Kitabı oku: «Rogue»

ROGUE

“Miss me?” The man’s voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words.

The unexpected voice—and the angry question—surprised me.

“Should I miss you?” I asked finally, pressing the phone against my ear.

“I guess that’s a matter of opinion, Faythe. My idea of what you should do obviously has little in common with your own.”

Irritation flared in my chest like heartburn. “Who the hell is this?” I demanded, half convinced that my judgemental caller had the wrong number, even though he knew my name.

Deep Throat clucked his tongue in my ear, and I gritted my teeth against the intimate sound and feel of his disapproval.

“How soon they forget,” he whispered, and the enmity in his tone chilled me.

And suddenly I knew. Andrew.

I’d never heard my human ex speak a word in anger before, and the rage in his voice rendered it completely unrecognisable.

Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent and read Rachel’s blog at ubanfantasy.blogspot.com

Shifters series

STRAY

ROGUE

PRIDE

Rogue
Rachel Vincent

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This is for Number One, who puts up with me on

a daily basis. Who is patient when the line between

fiction and reality blurs. Who remembers when I

forget. And who does hundreds of little things to

keep me healthy and happy, because we both know

I’d rather be working than sleeping or eating. I’m

still up and running because you take care of me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe more than I could ever express to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, for the use of her eagle eyes and for her willingness to tell me when I’m not living up to my potential. I only hope I’m half as much help to her as she is to me.

Thanks to my Dad, for the native Texan’s perspective.

Thanks to Livia Rosa, for double-checking my Portuguese, and for making suggestions. To Elizabeth Mazer, for more work on my behalf than I can begin to list. And to D. P. Lyle, M.D., whose medical expertise kept my corpses realistic. Any medical mistakes in this book are mine, not his.

Thanks to my agent, Miriam Kriss, for late-night, last-minute reads, and for all those times you must wish the Easy Button really worked.

And finally, thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for patience, guidance, wisdom and encouragement. Your enthusiasm is contagious, and I’m so happy to have caught it.

One

“Catch and release, my ass!” Grunting, I shoved the stray facedown over the trunk of Marc’s car, snatching back my free hand just in time to avoid his teeth as they snapped together. The bastard was half again my size, and thrashing like a…well, like a scared cat, determined to shred anything he could get his hands on—including me.

Several feet behind me, Marc watched, no doubt mentally noting every aspect of my performance so he could recreate it later for my father. So far, I hadn’t given him much good to report.

Beating prowlers senseless to teach them a lesson was one thing; I’d easily mastered most of the common scare tactics. But this whole chase-them-down-and-haul-them-out approach? That was bullshit. Complete and total idiocy. What was my father thinking?

The only stroke of luck I’d had all evening was that the stray had fled to a deserted make-out spot on the outskirts of Dumas, Arkansas. If he’d headed toward the town lights instead of away from them, I’d never have caught him. I wouldn’t even have tried. We couldn’t risk human passersby seeing an average-size young woman like me haul around a man who outweighed me by at least forty pounds. And the truth was that if the stray had known how to fight, I probably couldn’t have caught him.

Not that the capture had gone smoothly, even so. Marc had made no effort to help.

“Can you give me a hand, here?” I snapped at him over my shoulder, slamming the stray’s head back down on the trunk as he twisted, trying to break free of my grasp.

Masculine laughter rang out from behind me, unaccompanied by footsteps. “You’re doing just fine, querida.”

“Don’t…fucking…call…me…that,” I growled through clenched jaws. With my free hand, I seized one of the tres-passer’s flailing arms and pinned it to the small of his back. His other hand escaped me, clawing grooves into the paint. Not that it made any difference on Marc’s oft-abused car.

Marc laughed, unmoved by my threat.

Leaning forward, I draped myself across the intruder’s back to hold him still. His heart pounded fiercely against the thin, shiny material of a red blouse I’d had no plans to fight in.

His free hand flailed, still out of reach. I squeezed the wrist I’d captured. His bones ground together. Howling in pain, he bucked beneath me. I held on, determined not to screw up my first solo capture. Not with Marc watching. He’d never let me live it down.

“Let me go, bitch,” the stray growled, his words distorted with his face pressed into the car.

Behind me, Marc chuckled again. “I think he likes you, Faythe.”

“Either help or shut up.” With my free hand, I dug into my back pocket for my new handcuffs, fresh out of the package and still shiny. It was time to break them in.

Metal clinked against metal as I opened the first cuff, and the stray’s thrashing intensified. He threw his head back and tossed his free arm up at an awkward angle. His hand smashed into mine. My fist opened.

For one agonizing moment, the open half circle of metal dangled from my index finger, the other end swinging like a pendulum. Then the cuff slipped from my grasp and landed across the toe of my prisoner’s left shoe. Tightening my grip on his wrist, I bent to grab it, hauling him backward in the process. He kicked out. The cuff sailed beneath the car, skidding across the gravel.

“Damn it!” So much for shiny and new. I jerked us both upright and slapped the back of the stray’s head. He growled. Marc laughed. I barely held back a scream of frustration. This was not how my first catch-and-release was supposed to go.

Shoving aside my irritation, I slammed the stray back down on the trunk, but it was too late to regain the upper hand. I’d screwed up, and he’d rediscovered his balls.

Grunting, the stray threw his elbow back, into my left side. Pain tore through my chest and abdomen. My breath escaped in a single, harsh puff. His arm slid through my fist, and I nearly lost my grip.

Screw this. He’d blown his shot at nice-and-easy, which only left quick-and-brutal—my favorite way to play.

I sucked in a deep breath. Fire raced up my newly bruised side. I shifted my weight onto my left leg and slammed my right knee into his groin.

The stray made a single, pain-filled gulping sound, as if he were swallowing his own tongue. For a moment, I heard only Marc’s steady breathing at my back and the crickets chirruping all around us. Then my prisoner screamed. He hit notes that would have made Steven Tyler wince.

Satisfied that he couldn’t stand, much less run, I let him go. He crumpled to the ground at my feet, shrieking like a little girl.

“Well, that’s certainly one way to do it.” Marc stepped up to my side. He looked a little pale, and not just from the moonlight.

I smoothed more hair back from my face, eyeing the pathetic form on the gravel. “Give me your damn cuffs,” I snapped at Marc, not the least bit ashamed of myself for dropping my opponent with a knee to the groin.

