Prey (Shifters #4)(23)

“What’s…uh…going on?” Galloway shrugged nervously, addressing his question to Dan, the only one of us he might—almost—trust.
“You know Marc Ramos, right?” Dan sat next to me on the futon and gestured for Galloway to sit in the only chair, while Ethan and Parker remained standing—a constant and obvious threat.
Galloway nodded hesitantly, sinking into a decent-looking overstuffed armchair—easily the nicest piece of furniture in the room. And probably in the house. “That big Mexican tom who got kicked out…” His own words seemed to sink in, and his voice faded as his gaze traveled over us again. “You’re looking for Marc? What did he do?”
I raised one eyebrow over his assumption that we were trying to apprehend Marc.
“He disappeared.” I glanced at Ethan, unsure how much to tell the stray before asking our questions. But Galloway’s expression had shifted from fear to genuine eagerness and curiosity. This was a man looking for information, rather than hiding it.
Ethan shrugged, leaving the decision up to me, so I turned back to the stray. “Do you have any idea where Marc is, or who he’s with?”
Galloway appeared confused. “Why would I? He’s your friend. And rumor has it you two are more than just friends.”
I started to roll my eyes and ignore the implication— accurate though it was—but stopped when I recognized an opportunity to drive home my determination. “That’s right. And I’d do anything to find him, and the bastard who took him.”
“Whoa, someone took him?” Galloway sat straighter in his chair and ran one hand through shaggy black hair as he glanced at Dan for confirmation. “I thought you meant he’d skipped town or something.”
“No.” I leaned forward to underline the importance of what I was about to say. “He was taken by force, and we’ll get him back the same way, if necessary. Did his abduction have anything to do with the attack on our caravan on Friday?” 
“What attack?” Galloway scrunched his forehead in an exaggerated look of confusion, and his heart beat just a little bit faster. Which gave me a baseline. His reaction said he knew something about the ambush, but his lack of a reaction earlier said that he truly knew nothing about what happened to Marc.
Either that, or he was a really good actor. I wasn’t prepared to give Galloway that much credit yet.
“You were in the second wave of the ambush, weren’t you?” I pinned him with my gaze, and I swear the tom actually squirmed in his chair. There goes the good-actor theory….
“I don’t know what you’re—”
But I’d already moved on. “We thought you were after the tabbies,” I said, still watching him as if I could read his mind just by looking into his eyes. “But you were after Marc, weren’t you? Why?”
Galloway’s gaze flicked quickly from me, to Ethan, to Parker, and back again, and he began to fidget with a loose thread on the arm of his chair. “Look, I’m not the one you want to talk to about this—”
“But you’re the one who’s here.” Parker took a menacing step forward, arms crossed over his chest. “So go easy on yourself. Tell us what the hell you guys want with Marc.”
“They don’t want Marc, they want him dead.” Galloway sighed, as if giving up the information had somehow tarnished his badge of honor.
It had bruised my soul.
Terror clenched around my heart so tightly that at first it refused to beat. They wanted Marc dead, and now he was missing, all except for several pints of his blood. Had they gotten what they wanted?
No. I couldn’t make myself believe it. Not while there were still questions unanswered by that theory.
If they’d killed Marc, why take his body and leave the others?
I took a deep breath and nodded to Ethan’s questioning gaze to tell him I was all right. Then I turned back to Galloway and forced myself to focus. “They?”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea! I just do what I’m told.”
“By whom?” I scooted to the edge of the futon, when what I really wanted to do was stand up and pace. Pacing helped me think. But I sat still, because the stray would likely read my pacing as aggression—like a caged cat. Not a good impression coming from the “good” cop.
He glanced at Dan, as if for permission, or an opinion about what he was about to say, but Dan could only shrug, clearly at a loss. “Pete Yarnell.”
The name sounded familiar. Dan nodded on the edge of my vision, and I turned to him. “You know Pete?”
