“Take the furniture to the town dump. You can bring the rest of the mess with you when you come home, and we’ll burn it. Fortunately,” my father continued, as I popped open my can and drank from it, “with the temperature so low, it shouldn’t start to smell for at least a couple of days.”
I wanted to ask what would happen if we hadn’t found Marc in a couple of days, but I didn’t, because I already knew the answer. If we hadn’t found him by then, we wouldn’t find him alive.
“Okay, about these names…” A pencil tapped against paper, and I knew my dad was staring at the list I’d given him. “Michael’s given me addresses for two of them, but we have no record of the other three.” Which wasn’t much of a surprise. We tried to keep up with the strays living near our territory, but our lists became outdated fairly quickly, as strays were killed in skirmishes and others popped up to replace them. “And I can’t do much with the partials.”
“I figured.” I sighed, already tired of dead ends. “Just give me what you have, please.” I scribbled as my father spoke, then thanked him for the information.
“Ground rules,” he began, before I could hang up gracefully, and I glanced around the table to make sure the guys were all listening. “Talk to them one at a time. Strays are loners, so that shouldn’t be too hard. But then again, things seem to be changing in the free zone, so you never know. But if you can’t get a stray by himself, don’t approach him. Just follow him until he is alone. Got it?”
“Of course,” I said, and all around the table, the guys nodded silently.
“You can do the talking, but Ethan and Parker are in charge if persuasion proves necessary.”
I pouted a bit over that one. I’d never played bad cop, and couldn’t think of a more appropriate time to start. But if I argued, my dad would pull me off the case, regardless of my relationship to Marc. Because if that relationship got in the way of my work, it would put us all in danger.“And keep me updated.”
“We will.”
Again, I started to say goodbye, but again my father interrupted. “Ethan?”
“Yeah?” my brother said in the general direction of my phone, around a mouthful of pizza crust.
“Make sure she eats something.”
I rolled my eyes, but Ethan grinned and washed his bite down with half a can of Coke. “No problem.”
I said goodbye to my father and slid my phone into my pocket, then snatched a slice of pizza from my untouched plate, saluting my brother with it to demonstrate my cooperation. “Let’s go.”
Parker grabbed his keys while Dan shrugged into his jacket, and they all followed me out the front door, Ethan carrying the rest of my dinner for me. But I couldn’t think about food, and knew I would have no appetite until we’d gotten Marc back. Alive.
And eliminated the sorry bastards who’d taken him.
Ten
“So, who is Ben Feldman?” I leaned forward from the middle row, resting my elbows on the back of the passenger seat, inches from Dan’s head. Parker was driving, because it was his car, and Dan won shotgun by default, because he was the one with the directions.
Feldman was the only stray on the list whose address Dan knew without consulting the information my father had given us.
The stray turned slightly in his seat to face me and Ethan, who sat on my left. “Feldman got bit about seven years ago. That makes him kinda old for a stray, right?”
I shrugged. “I guess.” Dr. Carver claimed that because of their typically violent lifestyle, the average postinfection life span for a stray was under three years. I didn’t know if that was true, but Dan didn’t seem to doubt it. He’d probably heard those figures from Marc, who’d already lived far beyond that average.
Ben Feldman… Why did that sound familiar? “Would this be the same Ben you told about us coming through the free zone on Friday night?”
“Uh, yeah.” Dan glanced at Ethan, then back at me. “Before I met Marc, everything I knew about werecats I got from Ben Feldman.”
I leaned back in my seat and stared out at the dark road, thinking for a moment. “Was Feldman one of the cats who ambushed us the other night?”
“No, but I couldn’t swear he wasn’t in with the second wave.”
Which we’d never actually seen.
“So, are we assuming this is related to the ambush?” Parker glanced from me to Ethan in the rearview mirror.
“Until we find evidence to the contrary, yes.” I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest. “It’s too much of a coincidence, otherwise.” Feldman had to be connected to the ambush, because he was the only one Dan had told about our stop in Natchez.
