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 south-central 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 l
ong 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 guest house 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.