Lion's Share(17)

“I swear on my life, Rick. I won’t let her out of my sight.”





The guys arrived thirty-five minutes later, which told me they’d broken every speed limit between Jace’s lodge, which functioned as the capital of the Appalachian Territory, and the dead taxidermist’s house.

“Holy fuuuuuck,” Chase Taylor breathed, glancing around the gruesome cellar. He ran one hand through his dark curls and for a second, he looked just like his brother Brian. Only older.

“Those sick bastards!” my brother Lucas said from the bottom tread.

A heartbeat later, Isaac pushed him out of the way and clomped down the last three steps. He followed Lucas’s gaze to the Abby-board, and after a second spent processing, Isaac pulled me into a hug designed to block my view of the pictures. As if I hadn’t already seen them. “You okay?” he said into the top of my head.

“No. You’re smothering me.”

Isaac finally let me go, and a second later, Lucas, my second-oldest brother, pulled me into an identical embrace. At six foot six, Luke was a full half foot taller than our father, and as I had, he’d inherited our mother’s pale skin and red curls, though he kept his pretty closely cropped.

Isaac was the youngest of my brothers, yet still two years older than I. He had our dad’s straight brown hair and no freckles at all, and at six foot two, he was practically dwarfed by Lucas.

“What is all this shit?” Chase ran one finger over the nose of one of the mannequins, which resembled a skinned cat about his size, in feline form.

“They’re forms used for stuffing taxidermied animals,” I explained. “As near as I can tell from an internet search, cat-shaped forms are kind of hard to come by. My guess is that they were custom-ordered from a company that specializes in safari hunting supplies.”

“That is so fucked up,” Mateo murmured.

Jace had left the cellar untouched so that his enforcers could grasp the full scope of what we were facing. He and I had spent the past half hour upstairs, combing through the information we’d gathered about the house’s owner. His name was Gene Hargrove, and based on current pay stubs from a gun-and-archery range, taxidermy was just his hobby.

A very expensive, dangerous, time-consuming hobby.

Unfortunately, according to all the news stations, the name of victim who’d died in Gene Hargrove’s house was Joe Mathews. Which meant that the gun-toting, shifter-stuffing Hargrove was still out there. Still hunting.

Teo whistled as he glanced over the taxidermy tools and a small supply of unfamiliar chemicals. “How did we not see this coming?”

Jace shrugged, but his grim expression and the tight line of his jaw belied the casual gesture. “They’ve been targeting strays. Wildcats.”

“Titus didn’t say anything about wildcats going missing? I smell at least…what?” Teo glanced at the rest of us. “Six? More?”

“At least,” Jace agreed. “I’m waiting for a call back from him, so we’ll know something soon.” Titus Alexander was Jace’s contact in the Lion’s Den—a stray who’d been infected several years before. I hadn’t met him, but both Jace and Faythe spoke very highly of him.

“But I think if he knew about it, he’d have told me,” Jace continued. “The most likely breakdown of information is between the other wildcats and the Lion’s Den itself. As hard as Faythe and I have worked to open a solid line of communication with Titus, he’s working even harder to get the other strays to trust him. Some of them see him as a traitor for working with us.”

I couldn’t blame the wildcats for their distrust of us, and I knew Jace didn’t either. Though most of the other Alphas saw the need for and inevitability of a Pride comprised of strays in the free zone, few were as eager as Jace, Faythe, and Marc were to actually take that step, and the wildcats could no doubt feel that reluctance to accept them.

“Have Faythe and Marc heard anything?” Lucas asked, and Jace hesitated before answering.

“I don’t know. Rick offered to call them and the rest of the council so we could concentrate on cleaning this mess up and finding the sick bastard who’s been stalking his daughter.”

Every gaze in the room found me again. “She shouldn’t be down here,” Isaac said.

Jace turned to me with the first hint of a smile I’d seen from him since we’d stomped all over that line we’d both known better than to cross. Again. “You wanna tell them?”

