Unfortunately, I couldn’t even argue with that, no matter what the ramifications of full disclosure would be for my Pride. So I nodded, clutching the half-empty box to my chest like a life raft. “Okay. But please, as a gesture of goodwill between the affected toms and the south-central Pride, offer them our doctor’s services. Dr. Carver can quickly and safely remove the chips, and give them to you on the spot to be destroyed.”
“Miss Sanders, I don’t know that they’d trust a Pride doctor to do that. Considering that it must have been a Pride doctor who implanted the chips in the first place.”
“But not that Pride doctor,” Dan interjected. “He took my chip out with no problem. I trust him.”
Feldman studied Dan for a moment, then nodded again, and met my eyes. “I’ll extend your offer. But I make no guarantees.”
I forced a smile. “Thank you.” That was all we could ask of him. All we had any right to ask. And though I’d played no part in the microchip debacle—other than trying to sort it out—I felt guilty by association, for simply knowing Milo Mitchell and his hell-spawn son. I hated that feeling. And suddenly I understood how Jace felt about his stepfather being the driving force behind the effort to have my father removed from the council.
When I looked up, I found Jace watching me, as if he knew what I was thinking. Or as if he wanted to. But he knew better than to ask in front of anyone else.
“Okay, let’s go.” I slid the lid back onto the box and shoved the tracker into my front pocket, then marched for the door, confident that at least two of the toms would follow me. “It’s not getting any earlier out there. Or any warmer.”
Twenty-Five
Jace, Dan, and I parted ways with Feldman at the playground where we’d parked, and as we turned left coming out of the lot, I glanced back at Feldman to see him gripping his steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, his face twisted into one of the fiercest scowls I’d ever seen. He reminded me of Marc in that moment, because of both the stress he clearly took out on his vehicle, and his fierce determination to see justice done. I couldn’t help but respect his motives, even if his actions would oppose mine in the end.
“Hey, Dan?” I twisted in my seat as Jace swerved smoothly onto the on-ramp. “Could you turn around and make sure we have everything we need? I’m hoping this thing will shorten the length of our hike—” I held up the tracker “—but we need to be prepared for the worst.”
“Sure.” Dan unbuckled and stood on his knees to peer over his seat back into the cargo area of Jace’s Pathfinder, then reached up and pressed a light panel in the ceiling to illuminate the area. “Looks like we have a first-aid kit, four bottles of water, a shovel, some tools, and a couple of flashlights. And Marc’s coat.” Which he lifted from the backseat to show me.“Good. Thanks.” While Dan turned the light off and rebuckled, I watched Jace’s profile lighten and darken as shadows cast by a series of highway lights passed over him. “We have to stop by Marc’s house,” I said, a supply list running through my head. “We need more water, something quick to eat, and some more caffeine. And a restroom. And we need to cover all that very quickly.”
Jace nodded, and flicked on his blinker when our exit approached. Six minutes later he pulled into Marc’s driveway, and we all raced into the house. The guys gathered supplies and filled Dr. Carver in on what he’d missed while I used the restroom, all in under eight minutes.
But that still felt like too long. I felt like we’d been looking for Marc forever, and that even though we finally knew where he was—in theory—every second was still crucial.
I was zipping up my coat on the way to the front door, a newly loaded backpack over one shoulder, when my phone began to ring. I didn’t recognize the number, and only vaguely noticed that the area code was the same as Marc’s, so I didn’t expect to know the caller. But he definitely knew me.
“Faythe?”
My insides went cold, and I spun to face the guys, one finger pressed to my lips, warning them to be silent. Kevin Mitchell, I mouthed.
Jace scowled and Dan’s eyebrows arched in surprise, while the doctor simply nodded his acknowledgment.
“Yes?” I said into the receiver. “Who is this?”
“You know damn well who this is,” Kevin snapped, and I wondered if he already knew about our little B and E. “And I can tell you have company by the sudden silence in the background. Do you have them holding their breath?” I rolled my eyes but made no reply, so he continued, unflustered. “Are you still in Mississippi?”
