“I know.” I sighed and stared out the window as a series of bare, frozen fields flew by in the dark. “We were really close this afternoon, though. I’m hoping I can talk her into it as soon as I get back.”
“Good.” He paused and yawned again, triggering one of my own. “Get some sleep.”
“I’ll try.”
It was nearly three in the morning when we got back to Marc’s house. Dan crashed on the couch, and Ethan, Parker and I curled up together on Marc’s bed, like a pile of lions. I honestly don’t think I could have slept surrounded by Marc’s scent in his absence, if not for the shared warmth and the steady, comforting beats of two familiar hearts. And as it was, I didn’t sleep well. I was haunted by images of Marc, lying dead in a bare hole in the ground, in a congealing pool of his own blood, while scavengers picked the flesh from his bones.
I woke up in a cold sweat, with tears still damp on my face. Ethan’s arm lay over my shoulder, as if he’d tried to comfort me in my sleep.
It was still dark outside. The alarm clock read five forty-five. I was awake for good.
Ethan and Parker were still sleeping, so I snuck out of bed and tiptoed to the front of the house in my socks, only pausing to grab my cell phone from Marc’s nightstand. To my surprise, Dan Painter sat at the kitchen table, holding a can of Coke, damp with condensation, in spite of the chill in the poorly insulated room. His cell phone lay on the table in front of him.
“What are you doing up?” I padded past him into the kitchen in my thick, fuzzy socks.
“Tetris.” He held up the phone so I could see the colored bricks stacking up across his screen. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me, neither.” I pulled the empty carafe from the coffeemaker and ran water into it from the sink. “Wouldn’t you rather have coffee?” I asked, eyeing the cold can.
“I was afraid it’d wake you up.”
I gave him a small smile, thanking him for the courtesy. Then I reached overhead and started opening cabinets, looking for the coffee and filters.
“Second from the left, on the bottom shelf.”
Damn it. Dan Painter knew where Marc kept his stuff, and I didn’t. For about the thousandth time in the past few days, frustration raged through me, intensifying my fear and anger on Marc’s behalf. Being separated from him sucked. But not knowing whether he was dead or alive was torture.
I grabbed a filter and a bag of ground coffee from the bottom shelf and dumped a generous pile of the latter into the former. When the coffee was brewing, the very scent gifting me with rational thought in spite of my exhausted, emotionally drained state, I pulled out the chair opposite Dan and dropped into it. “Why can’t you sleep?”
Dan stared at the can he twisted on the cracked table surface. “Guilty conscience.”
My heart beat harder in sympathy. “Dan, this is not your fault.”
He shrugged, still avoiding my eyes. “If it was me instead of him, this never woulda happened. He woulda stopped ‘em.”
I sighed. He was probably right—after all, we were talking about Marc—but his guilt was totally misplaced. “You weren’t there, Dan. There was nothing you could do.”
He looked unconvinced, but before I could think of a more convincing argument, my phone rang from the pocket of my pj pants and I stood as I answered it, padding to the cabinets in search of coffee mugs.
“Did I wake you?” my father asked, his voice rough with exhaustion.
“No, I’m up. Did you find anything?”
“Owen found Eckard’s address, but we had to call Michael to find out what he drives. I have no idea how he gathers information like that so quickly.”
“He has friends in the Dallas PD, and serious computer skills.” The first cabinet held only paper plates and a case of Coke, so I moved on to the next one.
“Do you have something to write with?”
I glanced around the tiny kitchen and found a pad of Post-it notes in a magnetic case stuck to the fridge, and a chewed-up pencil in the silverware compartment of the otherwise empty dish drainer. “Yeah, go ahead.”
I wrote as my father read Adam Eckard’s address, then noted that he drove a black 2001 Ford Explorer. “Thanks, Dad. We’ll be on the road before the sun comes up.”
“It’s a bit of a drive, and if he works a normal nine-to-five, you probably won’t catch him before work.”
I shrugged, though he couldn’t see me. “If not, we’ll check out his place.”
My father sighed. “Be careful, Faythe.”
