“Thank you. You’ve been a big help.” Ethan scuffed the boy’s hair and knelt beside him again to feel the child’s flaming cheek with the back of his hand. “You’ve got a fever, Jack. Has your mom given you any medicine?”
Jack shook his head.
“Okay, I want you to go inside and get yourself a big drink of water. Then go wake your mom up and tell her you need some Tylenol. Okay?”
But before Jack could respond, light footsteps creaked from within the house, and a woman’s hoarse voice called out. “Jack? Get your ass in here and close the damn door. You’re lettin’ out all the heat!”
Ethan nodded to encourage the boy, and Jack went back inside and closed both doors. “Some people should never be parents,” my brother spat.
For a moment, anger on the boy’s behalf peeked through my surging terror, a bookend to Ethan’s blatant disgust. But then fear for Marc washed over me again, and I staggered on my feet.
I don’t remember walking back to the car, but I’m pretty sure Ethan pulled me down the sidewalk, then pushed me across the bench seat to make room for himself. I didn’t really wake up until Dan turned toward me, frowning after one glance at my face.
“What did he say?”
I blinked at him, and Ethan glanced at me, trying to decide whether or not to answer for me. But I shook my head. I was fine. “Adam went out with the strays Marc killed. Then he came back alone, covered in blood, just long enough to change clothes and grab a shovel.”
“Fuck!” Parker’s fist slammed into the right half of his steering wheel, and fury tightened the line of his jaw—what little I could see of it in the rearview mirror.
“It’s okay,” I insisted softly. “He’s alive.”
“How do you know?” Dan eyed me sharply, like he was looking for hope he could borrow.
“Because Marc doesn’t lose, and he never gives up.” I stared out the window as Parker pulled slowly away from the curb, my gaze glued to the front window of Adam Eckard’s half of the duplex. “He’s still alive, and we’re going to find him.”
“We need to know where he works.” I took the lid off my coffee and dropped it on a paper napkin, then reached into the box for another chocolate-cake doughnut hole. “Let’s go back and ask Jack.” I’d been too stunned and horrified to think of that before we left Eckard’s house.
“Why?” Dan asked, around a mouthful of apple
fritter. On his right, Parker sat chewing in livid silence, his free hand clenched into a fist on the table. But his carefully blank expression couldn’t quite hide the grief in his eyes, and that was really starting to piss me off. Marc was still alive—I
knew
it!—but Parker had already written him off. He was gearing up to
avenge
Marc’s death, while I was determined to
prevent
it.
Some small, traitorous part of me insisted Parker was just being realistic. That he was drawing conclusions based on solid facts. But the rest of me didn’t care. He’d given up on Marc, and for one tiny, fleeting moment, I hated him for that.
Behind Parker and Dan, the door opened to admit a family of five, as well as a blast of frigid air. Two of the three children—the two big enough to walk—took off immediately for the counter to peer through the glass at an assortment of sugary breakfast treats.
“Because then we can go
find
Eckard and
beat
him until he tells us where Marc is,” I said in response to Dan’s question.
And I am
not
playing good cop this time.
Parker and Ethan exchanged a pained look across the table. “Faythe…” Parker began, but I shook my head vehemently, my hair flying out to smack my brother in the face.
“Don’t say it,” I snapped, glaring at him like I could burn the thought from his mind. “He’s not dead, but he might be soon, and we’re
not
going to sit here all day stuffing our faces, waiting for answers to fall into our laps.”
“Why don’t we just do a thorough search of his
house, like you said?” Ethan suggested, appealing to me to be reasonable with one raised eyebrow. “Something in there might tell us where he took Marc.”
I rolled my eyes, trying to get a grip on the rage scalding my insides. “You think he left a big flashing
arrow
pointing to a filing cabinet labeled ‘Evidence Here!’? He’s a stray, Ethan, not Wile E. Coyote!”
“I don’t know what he left, but there has to be something, ” my brother insisted, standing up to my enraged outburst, the lines around his bright green eyes reminding me I wasn’t the only one scared for Marc. “And if not, we can wait until he comes home,
then
beat it out of him. See? You still get to beat on him.” He shot me a good-humored smile, trying to placate me, but I only scowled. I didn’t want to be placated.
I wanted Marc back.
