“And you are…?”
More smiling. My jaw was starting to ache. “I’m Faythe Sanders.” I paused to see if he would react to my name.
Feldman’s dark eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but the flaring of his nostrils was much more noticeable, as he verified from my scent that I was indeed who I said I was. Or at least that I was a tabbycat.
But rather than returning my smile, or ushering me inside, both of which I’d expected from a tom who’d probably never met a female of his species, he pressed his lips together in a frown. “What can I do for you, Miss Sanders?”
“May we come in? I have a few questions, and it’s pretty cold out tonight.” I rubbed my arms through my jacket for emphasis.
Feldman’s frown deepened, and he crossed bare, dark arms over a pale button-down shirt. His eyes focused over my head on Parker and Ethan, then he scanned the yard slowly, inhaling deeply.
“It’s just the four of us,” I assured him, impressed that he’d thought to check for backup. I used to forget that one a lot myself.
After another moment’s hesitation, he pulled the screen door open for us.
I stepped inside with the guys at my heels, all of us relieved by the warmth of the small room, but before he closed the door, Feldman took one last glance and sniff outside, to verify that we were alone. “Sit.” He waved one arm at a tan couch. The sofa was by no means new, but it was cleaner than anything in the guesthouse back home, and it matched the armchair in one corner, against which Feldman leaned, facing both us and the front door.
“Thank you.” I sank onto the cushion farthest from our host, and all three guys squeezed in with me, intentionally avoiding the aggressive backup stance. On the coffee table, a fat, hardbound book lay open next to a spiral notebook covered in neat, slanted writing. One glance at the book, and I nearly choked on my own surprise. It was a textbook anthology, open to Antigone.
“Are you in college, Mr. Feldman?” I asked, eyeing him in interest as I flashed back to my own days as an English major. Feldman looked to be in his midthirties—a little old for an undergrad, but not unheard-of.
His dark eyes hardened, and thick, brown hands smoothed his shirt as he settled into the armchair. “Is that what you came to ask me?”
Okay, he wasn’t exactly approachable, but at least he hadn’t kicked us out. Or tried to kill us. Yet. “Um, no. I was just curious.”
“Then no, I’m not in school. I teach Classical Humanities at the junior college in Natchez. Mostly night classes.”
“Oh.” Ohhh. I felt my face flame, and I glared at Dan, irritated by the lack of background information on our host. He only shrugged and, to my further embarrassment, I thought I saw amusement flit across Feldman’s face, softening it for just an instant.“It’s late, Miss Sanders, and I take it this isn’t a social call, so why don’t you get to the point?”
“Of course.” I crossed my legs at the knee, hoping to look competent and official. “This is Parker Pierce and my brother Ethan.” I gestured at each tom in turn, without taking my eyes from our host. “We’re enforcers for the south-central Pride, and personal friends of Marc Ramos—”
Feldman’s thick eyebrows arched. “The way I hear it, regarding your relationship with Ramos, that’s a bit of an understatement, Ms. Sanders.”
I blinked in surprise, and when I met Feldman’s gaze again, I saw challenge in his eyes. He knew exactly who I was and what I wanted, and he was daring me to drop the pretense and stop wasting everyone’s time.
So I did.
“Yes.” I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward with both elbows propped on my knees. “Mr. Feldman, Marc is more than a friend to me. More than a boyfriend. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to find him.”
He nodded, acknowledging that I’d met his challenge, though his stony expression did not soften.
“Yesterday, three tomcats broke into Marc’s house and attacked him. Two of the toms died, but injured Marc severely in the process. The third hauled Marc off.” I was not going to reveal that we’d found Eckard, and that Marc had escaped, because if the strays didn’t yet know he’d survived, I wasn’t going to tip them off. “We know Kevin Mitchell is in on this somehow. I’m here because rumor has it you have your ear to the ground and might be able to tell me where to find Kevin.”
Feldman simply watched me for several seconds, letting me stew. Or maybe trying to judge my sincerity. He had the upper hand, and he damn well knew it. Then, finally, he blinked, and leaned back in his chair, digging something from his right hip pocket.
“Yes, I can tell you were to find Kevin Mitchell. Or at least where he lives. But I’m not going to do that. Not now, and not ever. Because of this.”
