“Vic, I…”
I don’t know how I would have responded if I’d had the chance. But I never got that chance, because that’s when Vic’s cell phone rang.
“Hang on,” he said, digging it from his pocket to check the display screen. “It’s Marc.” He pressed a button on the tiny black phone and held it to his ear. “Hey, what’s up?”
I turned to the window, wishing I couldn’t hear their conversation. After what I’d just heard from Vic, I doubted the two of them ever discussed anything other than me and what a heartless bitch I was. And hearing it from Marc would be a million times worse than hearing it from Vic.
But as hard as I tried not to listen, Marc’s first statement caught my attention. “…spotted the tabby in the strip club just outside of Henderson.”
Twenty-Seven
Vic stomped on the brake to avoid a slow car in front of us, and Owen flew forward, whacking his shoulder—or maybe his head—on the back of my seat. “Owww—”
“You actually saw her?” Vic said into the phone as Jace cursed behind him.
“Not me, the bartender.” Marc’s voice sounded distant, and a little crackly. “Said she was there when they opened, and left about twenty minutes before we arrived. So she’s still here somewhere.”
I gripped the dashboard to steady myself as Vic swerved in and out of traffic.
“—ow long?” Marc was asking.
“Ten minutes, at the most.” Vic honked at a burly truck driver on our left. “We’re almost there now.”
“Good.” Marc grunted. “We’ll meet you in the parking lot of the Motel 6, off Highway 259.”
Eight minutes later, we pulled into the lot next to my father’s old van, against which Marc and Parker both leaned. In the front seat sat Dan Painter, a fresh bruise developing on his chin, just below the one I’d given him three days earlier.
“Is this the guy?” Owen nodded at Painter as he climbed from Vic’s Jeep.
I nodded as Marc pulled Painter—hands cuffed behind his back—from the van.
“Oh, hell no!” Painter shouted, only lowering his voice when Parker punched him in the shoulder hard enough to knock him into the side of the van. “I’m not going near that bitch.”
I couldn’t help smiling. Until Marc opened his big fat mouth. “You’ve been living with a murderer for the past week and a half, and you’re scared of her?” He aimed a dismissive gesture my way. Clearly he was still mad.
“Man, Manx is tame as a kitten, so long as you leave her alone. She don’t like to be manhandled. That’s where those other dudes fucked up.”
I exchanged a raised-brow look with Owen, surprised to hear that Painter hadn’t touched the tabby. Yet, oddly enough, I believed him. Like Ryan, Painter struck me as the kind of guy who considered his own well-being above all else—even his hormones.
“So, what’s the plan?” Jace asked, coming around the Jeep to lean against the passenger-side door next to me. Right next to me. His arm brushed mine. Twice.
I rubbed my forehead, fighting the beginnings of a huge headache. This was not going to be pretty.
“Well, I have to get back to the ranch,” Owen said, shifting his cowboy hat back and forth on his head. “And Painter’s going with me.”
“His car’s over here.” Marc led the way around the van to a dusty white Dodge Daytona parked on its other side. Parker pulled Painter to the passenger side of his own car and shoved him into the front seat. Then he took the cuffs from his pocket and secured Painter’s cuffed hands to the handle of his own door.
“You move so much as a finger and Owen will knock you out cold,” Marc warned.
Painter rolled his eyes and nodded. “I kinda figured.”
Two minutes later, Owen pulled back onto the highway in Painter’s car, which smoked and sputtered until it passed out of sight.
Marc glanced around at the rest of us. “We’re going to grab a quick lunch, then check out the main streets in two groups. Parker and I have already covered the south side, so you guys take everything east of Main Street, and we’ll take everything on the west side.”
Vic looked up from the map Marc passed him. “In the car, or on foot?”