“We don’t have time to wait.” I spit the last word like the profanity it tasted like, and this time all three of the guys stared down at their food, refusing to meet my eyes.
I sighed. “Look, I know you think he’s dead. I know Dad probably agrees with you.” His heavy silence during the latest update had spoken volumes. “But I don’t. And your lack of faith doesn’t really change anything. If he’s dead, are we just going to let him rot in the woods somewhere, where any scavenger is free to snatch a bite?”
“Of course not.” Ethan frowned, and I got another glimpse of his own carefully hidden anger and anguish. “We love him, too, you know, and we’ll make sure he gets a proper burial. But…”
But if he’s dead, there’s no real hurry.
We could wait until Eckard got home from work. Until the sun went down and we gained the cover of darkness. He didn’t have to say it. I could see it in his eyes.
I took another doughnut hole from the box and made myself chew, though I had no appetite. Eating gave me something to do, other than avoiding thoughts I couldn’t bear to think. When I swallowed, and finally felt calm enough to respond, I looked up. “Fine. If you want to search Eckard’s place, we’ll try that first. That’s probably the easiest way to find out where he works, anyway.”
Ethan sighed and glanced again at Parker, who nodded. We’d reached a compromise.
On the way out of the doughnut shop, I snatched a handful of powdered creamer packets and stuffed them into my pocket for later. Something told me there would be lots more black coffee in my future.
An hour later, Dan, Ethan, and I stood in Adam Eckard’s living room, staring at the mess we’d made ransacking his apartment. We’d snuck in through the back—Ethan broke the doorknob lock with one sharp twist—and had left Parker in the car a block away to cut down on our chances of being spotted breaking and entering in broad daylight.
And so the getaway car would be ready to go, just in case.
We’d searched every drawer and cabinet in the apartment, and though we had found an employee name tag and several check stubs—Eckard sold TVs at a local
electronics store chain—we’d found nothing to indicate where he might have taken Marc.
“Okay, back to plan A,” I said, kicking a couch cushion out of my way, as Dan pilfered through a desk drawer. “Let’s go meet Eckard for lunch.”
Ethan picked up a cracked video-game case and turned it over to glance at the title. “I still have doughnut glaze between my teeth, but what the hell. I could eat again.” He snatched a half-eaten bag of Doritos from Eckard’s desk and stuck his nose inside to sniff the contents. Then he considered the scent for a moment, shrugged and shoved a chip into his mouth.
“Eww, Ethan. Is there anything you won’t eat?”
He answered by crunching into a second bite, then turned to follow me out the way we’d come in. But I’d only gone a couple of steps when a shrill telephone ring sliced through the near silence. An actual, plugged-into-the-wall phone; not one of our cells.
I turned, glancing around for the source, and saw Dan rooting through a pile of old newspapers on a table near the door, in search of the phone. Ethan dropped the chip bag to lift a series of dingy pillows, stained couch cushions and unwashed articles of clothing. I found the phone beneath a discarded pair of jeans, on the floor next to the steel-and-glass computer desk—an obvious place to keep one’s phone, right?
“Should I answer it?” I asked, as Ethan retrieved his snack. But before either of the guys could reply, a mechanical voice spoke up from the overturned answering machine next to the phone.
“Eckard?” said an unfamiliar voice after the beep. “Where the hell are you? If you’re not clocked in in twenty minutes, don’t come at all. I’ll put your last check in the mail.” The machine clicked as the caller hung up, and I knelt to turn it over. On the digital display, the number two blinked in bright red.
Well, there goes plan A.
Eckard wasn’t at work, and it didn’t sound like he
would
be anytime soon.
“There’s another message,” I said, as Dan shoved his hands in his pockets and my brother devoured another handful of the rogue’s corn chips.
He shrugged. “Let’s hear it.”
I pushed Play and stood as a new message filled the room, irritation lending a sharp edge to the familiar voice. “Adam, where the hell
are
you? I sent Pete in this morning to clean up after you, and he said the whole house was already clean and reeking of Pride cats. Sounds like Greg’s boys are in town, so stay away from Ramos’s place, and keep your eyes open. And charge your fucking cell phone. It’s kicking me straight to voice mail.”
