Prey (Shifters #4)(60)

“You didn’t leave us much choice. We had to verify that it was really Adam in that hole. And it was, as you know, which means Marc was still out in the woods somewhere. Fortunately, finding him was easier than I expected. Remind me later, and I’ll explain to you just how we did that.”
My eyebrows shot up and a satisfied smile bloomed on my face. Kevin didn’t know we knew about the chips, much less that we could track them! Which meant he wasn’t at home. But he’d figure all of that out the minute he stepped into his own house. So we couldn’t let that happen.
“Why don’t you tell me now?” I asked, stalling for time as I pinned the phone between my shoulder and my ear, then dug the chip tracker from my pocket. I typed Eckard’s code into it again, this time from memory.
Kevin chuckled. “How ‘bout I show you instead? Meet me at my house in an hour, and—”
“No!” I shouted, as the screen in front of me disappeared, only to be replaced a moment later with a progress bar and the word Loading…
Damn it! I hadn’t meant to be so obviously opposed to the meeting place. The gears in my brain whirred to life louder than the rush of my own pulse, scrambling for a good cover. “Someplace public. There’s no way we’re giving you home-field advantage.”
The loading screen dissolved, and new coordinates appeared, but I could tell nothing from the longitude and latitude, so I pressed the Map View button, and the progress bar appeared again as the new page loaded.
“You’re right.” Kevin chuckled again, and I was starting to truly hate the sound of his laughter. “Because you’re coming alone. If you don’t, Marc’s dead.”
Nooooo! I could not come so close to getting him back—alive—only to have him snatched away from me again!
My heart tried to claw its way up my throat, and speech was suddenly impossible. Instead, a choking sound erupted from my mouth as I dropped the gadget on the table and struggled to draw a fresh breath. Only my hand gripping the back of a folding chair kept me upright.
Jace was behind me in an instant, taking the phone from my hand. Breathe…he mouthed, rubbing my back with his free hand.
“Faythe?” Kevin said over the line. Jace put the phone up to his ear, but I snatched it back before he could speak, finally sucking in a deep breath.
“I’m here.” I took a longer, calmer breath that time, and nodded to Jace that I was okay, just as Dr. Carver put a glass of ice water on the table in front of me. “But I want proof that you have Marc. That he’s still alive.” 
“Hmm…” Footsteps sounded over the line, and a rough, scratching sound told me Kevin was covering the mouthpiece. Then he was back. “That’s gonna be hard to come by for the moment. He’s unconscious.”
Damn it. “Is he snoring?” I avoided Jace’s wounded gaze. “Or even just breathing loudly? I’ll recognize it, if it’s him.”
“You’re serious?” Kevin scoffed.
“As a neutered tom.”
Dan flinched at my phrasing, and Dr. Carver grinned—perhaps considering performing such a procedure on the wildcat. But Kevin got my point. “Fine. Just a second.” There was more rustling against the phone, then a soft sound met my ears: a strong, smooth inhalation, with just a hint of a rattle.
Tears formed in my eyes, flowing over when I blinked. I’d recognize that sleep-breathing anywhere. One long inhale through his nose, with a slight whistle on the front end, and a little puh sound at the end, where he exhaled through mostly closed lips. It sounded like he had a chest cold—hopefully not pneumonia—but Marc was very much alive.
For the moment, anyway.
I choked off a sob of relief as something brushed Kevin’s receiver again, then he was back. “Satisfied?”
“Not in the least.” I’d just tasted a scrap from the table, when what I really wanted—what I needed—was the whole damn feast. “So how’s this going to work?”
“A simple trade.” I could practically hear the satisfied smile in Kevin’s voice. “You for Marc. You show up alone, or we kill him. You show up without fur, or we kill him. You show up ready to play nice, or we kill him. Got it?”
Yeah, yeah. Standard hostage conditions, and about as sincere as a politician’s promise. “I got it. Who’s we?”
“Just me and a friend. I’m serious, Faythe,” Kevin warned, and all humor had drained from his voice, leaving it cold and empty. “I have no reason to keep Marc alive, except to exchange him for you. If that trade doesn’t work out, he’s no use to me.”