Marc pulled his own handcuffs from his back pocket. “Remind me not to piss you off,” he said, dropping them into my open palm.

“You still need to be reminded?” Kneeling, I pulled the stray’s arms behind his back and cuffed them. He was still whimpering when I hauled him up by his elbow and half dragged him to the passenger side of the car. At the door, I spun him around to face me. “What’s your name?”

Instead of answering, he leered at the low neckline of my blouse. It wasn’t the smartest or most original response, but it was a definite improvement over the guy who’d tried to take a taste. Still, I was in no mood to be ogled. At least, not by him.

I let my fist fly, and my knuckles smashed into his rib cage. His eyes went wide, and he clenched his jaw on an oof of pain.

“This is the last time I’ll ask,” I warned, focusing on his closed eyelids. “Then I’ll just knock you out and call you Tom Doe. Your choice. Now, what’s your fucking name?”

His eyes popped opened, staring into mine as if to determine how serious my threat was. Whatever he saw must have convinced him. “Dan Painter,” he said, the end of his own name clipped short in anger.

“Mr. Painter.” I nodded, satisfied that he was telling the truth, based on his expression and the steady, if quick, beat of his pulse. “To what do we owe the displeasure of your visit?”

His eyebrows rose in confusion.

I rolled my eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The wrinkles in his forehead smoothed out as comprehension spread across his face. “Just doin’ my civic duty,” he insisted. “Chasing a piece of ass, not that it matters now. Bitch gave me the slip.”

Marc stepped forward. “That must have been some piece of ass, to tempt you into south-central territory.”

Groaning inwardly, I held my tongue. It would have been poor form to yell at my partner in front of the prisoner. Again.

“You got no idea.” The stray looked at Marc over my shoulder. “Or maybe you do.” His eyes slid back to me, and I ground my teeth as his gaze traveled down my blouse and snug black slacks. “This one’s kind of plain in the face, but she’s got it where it counts, huh?”

I felt Marc tense just behind me, and heard his knuckles pop. He was forming a fist. But he was too late.

“Consider this your only warning to stay out of our territory.” My fist flew in a beautiful right hook. My knuckles slammed into the stray’s left cheek. His head snapped back and to the side. And for the second time in four minutes, he collapsed—this time unconscious.

Already flexing my bruised hand, I let him fall. What did I care if he scraped his face on the gravel? He was lucky I hadn’t broken his cheekbone. At least, I didn’t think I’d broken anything. Except possibly my own knuckles.

Behind me, Marc made a soft whistling sound, clearly impressed. “That’s not standard procedure,” he said, his tone entirely too reasonable as he leaned over the stray’s body to open the back passenger-side door.

“Yeah, well, I’m not your standard enforcer.” The rest of my father’s employees had more respect for the rules than I had. They also had much more testosterone and two fewer ovaries. None of them really knew what to do with me.

Marc grinned, pulling my injured hand into the light from the car’s interior bulb. “I won’t argue with that.” He tilted my wrist for a better view, and I winced. “It’s not broken. We’ll stop for some ice on the way to the free zone.”

“And some coffee,” I insisted, already dreading the hourlong drive east to the Arkansas-Mississippi border, where we would release Dan Painter in the free zone on the other side of the Mississippi River. “I need coffee.”

“Of course.” Bending, Marc grabbed the stray’s shirt in his left hand and the waist of his jeans in the other. He picked up the unconscious werecat and tossed him headfirst onto the backseat. “That was one hell of a right hook.” Marc produced a roll of duct tape, apparently from thin air. He tore off a long strip and wound it around Mr. Painter’s ankles, then bent the stray’s legs at the knees to get his feet into the car. “I don’t remember your father teaching you that.”

“He didn’t.”

Marc slammed the door and arched one eyebrow at me in question.

Smiling, I knelt to look beneath the car. “Ultimate Fighting Championship.”

He nodded. “Impressive.”

“I thought so.” On my hands and knees in the gravel, I felt around beneath the car, searching for my handcuffs. I’d lost my first pair diving into the Red River in pursuit of a harmless but repeat offender a month earlier. If I came back without the new set, my father would have my hide. Or dock my paycheck.

My fingers scraped a clump of coarse grass growing through the rocks and skimmed over the rounded end of a broken bottle.

“Need some help?” Marc reached down to run one hand slowly over my hip.

I grinned at him over my shoulder. “You’re not going to find anything there.”

“That’s what you think.” His hand slid up my side as my fingers brushed a smooth arc of metal. I grabbed the cuff and backed out from under the car, and Marc pulled me to my feet. He turned me around to face him as I slid the cuff into my back pocket, then he pressed me against the side of the car. “Let’s take a break,” he whispered, leaning in to brush my neck with his lips.

“Like you’ve been working,” I said, but my hand reached automatically for his arm. My fingers brushed the lines of his triceps, my nails skimming the surface of his skin, raising goose bumps. I loved drawing a reaction from him. It gave me a sense of power, of control. And yet the feeling was mutual; I couldn’t say no to him, and he knew it.

“So why don’t you put me to work?” he purred against my ear, pressing closer to me. His fingers edged between me and the car, moving slowly to cup my rear, his grip firm and strong.

I leaned forward to give him better access. “Do we have time?”

“All the time in the world. Unless you have a curfew I don’t know about.”

“I’m grown, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” His tongue trailed lightly down the side of my neck, hesitating slightly at the four crescent-shaped scars, leaving a wet trail to be caressed by the warm September breeze. “You’re very, very grown.” His tongue resumed its course, flicking over my collarbone before diving into my cleavage. The sweet spot, he called it. With good reason.

“What about our unwilling guest?” My fingers trailed over his chest, feeling the hard planes through his T-shirt.

“He can find his own date.” Marc’s words were muffled against my skin, his breath hot on the upper curve of my breast.

“I’m serious.” I pulled him back up to eye level. “What if he wakes up?”

“He’ll be jealous.” Marc leaned in to kiss me, but I put a hand on his chest. Breathing an impatient sigh, he glanced through the car window over my shoulder, then back up to meet my eyes. “He’s out cold. Besides, we never have any privacy at the ranch, anyway, so what does it matter?”

Privacy. It had become our most precious commodity, and the supply was never enough to meet the demand in a house full of propriety-challenged werecats—noisy, overgrown children with supernatural hearing and no lives of their own. Marc was right: middle-of-nowhere Arkansas was about as private as we were going to get. Ever. For the rest of what passed for our lives.