The message ended with a click, and Ethan’s snack bag hit the floor at the same time as my rump. I looked up to find him staring at me in an odd mixture of surprise and rage. He recognized the voice, too.
Kevin Mitchell.
“A
re you
sure
it was Kevin Mitchell?” Parker asked for the third time, pulling into a parking spot near the front of the small shopping center in what passed for downtown Rosetta. After we’d given my father another update, the guys had insisted we go for a supply run while we waited to hear back from our Alpha on Kevin’s current address and vitals, like his place of employment, phone numbers and vehicle description.
There were more shopping options in Fayette, near Eckard’s duplex, but Rosetta was only minutes from Marc’s house, so we stood a much better chance of getting our frozen food into the freezer before it thawed.
But I did not want to be there. Like eating, shopping felt like an abominable waste of time. Time Marc couldn’t afford for us to squander. My hands clenched and unclenched, and my right foot tapped rapidly on the floorboard, my eyes darting swiftly over everything I
saw through the windshield. My impatience was as obvious as Marc’s absence.
“Yes, we’re sure.” I climbed out of the front passenger seat—I’d
finally
claimed shotgun—and slammed the door, rolling my eyes at Parker in exasperation. “I couldn’t forget that voice if I tried.”
“I know. It just doesn’t make any sense.” He and Ethan rounded the car and all four of us cut across the lot for a quick trip to the hardware store before hitting the Save-A-Lot. “Why would he kill Marc? I know they didn’t get along, but that hardly seems motive for murder.”
“Yeah, well,
none
of this makes any sense to me. Except for Pete. I’m assuming this Pete that Kevin sent to Marc’s house is the Pete Yarnell whom Galloway mentioned. Right, Dan?” I glanced at him as I stepped over a concrete tire bumper. “The same Pete who organized the ambush?”
Dan shrugged. “I only know one stray named Pete, and that’s him.”
“And they’re obviously in this together.” I jogged ahead, trying to rush everyone on, but Ethan caught up with me as I stepped onto the sidewalk.
“You know, there’s nothing more we can do until we know where to find Kevin, and we
need
supplies.”
“I know.” But nothing could quash the sense of urgency driving me, the adrenaline flooding my body in mass quantities, insisting that I do nothing else until I’d found Marc.
“Who’s Kevin Mitchell?” Dan asked from Parker’s
other side as they caught up with us, and I glanced at him in surprise before remembering he hadn’t been with us during the Kevin fiasco several months earlier.
“One of our former Pride members. He’s been living in the free zone since my dad kicked him out back in September.”
“Like Marc?” Dan asked, and we stared at him like he’d just desecrated the American flag.
“No.” I stepped through the glass door Parker held open for me and nodded in response to the cashier who greeted us, then rushed us toward the back of the store, speaking to Dan in a hushed voice. “Marc was sacrificed to the political machine. My dad had no choice.” Though it had taken me a while to truly understand that. “Kevin was kicked out for breaking the rules. Repeatedly. He accepted money to sneak a stray—one of the toms Manx later killed—over the territorial border into New Orleans on a weekly basis for some male bonding at a local strip club.”
“And that’s where Manx found the tom?” Dan concluded, as we passed a display of artfully arranged toilet bowl plungers. He looked angry on behalf of the slaughtered stray.
“Exactly.”
Since he’d been expelled by my father, Kevin was officially considered a wildcat—a natural-born werecat living in the free zone, whether by choice or not. Of course, if we could prove his involvement in the attack on Marc, he’d also be a considered a rogue, by virtue of his criminal behavior.
Wildcats, like my brother Ryan, typically lived even more isolated lives than strays, who hated them for the birthright they no longer possessed. So it was quite a surprise to hear Kevin’s voice coming from Adam Eckard’s answering machine. They were clearly both implicated in what had happened to Marc—and to whatever had become of the other missing strays—and I couldn’t help but wonder how an unlikely partnership like that had formed.
And who else was involved.
There were very few toms on the face of the planet I respected less than Kevin Mitchell, not just because of his betrayal of our Pride, but because of the way he’d always treated Marc, as if our Pride’s “token stray” wasn’t good enough to lick Kevin’s paws. Marc had broken Kevin’s nose after a comment to that effect a few months earlier, and I’d never cheered harder on the inside.