Kevin had been human once. Half-human, anyway. Had exile changed him so much? Or was this desperation to earn his way back into his birth Pride?
“I know.” I sipped from the water Dr. Carver had brought me, then turned my back on the toms and closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know, but… “What do you want from me, Kevin?”
Someone else—someone not Kevin—laughed lasciviously in the background, until an angry noise from Kevin shut him up. “Information. We just want to talk to you.”
Well, that would certainly be a first…not that I believed it. No one had ever expended so much effort before just to get me to talk; usually people worked to get me to shut up.
“So, what? I show up and you let Marc go? How’s he supposed to leave if he’s unconscious?”
“We knocked him out, and we can wake him up just as easily.”
My grip on the back of the chair tightened until the metal groaned. “Damn it, Kevin, I swear, if you hurt him, I’ll rip your arms out of their sockets and beat your friend to death with them while you bleed out.”
“Oh, I believe you,” he said, though the amusement in his voice said that he did not. “But Marc was hurt long before we got to him.”
“Thanks to another one of your goons. Yet you expect me to just hand myself over and trust you to let him go?”
Footsteps clomped over the line, and that soft refrigerator hum was back, this time followed by running water. “I don’t give a shit what you trust. He goes out the back door the minute you come in the front. Or not at all. We do this my way, or you can take Marc home wrapped in plastic, and have a double service on Saturday.”Fury shot through me like fire in my veins, and all three toms tensed at the rage and adrenaline I was dumping into the air. “You son of a bitch—”
“Save the drama,” Kevin snapped. “I’ve heard it all before. One hour,” he said, and this time his voice had the sound of finality. “At my house.” He rattled off an address I didn’t bother to write down—we knew damn well where he lived. “My watch says 11:07 p.m. If you’re not there at 12:07, Marc dies at 12:08.”
With that, the line went dead, and I was left staring at my phone. As I shoved it into my front right pocket, already bending for the backpack I’d dropped at some point during the phone call, my gaze caught on the tracker still lying on the table. I’d almost forgotten about it in the excitement of hearing Marc breathe.
“You do know they’re not going to let him go?” Jace said, as I picked up the palm-size gadget.
“Of course they won’t. They’ll kill him the moment I walk through the door.” I pressed a button on the side to “wake” the tracker, and a map appeared on-screen. “Which is why you and Dan have to go in through the back and get him out while I make a fuss in the front.”
Jace crossed his arms over his chest while Dan and Carver watched us both closely. “Don’t you think they’ll be expecting that?”
“Yes.” I looked up and met Jace’s eyes, showing him the steady determination in mine. “They’ll be expecting it in an hour, at Kevin’s house. Which is why we’re going to hit them twenty minutes from now. At Peter Yarnell’s.”
“What? Why Pete’s?” Dan’s eyebrows drew together in a deep frown. Dread, if I had my guess. If he and Pete had ever been friends in the past, they never would be again, after our little chat with Yarnell the day before.
“Because that’s where they are now.” I held up the tracker for them all to squint at. “And they won’t be expecting Dan, because his microchip is still at the ranch.” The guys looked surprised at that little reminder, and Dan even looked a little relieved.
But then Jace frowned and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “That’s assuming Kevin has Eckard’s microchip with him.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” I set my bag on the folding chair and dug through it, mentally inventorying the supplies. We wouldn’t need most of them, now that we wouldn’t be hiking through the woods, but it never hurt to be overprepared. “Kevin has no idea we know about the chips, and he won’t until he gets home.”
“What if he’s on the way there now?” Dr. Carver asked, a can of Coke halfway to his mouth. 
“He isn’t.” I showed him the electronic map again, where Eckard’s blip was still sitting pretty at Yarnell’s house. “And if he leaves while we’re en route, we’ll follow them. At the very least, we’ll still catch them half an hour early, and hopefully off guard.” I zipped the bag and threw it over my shoulder. “But we have to move now. Let’s go!”