“I met him a couple of times. His name’s on the list.”
Oh, yeah. He was the only tom my father hadn’t been able to find an address for.
“Man, you made them a list?” Galloway looked both shocked and impressed by Dan’s nerve. “You better watch it. They’ll be after you next.”
My head swiveled in his direction so fast I got an instant headache. “Next, after whom? Marc? Why are they after Marc?”
Galloway closed his eyes briefly, then met my gaze reluctantly, as if already ashamed by what he was about to admit. “I don’t know who took your boyfriend, or what they want. But it wasn’t one of us. At least, not that I know of. On Friday, we were trying to take him out of the picture, but that obviously didn’t work. And I haven’t heard anything about a second attempt.”
“Why was there a first attempt?” Ethan stepped closer to me for a better view of our new informant.
“Because he’s a fucking traitor!” Galloway sat straighter, his courage evidently bolstered by what he saw as the unblemished truth. Then he turned to Dan. “And they won’t be very happy with you, either, when they find out you’re picking up where Marc left off.”Frustrated almost beyond rational thought, I turned to Dan. “What the hell is he talking about?”
He sighed. “Pete thinks Marc’s still working for your dad.”
I shook my head; comprehension wouldn’t come. “Why would he think that?”
“Because nobody really believes he got kicked out in some kind o’ political squabble.” Dan hesitated, clearly preparing to say something I wasn’t going to like. “You have to understand how it looks to them. To the strays that don’t know Marc.” He gestured at Galloway as an example. “Marc’s a legend. A stray living with the Pride cats, bangin’ one of their princesses—no offense—” I waved him on, and he continued “—doin’ the messy jobs so the Pride cats don’t have to get their hands dirty.”
“That’s not true!” I snapped. “We’re all out there getting our hands dirty. Enforcers fight nearly every day to protect and defend our territory—not to mention the entire species—from trespassers stomping all over our land and rogues out there making no attempt to hide their existence from humans. We’re trying to keep everyone safe. Both Pride and stray.”
Dan rolled his eyes. “I get it. You’re the National Guard and the fuckin’ ASPCA all rolled into one. But what they see is a hired gun that’s been pickin’ them off one by one for the last decade or so. And now he’s livin’ here with them—”
“Still picking us off one at a time,” Galloway finished for him.
I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”
“Rumor has it he’s here to clean house for the Prides,” Dan said. “To rid the free zone of strays, once and for all.”
“What?” I felt my eyebrows arch halfway up my forehead, and my fellow Pride cats looked just as upset as I was by that little nugget of information. “Why the hell would they think that?” I demanded. “Marc’s a stray, just like everyone else here.”
“He’s a stray, but not like everybody else,” Painter insisted, clearly surprised that I couldn’t see his point. “He’s got training and knowledge and connections. He’s a threat. And everyone here knows where his loyalties lie, and it ain’t with every common stray that crosses his path.”
I laughed bitterly at the irony, and looked at Ethan. “If they only knew.”
“Knew what?” Galloway glanced back and forth between us. If he were in cat form, his eager ears would have swiveled in my direction.
“The Prides don’t want Marc.” I spit the vile truth, hating each word as I said it. “My father’s the only Alpha who ever accepted a stray into a Pride, and he’s paying for that right now.” I made myself stop because I wasn’t sure how much Dan and Galloway knew about my father’s political problems. Or how much they should know, considering Dan’s habit of sharing information with our enemies and Galloway’s tendency to work for them. “Marc’s about as welcome in most of the Prides as he is here.” 
Painter shrugged, a gesture that was starting to look habitual. “Well, at least the Pride cats aren’t trying to kill him.”
Not so far, anyway.
“So, wait…” Parker said to Galloway, drawing me back on track. “What do you mean, Marc’s picking you off one at a time?”
Galloway shrugged. “Just what I said. Guys are going missing. Just…gone. And everyone knows it’s Marc. He’s killing them, for your dad.”