from somewhere over the line. “And there’s no cussing in front of the Alpha.”

  Yeah, I was still working on that one myself.

  “Sorry,” Painter mumbled, just as Marc said, “Should I put him on the phone?”

  My father closed his eyes, considering the request. Then he opened them and said, “Please.” The phone clattered as it changed hands, and then he was speaking to the informant himself. “Mr. Painter? I understand you have some information for me.”