We’d stopped at Marc’s for more supplies, and to change into heavier clothes. The current temperature was twenty-two degrees. Too cold for even our natural fur coats to keep us warm. So we’d go out in human form, bundled to twice our normal sizes.
I slowly spun one of the round weights on its bar, trying not to think of how sick and weak Marc would likely be when we found him. “But before we go out, I owe you an update. We figured out why Marc cut a hole in Eckard’s back.”
My father’s armchair creaked again. “I’m all ears.”
“He was removing some kind of high-tech digital tracking device.”
For a moment, there was only silence over the line. “Someone was tracking Adam Eckard? You’re serious?”
“
Dead
serious. And he wasn’t the only one. We just spoke to Ben Feldman, and he had one, too. He took it out of his own back, if you can believe that. And he says it’s happened to several of the toms here. Daddy, someone’s been taking strays one at a time and putting these tracking things under their skin, then they wake up the next morning with no memory of it. If they wake up at all.”
“The missing toms…” my father whispered, clearly catching on much faster than I had.
“Exactly. We think something went wrong with a few of the implantations, and those strays just disappeared.”
“Feldman told you all this?”
“Some of it. And we pieced together the rest. Unfortunately, Feldman thinks Marc’s involved in this, on
your
orders, and that the attack on Marc was an attempt to stop the whole thing. But you’re never going to guess who’s
really
doing it.”
More leather creaked as my Alpha rose from his chair, and I heard his footsteps on the office floor as he paced in thought. “Kevin Mitchell. Though he’s probably working with his father. Or maybe Malone.”
It was my turn for surprised silence. “We’re almost sure. How did you know?”
My father chuckled. “I’ve been doing this a while, Faythe. Kevin’s the piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit. And you’ve already established that he’s involved in the attack on Marc.”
“Oh.” I leaned against the wall and my free hand rubbed the cracked bench pad aimlessly.
“So, Marc’s out there injured and alone, with evidence of a Pride plot to tag and monitor strays without their knowledge.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.” Another rush of gratitude flooded me when I realized my dad was assuming Marc was still alive. “And he’s probably trying to bring us proof.”
“How did he know the chip was there?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. But I hope to be able to ask him soon.” My heart pounded fiercely over the
possibility, and I stood, ready to start the search immediately. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“Good.” My father’s footsteps paused along with his words, and I sensed a less pleasant change of subject. “Michael and Manx are on their way home, and they’re going to drop Vic off on the way to help with the search.”
Well, that was good, but… “Is it…
over?
”
“Yes. They took her claws.”
My whole body suddenly felt heavy, and I sank back onto the bench press, devastated by the weight and permanence of such a…tragedy. Manx would never be the same again, and I couldn’t decide whether I should be happy that she’d survived, or sad for what she’d lost, and the juxtaposition of those two emotions left me feeling confused and off balance.
“Faythe…there’s more.”
My heart dropped into my stomach at the dread echoing in my father’s voice. If he didn’t want to say something, chances were good that I wouldn’t want to hear it. “What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come home.”
“I will. As soon as we find Marc. I want to bring him to the ranch to recuperate. We can’t leave him here with the strays trying to kill him. And I don’t think the council is in any position to say no to that, considering what one of your fellow Alphas has been up to lately. I can’t wait for
that
load to hit the fan—”
“No, Faythe, you have to come home
now.
Kaci’s getting worse. She passed out this afternoon.”
A groan began deep in my throat, and my hand clenched around the metal bar. “You mean passed out, like ‘fell asleep at the table,’ right?”
“No.” My father exhaled heavily. “She fainted in the hallway and hit her head pretty hard on the tile. She felt a little better after dinner, but then she fell asleep at seven-thirty. She’s getting weaker, Faythe. If she doesn’t Shift soon, she’s not going to have the strength to do it at all. And you know what Dr. Carver said.”
Yes, I knew. The doc thought we should force her Shift, but I had no doubt that if we did, she’d never forgive us. Never forgive
me.
She’d never trust me again, and she
needed
to trust
someone.
“I can talk her into Shifting.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. “But, Dad, I can’t leave until we find Marc. I
can’t.
”
My father sighed, sounding every bit as conflicted as I felt. “I know how you feel. But the guys can look for Marc without you, and you’re the only one who can help Kaci.” Because everyone seemed to agree that I had the best shot of convincing her to Shift on her own. “But I’m not going to order you to come home. I can let Dr. Carver monitor a forced Shift, if you think she’d make it through okay. He’s coming for a look at Manx’s hands anyway.”
I was pretty sure Kaci’d be fine, physically, after a forced Shift. But not psychologically. She needed to
want
to Shift, or we’d be in the same position a few weeks later. Only she’d no longer trust me to talk her through it.
