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.
Chapter 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.