At the back of the hardware store, I fidgeted with a display of doorknobs while Parker selected three different locks—two for Marc’s front door and one to reinforce the bolt on the back door. After hearing that one of Kevin’s “men” had been at Marc’s house, we were determined to give ourselves as much warning as possible, should someone else show up.
We also picked out a good-quality air mattress, inflatable pillows and blankets.
Next we hit the grocery store. Marc’s fridge was far from empty—he was a tom, after all—but he had nowhere near enough food to sustain four full-grown werecats.
I hurried the guys through the aisles while they piled the cart with enough to feed the Dallas Cowboys for a week, and nothing that took much trouble to prepare. Pizza, frozen lasagna, family-size bags of frozen pasta, and all the usual snack stuff.
While Ethan and I paid for the food, Dan and Parker ran next door for some staples from the liquor store.
I stared at my phone all the way to Marc’s house, willing it to ring. Willing my father to come through with the information we needed to find Kevin. Who could hopefully tell us where to find Marc.
With any luck, he’d make us beat it out of him.
Parker and Dan installed the locks while Ethan and I put up the other supplies and stuck two party-size boxes of frozen enchiladas in the oven for a late lunch. I carried the blow-up mattress into the empty front bedroom, autodialing my father as I went.
I pressed my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I unrolled the mound of vinyl and hooked up the virtually useless plastic hand pump.
“Hello?” my father said into my ear, sounding both distracted and frustrated.
“Anything on Kevin yet?” I probably should have opened with a salutation, considering that I was speaking to my Alpha as well as my dad, but I’d reached the end of my patience. The beating of my own heart felt like a second hand ticking away the last moments of Marc’s life, and I couldn’t stand the thought that he could be dying while I sat in his house, pumping air into a stupid inflatable mattress!
“We have an address on file for him,” my dad said, and I stopped pumping so I could hear him over the hiss of air. “But he’s not there anymore. His cell phone’s been disconnected, too. Owen’s looking for more current information, but we’re not having much luck so far. We’ll keep trying, though.”
Damn it!
I resumed pumping with determination fueled by anger and frustration.
“Faythe, are you okay?” my father asked gently.
I made myself take a long, deep breath, and my hand went still on the pump. “No. Fortunately, we have another lead. There’s another stray who might know where Eckard took Marc, but I’m gonna need Michael’s help finding him. Will they let him answer his phone during the trial?”
“I’m sure he can take a break.” He paused, and I heard Owen clacking away on a keyboard in the background. “Let me know what you find out.”
“I will.” I hung up the phone and plugged the hole in the mattress, though it was only half-inflated. “Hey, Dan?” I called, heading down the hall toward the living room.
“Yeah?” He sat in a chair in front of the open front door, patiently installing a new dead bolt with a flathead screwdriver.
“Are you sure you don’t know where Peter Yarnell lives?” It would be so much easier if he did, and we could leave immediately, instead of having to wait for Michael to dig up an address.
Dan sat up and met my gaze, the screwdriver held loosely in his lap. “I’m sure. It’s not like we get together
to play poker or anything. I’ve only met him a couple of times. But he’s definitely the one you want. His scent’s right here.” Dan pointed one callused finger at the knob on the outside of the door, and I knelt for a whiff.
Sure enough, the faint scent of yet another stray clung to the aluminum knob, though I smelled it nowhere else.
“He must not have touched anything else,” I ventured, glancing around the living room and kitchen at all the things that didn’t carry his scent.
“I’m guessin’ he broke in and saw that we’d already cleaned up, then hightailed it outta here.”
I nodded, already distracted. “Thanks, Dan.”
The stray’s head bobbed in acknowledgment, and he bent over his work again.
I dialed Michael on my way into the kitchen to check on the enchiladas. The phone rang in my ear as I opened the oven door and flipped on the tiny lightbulb. And while I closed the door and took a chilled soda from the fridge. And while I popped the seal and gulped from the can. And still the ringing continued.
Just when I thought Michael’s voice mail would pick up, he answered his phone and snapped softly into it, “This better be important, Faythe. We’re in the middle of a
hearing.
”
Oops.