“It’s your decision,” my father continued, and my heart beat so hard my chest actually ached.
My head fell against the wall at my back. Less than a year earlier, I’d whined about never being allowed to make my own choices. What the hell was I
thinking?
I couldn’t choose between Marc and Kaci!
My dad cleared his throat to recapture my attention. “Faythe? What are you going to do?”
It was strange to hear that question coming from the man who, in the past, had simply told me what I would be doing.
“I don’t know,” I said, and immediately hated the sound of what had to be the weakest sentence I’d ever uttered. “Kaci clearly needs me. But I
need
to be here when we find Marc.” The weight room swam as tears formed in my eyes, and I rubbed them away roughly, silently scolding myself. Tears wouldn’t help Marc. Or Kaci.
“What would Marc say, if you could ask him?” my father asked gently.
I closed my eyes, wiping away more moisture. “He’d say that he’ll be fine without me, but
she
needs me, and I damn well know it.”
“And would he be right?”
“Yes.” My next exhalation seemed to deflate me completely. “But I’m coming back as soon as she Shifts.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I flipped the phone closed and glanced up to find Dan watching me from the hall, barefoot and naked from the waist up, a clean shirt in one hand. “How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough.” He smiled sympathetically.
“And?”
His smile grew, even as the sad wrinkles around his eyes deepened. “You’re doin’ the right thing. Parker and I will be here for Marc. And he really would want you to go.”
He was right. “Thanks.”
Dan nodded, and turned to pull his shirt over his head, but as he lifted his arms, light from the dusty bulb overhead shined on something I’d never noticed. A small, smooth white scar right between his shoulder blades.
“Dan, wait!” My pulse raced, and I flipped my phone open, autodialing my father again.
“Faythe, what’s wrong?” he asked in lieu of a greeting, as Dan raised one brow at me in question.
“Dad, can you have Dr. Carver leave for the ranch now? I think I just found the proof we needed.”
W
e made it home by four-thirty in the morning with no trouble, and I actually managed nearly three hours of sleep while Dan and Ethan took shifts behind the wheel. They’d insisted I wasn’t alert enough to drive, and I wasn’t going to argue.
In spite of the early hour, my parents were both up when we walked through the front door, my mother wrist-deep in a colossal pile of shredded potatoes, while grease warmed in two massive cast-iron skillets on the stove. She was making hash browns to go with the huge platter of bacon already fried and ready to eat. Next would come eggs, and I knew by the scent of the entire house that homemade biscuits were already baking in the oven.
“Mom, you didn’t have to do all this.” I sank onto the closest bar stool and crossed my arms on the countertop, trying to hold my head upright though it felt about ten pounds too heavy from exhaustion.
“Kaci needs the energy, and from the look of the rest
of you—” her gaze flicked over my shoulder to where Ethan and Dan had followed me into the kitchen “—so do you.” My mother set down her shredder and rinsed her hands at the sink, then dried them on a clean towel hanging from a drawer handle. “You must be Mr. Painter,” she said brightly, rounding the end of the peninsula with her arm extended.
Dan nodded and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.” I’d never seen him look so…bashful, and I was just plain amused by the amazement with which he watched my mother. And for a moment, I saw her through his eyes: pretty, petite, nurturing, and efficient, with a surprising strength in her handshake and a bright gleam of intelligence in the Caribbean depths of her eyes.
I smiled and waved the guys toward the remaining bar stools, then swiped a slice of bacon from the platter.
“You made fantastic time,” my father said from the doorway, and I turned to see him frowning. “Which means someone drove entirely too fast.”
I pointed at Ethan, and he smacked the back of my head, but his grin never faltered.
“Mr. Painter.” My father stepped forward and extended his hand toward our guest, as Dan slid off his stool. Apprehension flitted across his face for a moment before his blank look settled into place—another lesson well learned from Marc. He shook my father’s thick hand, and I couldn’t help but contrast this greeting with the less enthusiastic welcome he’d gotten the last time he’d been on the ranch, when he was interrogated about the time he’d spent with Manx during her crime spree.
It felt like my entire world had been spun off its axis in the four months since then. Everything had changed, and not for the better.
“May I see this scar?” my father asked, and Dan turned and pulled his shirt off to present his back for examination under the bright fluorescent lights.
I smiled at the strange sight, while Dan flushed. I could sympathize. My partial Shift had been perfunctorily examined many times, and I hated being presented like a show horse. But Dan was a good sport about it, due in part to his agreeable nature. Though I assume he was also equally eager to have the foreign implant removed from his body.
I sympathized with that, too.
“I’ll be damned…” my father mumbled, removing his glasses to squint at the short, smooth white line on Dan’s back. “This is the strangest thing I’ve encountered in more than thirty years as an Alpha.” He looked up and locked gazes with my mother, who had paused in the process of scooping shredded potatoes into the first skillet. “Things are changing, Karen.”