“I can’t see Ben being mixed up in any of this. He’s a good guy.” Dan loosened his seat belt and twisted even farther in his seat, as if showing us his earnest expression would convince us. “Out of all the guys on that list, he’s the one I’d guess would help us out. He’s big and he’s got a temper, but he’s smart and he knows what’s right.”
“Oh, good!” Ethan’s green eyes brightened with mock mirth. “Maybe instead of throwing empty beer bottles at us when we wake him up in the middle of the night, he’ll show us in and serve hot tea!”
Dan glared at him, but Ethan’s good humor couldn’t be stifled. Even at midnight, on a strange highway in the free zone.
Unfortunately, after nearly an hour of driving, we got neither empty bottles nor hot tea, because Mr. Feldman—our best shot at peaceful information, in Dan’s opinion—wasn’t home. So we moved down the list to Hooper Galloway, because he lived the closest to Feldman.
Galloway lived in a tiny rental house crowded into a street already packed with dozens more just like his. There was no front yard to speak of, and standing on his porch in the middle of the night made me nervous. I was sure some nosy, insomniac neighbor was peering through a dusty set of miniblinds at that very moment, wondering why a young woman and three large men were knocking on the Galloway boy’s door at nearly one in the morning.
But as thoroughly as I scanned the darkness, I could detect no one watching. The streetlight in front of the house was busted, and human eyes wouldn’t have been able to see much of us at all.
When Dan’s first, polite knock got no response, Parker took over, pounding on the door with a volume and tempo which could not be ignored. We were assuming Galloway was home, based on the car parked in the driveway, which reeked of stray. So I nodded when Parker asked me with a mimed knock whether or not he should give it another try. But that proved unnecessary, as uneven footsteps thumped toward us from within the house.
The white-painted steel front door opened, leaving only a storm door between me and Hooper Galloway. Who obviously wasn’t yet fully awake. “This better be—” he began, voice rough with sleep. Then his gaze found me briefly before flicking to the three large toms at my back. Galloway’s eyes widened when his gaze landed on Dan, whom he clearly recognized, but he did not invite us in.
“Hooper Galloway?” I asked, and his eyes narrowed, nostrils finally flaring to confirm my species. Most strays would live and die without ever laying eyes on a tabby, and I knew from his own scent that Galloway had not been among the toms who’d attacked us three nights before.
“Who the hell are you?” Spoken like a man who has no idea that a screen door isn’t enough of a barrier between himself and the serious trouble I was dying to unleash on someone.
But I kept my temper in check; his voluntary cooperation would get us information much faster than having to beat it out of him. As much fun as that might have been, under the circumstances. “My name is Faythe Sanders, and I’m an enforcer for the south-central Pride. As are two of the gentlemen behind me. We’d like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”
Galloway only blinked at me, and I could almost see comprehension slide across his features as my words sank in. One by one, evidently. Fear glinted in his eyes, but it was pigheaded stubbornness that tightened his grip on the screen door handle. As if that would keep us out.
I raised both eyebrows and let a wry smile turn up one corner of my mouth. “Whoops. I phrased that as a question, didn’t I? My mistake.” I stepped back and Ethan wrapped one hand around the door handle—one of those old, flimsy metal ones with a button at the top for your thumb—and pulled it right out of the door frame with a single tug. Metal screws squealed as they tore free from the wood, and Ethan stepped past me holding the door with both hands.I could have done that myself, of course, but I was supposed to be playing the good cop, which meant I didn’t get to break stuff unless the whole thing went downhill and we went for plan B: bad cop/worse cop.
“Now, Mr. Galloway, you have two choices. You can either step aside and let us in, or you can hold your ground and be forcibly removed, just like your door.”
He moved back faster than I could catch more than a whiff of his fresh fear.
“Thank you.” I stepped past Galloway into his living room, flipping the switch as I went. Dim light flooded the room from a cheap ceiling-fan fixture overhead, and I made myself at home on the ratty futon serving as his couch while the guys followed me inside. Parker was the last one in, and he bolted the still-functioning door while Ethan propped the storm door against a bare, white wall.