“I will.” Finally, the third and last cabinet yielded three coffee mugs and a half-empty bag of powdered sugar. There was no creamer, because Marc took his coffee black.
The sugar was for French toast, his favorite breakfast. He ate half a loaf at a time.
After I hung up, I poured myself a mug of coffee with extra sugar—trying to make up for the lack of creamer—and took my mug into the bathroom along with shampoo and a change of clothes from my bag. I’d wake the guys up after my shower, because otherwise, they’d use all the hot water before I got a shot at it.
When I got out of the shower, my coffee was cool enough to drink—if not quite sweet enough—and I emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later with mostly dry hair and an empty mug. All three guys sat at the table, Ethan and Dan drinking from Marc’s last two mugs, while Parker cradled a white foam cup he’d found in one of the cabinets.
“You guys get showered and dressed.” I poured the last of the coffee into my mug and turned to face them, leaning against the countertop. “Dad came through with Eckard’s address, and that’s our first stop.”
“We know.” Ethan waved the Post-it I’d scribbled on.
Parker stood and drained his cup. “I’ll make breakfast if you’ll start some bacon while I shower.”
“Deal.” I wasn’t much of a cook, but even I could handle throwing a few strips of meat into a skillet.
Twenty minutes later, Ethan—the last to shower—emerged from the bathroom barefoot and shirtless, a strand of black hair plastered to his forehead. He slid into the fourth chair just as Parker set down two paper plates piled with a dozen fried eggs. Ethan snatched a strip of bacon from another plate—we’d cooked two pounds—while Parker went back for twelve pieces of buttered toast and a jar of grape jelly.Marc didn’t have milk or juice, so I was on my third cup of bitter black coffee. It was nasty, but after only two and a half hours of sleep, it was also necessary.
We left the house before seven in the morning, but it took us nearly an hour to get from Rosetta to Fayette, where Eckard lived. Plus another twenty minutes to find his house. Adam Eckard lived in the right half of a duplex, and shared his driveway with the left half of the duplex next door. His side of the driveway was empty, except for several oil stains, but we knocked on the door just in case. Or rather, I knocked on the door.
Since we couldn’t force our way inside in broad daylight, the guys watched from the car as I stood on the double front porch alone. I was confident I could take a single stray on my own, if I needed to, considering that unless he knew to sniff my scent immediately, Eckard probably wouldn’t realize I was a werecat.
And the guys were confident they could get to me very quickly, in case I was wrong about that. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Eckard wasn’t home.
“You lookin’ for Adam?” The screen door to the other half of the duplex swung open on my left as I turned toward the car, and I whirled around to find a little boy watching me, one hand still on the door handle. He was no older than eight and, in spite of the temperature, he wore only a pair of worn-out jeans and a faded short-sleeved T-shirt, his feet bare on the cold concrete. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes glassy with fever, and a single whiff of his scent told me he was sick. Some kind of infection, which had no doubt kept him home from school.
Behind me, the back door of Parker’s car opened, and I glanced over my shoulder to tell Ethan I was fine. He nodded but jogged down the cracked walkway toward me, rather than getting back into the car.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy, as my brother’s footsteps slowed to a stop just behind me.
“Jack,” the child said, his eyes widening as Ethan knelt at my side, putting himself roughly even with the boy’s line of sight. My brother smiled, but Jack only stared, neither intimidated nor frightened by the presence of two strangers.
“Jack, are your parents home?” I asked, and his fever-dull eyes rolled up to meet my gaze.
“My mom’s still sleepin’.”
I stifled a flash of irritation with the mother who should have been awake, giving the poor kid some Tylenol and making sure he stayed hydrated. “We’re looking for your neighbor. Mr. Eckard,” I said, answering his earlier question. “Do you know him?”
“I seen him.” Jack blinked listlessly at me.
“Today?” Ethan asked, and the boy’s head swiveled in his direction.
“Yesterday.”
“Do you know where he went?” I didn’t really expect an answer, and sure enough, Jack shook his head.
“He left with his friends, but I don’t know where they was goin’.”
Ethan glanced up at me with both eyebrows raised, and I nodded. “What did his friends look like?”