I nodded, sliding my hands slowly beneath the front of his shirt. “Okay, but you’d better have a blanket in there.” I tossed my head toward the trunk. “’Cause I’m not lying down on this gravel.”

He frowned, and his nose met mine as he bent down for one more kiss. “Who said anything about lying—” his cell phone rang out from his hip pocket, just as his lips brushed mine “—down.”

I smiled, not a bit surprised. Timing was everything, and in that regard, my father was a force to be reckoned with.

Marc stepped back, pulling the phone from his pocket, and my hands fell from his chest to rest on my hips. “Damn it, Greg,” he muttered, glancing at the backlit screen.

“Tell him what we were about to do, and he’ll probably leave us alone,” I said, pulling open the front passenger-side door. Unlike most fathers, mine was…enthusiastic about my relationship with my boyfriend. So was my mother. They loved Marc as if he were a son, and would have done anything to make an honest couple of us, including gluing the ring to my finger. It was kind of creepy, if I stopped to think about it for too long.

“That’s not a conversation I particularly enjoy having with your father.” Marc scowled as the phone continued to ring. “And if I get one more tip from Michael, I’m going to throw him right through the living-room window, even if he is your brother.”

I flinched. “He didn’t.”

Marc raised his eyebrows.

Damn. He did. Marc wouldn’t have to kill Michael; I’d do it myself. I just could not make people understand that my private life was exactly that: private.

Smiling now, Marc pressed the on button and held his phone to his ear. “Hi, Greg. What’s wrong?”

My father’s reply came through loud and clear. “I just checked my messages and found something interesting. An anonymous call about a dead cat. I hope you have your shovel.”

Of course Marc had his shovel. Because what better way was there to end a date than by burying a corpse in the middle of the night?

It’s official. My job sucks.

Two

“An anonymous call?” Marc said, his brow furrowed. “That’s…unusual. What time did it come in?”

“Shortly after seven.” Thanks to my werecat’s enhanced hearing, my father’s voice was easily audible, even though I was several feet from the phone.

I pressed the button on the side of my watch, illuminating the face. It was just after ten. The message was three hours old.

“Where did the call come from?” Marc asked.

Over the phone, my father cleared his throat. “A phone booth in southern Arkansas. You and Faythe are closest, so keep your eyes open, because whoever made the call could still be around.” Silence settled in over the line for a moment. “I need you to identify the corpse and take care of the body.”

Marc glanced at me, and I shook my head. Hell no. We’d already detoured from a much-anticipated weekend road trip to take care of some random trespasser, and were just about to take care of each other. That was enough for one night. The body could rot, for all I cared.

Except that we couldn’t really let it rot. At least, not where a human could find it. Humans tended to get uptight and curious around corpses, and were generally adamant about pinning down the source of the problem. Which, of course, was us. Well, not my Pride specifically, but likely a member of our species. So, Marc and I would take care of the body, whether we wanted to or not. For the good of the Pride. Because that was our job.

Marc frowned at me, and I nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, we’ll take care of it as soon as we get rid of the stray in the backseat,” he said.

“Did she do it on her own?” my father asked, and I ground my teeth together. I couldn’t help it. I’d called to report the intruder like a good girl, and was rewarded with an order to take him unassisted. It was my father’s idea of a test.

Most aspects of my training didn’t agree with me. There wasn’t as much bossing around as I’d hoped for, and there was way too much following orders. Fortunately, there was also ample opportunity to vent my frustration in the guise of protecting and defending our property boundaries. That part wasn’t too bad.

“Let’s just say your daughter has one heck of a right hook,” Marc said, laughter bubbling up behind his words.

“I’m not surprised.” Our esteemed Alpha gave Marc directions to the exposed corpse as we settled into the car, and by the time we turned left out of the empty lot, he’d hung up the phone.

“So, what are we supposed to do with the body?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew the answer.

“Bury it. Unless you’d rather take it to school for show-and-tell?”

“Smart-ass,” I snapped. Burial was what I’d expected. Unfortunately, we hadn’t come prepared with a backhoe. Or a coffin. All we had was an emergency kit and a couple of shovels Marc kept in the trunk, for just such an occasion.

Huffing in irritation, I glanced at my clothes, selected with our weekend getaway in mind. But our trip had been canceled. There would be no quiet dinner in a nice restaurant with cloth napkins. No popcorn in the dark theater. No private hotel room, far from the inescapable eyes and ears of our fellow werecats.

Instead, we’d be working. All night. For no overtime.

Most of my friends had returned to school the week before and had probably spent their night gathered around textbooks and boxes of pizza. I, on the other hand, had chased down a trespasser, in three-inch heels, and would soon be digging a grave by hand in the middle of the night.

I felt my mood darken just thinking of school, and of not being there. Of not completing my master’s degree, or even using my brand new BA in the foreseeable future. But I’d bargained with my father for the next two years and three months of my life, to be spent serving the Pride and training for a future I wasn’t even sure I wanted.

“Definitely a broken neck.”

“Hmm?” I murmured, staring hard at the line of trees twenty feet to the east. If I focused on them, on the way the moon cast ever-shifting shadows of the branches as they swayed in the early-morning breeze, I wouldn’t have to look at the corpse. And I really didn’t want to look at the corpse.

We’d found him just where the informant had said we would, in an empty field about half an hour south of Little Rock, near a tiny rural town called White Hall, which boasted some six thousand residents. From what little I could see of it in the dark, White Hall seemed like a decent place to grow up. A place that did not deserve a middle-of-the-night visit from us.

Marc turned his flashlight to my face, and I winced, squeezing my eyes shut against the sudden glare. “Pay attention, Faythe,” he snapped, his earlier playfulness gone. He was all business now, kneeling next to the dead man who lay facedown in the grass. “I said it’s definitely a broken neck. Come feel this.”

“No thanks.” I shoved his flashlight aside and blinked impatiently, waiting for the floating circles of light to fade from my vision. “I can see it fine from here.”

“Yes, but you can’t feel it.”

I glanced down to see Marc’s fist around a handful of the corpse’s hair, using it to rotate the poor man’s head, which obviously provided no resistance. “The bones kind of…crunch, when you turn his neck. That means his vertebrae are fractured.”

“Fascinating. Really.” I swallowed thickly, and Marc continued to twist the man’s neck, his ear aimed at the ground. Maybe he could actually hear the bones grinding together. Ewwwww. “Could you stop that, please? Leave the poor man alone.”