She nodded mutely, the slight dip in the thin lines of her forehead the only indication that she shared his mounting concern with the state of the world. But that was plenty for those of us who knew her.
My father stood, his mouth tugged into a deep frown, and motioned for Dan to put his shirt back on. I knew what he was thinking. How could he possibly keep up with rogues committing crimes aided and inspired by technology he didn’t know existed?
“Dr. Carver’s running late, but he’ll be here within the hour. We’ll eat, then he can remove the chip from Mr. Painter’s back.” My Alpha’s gaze found me as I snagged another piece of bacon. “And when Kaci wakes up, you
have
to talk her into Shifting.”
I could only nod and chew my bacon, hoping Kaci was ready to get it over with.
Ethan went to the guesthouse to wake up Jace and Brian, and by the time they’d showered and dressed, Owen had joined the rest of us in the dining room. We were careful not to wake Kaci—though I couldn’t resist peeking into her room to check on her—because in her weakened state, she needed all the sleep she could get. And because we didn’t want her to hear about what had happened to Manx or Marc, or the possibility—however slim it was in my mind—that he might not be found alive.
She would have to know eventually, of course. But not until she’d Shifted and could regain her strength.
Dr. Carver arrived as we were sitting down to a huge, hot breakfast. My mother set another place at the long dining room table for him, and Ethan and I introduced Dan and caught everyone up on what had gone down in Mississippi. Including our suspicion that Kevin Mitchell was working for either his father or Calvin Malone, the two Alphas most outspoken about the “stray problem” and least concerned with violating the civil rights of a segment of the population they had no use for anyway.
I was on my third helping of scrambled eggs when
soft footsteps whispered from the hallway, and Kaci stepped into the doorway, long brown curls tangled from sleep. She clutched the door frame with one thin, white hand, her huge eyes taking in all the new arrivals at once.
“Kaci!” I smiled and stood, cutting Ethan off in the middle of an off-color description of Eckard’s corpse, hopefully before the tabby had heard too much. All eyes followed my gaze to the doorway, and my mother rose immediately to fill another plate, while I shoved Jace’s empty chair over to make room for the one he had taken from against the rear wall.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” She lowered her frail form onto the chair between mine and Jace’s, glaring at me with accusation swimming in her eyes. “I didn’t even know you were coming home.”
“It was a last-minute decision. Mr. Painter—” I gestured at Dan, by way of an introduction “—needed to see Dr. Carver for…a checkup. So Ethan and I brought him.”
She wasn’t buying it; I could tell from the firm, straight line of her mouth. But she’d learned enough diplomacy in her months with us—in spite of my sometimes less than perfect example—to know better than to call me out in front of everyone else. So Kaci just frowned and accepted the plate my mother handed her with a whispered “Thanks.”
I’d been gone for less than forty-eight hours, but I couldn’t believe the difference in her. Her eyes were dull, and looked bigger than they should have, while the rest of her seemed to have shrunk. Her skin was so pale
I could clearly see the veins peeking through the dark smudges beneath her eyes, and her arms were all sharp angles, thanks to the too well-defined bones of her wrists and elbows.
While I watched her push eggs around on her plate, the table went quiet. No one seemed to know what to talk about, now that Kaci’s arrival had put an end to the update on the search for Marc.
When everyone was finished except for Kaci, who’d finally donned a small smile as she watched Jace and Ethan spar with the last two sticks of my mother’s homemade biscotti, my father gestured for me to follow him and Dr. Carver into his office. He shut the door behind us, and I sank onto the leather couch as if I hadn’t just dozed through most of the drive home.
I
had
slept, but I hadn’t slept well—not in several nights—and both the physical and emotional stress were getting to me.
Carver lowered himself onto the couch next to me, clutching a steaming mug of coffee in both hands while my father settled into his armchair. “I need to get Kaci out of the house until Dr. Carver has finished removing Dan’s microchip. We don’t want her to overhear any of that, for obvious reasons.”
I nodded, but my gaze remained glued to the mug I was seriously starting to covet.
“What do you think, Danny?” my father continued, and I tried to tune back into the conversation. “How long will this procedure take?”
Carver shrugged and somehow avoided spilling his
coffee. “Half an hour, at the most. It’s very simple. Local anesthetic, a short cut, pull out the microchip, then some sutures.”
“Do you think Kaci can handle a half-hour walk in the woods?”
The doctor nodded. “I don’t know that she’ll feel like walking the whole way, but if someone is willing to carry her when she gets tired, the fresh air might actually do her some good. Assuming she’s properly bundled.”
Fortunately, the cold front had already passed over Texas, so it was nearly ten degrees warmer at the ranch than it had been in Rosetta.
