Prey (Shifters #4)(65)

“What?” I was honestly thrown off by his first question; Ryan’s was the last name I’d expected to hear from Kevin’s mouth.
“Any idea how he got out of his cage?”
No. So far as I knew, no one had figured that out yet. But responding to Kevin’s question—even one I had no answer for—could be construed as cooperation, and I couldn’t let them think I was capitulating so early.
“So Kevin asks the questions, and Peter likes to hit girls. What’s your role in this?” I leaned to my left to peer at Dan around Kevin’s arm. “I mean, other than informant and traitor…?” Because he was the only one who could have told them Ryan was missing. My father hadn’t reported that development to the council, because technically they had no authority in the matter. And until the larger pile of cat shit hit the fan, we were hoping we could find him before anyone else found out.
So much for that idea…
Kevin stepped into my line of sight to block Dan from view, so I leaned the other way. “What are you getting out of this, other than Milo Mitchell’s pocket change?” 
Dan shrugged, looking miserable. “Membership has its privileges.”
“Membership to what?” I demanded. “You were just eight months’ probation away from membership in the biggest Pride in the country, and you threw it all away! Why?”
“Because he sees logic, which is more than I can say for you recently,” Kevin snapped, moving between me and Dan again. “Your dad said he’d consider accepting Dan if he could keep his nose clean until September. But by then, the war will be over, and your Pride won’t even exist. Dan’s smart enough to side with the inevitable victor early on.”
“But for what?” I leaned the other way again, already tired of having to fight for eye contact. “You sold us out—sold Marc out—for a little cash!”
“No, that was Pete,” Dan snapped. “I just wanted out of the free zone.”
“Oh…” Understanding finally came, and I almost felt sorry for Dan. Almost. “You think they’re going to take you in. Did they tell you that? That after you’ve served as their spy, or their foot soldier, or whatever, that they’ll let you play their reindeer games? Because they won’t. You know that, don’t you, Dan?”
Surely he wasn’t that gullible….
Kevin growled, and backhanded me so hard I fell over sideways again, the living room spinning before me. I never even saw the blow coming. “My father will stand by his word.”
“The hell he will….” I mumbled, my words slurred by shock and the pain radiating through my right cheek. I tasted blood in my mouth, and licked it from my lips as Pete pulled me upright again, probably positioning me for another blow, rather than for my comfort. “He said you could come back, too, didn’t he?” I pinned Kevin with my gaze. “How often has he promised? How soon did he say you’d be back home, in your old room? Next month? Next week? Or was it last month?”
Kevin glowered at me. “Plans change.”
“Wow, you’re so naive for a bad guy!” I let genuine amusement leak into my tone, then leaned forward to spit more blood on Yarnell’s pale, plush carpet before I met Kevin’s eyes again. “He’s not going to take you back, and my bet is you already know Dan’ll never make it to the northwest Pride. So how’s he going to die? In a fight? Or peacefully in his sleep? Or are you going to bait one of us into killing him for you? Either way—” I leaned around him again to catch Dan’s gaze “—once you hand over Manx and Kaci, they’ll be done with you, and you’ll end your existence in an unmarked hole in the ground. Maybe right next to Adam Eckard. Because the truth is that my father’s the only Alpha in the country who’d seriously consider admitting a stray into his Pride. The proof of that is lying unconscious in the back bedroom.”
Marc, of course.
“Where you put him.” I glared at Dan, unable to censor my anger and betrayal even if he was my only shot at survival. “Were you there when they came for him? Did you fight him? We’d never have known, would we? Since you were the one who reported it, we didn’t think twice about your scent in his house.”
Dan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “I wasn’t there. I knew they were going to implant him, but I couldn’t help, or he’d know I was in on it. I didn’t know the guys they sent, and I didn’t even know when they were going to do it. I never touched him.”
“Yet he’s going to die because of you! What did Marc ever do to you? Other than teach you to fight and welcome you into his home?”