Feldman’s thick fist swung forward, and I jerked back from the blow to come, as the guys shot to their feet, ready to defend me. But Feldman’s blow never landed. Instead, he slammed his hand palm down on the battered coffee table, and when he withdrew it an instant later, he left something on the laminated wood surface.
A clear, rounded cylinder, half the diameter of my smallest finger and no longer than the first joint. Inside the cylinder was another cylinder made up of tiny green and black parts I couldn’t focus on without a microscope.
“What is that?” I asked, leaning forward to squint at it, as the guys mimicked my motion.
“That,” Feldman spat, glaring across the coffee table, “is the microchip I dug out of my own back last week.”
Fifteen
“A microchip?” Parker reached for the tiny cylinder, but Feldman snatched it back, holding the object up where we could still see it between his thick fingers. But we couldn’t touch it without taking it from him. Which would not fit into our playing-nice approach.
“Yes.” Feldman eyed us closely, each in turn, obviously studying our reactions.
“That was in your back?” An image of Eckard’s corpse flashed behind my eyes, complete with the precisely slit skin between his shoulder blades.
Feldman nodded, frowning at my obvious surprise as I made the connection.
“Your upper back? Just to the left of your spine?”
“Yeah.” Feldman lowered his hand into his lap, fist wrapped around the tiny device again as excitement made my heart beat faster. Eckard had had one, too—until Marc had cut it out of him. But how had he known it was there? If Marc knew about the microchips before he was attacked, he would have told me.
“First of all, that’s weird,” Ethan said as he caught my gaze, silently telling me he’d made the connection, too. Parker and Dan nodded; we were all on the same page. “And it doesn’t look like any microchip I ever saw.”
“Me, either.” I smiled to thank him for keeping the tone light. Whatever these microchips were, we’d stumbled onto something big, and we couldn’t afford to piss Feldman off before he told us what he knew. I met the stray’s gaze. “Though admittedly, my familiarity with chips is limited to the guts of my cell phone. So enlighten me, please. What does it do?”
Feldman frowned, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You really expect me to believe you don’t know what this is?”
I blinked at him in genuine surprise. “Why would we? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“So you have no idea how this got under my skin?”
“None.” I met his eyes boldly, letting the truth shine in mine.
“Holy silicone suppository, Batman!” Ethan said, grinning. Dan snorted, Parker coughed to disguise a laugh, and I glared at them all. “What?” My brother shrugged defensively. “That’s what it looks like.”
Un-amused, Feldman ignored Ethan and focused on me. “Then how did you know where it was implanted?”
Crap. My mind raced. I had to answer, to keep him talking, but how much could I say without revealing that Marc had survived? “We, um…” I hesitated, glancing at the guys for advice. Dan shrugged, clearly at as much of a loss as I was, and Parker gave me a slight nod, telling me to say something. But as little as possible.
I took a deep breath and continued. “We found a body with a small hole in his back. Just big enough to implant one of those.” Or remove it. “But we didn’t know what that hole meant until now.” Please, please don’t ask whose body we found!
Fortunately, Feldman was too preoccupied with the chips to waste questions on tangential issues. “And you don’t know what this is?” he repeated, his face a tense mask of suspicion. We hadn’t convinced him yet.
“No clue,” Ethan said, with no trace of a smile.
“It’s a digital tracking device.” Feldman still scrutinized our reactions. “So whoever’s monitoring it can know where I am all the time. Or at least where the chip is.”
“They can do that?” Parker stared at the clear capsule in amazement. “Track people with something so small?”
“No. Not officially.” Feldman sat back in his chair. “There’s nothing this advanced available to the public. Not that I’ve been able to find, anyway.”“Sounds like supersecret spy shit to me.” Ethan grinned, but his eyes held little humor. He knew how serious this had just become.
“Not quite.” Feldman rolled the chip between his thumb and forefinger, and his jaw tightened in anger. “It’s a high-tech pet tracking device, designed to find rich-bitch poodles that wander too far from their gated communities,” he said. “But it’s still in the prototype phase. We’re being tagged like apes in the wild, using a technology that hasn’t yet been approved for dogs, and should never be used on people.”