Prey (Shifters #4)(27)

“Eww, Ethan. Is there anything you won’t eat?”
He answered by crunching into a second bite, then turned to follow me out the way we’d come in. But I’d only gone a couple of steps when a shrill telephone ring sliced through the near silence. An actual, plugged-into-the-wall phone; not one of our cells.I turned, glancing around for the source, and saw Dan rooting through a pile of old newspapers on a table near the door, in search of the phone. Ethan dropped the chip bag to lift a series of dingy pillows, stained couch cushions and unwashed articles of clothing. I found the phone beneath a discarded pair of jeans, on the floor next to the steel-and-glass computer desk—an obvious place to keep one’s phone, right?
“Should I answer it?” I asked, as Ethan retrieved his snack. But before either of the guys could reply, a mechanical voice spoke up from the overturned answering machine next to the phone.
“Eckard?” said an unfamiliar voice after the beep. “Where the hell are you? If you’re not clocked in in twenty minutes, don’t come at all. I’ll put your last check in the mail.” The machine clicked as the caller hung up, and I knelt to turn it over. On the digital display, the number two blinked in bright red.
Well, there goes plan A. Eckard wasn’t at work, and it didn’t sound like he would be anytime soon.
“There’s another message,” I said, as Dan shoved his hands in his pockets and my brother devoured another handful of the rogue’s corn chips.
He shrugged. “Let’s hear it.”
I pushed Play and stood as a new message filled the room, irritation lending a sharp edge to the familiar voice. “Adam, where the hell are you? I sent Pete in this morning to clean up after you, and he said the whole house was already clean and reeking of Pride cats. Sounds like Greg’s boys are in town, so stay away from Ramos’s place, and keep your eyes open. And charge your fucking cell phone. It’s kicking me straight to voice mail.”
The message ended with a click, and Ethan’s snack bag hit the floor at the same time as my rump. I looked up to find him staring at me in an odd mixture of surprise and rage. He recognized the voice, too.
Kevin Mitchell.
Twelve
“Are you sure it was Kevin Mitchell?” Parker asked for the third time, pulling into a parking spot near the front of the small shopping center in what passed for downtown Rosetta. After we’d given my father another update, the guys had insisted we go for a supply run while we waited to hear back from our Alpha on Kevin’s current address and vitals, like his place of employment, phone numbers and vehicle description.
There were more shopping options in Fayette, near Eckard’s duplex, but Rosetta was only minutes from Marc’s house, so we stood a much better chance of getting our frozen food into the freezer before it thawed.
But I did not want to be there. Like eating, shopping felt like an abominable waste of time. Time Marc couldn’t afford for us to squander. My hands clenched and unclenched, and my right foot tapped rapidly on the floorboard, my eyes darting swiftly over everything I saw through the windshield. My impatience was as obvious as Marc’s absence. 
“Yes, we’re sure.” I climbed out of the front passenger seat—I’d finally claimed shotgun—and slammed the door, rolling my eyes at Parker in exasperation. “I couldn’t forget that voice if I tried.”
“I know. It just doesn’t make any sense.” He and Ethan rounded the car and all four of us cut across the lot for a quick trip to the hardware store before hitting the Save-A-Lot. “Why would he kill Marc? I know they didn’t get along, but that hardly seems motive for murder.”
“Yeah, well, none of this makes any sense to me. Except for Pete. I’m assuming this Pete that Kevin sent to Marc’s house is the Pete Yarnell whom Galloway mentioned. Right, Dan?” I glanced at him as I stepped over a concrete tire bumper. “The same Pete who organized the ambush?”
Dan shrugged. “I only know one stray named Pete, and that’s him.”
“And they’re obviously in this together.” I jogged ahead, trying to rush everyone on, but Ethan caught up with me as I stepped onto the sidewalk.
“You know, there’s nothing more we can do until we know where to find Kevin, and we need supplies.”
“I know.” But nothing could quash the sense of urgency driving me, the adrenaline flooding my body in mass quantities, insisting that I do nothing else until I’d found Marc.
