On my left Jace growled, and Lucas smacked the back of Radley’s head with one huge hand. “You’re in no position to smart off.”
Radley ignored Lucas in favor of Marc, who looked amazingly calm and in control. “You didn’t answer the question,” the prisoner said. “Is this your land or not?”
“No.” My father clasped his hands behind his back, standing straight and tall in his suit and tie, even at three in the morning. “This is not our land. But this is my daughter—” he gestured toward me with one outstretched hand “—who now has twenty stitches in her stomach, thanks to you.”
My left hand settled lightly onto my abdomen. Twenty? Really?
Radley rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes at my father, Alpha of the south-central territory and head of the Territorial Council. Sure, I did that all the time, but I’d also peed on his lap when I was two. No one else got away with such disrespect toward an Alpha, which meant Radley either didn’t know who my father was, or didn’t care. Either could have been true, because most strays didn’t understand the werecat social hierarchy, and those who did had little reason to respect our Alphas.
Still, I wasn’t the only one surprised into silence.
“That was an accident!” Radley snapped, shuffling on the floor to find a more comfortable position for his bruised knees. He glanced from my father to me, then back to my father. “I was just trying to get out of there alive, and I knew they wouldn’t hurt me while I had her.”
“Why did you ‘have her’ in the first place?” Marc demanded, his voice low and dangerous.
“She set me up. You all set me up. You dangled bait in front of my face, and now you want to know why I took it!”
I tried not to squirm. He was right; we had set him up. Was it possible Radley knew nothing about the missing hikers and the slaughtered cop? Could he have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time? That was almost too much of a coincidence to believe.
“You didn’t have to chase her.” Jace squeezed my shoulder protectively. “Why did you?”
Radley huffed impatiently, which seemed odd coming from a man in his position. “Look, you assholes may have dinner with a tabby every night of your life, but for a tom like me, running into a puss like that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” His gaze raked over me boldly, as if we weren’t surrounded by five other tomcats, including my father. And Marc.
Well, at least he’s honest. I had to give him that.
Jace seemed much less inclined to give him a break. “So you followed her because you’ve never seen another tabby?”
The stray blinked, and indecision flashed across his face so fast I wasn’t sure I’d seen it in the first place.
Whatever he’d started to say was gone, but Radley’s confidence was back, bolstered by another dose of anger and resentment. “I followed her because she looked upset. She ran off by herself. It’s not safe for a girl to be on her own in the woods at night.”
“I’m not a girl,” I snapped, but my ferocity floundered as Radley’s nostrils flared, obviously taking in my scent. Marc tensed, and I rushed on before he could interrupt. “In fact, I’ve probably been alone in the woods more times than you’ve pissed in private.”
“Lovely, Faythe,” Michael murmured on my right as Jace nearly choked trying to hold back laughter.
“And completely beside the point.” My father frowned sternly, then faced the prisoner, dismissing me entirely.
Marc cleared his throat, drawing Radley’s attention away from me and pulling the interrogation back on track. “So you followed her to protect her? What were you going to do—serve her cocoa, then walk her home?”
I laughed aloud, drawing more disapproving glances from my father and Michael, and another stifled chuckle from Jace.“I don’t know.” Radley sniffed at a drop of blood trailing from his nose. “I didn’t have a plan. I just saw her run off, and when neither of you went after her, I figured someone should.”
“It was an act—you said it yourself,” Marc growled through gritted teeth, and I knew it irked him to let Radley think I’d run to get away from him.
The stray shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less. “Whatever. I didn’t think she should be alone in the woods.”
Jace inhaled softly, and his hand tightened briefly on my shoulder. “Why were you following us?”
“Because I’m not as dumb as I look.” Radley lowered his weight, so that he sat on his feet. “If you saw three strange cats walking through your territory, wouldn’t you follow them?” He bent to one side, extending his arms behind his back so we could all see the tape binding them. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t stop there.”
“This isn’t your territory,” Michael pointed out calmly, ever the voice of reason.
“It’s as much mine as it is yours.”
Even more so, I thought, but had the good sense to keep my mouth shut for once.
Marc nodded. “Fair enough. So you followed her—for her own protection, of course…” The sarcasm in his voice could have sliced through glass. “Why was she running from you when we found her?”
Radley shrugged. “How should I know? I must have scared her. I didn’t mean to though.” He peered around Marc’s arm to address me directly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“The hell you didn’t!” I leaned forward in my chair, and the medication-dulled pain in my belly roared into focus with the sudden movement. Damn it! I pressed one hand to my stomach, breathing deeply until the sharp throbbing ebbed. When I looked up, everyone in the room was watching me, including my father, which reminded me that no one had heard my side of the story yet. “He wasn’t going to let me leave. He was trying to take me somewhere.”
Radley shook his head, this time rolling his eyes at me. “There was someone else out there. Another cat,” he said. His eyes were wide and earnest, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trying a little too hard to convince us. Still, there had been another cat…
Marc glanced at Jace, and I knew they were thinking the same thing I was.
“I was trying to stop her from running off again,” Radley continued. “For all I knew, she’d run right into that other cat, and I doubt he’s as friendly as I am. Not that being friendly’s helped me much today.”
If he was telling the truth, we were seriously mistreating Zeke Radley. But though I couldn’t find an inconsistency in his story, neither could I swear it wasn’t a lie. I couldn’t read Radley, and that knowledge gnawed at me from the inside, mirroring the now mercifully dull pain in my stomach.
Though I could interpret neither my father’s expression nor my brother’s, Marc wasn’t buying Radley’s innocence in the least. “Maybe you should have Saint Zeke tattooed on your rump…” he muttered, turning away from the bound tom in disgust and frustration.
Facing me now, Marc closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. When he opened them a second later, his face was carefully blank, his hands open at his sides instead of curled into fists. He turned slowly, ready for another round of questions. “Where do you live, Radley?”
“Nearby, for the moment.”
“On this mountain?” Marc swung one hand toward the window to indicate the swath of forest barely visible in the dark. Radley sighed and nodded, so Marc continued. “A cabin? A house? What?”
“Anyplace that will keep me warm for a few hours. I don’t have the deed, if you know what I mean.”
We knew what he meant. He was a drifter.
While most strays used the stability of an established human lifestyle to balance out the volatility of life as a stray, some new werecats never readjusted to a normal human existence after being infected. Drifters roamed from place to place, hunting when they were hungry, sniffing out water when they were thirsty, sleeping wherever they found warmth, and only venturing into human society when they were too lonely to think straight. However, attempts at socialization rarely lasted long for a drifter, because he would soon come to realize all over again that he had little in common with the human world, and thus no real place in it. And back to the woods he would go.
But Radley didn’t strike me as a typical drifter. His hair was trimmed and his teeth were in good shape, both of which are hard to accomplish in an existence with no scissors or toothbrushes.
“Where are you from?” Marc asked.
“My birthplace.” Radley smirked.
“Specifically…?” Marc rolled his shoulders, making it clear that he was ready for more persuasion, should it prove necessary.
Radley licked blood from his lips in a slow, deliberate motion. Then he closed his mouth and met Marc’s eyes boldly.
Marc shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to lose my canines. But that’s your call.” He uncrossed his arms, elbows bent, fists clenched. He dropped one hip and leaned in for a kick, no doubt aimed at the stray’s jaw.
My father went completely still. Jace’s hand tightened on my shoulder in anticipation. My breath caught in my throat. My brother Ethan told me once that Marc could throw a kick with enough precision to knock out a single tooth. But I had no desire to see it happen.