“Sorry.” He dropped the head, and it hit the grass with a nauseatingly solid thunk. “It’s weird, though. Not a bite or fresh claw mark anywhere.”

“How do you know? You’ve only seen his neck.” With a resigned sigh, I stared down at the body, scenes from the latest CSI rerun flashing through my mind. “Shouldn’t we turn him over, or check for wounds beneath his clothes, or something like that? What if he was killed somewhere else, then moved here to keep us from finding the real crime scene?”

“Crime scene?” Marc laughed, and I gritted my teeth, uneasy with the fact that he was so comfortable around corpses. “You watch too much TV,” he said, refocusing the light on the werecat’s neck.

Only it wasn’t just any werecat. It was a stray—a human initiated into our secret existence by violence rather than by birth. At least he had been a stray. Now he was dead, and his social standing no longer mattered.

Lucky bastard.

“It’s research.” I dragged my gaze from the corpse to Marc’s face. His gold-flecked brown eyes glittered in the moonlight.

“Whatever.” Marc shrugged, and the flashlight’s beam swung off into the grass. “My point is that he wasn’t bitten or clawed. I don’t smell blood.”

Pushing damp strands of hair from my face, I sniffed the air, flushing in annoyance when I realized he was right; if there had been any blood present, fresh or old, we would have smelled it. And if there was no blood, there had been no fight. No werecat—even one in human form—would fail to draw blood with a bite or scratch.

How was I sure the murderer was a werecat? Simple. No human had the strength to break a man’s neck one-handed, and judging from the bruises on the back of the dead guy’s neck, that was exactly what had happened to him. Sure, in theory it could have been a bruin, or one of the other shape-shifter species, but the chances of that were almost nil. What few other breeds existed weren’t interested in us, and the feeling was mutual.

“Oh,” I said, glancing again at the trees as I conceded his point. What else could I say? Marc was the expert on dead bodies, and in spite of having…um…made one a few months earlier, I knew almost nothing about murder victims. And I liked it that way.

Marc sighed. “Fine. If it’ll make you happy, I’ll check for other wounds.” With an Oscar-worthy grunt of effort, he tugged up on the dead guy’s T-shirt, exposing a tangle of old scars reaching toward his spine from both sides of his chest.

I frowned at the long-healed marks. “You’re right. I admit it. There’s no reason to undress him.”

Marc shot me a cocky smile and lowered the poor man’s shirt.

Biting my lip in frustration, I glanced at my watch, pressing the button on the side to illuminate the face with a soft green glow. Almost one in the morning. Great. I should have been curled up next to Marc in bed, exhausted but satisfied. Instead, I was digging unmarked graves by moonlight, exhausted but creeped-the-fuck-out.

We’d dropped off the unconscious Dan Painter in a thick stand of trees just east of the Mississippi River and north of Arkansas City, still bound and now gagged, to teach him a lesson. Then we’d backtracked two hours northwest, on a predominantly two-lane highway. Or rather, Marc had backtracked. I’d recited the prologue to Canterbury Tales in my head. In Middle English. Backward. Marc had his special skills, and I had mine. Of course, his came in far handier than mine in our line of work. Bad guys were hardly ever intimidated by a stirring recitation from Hamlet.

Gritting my teeth, I clung to the last of my dwindling supply of willpower and gave up all hope of seeing my bed before dawn. If I was going to be awake all night, I might as well get something done.

“Okay, a broken neck, but no other obvious wounds,” I said, tugging on the hem of my snug white T-shirt.

Of course, if I’d known I would be handling a corpse, I would have worn something…darker. Or disposable. As it was, I considered myself fortunate to be wearing jeans and a T. If not for the bag I’d packed for our weekend getaway, I’d be digging in expensive black slacks and a red silk blouse.

“So, we’re probably looking for another stray,” I continued, brushing imaginary grave dirt from my shirt. “Maybe one with a grudge, or a history of violent behavior?” I could feel the fine layer of grit all over me, like a ghostly dusting of death, somehow itching and burning beneath my skin.

Or maybe I was overreacting.

Marc shrugged, oblivious to my discomfort as his face smoothed into an unreadable expression. “That describes nearly every stray I’ve ever met. But it doesn’t matter, ’cause we’re not looking for anyone. We’re here to dispose of the body, not investigate the murder.”

I nodded and glanced away. I’d known better. The Territorial Council, nominally led by my father, would never tie up its resources investigating the murder of a single stray. They would almost certainly view the dead cat as one less flea in their collective fur.

“It doesn’t matter what he was doing here, or who killed him,” Marc whispered, kneeling next to the body. “No one gives a damn.”

He would never have voiced such a concern to anyone else, and my heart ached for him, knowing what it had probably cost him to say it in front of me. I knew he cared not because he’d known the stray, but because he hadn’t. Because no one had. And because, like the dead cat we’d come to bury, Marc was a stray. He was facing what I knew to be one of his worst fears: a quick burial in the middle of the night, without a single friend to remember him kindly.

As long as I was alive, that would never happen to Marc. He had me, my whole family, and our entire Pride to miss and remember him. Yet the injustice of a secret burial for the anonymous cat still bothered him. Righteous anger burned bright in his eyes when he looked up at me, and there was nothing I could do to put out the flames.

Marc glanced away from my sympathetic look, but before he turned back to the body, his expression hardened into its usual business face, cold and unreadable. It was a defense mechanism I had yet to master.

He pulled a brown leather wallet from the stray’s back pocket and thumbed through the contents: two credit cards, a few folded receipts, a single wrinkled twenty, and at least two dozen crisp new one-dollar bills. Marc slid a driver’s license from its plastic cover and passed it up to me without even glancing at it.

I looked at the photo, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Until I saw his face, Bradley Moore had just been a body, a nameless corpse to be disposed of quickly, so I could get on with my night.

But now that I’d seen his license, I knew that Moore lived in Cleveland, Mississippi, and was licensed to drive a motorcycle. He’d just celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday, was six foot two and a half, and weighed two hundred and twelve pounds. And he had the most beautiful, hypnotic bluish-gray eyes I’d ever seen.

“Do you smell that?” Marc asked.

“Smell what?” I slipped the license into my front pocket and knelt beside him, eager to forget Mr. Moore’s haunting eyes.