“On foot.” Marc dug for his wallet. “Hopefully Faythe’s the only one either of the strays will recognize, and that’s a small risk to take, considering the alternative—we won’t be able to smell anything from the car.” He pulled two twenties from his wallet and handed them to Jace. “Run next door and get a dozen corn dogs and some drinks. And make it quick.”
Jace scowled. But he did as he was told, because Marc out-ranked him. And clearly wasn’t above using his authority to keep Jace away from me.
This is going to get old fast.
“So the tabby was actually in the local strip club?” Vic asked, one foot propped on the curb beneath his front bumper. I smiled at him, grateful that someone was willing to break the tension.
“Yeah.” Parker nodded, salt-and-pepper hair ruffling in the warm wind. “The bartender said she walked around and checked everything out, including both bathrooms, then left, without ordering anything or even glancing at the stage. Said he thought she was looking for someone.”
“Could you smell her?” I asked, curious to know if her distinctive scent had been any stronger when it was fresh.
“Only on the ladies’-room doorknob,” Marc said, and I pictured the strange looks he must have gotten when he bent over to sniff the bathroom door. “I don’t think she touched much else while she was there.”
Well, I couldn’t blame her for that one.
We stood around in silence for several minutes after that, until Jace emerged from the convenience store with two bulging white plastic bags, and I breathed an audible sigh of relief. If he’d been a minute later, I’d have gone after him myself.
The only thing worse than fighting with Marc was having nothing to say to him. Or having a lot to say, and not being able to say it.
“Here.” Jace handed me one of the plastic bags. Inside, I found an assortment of twenty-ounce sodas and five bottles of water. I handed a soda and a bottle of water to each of the guys, while Jace passed out the corn dogs.
“Okay.” Marc opened the driver’s-side door of the van. “Turn right on East Main Street and park at one of the businesses there. Then start walking. Keep your phones on and your eyes open. And try not to do anything stupid.”
He didn’t name names, but he was looking right at me for that last part. I knew why he was mad, and I understood. But he didn’t have to be such an ass about it. Was he trying to piss me off?
Of course he was.
I’d finished my first corn dog by the time Vic found Main Street, and I was halfway through my bottle of Pepsi before he realized he was on South Main, rather than East Main. “Why the hell does any town need four Main Streets, anyway?” he mumbled around a mouthful of food.
“There’s only two,” Jace said, twisting open his water in the front seat. “The directions change where the streets intersect.”
Vic drank from his Dr. Pepper and turned right into the parking lot of a local grocery store. “Same thing. You guys ready?”
For the next hour, we walked the mile-and-a-half section of East Main Street, until we stopped to call Marc and Parker. They’d called us half an hour earlier, with no news, and there was none to report from either side during the second call, either.
“Turn around and walk back to your car, then head to North Marshal,” Marc said, over the rumble of a passing car’s engine. “We’ll take Van Buren, then we’ll all meet up for something more to eat if we don’t find anything this time.”
That sounded good to me. A couple of corn dogs hadn’t been enough to fuel any of us for a two-mile walk.
Less than half a mile into our return trip, we paused at a crosswalk on Oak Street. When the light read Walk, the small group of pedestrians started forward. But I froze, shocked motionless by the brief whiff of a scent I’d caught.
“Faythe?”
Jace frowned, on instant alert when he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s here.” My gaze flitted frantically over the sidewalk, searching for long, tanned legs and a familiar head of light brown hair. I was trying to be inconspicuous, but based on Jace’s expression, it wasn’t working.
“You smell him?” Vic whispered, glancing casually around the crowd of humans.
I nodded. I did smell Andrew—but not like I’d ever smelled him before. His scent was…different. It was still his own, but it was part mine now, too. It was the scent of a werecat. Andrew was a stray.
I’d known the truth in my head. I’d even heard it in his voice over the phone. But I don’t think I’d really understood—truly believed it—until I smelled his stray-scent for myself.
“Where?” Jace scanned the sidewalk with us now, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air.
