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. Hes dead.
We usually have to work much harder to identify corpses not of our own making.
By which, of course, he meant Marcs making. Marc was my fathers de facto executionerthe 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 Moores license.
Thats unusual. Theyre 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 wasnt 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 couldnt see me. No, no bumps that Ive seen. Umhang 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 Moores face, his beautiful eyes staring up into nothing.
Marc lifted Moores 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 strays 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, Ill give him all of your paycheck.
Hmm, theres 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 hed 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 Marcs eyes. He frowned sternly at me, but his lips held a hint of a smile. Dont even say it, he warned. Im not digging this grave by myself. Not even for your annual salary. So quit looking at the dirt like its going to stain your soul, princess, and get to work. Openly smiling now, he tossed me the shovel one-handed.
I caught it, though Id literally never held a shovel before. Cats have great reflexes, which isnt 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, Id 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 drivers seat, Id be afraid to blink, much less sleep. Marcs 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 didnt apply to him, simply because it hadnt 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 Id 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 Id 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 familys propertydevoid of domestic animals in spite of the title ranchsat 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. Weve 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 couldnt do if we werent with him most of the time.
Fortunately, the advantages balanced out the drawbacks of being forever under my fathers watchful eye. Most of the time. And the number one benefitother than free food and freshly folded laundrywas the fact that my familys mostly wooded property backed up to the Davy Crockett National Forest and its 160,000 acres of woodland. Which made one hell of a bigand convenientplayground for a houseful of werecats.
It was nearly 10:00 a.m. when I turned Marcs 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 drivers-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.
I was too tired to go to war with my conscience, and more than a little irritated with Marc. So, I cranked down the drivers-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 Id left it. My bookshundreds of themwere crammed two rows deep into my only bookshelf, the extras stacked horizontally wherever they would fit. My bed was unmade, because I hadnt made it, and because Id refused to let my mother into my room to clean since my first week home, when Id 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 Id told her to stay the hell out. Shed 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, andstill wearing the diamond stud earrings Id put on in concession to my original plans for the night before. It was a miracle I hadnt lost them bothalong with half my earlobeto Dan Painters temper and desperate, flailing fists. Or his teeth.
As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, Id been completely unprepared for my run-in with Painter. After we dropped off the stray, Marc had laughed at my bewildered expression as hed pulled item after item from a trunk emergency kit, the likes of which Id never seen because Id 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 didnt 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 hadnt 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 cats sensitive nose, smelling good is very, very important, especially in human form, where body odor, unlike personal scent, isnt socially acceptable.
I was reaching for my robe when the first few grunts of Pinks 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 Id 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 wouldnt bother knocking on my door before barging in, much less calling first.
Maybe it was Abby. Shed spent most of the summer on the ranch, recovering from her ordeal at Miguels hands with a fellow survivorme. And shed called me at least a dozen times in the three weeks shed 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 Id 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 Sammis perky, full-speed chatter from the other end of the line.
Miss me? The mans voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words.
The unexpected voiceand the angry questionsurprised 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 arms length to read the number on the screen. I didnt recognize it.
Should I miss you? I asked finally, pressing the phone against my ear.
I guess thats 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 couldnt, 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.
Id 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 hadnt spoken to Andrew in three months, since before Id 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 countrys first and only female enforcer, I was no longer the same girl Andrew once knew. The entire college experienceincluding the exotic-because-hes-normal human boyfriendseemed really tame, and much less relevant to my new life. Which was actually my precollege life on steroids.
Id tried to tell Andrew I was leaving school, and that Marc and I had gotten back together, but Andrew hadnt answered his cell phone, and his roommate didnt 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.