“The killer, I assume. I smell another cat on him. On his clothes, and here, on his neck.” He bent to sniff where he’d indicated, and my stomach churned. I understood his sympathy for the unknown stray; I really did. And after seeing Moore’s face, I couldn’t help but share it. But three months earlier, I’d had to rip out a tomcat’s throat in order to free myself and Abby, my kidnapped cousin. And impractical as it might sound, considering my line of work, I’d had no plans to ever again share such intimate contact with a corpse.

I could handle wrapping the cadaver in plastic and dumping it in a hole in the ground, though that might have been easier if I’d never learned the victim’s name. But sniffing a corpse’s neck went way past my definition of decorous behavior. It was macabre, and disturbing.

“I can smell it from here,” I said. Marc hadn’t asked me to come closer, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Does it smell like a stray to you?”

I inhaled deeply, mentally sorting through the smells I already knew. The strongest was Marc. Musky and masculine, his scent was as familiar as my own. It was also blended with mine, the result of every kiss and embrace we’d shared since my last shower. Which we’d also shared, come to think of it.

Next, I filtered out the scents from the field around us, so pervasive I barely noticed them without conscious effort. I identified trees, grass, dirt, fresh dew, and several small rodents, mostly rabbits and mice.

On the body itself were several more scents, including Mr. Moore’s cologne, the oppressive stench of cigarette smoke, and a strong, minty breath spray. What was left after I’d sorted out all of those smells was the one Marc meant. It came from the stray, but was not his personal scent. It was something else. Something definitely feline, and rich, and pungent. Almost spicy…

Shock jolted up my spine, cold and numbing. Terror ripped through my chest. For one long moment, my heart refused to beat, and I could do nothing but stare at the corpse. I knew that scent. One aspect of it, anyway.

“Well?” Marc asked, staring at me as I stared at the body, my eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Foreign cat.” I stood and stumbled back a step, too horrified to form a complete sentence.

“What?” Marc glanced up at me sharply, then back down at Moore. “No. It can’t be. Luiz is long gone. We would have heard about him by now if he were still around.”

Luiz was one of a pair of jungle strays who’d invaded our territory three months earlier, kidnapping and raping at will. I’d fought him once, and won, but he got away and we hadn’t heard from him since, a fact that scared me more than I was willing to admit out loud. And fucking pissed me off.

“It’s not Luiz.” I was certain of that much. The scent was very faint—meaning the murderer had only briefly touched the victim—but I knew two things without a doubt. The scent was not from a native cat, and it did not belong to Luiz.

“There’s barely a trace of a scent.” Marc shook his head slowly, but his stare never left Moore’s neck. “I don’t see how you can tell a damn thing about it.”

“I can tell.” I’d only met Luiz once, but that was plenty. If I lived to be two hundred, I’d still remember his scent on my deathbed. It was permanently imprinted on my brain, alongside such innocent memories as the taste of my first kiss—Marc—and the flavor of my first snow cone—blue raspberry.

“Fine.” Marc nodded, glancing up at me. “It isn’t Luiz. But is it a stray?”

Against my better judgment—and in spite of an irrational urge to run, or at least find a weapon—I knelt for a stronger whiff of the scent. It didn’t help. “I don’t think so. There’s something…weird about the smell. It’s a foreign scent, but it’s also…more. If that makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Marc said as I stood and backed away from Moore’s corpse. “But you’re right.” He still knelt by the body, looking at it rather than at me as a light breeze ruffled tall blades of grass against his jeans. “There’s an element to it that I can’t quite place.” He leaned back on his heels, frowning in frustration. “What’s his name?”

“Bradley Moore.” I slipped my hand into my pocket, feeling the slick surface of the plastic card, now warm from my own body heat. “He’s from Mississippi.”

Marc nodded, as if he’d already known that last part. It wouldn’t be too hard to guess. Mississippi was the nearest free territory, unclaimed by any Pride. And because it had the mildest climate of any of the free territories, it was home to the largest concentration of strays in the country, mingling with the human population like the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing.

We were less than forty miles from the Mississippi border, where interstate travelers were welcomed across the state line by a seedy-looking strip club, at which Moore had no doubt planned to spend the bundle of ones in his wallet. At least that much of his plan for the evening was clear. Unfortunately, a stack of one-dollar bills did nothing to answer the other questions pinging around my brain like the little silver balls in a pinball machine.

“Well, let’s get going.” Marc stood and brushed his palms against his legs, as if he could wipe the feel of dead flesh from his hands like road dust. I knew exactly how he felt. “It’s a shame the son of a bitch didn’t have the courtesy to give him a decent burial,” he said. “We do that much even for trespassers, and this asshole couldn’t be bothered to bury a friend.”

I blinked at Marc’s tone, so low and gravelly. And angry. Then his meaning sank in. “You think Moore knew whoever killed him?”

“How else could the killer have gotten so close to him?”

I thought about that for a moment, still rubbing the license in my pocket as I stared at the ground near poor Mr. Moore’s head. “No defensive wounds,” I said finally. I took another deep breath, again searching with my sensitive nose for any sign of blood. I still found none. “No blood beneath his nails or in his mouth. He didn’t fight back.” Marc was right. They’d probably known each other. But how was that even possible? How could an American stray have become friends with a foreign cat who had no business in the United States, much less in the southcentral territory? And what were they both doing on our land?

Marc nodded again, interrupting my silent confusion. A hint of a smile showed me he was pleased that I understood what he was getting at.

I wasn’t pleased. I didn’t want to understand death and murderers. Unfortunately, what I wanted mattered no more then than it ever had. Alphas aren’t big fans of free will. In fact, our social and political structure is more of a monarchical system, in which the monarch is invariably the strongest male in the territory. Power passes not to one of the Alpha’s several sons, but to the tomcat who marries his only daughter. This son-in-law and future Alpha must be strong enough to lead, protect, and ultimately control the entire Pride, or the entire system falls apart. And the system—along with the continuation of the species itself—must be protected at all costs.

My father was a bit of a rebel among the other Territorial Council members, Alphas of each of the nine other territories. Rather than passing the south-central Pride on to my future husband—Marc, if my parents have any say in the matter—he wanted to hand the reins over to me. That very concept was sending shock waves of anger and impropriety throughout certain elements of the Council. If my father’s scandalous scheme ever came to fruition, I would someday have an opportunity to change the system from the inside.

It was the “inside” part that bothered me.

A chill went through me at the very thought of ever being in my father’s position, and Marc mistook my shiver for one of sympathy for the dead stray.

