“Keep her quiet,” he muttered on his way across the room.
Yarnell raced in from the kitchen and was on me before I could yell to warn Dr. Carver. He pulled me onto his lap on the couch and shoved the end of Dan’s bloodstained towel into my mouth, then clamped his hand over it. My shout came out as a muffled moan, and no amount of struggling could dislodge Yarnell’s grip on me, though his still-healing ribs must have been in agony.
Kevin stopped beside another armchair and squatted to pull something from behind it. My eyes widened when I saw the tire iron Dan had been carrying, and I wasn’t much comforted when he took the time to wrap his own bloodstained towel around the business end of the tool.
“Shh,” he said, eyes wide, one finger pressed to his lips. “I’m hunting wabbit! But we don’t want Carver dead until he’s fixed my nose, now do we?” Kevin stood flat against the wall, where I could see him, but someone coming through the back door would not.
I thrashed harder, but Yarnell’s grip on me only tightened until I was afraid he’d break my ribs. Unfortunately, there was no time for a partial Shift, or any other offensive measure.
The kitchen door opened, and Dr. Carver’s voice reached my ears. “Where is she?” Then his gaze landed on me, and his forehead crinkled in confusion. “What the hell—”I screeched wordlessly in warning as he passed through the doorway, but it did no good.
“What’s up, Doc?” Kevin swung the tire iron like a baseball bat. The towel-wrapped steel connected with the side of Dr. Carver’s skull, and the doctor collapsed onto the carpet with a muffled thud.
Noooo! I screamed in my head, but the audible portion was nothing more than an inarticulate groan.
“Tape him up and toss him into the tub,” Kevin ordered, and Dan stepped forward reluctantly, a fresh roll of duct tape in one hand.
Yarnell copped a generous feel of my inner thigh, then shoved me off of his lap, onto the center couch cushion, where I fell over on one side, unable to right myself without the use of my hands. Tears formed in my eyes and ran sideways across my cheeks as I watched Dr. Carver—my last hope for help from the cavalry—hauled down the hall.
“Now…” Kevin said, slinking across the room toward me, the rings around his eyes darkening with each second as he took the towel out of my mouth. “Let’s get down to business….”
Twenty-Seven
“Here’s how this is going to work.” Kevin stopped three feet in front of the couch, squatting to put himself at eye level with me, my face half-buried in the cushion. “I’m going to ask the questions, and Pete’s going to make sure you answer them.”
“And let me guess,” I said, my words slurred with the left half of my mouth pressed into the upholstery. “If I play nice, you’ll let me go, but if I don’t, you’ll kill me.”
“No.” Kevin shook his head firmly and hauled me upright by one arm, so fast my vision swam. “You’re going to die either way. I can’t see any way around that, considering how much you know about all this.” His open arms took in the whole room, indicating their little conspiracy.
“Kevin…” Dan began, and my gaze found him slouched in a chair across the room. “You said she’d get to go home….”
“Yeah, well that’s before she wound up in the middle of all this! If you’d kept her out of the way like you were supposed to—if you hadn’t blown your fucking cover—she’d get to go back to Texas with you tonight. But you fucked up, so she has to die along with her collection of adoring tomcats.”
Dan flinched and avoided my eyes.
“It’s a shame,” Kevin continued. “Considering how badly we need tabbies. But when Dan brings the bodies of Greg’s Pride cats—including his precious kitten—back home, the Alpha will be so grateful for your compassion and so impressed by your loyalty that he’ll accept you into the Pride. Hell, he’ll need you. Which will put you in the perfect position to extract both of the other tabbies, when their guard is down and you’ve gathered enough intel…”
Shit. Kaci and Manx. Were they the point of this whole operation?
No, they couldn’t be. The microchips were implanted long before the council decided to remove Kaci. So maybe they were just part of it.
The lines in Dan’s forehead deepened, and for a moment, determination flickered behind his dark brown eyes. “Kaci’s just a kid, Kevin….”