“Who’s Kevin Mitchell?” Dan asked from Parker’s other side as they caught up with us, and I glanced at him in surprise before remembering he hadn’t been with us during the Kevin fiasco several months earlier.
“One of our former Pride members. He’s been living in the free zone since my dad kicked him out back in September.”
“Like Marc?” Dan asked, and we stared at him like he’d just desecrated the American flag.
“No.” I stepped through the glass door Parker held open for me and nodded in response to the cashier who greeted us, then rushed us toward the back of the store, speaking to Dan in a hushed voice. “Marc was sacrificed to the political machine. My dad had no choice.” Though it had taken me a while to truly understand that. “Kevin was kicked out for breaking the rules. Repeatedly. He accepted money to sneak a stray—one of the toms Manx later killed—over the territorial border into New Orleans on a weekly basis for some male bonding at a local strip club.”
“And that’s where Manx found the tom?” Dan concluded, as we passed a display of artfully arranged toilet bowl plungers. He looked angry on behalf of the slaughtered stray.
“Exactly.”
Since he’d been expelled by my father, Kevin was officially considered a wildcat—a natural-born werecat living in the free zone, whether by choice or not. Of course, if we could prove his involvement in the attack on Marc, he’d also be a considered a rogue, by virtue of his criminal behavior.
Wildcats, like my brother Ryan, typically lived even more isolated lives than strays, who hated them for the birthright they no longer possessed. So it was quite a surprise to hear Kevin’s voice coming from Adam Eckard’s answering machine. They were clearly both implicated in what had happened to Marc—and to whatever had become of the other missing strays—and I couldn’t help but wonder how an unlikely partnership like that had formed.
And who else was involved.
There were very few toms on the face of the planet I respected less than Kevin Mitchell, not just because of his betrayal of our Pride, but because of the way he’d always treated Marc, as if our Pride’s “token stray” wasn’t good enough to lick Kevin’s paws. Marc had broken Kevin’s nose after a comment to that effect a few months earlier, and I’d never cheered harder on the inside.At the back of the hardware store, I fidgeted with a display of doorknobs while Parker selected three different locks—two for Marc’s front door and one to reinforce the bolt on the back door. After hearing that one of Kevin’s “men” had been at Marc’s house, we were determined to give ourselves as much warning as possible, should someone else show up.
We also picked out a good-quality air mattress, inflatable pillows and blankets.
Next we hit the grocery store. Marc’s fridge was far from empty—he was a tom, after all—but he had nowhere near enough food to sustain four full-grown werecats.
I hurried the guys through the aisles while they piled the cart with enough to feed the Dallas Cowboys for a week, and nothing that took much trouble to prepare. Pizza, frozen lasagna, family-size bags of frozen pasta, and all the usual snack stuff.
While Ethan and I paid for the food, Dan and Parker ran next door for some staples from the liquor store.
I stared at my phone all the way to Marc’s house, willing it to ring. Willing my father to come through with the information we needed to find Kevin. Who could hopefully tell us where to find Marc.
With any luck, he’d make us beat it out of him.
Parker and Dan installed the locks while Ethan and I put up the other supplies and stuck two party-size boxes of frozen enchiladas in the oven for a late lunch. I carried the blow-up mattress into the empty front bedroom, autodialing my father as I went.
I pressed my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I unrolled the mound of vinyl and hooked up the virtually useless plastic hand pump.
“Hello?” my father said into my ear, sounding both distracted and frustrated.
“Anything on Kevin yet?” I probably should have opened with a salutation, considering that I was speaking to my Alpha as well as my dad, but I’d reached the end of my patience. The beating of my own heart felt like a second hand ticking away the last moments of Marc’s life, and I couldn’t stand the thought that he could be dying while I sat in his house, pumping air into a stupid inflatable mattress!
“We have an address on file for him,” my dad said, and I stopped pumping so I could hear him over the hiss of air. “But he’s not there anymore. His cell phone’s been disconnected, too. Owen’s looking for more current information, but we’re not having much luck so far. We’ll keep trying, though.”
Damn it! I resumed pumping with determination fueled by anger and frustration.