“He probably never saw it coming.” Marc shook his head in disgust. “The bastard just reached over and snapped his neck from behind.”

My phone rang into the silence following his words, rescuing me from the fact that I had no idea what to say next. I fumbled in my right front pocket, digging for the phone. Squinting at the tiny display screen, I was relieved to recognize the number for my father’s private line. “It’s my dad.”

Marc nodded and bent to pick up the roll of black plastic in the grass at his feet.

I pressed the yes button as he spread the plastic out on the ground beside Moore’s body. “You rang?” I said into the phone, turning away from Marc as he prepared to flip the corpse over.

“Did you find it?” my father asked.

“Yeah.” I grimaced at the heavy thunk and the crinkling of thick plastic at my back. “I think we need to look into this one.” Marc went silent behind me, and I knew he’d frozen in surprise. He would never have voiced such a request.

“Faythe…” A chair creaked in the background as my father leaned back. “You know we don’t have the resources to investigate every stray who dies in a brawl. We’d just be chasing our own tails. Bury him and come on home.”

I exhaled slowly, wondering whether I was trying to satisfy Marc or set my own mind at ease. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

“There’s a scent on the body. It’s very faint, and it’s only on his neck, so we’re ninety-nine percent sure it’s the killer.” I hesitated when the next words seemed to catch in my throat, threatening to choke me. Then, finally, I spat them out, grimacing at the bitter taste. “It’s a foreign cat.”

A sharp, near-silent inhalation was my father’s only reaction. He was as worried and pissed off as I was at the news of an outsider in our territory. Thank goodness.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice frightfully calm as Marc went still again behind me.

“Completely.”

Silence stretched out over the line, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. I’d come to recognize that particular pause over the past three months; everyone close to me lapsed into it often enough. He was thinking about Miguel, debating whether or not to ask me if I was okay. Like the rest of my family, my father was afraid of upsetting me with reminders of the bastard who’d kidnapped, caged, and beat the living shit out of me. Apparently he thought I was sturdy enough to chase down intruders and bury dead bodies, but too delicate to withstand the assault of my own memory. Go figure.

What my father didn’t realize, what none of them seemed to realize, was that just reporting for work every morning reminded me of Miguel, the jungle stray whose disregard for personal liberty and a woman’s right to say “no” had changed my life forever. I’d agreed to work for my father in exchange for the opportunity to go after Miguel. To take my pound of flesh from the sadistic bastard who’d murdered one of my childhood friends and raped my teenage cousin. And who’d tried to sell all three of us as personal property to a jungle Alpha somewhere in Brazil.

Though no one seemed willing to believe it, thinking about Miguel didn’t so much upset me as inspire me. It reminded me of my new purpose, of why I was willing to forgo a weekend with my boyfriend to kick the shit out of one stray and bury another. And every now and then I really needed that reminder, so I wished my father would quit stalling and just spit it out. And finally he did.

“Miguel’s dead, Faythe. He’s not coming back.”

“Damn right.” But I shivered in spite of the balmy breeze. Marc laid a warm, heavy hand on my shoulder, clearly having heard both sides of the conversation.

“Are you okay?” My father’s voice was hollow-sounding, the way it got when he cradled his head in one hand, in spite of the telephone.

In the distance, a whip-poor-will sang, unconcerned by our presence. “Yeah. I’m fine.” And if I’m not now, I will be soon. “Really,” I added, before he had a chance to ask if I was sure. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Good.” Over the line, he cleared his throat and tapped a pen against his desk blotter, and I couldn’t stop a smile. My father was gone; the Alpha had arrived. “Okay, so you’re pretty sure the killer is foreign. Is it a jungle cat?”

I inhaled again, but was rewarded only with frustration. “I don’t know. It’s too faint to tell for sure, but that’s a definite possibility. And there’s something weird about the scent. It’s definitely foreign, but it’s also…more. If that makes any sense.”

“Not much sense, I’m afraid,” he said. “Would you recognize it if you smelled it again?”

“Absolutely.” I nodded, though he couldn’t see me.

“Me, too.” Marc bent to pick up a shovel mostly hidden by tall grass. I didn’t bother passing his answer along; my father could hear him just fine.

“Good. That’s a start.”

“Any word yet on who called it in?” I asked, shuffling my feet in the long grass.

“We’re still working on it, without much luck.” Metal springs squealed and I pictured my father leaning forward again in his desk chair. “The only thing we know for sure is that the caller was male.”

That was pretty much a given. Female cats—tabbies—were few and far between, and we were never unattended for long enough to stumble across a dead body in an empty field.

“And that he isn’t one of ours,” my father continued. “He sounded young, but that isn’t specific enough to be of any help. Owen’s compiling a list of strays living closest to the Arkansas border.”

“Did Bradley Moore come up on your list?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder to see Marc sliding a pair of scissors through the plastic, on which Moore now lay faceup.

“Just a minute…” Papers shuffled and my father cleared his throat as my gaze slid back toward the trees. “Yes. Bradley Moore. You have reason to suspect him?”

“Nope.” From behind me came a dull ripping sound as Marc tore strips from a thick roll of duct tape. “I have a reason to cross him off your list. He’s dead.”

“We usually have to work much harder to identify corpses not of our own making.”

By which, of course, he meant Marc’s making. Marc was my father’s de facto executioner—the enforcer charged with carrying out death sentences for any werecat guilty of one of the three capital crimes: murder, infection, or disclosure of our existence to a human.

“Well, this one was easy. He still had his wallet.” I curled my left hand into a fist to keep it from sneaking back into my pocket to feel Moore’s license.

“That’s unusual. They’re typically stripped of their ID and anything valuable.”

“Yeah, well, it gets even weirder.” I brushed my hair back from my face, making a mental note to wear a bun or a ponytail on my next burial run. “His neck is broken, but he wasn’t bitten or scratched at all, and he has no defensive wounds. Marc thinks he knew his attacker.”

“Does he have any lumps on his skull? Do you smell any strange chemicals?”

I shook my head before I realized he couldn’t see me. “No, no bumps that I’ve seen. Um…hang on.” I turned to Marc with an upraised eyebrow. He frowned and handed me his flashlight, then squatted to rip a strip of duct tape from one end of the long black bundle. Sheet plastic fell away to reveal Bradley Moore’s face, his beautiful eyes staring up into nothing.