“I don’t know.” Cats don’t hunt by scent, like dogs do. The equipment is all there, but the instinct isn’t. We hunt by sound, and by sight, so anything more complicated than identifying the scent we smelled was very difficult. And unless Andrew had stopped to pee on every light post he passed, we wouldn’t be able to track him. So we spread out on the corner, looking through store windows and strolling slowly down the sidewalk, trying to be subtle as we searched for the scent I’d barely smelled in the first place.
Finally, just when I was starting to feel weird about loitering on a corner in broad daylight, Jace whispered my name. I turned to find him leaning against the post on the corner, apparently waiting for the light to change. But he was actually waiting for me and Vic.
We strolled toward him, and it was an effort not to run. “Where?” I asked, inhaling deeply as I came to his side.
“The button. I think he pushed the button.”
Following Jace’s eyes, I found the crosswalk button on the pole. If Andrew had pressed it, his scent would linger. At least until the scents of those who’d touched it after him overwhelmed the smell of stray.
Thinking fast, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of change, most of which I “accidentally” dropped on the sidewalk. “Damn,” I muttered, bending to retrieve my money.
Jace snickered, but Vic knelt to “help.”
I got a good whiff of the button on my way down, and on my way up. Jace was right. Andrew had pressed the button. Which meant… “He crossed the street.”
Shoving the last of the change into my pocket, I studied the storefronts across the road. Fortunately, the corner was now deserted, most of the small lunch-break crowd having already returned to their various offices, so there was no one around to comment on how odd we were acting.
When I couldn’t find Andrew through the window of the hardware store, I scanned a quaint local deli. At the counter, an obese woman was paying for what appeared to be a huge loaf of unsliced bologna. Behind her stood a black man in a suit and tie. And in line behind them both was…Andrew. I couldn’t see his face, but I was almost certain.
“Guys!” I hissed, my hands finding and tugging one of each of theirs. “That’s him, in the deli.” I pulled them to a shadowy nook that would hide us.
Jace squinted into the afternoon sun. “Where?”
“Behind the man in the suit. Wearing a white linen button-down and knee-length khakis.” It was typical Andrew-wear. If he’d had brown leather sandals and a worn backpack thrown over one shoulder, he could have been a student traveling around Europe—with his mother’s credit card in his pocket, of course.
Vic frowned. “Are you sure? I don’t remember him being that tall.”
“Well, I could go sniff him,” I suggested, smiling when he turned to glare at me. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. He looks exactly the same.”
“From the back?” Vic raised one brow at me to drive home his point. “We have to be sure.”
I grumbled but knew he was right. So we waited.
The woman left the deli with her package under one arm, and the men behind her stepped forward. The customer in the suit leaned over the counter to point out something in the case, and while he was waiting, the tall man in khakis turned to look around the store, running one hand through familiar light brown hair, kissed with natural streaks of sun-bleached blond. Then he glanced out the window, and we got a clear look at his face before he turned around.
My pulse spiked, and my mouth went dry. My hand clenched Jace’s arm. It was Andrew. Without a doubt. The guys had gone stiff on either side of me; they recognized him, too.
“Jace, call Marc,” Vic ordered softly. “Tell him where we are, and that we’ve found Andrew. Faythe and I will go back for the car. You follow him—subtly, please—and we’ll pick you up. Call us if you lose him.”
Jace nodded, his phone already in hand.
Vic took off down the sidewalk, practically dragging me with him, because I couldn’t take my eyes from Andrew as he perused the meat case. It was eerie, how little he’d changed. How could he possibly look so unthreatening, so very human, yet be one of us?
Finally, Vic gave my arm one last, hard tug, and got my attention. We raced to the car, running—at human speed—once we were out of sight of the deli.
At the parking lot, Vic slammed the Jeep into Reverse, and I drained the now-warm bottle of water Jace had left in the front seat. By the time we turned right onto East Main, almost eight minutes had passed, and Pink was singing from my front pocket again. Jace was calling.