“Enough.” Kevin slapped me again, and this time when he picked me up, I spit blood in his face, knowing it would hurt his broken nose to wipe it off. He dabbed at his nose gingerly with the towel Pete had stuffed into my mouth, then dropped it on the floor, fury glowing crimson in his cheeks. “I’m going to give you one chance to answer, then I’ll let Pete go to work on you. How peacefully you die is up to you.”I rolled my eyes again, then met his gaze to let him see the derision swimming in mine. “I may be a girl, but I bet my rear claws I have bigger balls than either of you assholes. Not that that’s saying much.” Yarnell growled on my right, but I continued as if I hadn’t heard him. “I’m not going to answer your questions, no matter what you do to me. So why don’t you just save us all the trouble and kill me now?”
Not that I expected them to actually do that. In fact, I was kind of counting on their refusal. And hoping that the madder they got, the more careless they’d get. If I could stall them long enough for one of the toms to come out of their drugged sleep—and Marc was the most likely to wake up, since he’d been put under first—we might have a chance to make it out alive.
Kevin squatted to watch me from eye level, as if whatever he had to say was too important to be spoken at any real distance. “If you won’t cooperate, and we can’t beat the information out of you, we’ll just bring one of your boys in here and let you watch us beat him until you answer. How ‘bout that?”
I refused to answer, my jaws clenched shut so hard I thought I heard the bones creak. Taking my own beating was one thing, but I couldn’t watch the guys suffer in my stead. No more than I could have watched Abby raped, or Kaci kidnapped. And Kevin clearly knew it.
“Should we start with Marc? I’m assuming he’s the one you’d most want to protect. But I don’t know…” His voice rose on the end, and he glanced up at Yarnell as if for an opinion. “Jace and the doc have nothing to do with any of this. They’re innocent bystanders, of a sort. And I’m guessing you don’t want to see them suffer, either. Maybe we should flip a coin….”
“Good idea, dumbass!” I knew smarting off was a bad idea, but I just couldn’t help myself. My mouth was the only weapon I had left. “You have a three-sided coin?”
Kevin bitch-slapped me again, and this time my lower lip split wide open, and blood spilled over my chin. “Go get Marc. He should be coming out of it soon anyway. I have a feeling there’s nothing she won’t do to spare him pain. Except marry him.”
Twenty-Eight
Yarnell clomped off down the hall, and I wiped blood from my chin onto my shoulder, then stared at Dan, begging him silently to look at me. “Dan, don’t let them do this! Marc never did anything but help you!”
Dan turned away from me, but his leg began to bounce, his foot rapidly tapping the thick carpet. I was getting to him.
“How can you sit there and watch them beat him for no reason?” Yes, Marc had often pounded information out of hostile trespassers, but Kevin didn’t want information out of him. He wanted it from me, and we’d never hosted a pounding by proxy. That was a line my Pride would never cross. “You can stop this, Dan. You can do the right thing. Hell, you fought with us in the ambush. Was that part of your act?” 
He shrugged, still avoiding my eyes. “I’m not close personal friends with every stray out there. Besides, I didn’t kill anyone. And it’s not like I could stand there and watch you all get slaughtered.”
“But you can now?”
And finally he met my desperate, imploring gaze, silently begging me to understand. “Now, it’s him or me, Faythe.” His voice was empty. Hollow. Detached. That was the only way he could remain sane, because inside, I knew Dan Painter was a good person. He’d fought alongside us because he and Marc were friends. I was sure of that, because Marc was a wonderful judge of character.
But Kevin had preyed on his worst fears and his biggest dreams, convincing Dan that his only shot for acceptance by and protection from his fellow werecats lay in giving them Marc.
“If I help you, they’ll kill me.” He tossed his head at Kevin, who nodded smugly. “And even if they don’t, your dad will. Every cat in your Pride will be after me within the hour, and you know it. I’m sorry, but it’s too late. I gotta think about me.”
Fresh tears formed in my eyes, and this time the pain had nothing to do with my bruises. Dan was breaking my heart. Killing some relentlessly optimistic part of me that had truly believed Pinocchio would listen to Jiminy Cricket in the end. That good would triumph over evil, as trite as that sounded.