Marc lifted Moore’s head gently, and I grimaced at the ease with which it rolled on his broken neck. Mouth set in a grim, hard line, Marc moved his fingers quickly but thoroughly over the stray’s skull, examining every inch of it as I watched, fending off nausea by sheer will. Finally, he lowered the head back onto the plastic and looked at me, eyes glittering in the beam of the flashlight. “No bumps. And that odd element to the scent is biological, not chemical.”

“Okay.” My father sighed in frustration. “Just get him buried and come home.” He paused, and I could feel the lecture coming, even as I heard the tired smile in his voice. “And if you make Marc do all the digging, I’ll give him all of your paycheck.”

Hmm, there’s an idea. What was I supposed to do with my meager income, anyway? I lived with my parents, owned no car, and had no bills. And I hated shopping. Marc could have my check, especially if he’d dig the damned hole himself.

I grinned, glancing at Marc from the corner of my eye as I spoke into the phone. “Thanks for the warning. I gotta go bury a body.”

“Make it at least five feet deep,” my father said, and very few other people would have heard the exhaustion in his voice. Then he hung up. No “Thanks for giving up your weekend to do my grunt work, Faythe.” No “Have a safe drive home.” Not even a goodbye. The Alpha was all business.

A little miffed, I shoved my phone back into my pocket and met Marc’s eyes. He frowned sternly at me, but his lips held a hint of a smile. “Don’t even say it,” he warned. “I’m not digging this grave by myself. Not even for your annual salary. So quit looking at the dirt like it’s going to stain your soul, princess, and get to work.” Openly smiling now, he tossed me the shovel one-handed.

I caught it, though I’d literally never held a shovel before. Cats have great reflexes, which isn’t always a good thing.

He grinned, gold-flecked eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “First one to hit five feet wins.”

“Wins what?”

“A nap on the way home.”

I groaned, my good humor beginning to fade. Nothing good could come from such a wager. If I lost, I’d have to drive for the entire five-and-a-half-hour trip home. But if I won, Marc would drive, which was much, much worse. With him in the driver’s seat, I’d be afraid to blink, much less sleep. Marc’s favorite travel game was highway tag, which he played by getting just close enough to passing semi trucks to reach out his window and touch their rear bumpers. Seriously. The man thought the inevitability of death didn’t apply to him, simply because it hadn’t happened yet.

Marc laughed at my horrified expression and sank his shovel into the earth at the end of the black plastic cocoon. With a sigh, I joined him, trying to decide whether I’d rather risk falling asleep at the wheel, or falling asleep with Marc at the wheel.

It was a tough call. Thankfully, I had three solid hours of digging during which to decide. Lucky me.

Three

Marc hit five feet first, naturally, and as he grinned in triumph, completely covered in grave dirt, I dropped my shovel in defeat. I was done, and not a single threat from him could pry my tired, grimy ass off the ground. My formerly white T-shirt forgotten, I lay sweating on dew-damp grass as Marc rolled Bradley Moore into the hole, then shoveled dirt in on top of him. Then I took the keys Marc held out to me and snatched my shovel from the ground, my mood growing more foul with each step I took toward the car, in spite of my relief to be leaving the unmarked grave behind. This was not how I’d planned to spend my time off.

I stopped for coffee five times on the way home, and had to use the restroom at each stop. Marc slept the whole way, and his obnoxious snoring did more to keep me awake than the caffeine did during the drive from White Hall, Arkansas, to the Lazy S Ranch. My family’s property—devoid of domestic animals in spite of the title ranch—sat on the outskirts of Lufkin, Texas, sixty miles from the Louisiana border.

Yes, at twenty-three years old, I still lived with my parents. But so did three of my older brothers, and four of my fellow enforcers, though they technically lived in a guesthouse on the back of the property. The concept of a group dynamic is different for werecats than it is for humans. Pride members are very close, both emotionally and physically, especially the core group, consisting of the Alpha, his family, and the enforcers. We’ve always lived in large, mostly informal groups for protection, comfort, and social interaction. And because one of the primary duties of an enforcer is to protect and assist the Alpha, which we couldn’t do if we weren’t with him most of the time.

Fortunately, the advantages balanced out the drawbacks of being forever under my father’s watchful eye. Most of the time. And the number one benefit—other than free food and freshly folded laundry—was the fact that my family’s mostly wooded property backed up to the Davy Crockett National Forest and its 160,000 acres of woodland. Which made one hell of a big—and convenient—playground for a houseful of werecats.

It was nearly 10:00 a.m. when I turned Marc’s car onto the quarter-mile-long gravel driveway. I parked in the circle drive, as close to the front door as I could get, and heat hit me like a blast of steam from a furnace as I opened the car door. The 102-degree-heat index was our own personal inferno, a September-in-Texas specialty, guaranteed to melt tourists where they stood. But I was a native, and all the searing, blacktop-melting blaze drew from me was a weary sigh.

My boot heels sank into the gravel as I stood, and I glanced at Marc, where he still sat snoring against the passenger-side window. I should wake him up, I thought. But then, he should have offered to split the drive with me.

I was too tired to go to war with my conscience, and more than a little irritated with Marc. So, I cranked down the driver’s-side window to keep him from baking and closed the door gently, smiling to myself as Marc shifted in his seat, then resumed snoring, still out cold in spite of the heat.

My boots clomped as I trudged up onto the porch, and when I opened the front door, cool air rushed out to meet me. I sagged in the doorway for a moment, one hand on each side of the frame, letting the artificial breeze dry my sweat and chase away the heat that had been slowly draining my vitality.

In my room near the end of the long central hallway, I stripped completely, tossing my dirty clothes into a pile by the door. I considered putting them in the hamper, but since I had no plans to ever wear them again, going through that much effort seemed pointless.

I glanced around the room, happy to find everything just as I’d left it. My books—hundreds of them—were crammed two rows deep into my only bookshelf, the extras stacked horizontally wherever they would fit. My bed was unmade, because I hadn’t made it, and because I’d refused to let my mother into my room to clean since my first week home, when I’d realized she was using housework as an excuse to spy on me. That could not continue. Besides, I was damn well old enough to clean my own room. Or to not clean it in peace. So I’d told her to stay the hell out. She’d frowned at my language, but complied.

At my dresser, I paused to take off my watch and caught sight of my own reflection. I looked like shit. Dirty, sweaty, tangled, and…still wearing the diamond stud earrings I’d put on in concession to my original plans for the night before. It was a miracle I hadn’t lost them both—along with half my earlobe—to Dan Painter’s temper and desperate, flailing fists. Or his teeth.