“Are you?” I only realized I was pacing when I reached the kitchen table and had to turn around. He knew we were at Marc’s house earlier because Yarnell had found our scents when he’d come to clean up the bodies we’d already disposed of. But did Kevin know we’d made a trip to the ranch? And did he know why?
“Where else could I be?” he huffed in irritation. “You may recall that I’m restricted to the free zone now.”
“That does sound familiar….” I couldn’t keep anger from bleeding into my voice. I was desperate to find Marc, but couldn’t afford to hang up on Kevin. We needed him in custody, in order to bring him before the council.
“The real question is what are you doing here? Other than making a bonfire out of Adam Eckard’s car?”
“There was a fire? Ohhh, too bad I missed that. I never pass up an opportunity to make s’mores.” I shrugged at Jace, wondering if it would be stupid of me to talk to Kevin from the car, on the way to find Marc.
“I missed it, too.” A soft suction sounded over the phone, then a low-pitched hum met my ears. Kevin had just opened a refrigerator. The bastard was having a snack while he taunted me!
Did that mean he was at home? Did he already know we’d been through his stuff and taken the tracker? Was he just stringing me along? I shot a desperate look at Jace, but he only shrugged. Either he didn’t know what I was thinking, or he didn’t have the answers to my unspoken questions.
Kevin continued, oblivious to my silent panic. “By the time I got there this afternoon, there was nothing left but a burnt patch of grass on the side of the road. But then I noticed a break in the tree line, like several people had stomped through the woods.”
“Weird.” My coat was too thick to be worn indoors, and I was starting to sweat, either from the warmth or from nerves.
“I know!” Kevin exclaimed too brightly, and suddenly I was tired of our role-playing, and ready for him to cut to the proverbial chase. But Kevin liked to hear himself talk. “And it gets weirder from there. I found blood on the ground near that break in the trees, from two different strays. I assume you know whose blood I found?”
I threw my hands in the air. “Kevin, this is stupid. Cut the shit and get to the point.”
Jace groaned and let his forehead fall into his hand; evidently he would have handled it differently.
“Who’s with you?” Kevin asked, and I glared at Jace for giving away their presence. “It’s Jace, right?” Kevin guessed, and I inhaled sharply in surprise. How the hell had he known that? “Obviously it’s not Ethan. I hear the youngest Sanders tom met with an unfortunate end this morning.”
This morning? Had it really been less than a day? It felt like forever since Ethan died, yet each second seemed to slip away from me faster than the last, time sliding rapidly through my fingers like a rope burning my palm. Hearing my dead brother’s name spoken in Kevin Mitchell’s irreverent voice made me want to reach through his stomach and pull his intestines out inch by excruciating inch.
A growl rumbled from my throat before I could stop it, and on the edge of my vision, Jace’s fist flew. An instant later, his travel mug hit the wall, leaving a cupshaped dent in the Sheetrock and splattering still-steaming coffee over the wall and floor. Obviously furious and hurting, Jace suddenly seemed to take up more room than he should have, like a cat whose fur is standing on end. It was an angry-Alpha pose, and I would have been impressed if I weren’t just as pissed and wounded as he was.
Kevin laughed into my ear. “Tell Jace I said hi.”
“What do you want?” I demanded, and had to make myself loosen my grip on my phone before I crushed it.
“I just wanted to extend my sympathy for what happened to your brother—so sad—and to assure you that nothing so tragic has happened to Marc. Yet.”
What? Shock jolted through me, and my heart hammered against my sternum. “You’re bluffing.” But my voice came out weak with doubt, and we all heard it. I cleared my throat and tried again, pacing quickly now to burn off the fury racing through my veins with each beat of my heart. “You don’t have Marc. Pete Yarnell said he was dead.” And hopefully Kevin would think I believed that.
“And that’s what we truly thought at the time. Until I followed that trail of blood through the woods and discovered Adam’s lonely, unmarked grave. And I suspect the trail was even easier for us to follow than it was for you, thanks to the path you broke. What’d you do, march an elephant through there?”
No, just four werecats in sturdy boots.“You disinterred your own…friend?” Or fellow henchman. Or evil sidekick. Or…whatever. Shivers of disgust raised chill bumps all over my arms and legs, in spite of the winter coat I still wore. The only task worse than burying a body was unburying one.