I sucked in a deep breath. “You’re looking at your newest coworker. I was sworn in this morning with six Alphas in attendance.” I shrugged. “The ceremony broke some kind of record.”

For a moment, there was only stunned silence.

“Why would you—” Lucas asked, but Isaac interrupted him.

“Why would Dad let you do that?”

“It wasn’t up to him.” I gave them another shrug, and all four turned to Jace.

“She’s right,” Luke growled. “Why would you let her do that?”

Jace bristled as if even in human form, his fur was standing on end. “I make the decisions for this Pride, and I don’t owe anyone an explanation.” He cleared his throat, and my brothers shuffled their feet on the grimy concrete, obviously unaccustomed to being reprimanded by their Alpha. At least, in front of an audience. “You four bring in the cleaning supplies and get to work. Teo, I want every photo and scrap of paper filed and catalogued.”

Mateo nodded, then gestured for the others to proceed him up the stairs.

“Abby,” Jace said, loud enough for them all to hear, “you’re on intel duty. Go through every file on Hargrove’s computer. And all his emails. We need to know who the rest of the hunters are and how many of them are left. And where they live, because that may tell us where Hargrove is hiding.”

And if he were smart, he would be hiding.

I nodded, already jogging up the steps after the guys. I would also go through Hargrove’s search history and any online bank statements—we hadn’t found any hard copies. But most of what I was actually looking for, I could never reveal to the others.

Not even to my Alpha, even though it killed me to be lying to Jace.





By the time the sun set three hours later, the guys had cleaned the entire house top to bottom—a skill most toms learned on the job yet rarely used at home. They’d made two trips to the county dump with trunks full of garbage, then had catalogued and packed up everything we would need to keep. Or have to bury. They’d found the desiccated remains of two headless shifters wrapped in tarps behind the shed.

When they came to pack up Hargrove’s computer for further investigation at the lodge, I’d already uncovered the names of ten more members of the sick hunting club.

Six were already dead: Joe Mathews, who’d been killed in Hargrove’s house, the three hunters I’d killed over fall break, and two more who’d been mauled to death in previous attacks, just like Mathews.

“Well?” Jace said as Teo and Isaac packed the cumbersome desktop and its accessories in one of the boxes they’d brought from the lodge.

I swiveled in the rolling chair to face him. “From what I can tell, the other maulings each took place in the victim’s home, which suggests that the killer actually intended to hit Hargrove here, in his own house. Either Hargrove’s guest—Mathews—was here alone when the stray broke in, or Hargrove survived the attack and escaped.”

“One of the blood scents in the basement matches the owner’s scent all over the rest of the house, but we can’t tell how fresh it is, with so many other overlying scents.” Teo shrugged. “He could have been injured in the attack, or he could have cut himself on one of his own tools months ago.”

I blinked, sorting through both information and procedures that were new to me. “Whether he was hurt or not, you think he escaped, right?”

“Or the stray abducted him,” Isaac said. “Maybe Hargrove missed the attack, and he’s the one who hung the pictures afterward. Maybe he killed the stray. Or maybe he was taken and killed by the stray, and another member of their weird-ass safari club hung your pictures up as a threat. Or a warning.”

“Okay.” Jace nodded, obviously thinking it all through. “So, how many hunters are still out there?”

“As far as I can tell, four, counting Hargrove.” I dropped the wireless mouse into the box Isaac held out for me, then spun in the rolling chair to face my Alpha again. “Two of them live down south, near the border of the free zone.” The distance could explain why they hadn’t been killed by the vigilante shifter yet, as well as how they were able to target so many strays, with their operation apparently centered firmly in the Appalachian Territory.

“And the third?”

“His name’s Darren, but that’s all I’ve found on him. They don’t use his last name in any of the emails, and I haven’t found any reference to where he lives or works, or even what he does for a living.”

“That’s not a lot to go on,” Chase said on his way through the living room with another box.

“I know, but we could find more information at the other crime scenes.”