As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I’d been completely unprepared for my run-in with Painter. After we dropped off the stray, Marc had laughed at my bewildered expression as he’d pulled item after item from a trunk emergency kit, the likes of which I’d never seen because I’d never had reason to use one. The kit included two shovels, a roll of 3 mm black plastic, duct tape, black jeans and a black T-shirt, a pair of old sneakers, and an ax.

I didn’t ask what the ax was for, because I doubted its uses involved fallen tree branches and cozy campfires. Regardless, Marc was nothing if not prepared. He was like an overgrown Boy Scout. A Boy Scout with gorgeous gold-flecked brown eyes and glossy black curls crowning a physique solid enough to stop a fucking freight train. A Boy Scout who could bring a girl screaming with a single lingering glance…

Okay, he really had little in common with the Boy Scouts, other than the whole overpreparedness thing. And his damned emergency kit hadn’t kept me from letting him bake in his own car, now, had it?

Thoroughly satisfied with my revenge, I dug out a change of underwear and a nightshirt and tossed them onto my bed, then plodded into my private bathroom and straight into the shower. Ten minutes later, I stepped out into the suddenly frigid bathroom, soaked but smelling of lavender-scented soap, rather than sweat and dirt. To a cat’s sensitive nose, smelling good is very, very important, especially in human form, where body odor, unlike personal scent, isn’t socially acceptable.

I was reaching for my robe when the first few grunts of Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” rang out from my cell phone. I pulled my robe from its hook and shoved my arms through the sleeves on my way out of the bathroom. In the middle of my bedroom floor I glanced around for my phone, my focus sliding over my dresser, bed, nightstand, and wall shelf before finally landing on my desk. There. Only lower.

My gaze dropped to the clothing I’d kicked off to the right of my door. Squatting in front of the pile, I searched my jeans pockets frantically, wondering who the hell would be calling me at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday. Unfortunately, I no longer had much contact with the world outside of the Lazy S, and my fellow enforcers wouldn’t bother knocking on my door before barging in, much less calling first.

Maybe it was Abby. She’d spent most of the summer on the ranch, recovering from her ordeal at Miguel’s hands with a fellow survivor—me. And she’d called me at least a dozen times in the three weeks she’d been home, with little to say except that she was fine. She seemed content to hear that I was fine, too, and to listen to me prattle on about my endless, exhaustive training.

But Abby should be back in school by now, so who…

Sammi. A smile formed on my face in spite of my fatigue as I thought of my college roommate, and how long it had been since I’d spoken to her.

My fingers closed around the phone and I flipped it open without bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?” I said, fully expecting to hear Sammi’s perky, full-speed chatter from the other end of the line.

“Miss me?” The man’s voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words.

The unexpected voice—and the angry question—surprised me so much that I fell on my tailbone, smacking the back of my skull against the edge of my desktop. Confused, and still rubbing the new bump on my head, I held the phone at arm’s length to read the number on the screen. I didn’t recognize it.

“Should I miss you?” I asked finally, pressing the phone against my ear.

“I guess that’s a matter of opinion, Faythe. My idea of what you should do obviously has little in common with your own.”

Irritation flared in my chest like heartburn. “Who the hell is this?” I demanded, half convinced that my judgmental caller had the wrong number, even though he knew my name.

Deep Throat clucked his tongue in my ear, and I gritted my teeth against the intimate sound and feel of his disapproval. “How soon they forget,” he whispered, and the enmity in his tone chilled me.

Bewildered, and now truly pissed off, I glanced at the phone again, hoping to identify the number on second glance. I couldn’t, yet the caller obviously knew me. In fact, he spoke as if I should have been expecting his call. As if we were picking up an old, unfinished conversation…

And suddenly I knew. Andrew.

Shock knocked the breath from my lungs. The phone slipped from my hand and landed in my lap, then cartwheeled to the floor with a carpet-muffled thud. Miraculously, it remained open.

I’d never heard my human ex speak a word in anger before, and the rage in his voice rendered it completely unrecognizable.

For a moment, I simply stared at the phone, too astounded to move. I hadn’t spoken to Andrew in three months, since before I’d quit school and agreed to work for my father. Hearing from him now was odd and uncomfortable, especially considering how mad he obviously was.

But then, that last part was at least partially my fault.

After surviving a beating from Miguel, taking a life in defense of my own, and becoming the country’s first and only female enforcer, I was no longer the same girl Andrew once knew. The entire college experience—including the exotic-because-he’s-normal human boyfriend—seemed really tame, and much less relevant to my new life. Which was actually my precollege life on steroids.

I’d tried to tell Andrew I was leaving school, and that Marc and I had gotten back together, but Andrew hadn’t answered his cell phone, and his roommate didn’t know where he was. And honestly, I thought it would be easier for all concerned if I let my efforts rest there, so we could all move on in peace.

Clearly I was wrong.

“What, all of a sudden you have nothing to say?” Andrew said, breaking into my thoughts. “That’s certainly new.”

So is your attitude. I picked up the phone and held it to my ear, unsure what I was going to say until the words came out of their own accord. “Andrew?” I asked, the gears in my brain grinding almost audibly as I tried to reconcile this bitter, sharp-tongued man with my Andrew, who was sweet, and funny, and…nice. I couldn’t do it.

“So you do remember me?” His sarcasm was every bit as sharp as my own claws.

“Of course I do.”

“I haven’t forgotten you, either.” He didn’t sound very pleased by that fact, and at the moment, the feeling was mutual.

Before I could reply, a harsh rustling sounded in my ear, as if he’d covered up the phone on his end of the line. Then I heard indecipherable angry words, and the line went silent. No static, and no breathing. He’d hung up.

The words end call, printed across the screen on my phone, confirmed it.

At least a minute later, my bedroom door swung open to smack against my knees, and Marc stuck his head around the edge to see what he’d hit. He found me still staring at my phone, my robe gaping open across one thigh. “You have to push the buttons to make that work,” he said, his expression completely serious.

“Thanks, smart-ass.” I shook my head to wake myself up. Fatigue and the shock of hearing from Andrew had pulled me past the end of my energy reserve.

Marc offered me his hand as he stepped into the room. I took it, and he hauled me up. He would have pulled me into an embrace, but I aimed a pointed glance at his grime-covered clothes and stepped back, banging my hip on the corner of my desk. “Something wrong with your phone?”