“I’ll take her.” I stood, intending to pour coffee into a travel mug before heading back into the great outdoors.
My father frowned, templing his hands beneath his chin. “I want you to stay here and rest. You look like hell.”
“Um…thanks?” But I sank back onto the couch, partially relieved. I couldn’t remember ever being quite so tired.
“Jace and Ethan can take her,” the Alpha continued. “She seems to enjoy their company.”
“Yeah, that’s because she has ovaries.” The wonder twins were chick magnets, plain and simple, and Kaci was not immune to their powers. But if anything, that strengthened my father’s argument. She’d enjoy a walk in the woods with two handsome, older men. And we could trust them to watch her carefully.
The Alpha dismissed us both, and the doc went to set up his stuff in Manx’s room, currently the only unoccupied bedroom in the house.
I headed into the kitchen for some coffee, but I got there just in time to see Jace pour the last of it into a clean mug. I groaned in frustration when he added sugar and cream, then began to stir. I’d hit that odd point of exhaustion at which I could no longer function without caffeine, but I was too tired to make a fresh pot of coffee. It was like being too hungry to eat, or too tired to sleep. Only worse.
“Damn it, Jace,” I moaned, opening the cabinet over my head to pull out a five-pound bag of coffee beans.
He smiled and took the bag from my hands, replacing it with the mug. “I’ve already had two cups. This one’s for you.” Then he turned to the coffee grinder and dumped the beans in before I could reply.
“Thanks.” My heart thumped harder when his hand brushed mine as he reached up to replace the bag of coffee, and I stepped back, confused and startled by the spark. I sipped from my mug and forced my pulse to slow. “Hey, can you and Ethan take Kaci for a short, predawn walk in the woods when she’s done eating? To get her mind—and her ears—off of Dan’s…
checkup
.”
At the sound of his name, Ethan looked up from the table in the dining room, where he was entertaining Kaci with impersonations of Owen during his single, disastrous semester as a 4-H roper, chasing terrified calves around their pens.
“No problem.” Jace leaned against the counter next
to me, and from the dining room, Ethan nodded, though his consent wasn’t really necessary; the okay from one of them was assumed to go for both. It had been that way for most of their lives.
“Don’t take her too far, and pick her up if she gets tired. We only need her out of the way for about thirty minutes, and we want her energized but not exhausted. At least, no more so than she already is. And I’ll make sure she dresses warmly.”
Jace smiled. “We’ll take good care of her.”
Fifteen minutes later, I watched through the back door as Kaci—bundled like an Eskimo in the arctic winter—walked across the dark expanse of the backyard between her two favorite toms. She’d asked about Marc while I helped her dress, but I’d avoided specifics, telling her only that Ethan and I would return to help with the search after Dan’s checkup. Jace was coming with us, too, since Michael would be back to help out on the ranch later that afternoon.
As soon as Kaci and her escorts disappeared into the woods, I took my refilled mug into Manx’s room, where Dan had taken off his shirt and was now lying on his stomach on Manx’s bed, which my mother had thoughtfully draped with black plastic. The patch of skin surrounding his scar was rust-red from iodine, and a clean white towel had been draped over the back of his head, to keep his hair from getting messy.
Carver was using a local anesthetic only, so Dan would be conscious and coherent the whole time, and thus able to answer questions during the simple proce
dure. Which would conveniently kill two birds while our thirteen-year-old stone was out of earshot.
“You have no memory of the implantation?” my father asked, from an overstuffed armchair opposite the bed. I leaned against the end of Des’s crib, since there were no more seats.
“Uh-uh.” Dan started to shake his head, then remembered there was a syringe poised over his back and froze. He flinched as the needle slid into his skin, then continued talking, as if to distract himself from the procedure. “I wouldn’t’ve believed anything was in there if I hadn’t seen the scar myself in the mirror.”
Which I’d held for him. The placement of the microchips was genius; how many people study their upper backs in the mirror on a daily basis? Assuming there was no discomfort from the procedure, the strays would have no reason to suspect a thing.
Dr. Carver gave Dan another shot, and again the stray flinched. Then the doc sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the anesthesia to take effect.
My father cleared his throat. “Do you have any idea when this happened? Any lapse of memory?”
“Just one.” Dan shrugged, an awkward movement, since he was lying facedown. “I went out drinkin’ after work one night—I think it was a Thursday—and woke up the next mornin’ with the worst hangover I ever had. I couldn’t even stand up without getting dizzy, and I puked on the floor by my bed. I had to call in sick for work, and to this day I have no idea how I got home, or what I did before I got there.”
“That seems to be the pattern,” I said, then sipped from my mug while my father nodded. Then a new thought occurred to me. “Dan, has Marc ever seen that scar?”