“It won’t take long.” Since I’d already interrupted him anyway…
“Fine. Hold on.” His shoes squeaked on the Di
Carlos’ stone floor and a door closed. Then his voice gained its normal volume. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, just about everything.” I set my can on the counter and lifted the chewed-up pencil, which had somehow made it back into the empty dish drainer. “The short version is that Marc’s still missing, and Kevin Mitchell’s mixed up in it somehow.” I exhaled slowly, and tapped the eraser end of the pencil on the faded Formica. “I don’t think he has much time left, Michael. It’s twenty-nine degrees outside, and we don’t know how or where he’s injured, but we know he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“I’m so sorry, Faythe….” he began, but I cut him off, tears standing in my eyes.
“He’s not dead, Michael. And I need your help to find him.”
“What can I do?” That was my big brother. Always ready for the bottom line. But this time his voice was pinched with concern, which warmed my heart just a little bit, and I forgave his lack of faith. I loved it that the rest of my family loved Marc as much as I did.
“Do we have anything on a stray named Peter Yarnell?” We kept track of as many cats in the free zone as we could, to make our job easier, and because Michael kept the records, he always had the most up-to-date information.
“Hang on and let me check my spreadsheet.” His footsteps echoed on the floor again, and another door creaked open. “Who is Peter Yarnell?”
“He’s the stray Kevin sent to Marc’s house this morning, to dispose of the bodies. Which we’d already
done, of course. I’m hoping, since he’s obviously in on this, that he’ll know where Eckard took Marc.”
“Okay, just a minute.” Springs groaned softly as Michael settled into a chair, probably in front of the laptop he kept running all day, every day. “Um…yes. As of May of last year, Peter Yarnell was living in Gloster, Mississippi.” His fingers tapped rapidly over the keys, then he spoke again, before I could ask. “That’s about half an hour from Rosetta.”
“What’s the address?” I wrote on Marc’s notepad while Michael read information from his obsessively organized spreadsheet. “Do you have a phone number?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t suggest warning him before you show up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Michael. What would I ever do without the benefit of your wisdom?”
“You’re welcome,” he said in response to my sarcasm. Then he read me the number.
“Thank you. Hey, while I have you on the phone, how’s the hearing going?” I asked, taking another sip from my soda.
“It’s not looking good, Faythe.”
My heart pumped harder in sympathy for Manx. I’d really been hoping for some good news to balance out the most miserable thirty-six hours of my life. “Why not?”
“Because Manx claims she killed those toms in self-defense, but they’ve already gotten her to admit she was in no immediate danger at the time. And the council
doesn’t recognize any kind of temporary insanity defense.”
Which was a real shame, because most of the councilmen had considered me crazy for most of my life.
After I spoke to Michael, I called my father and gave him another update while I finished blowing up the mattress. He gave us permission to go interrogate Peter Yarnell at our earliest convenience—the very words I’d been hoping to hear.
In the kitchen, I opened the oven and pulled out both trays of enchiladas, setting them on top of the burners. Then I grabbed a pile of paper plates from an upper cabinet and a handful of mismatched forks from the top drawer. “Lunch!” I yelled, pulling three more sodas from the fridge. Footsteps stomped toward me from all directions, and in seconds the three toms had converged around the stove, scooping sloppy servings onto flimsy paper plates.
“Eat quickly,” I ordered, pleased to hear my father’s no-nonsense tone coming from my own mouth. “We’re leaving for Gloster in ten minutes.”
I filled the guys in while they shoveled huge bites of chicken, cheese and tortilla into their mouths, and I picked at my plate, only actually eating when Ethan frowned at me or nodded at my food.
Then I put on my steel-toed boots and led the way to Parker’s car, a foam cup of coffee in one hand.
Twenty minutes later, we drove into downtown Gloster, past a row of quaint storefronts and several
residents ambling down the sidewalks, presumably to or from work at one of the local businesses. After another mile and a couple of turns, Parker stopped at the first—and only—gas station we saw to ask for directions to Peter Yarnell’s street. We found it quickly after that, and slowly cruised past house after house in the calm, middle-class neighborhood, in search of the address I’d written down.
It turned out to be the last one on the block, before the street ended in a dead end and a rough circle of asphalt. Yarnell’s house blended perfectly with the rest of the neighborhood. Redbrick with black shutters. Tall windows; small, neat lawn. The two-car garage was closed, but parked in front of it was a conservative dark blue SUV.