Marc and Parker had picked him up, and they were tailing Andrew down Main Street in his silver BMW Z4—the car his parents bought him when he graduated. Both vehicles were heading west. Right toward us.
Vic spotted the Z4 as I hung up the phone. “Duck!” he ordered, but before I could, he put one hand behind my neck and shoved me forward so that I sat folded in half in the passenger seat.
Seconds later, he let me go and the Jeep swerved into a half-empty parking lot. He cut a tight, too-fast circle, then turned back onto Main. Marc was two cars ahead of us, and as far as I could tell, Andrew was three cars ahead of him. A quarter of a mile later, Marc turned on his right blinker. We followed him onto a side street, where the van slowed considerably. There was no one between him and Andrew now, and it wouldn’t be hard for even a rookie stray to realize he was being followed by a van full of men he may or may not recognize from his college campus.
After another quarter mile, Andrew turned right. Marc followed him, but told us over Vic’s phone—now on walkie-talkie mode—to stay put. “Give me a minute to see where he’s going, and we’ll—” Marc stopped in midsentence, and a second later, Parker picked up where he’d left off.
“There. He’s turning into that rail yard.”
Jace’s static-fuzzy voice came over the line, along with the squeal of seat springs. “I don’t think it’s operational.”
I squinted out the window on my right, trying to see past a stand of trees in back of some sort of utility building. The foliage was too thick in the summer; I couldn’t see anything but leaves.
“Are they holed up in the rail yard?” Vic asked, aiming his question at the phone I held up for him.
“Looks like it.” Marc paused, and paper crackled over the connection, probably a map unfolding. “There’s a park about a block away. We can meet there and decide how to proceed. I’m gonna call Greg.”
“See you in a few.” Vic shifted the Jeep into gear, and I hung up the phone. In front of us, the van rolled forward, and we followed it. I watched Marc through the pair of square rear windows.
He’d hung up by the time we turned the corner, and seconds later we rolled over an old, bumpy set of train tracks. On my right was the rail yard, and I saw immediately what Jace had meant by “not operational.” It was abandoned. It had to be.
The tracks leading in were heavily rusted. The buildings—some sort of office or station, and an engine depot—were old and run-down, with peeling paint, broken windows, and cracked, crooked steps. Old box cars were scattered across the lot, both on and off sever
al sets of tracks, and the ground was littered with other debris, including a huge gantry crane once used to lift freight.
The rail yard itself had an oddly deserted look to it. It was like looking at a creepy, half-collapsed haunted house surrounded by a picture-perfect, white-picket neighborhood. And something told me that strange noises from the rail yard went unnoticed—or at least uninvestigated—all the time. Lucky us.
Twisting in my seat, I stared at the rail yard after we crossed the tracks, until Vic turned into the park.
In the white-lined lot on the far side of the swings, we parked both cars side by side and got out. Everyone looked to Marc in anticipation of our new orders. “Okay, here’s the plan,” he said, leaning against the hood of the van. “I’m going to cut across the park and scout things out. When I get back, we’ll discuss a specific course of action.”
“Let me go in,” I insisted, struck by the sudden impulse to prove that my job performance was unaffected by our splintered relationship. That I was still a valuable member of the team, even without Marc attached to my hip. “I’m the fastest.”
Marc shook his head, his expression carefully blank. “You’re also the loudest. I’d rather get in and out without being detected than have to outrun them both.”
“I’m not going to stumble around and—”
“No.” Marc frowned. And just like with my father, that was that. I knew better than to press the point past a solid no.
Still glaring at me, Marc took off. At the edge of the park, he glanced around to make sure no one else was watching. Then he vaulted over a chain-link fence and disappeared behind the first of at least a dozen presumably empty boxcars.
The rest of us waited in the parking lot, growing more and more impatient in the September heat.
Ten miserable minutes after he left, Marc returned, issuing orders before he even got to the car. My father would have been proud.