“Exactly.” Kevin whirled on him, legs spread wide to take up as much room as possible in imitation of an aggressive Alpha stance. “And kids need proper care, which she is not getting in the south-central Pride. The council’s already ruled to remove her, and you have the chance to succeed all on your own, where Calvin Malone’s highly trained team of enforcers failed.”
“And Manx?” I asked, curious to know how he could possibly put a positive spin on her forcible removal.
Kevin twisted to glare at me over his shoulder, then turned back to Dan. “Manx has paid for her crimes. She lost her claws. Do you really think it’s fair for her to be stuck in the middle of a war zone—once the fighting starts—when she can’t defend herself anymore? Or her baby?”
Damn. I was almost impressed. If Kevin had shown so much potential as an orator while he was a member of our Pride, my father might actually have found some use for him.
Or not. We weren’t big on moral ambiguity in the south-central Pride, and that included propaganda. But it was the propaganda itself that caught my attention.
“Fighting?” I tried to keep my voice calm and steady.
“Oh, come on, Faythe!” Kevin stepped back so he could see both me and Dan. “We all know the war is coming, but I don’t think even Calvin Malone could have foreseen your father throwing the first punch.”
“Malone started this!” I shouted, straining desperately against my bonds. I felt helpless, worthless, without the use of my hands. “His tom killed Ethan in cold blood!”
“Ethan died because he stood in the way of an authorized mission. The official first strike will be when your father invades the Appalachian territory. And thanks to Dan, we know that’s exactly what he’s planning.”
Dan had the grace to look guilty as hell while judiciously avoiding my eyes.
“And when your father makes his move—an illegal breach of another Pride’s territorial boundary—the entire council will unite against him.”
I shook my head with feigned confidence, while my aching heart withered in my chest. “Uncle Rick will never go along with that. Neither will Bert Di Carlo.”
Kevin shrugged smugly. “If they side with your father—supporting his treachery rather than the council’s authority—they’ll be removed from power just like he will, and their territories will be redistributed once the council membership is settled.”
“That’s not going to happen!” I spat, glowering at Kevin in the most frustratingly impotent moment of my life. “No one but your dad and Calvin Malone will support this war once they hear how Ethan really died. He was pounced on from above—murdered in cold blood. My father and I saw it with our own eyes.”
“Unfortunately, you won’t be there to testify, and after the council hears the intelligence we’ve gathered against your father, the Alphas won’t believe a word he has to say.”
My pulse jumped, in spite of my best effort to steady it. “What intelligence?”
Kevin’s gaze narrowed on me. “That’s where you come in.”
“Oh, the whole Q and A bit?” I rolled my eyes, trying to look calm and fearless, while my heart raced like a scared rabbit’s. “What’s my motivation to play along, if you’re just going to kill me anyway?”On the edge of my vision, Dan went stiff, and I took heart from his reaction. He was clearly uncomfortable with the thought my murder—as was I, for the record—which definitely gave me something to work with. But should I appeal to his sympathy, or his faltering sense of honor?
“Pain,” Kevin said, and I blinked at him in confusion, trying to haul myself back from thoughts of escape long enough to make sense of that one word.
“Huh?”
“Pain is your motivation,” he clarified. “Pete’s looking forward to beating a little compliance into Greg Sanders’s infamous shrew before I give him the all clear to take whatever else he wants from you. The more you talk, the less opportunity he has to hit you. Is that motivation enough?”
My heart slammed against my chest, and my hands began to sweat against the soft gray upholstery at my back, but I forced confidence into my expression, crowned by two eyebrows arched in challenge. “Knowing that either way, this party ends with my rape and murder? No. There is no motivation strong enough to guarantee my cooperation.”
“Yeah?” Kevin smiled viciously. “Let’s give it a shot anyway….”
I shrugged, bolstering myself with bravado, since I had nothing else left to work with. “I’m not exactly new to being threatened. Or punched.”
Yarnell’s leering grin widened. “Sounds like she likes it rough.”
I never said I liked it that way….
“Well then, she’s in luck.” Kevin paced in front of me again, arms crossed over his chest. “Ryan’s missing again, isn’t he?”