Pride (Shifters #3)(57)

Kaci nodded, just the slightest bob of her head, but it was enough to send a jolt of understanding tingling down my spine to settle in my toes like pins and needles. She wasn’t trying to decide whether to trust me with her life. She was trying to decide whether to trust me with her secret.
The female hiker. If she’d infected the man, she’d probably at least seen the woman, and I knew from experience how quickly a confrontation with a human could go very, very wrong. I’d almost killed a hunter once, when I’d lost control of fear-induced bloodlust.
It was an accident, I told myself as she unbuttoned the blouse with her back to me. Whatever happened with Kaci and the hikers was an accident. They’d surprised her, or she’d surprised them, and all parties had acted on instinct. That was it. It had to be.
“What are they going to do to you?”
I shoved hair from my face, wondering how much of my answer she could possibly understand. Or should even hear. “They’re holding a hearing right now. It works kind of like the trials you see on TV, but I don’t get a lawyer, and there are three judges. And no jury.”“That doesn’t sound fair.” Kaci leaned forward to grab a long-sleeved T-shirt from the bed I sat on. The front read Hands Off. I’d been tempted to buy one for myself.
“It isn’t fair.” I rubbed both hands over my face, suddenly very, very tired. “The Territorial Council doesn’t care much about fair. They have to put the good of the group above the good of the individual, and right now some of them think I’m a threat to the group.”
She pulled the T-shirt over her head and tugged it into place. Then she shoved her trembling hands into her pockets and took a deep breath, meeting my eyes with fear in her own. “Are they going to kill you?”
Apparently a sense of decorum doesn’t come into play until late adolescence. But even I recognized the incongruity in that thought; my mouth had gotten me in far more trouble than my fists ever had.
I met her eyes, doing my best to project honesty in my voice. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s not over yet. They haven’t even decided on a verdict so far, much less a sentence.”
Kaci nodded as if she understood, but her face had gone pale with fear, and suddenly I realized my mistake. If they were willing to execute me for my crimes, it stood to reason that they might execute her, too. I’d just given her cause to fear for her life among those I’d sworn would protect her.
But the rules of the game had changed with the discovery of Bob Tindale’s body, and I couldn’t reassure Kaci when she hadn’t even told me what had happened yet. She had no idea I knew about the hikers.
Too on edge to sit now, I folded a pair of khakis, then put them in the bottom drawer of the closest dresser. “Kaci, how long have you been here?” She shook her head, obviously thrown off by the change of subject, so I tried again. “In these woods, on this mountain?”
“I…I don’t know.” Her eyes narrowed in thought, and her hand absently stroked the sleeve of the pink sweater on the bed next to her. “What day is it?”
“November thirteenth.”
Her eyes closed, and her pulse spiked noticeably. “November?” When she looked at me again, her eyes were glazed with fear, highlighting the pale green in a sea of deep brown. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I forced a small smile and bent to pick up a package of athletic socks that had fallen on the floor. “What month did you think it was?”
“I don’t know.” She half turned toward the window, her gaze going unfocused as she stared at the trees in the distance. “I knew it had gotten colder out, obviously, but the last time… When I…” Her mouth closed firmly, and she sank onto the bed facing me, without bothering to shove the clothes over. “August. It was the end of August.” 
Whoa. She’d been on her own for two and a half months. Not weeks. Months.
Part of me was impressed. But the rest of me was furious at whoever was responsible for this girl. If Kaci was a Pride cat, some team of enforcers was seriously neglecting its duty. If she was a stray, someone had infected her, and whoever the bastard was, he was going to pay for that when we found him.
Just like I would pay for what I did to Andrew.
A sob caught in my throat and I forced it down, startled by the sudden reminder that I was in as much trouble as whoever was responsible for Kaci. Yes, I’d infected my ex by accident, but that had made no difference to him. What had mattered to Andrew was that I bit him, then abandoned him. His blood was on my hands, and I would pay.
But not before someone paid for what had happened to Kaci. And to the hikers by extension.
“Kaci, when you were in cat form, did you see any humans?”
“Not very often.” She fingered the collar of the leather coat, her gaze tracking her hand up and down the smooth surface. “I followed the river most of the time, but I stayed in the woods, and there weren’t many people out there. Mostly just animals. Deer and rabbits. And raccoons.”
“But you did see some humans?”
She nodded slowly. “A few. Why?” Her voice grew cold with suspicion, and I steeled myself in preparation to simply spit the question out. Surely that would be easier on us both. But before I could do more than open my mouth, a soft, rapid series of knocks sounded on the door.
My nose supplied me with Dr. Carver’s name even as he eased the door open.
Kaci froze, and startled recognition flashed across her face. “It’s okay.” I moved quickly to put myself between the two of them, facing her. “You remember Dr. Carver?”
Her head bobbed stiffly.
“Doc?” I twisted and arched my brows at him in question, which he took as an invitation to enter.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” He smiled confidently, but his left hand rubbed the bandage on his right arm, a painful reminder of their last meeting. “But I need to borrow Faythe for a few minutes.”
“What’s up?” I glanced at my watch. I still had forty minutes.
“Michael’s asking for you downstairs.”
I scowled, showing him silently how bad his timing was. “Can it wait?”
“Um…no.” The urgency in Dr. Carver’s eyes sent an adrenaline-spiked surge of dread through my bloodstream, and I frowned. What’s wrong now?
Twenty-Five

“Kaci, I’ll be right back.” I hesitated, one hand on the doorknob. “Can I bring you a soda?”
She nodded, eyeing us both suspiciously, but voiced no protest when I followed the doctor into the hall.
“Sorry,” Carver said as soon as the door latched shut behind us, heedless of the guard obviously listening in. “But Michael—”
I cut him off with a harsh look and a firm grip on his arm, hauling the doctor quickly toward the staircase at the end of the hall. “She can hear us, genius,” I hissed, clomping onto the first step.
One corner of his mouth turned up in surprise. “Yeah, I guess she can. Why is it we forget children can hear us, and we talk about them like they aren’t even there?”
“Children? Hell, that’s how most of you treat women. And that’s not always a bad thing.” I got most of my privileged information when some stupid tom or arrogant Alpha forgot I was within hearing range.
“I suppose you’re right.” The doctor shrugged, but had the sense to look embarrassed.Downstairs, I found Michael surrounded by Jace and all four Alphas, all staring at whatever he held. Lucas and the other enforcers were gone, presumably having joined the search for the still-missing female hiker.
Marc hovered on the edge of the room, fists clenched in irritation. Though his flight wouldn’t leave until early the next morning, he’d been removed from the proceedings by virtue of his official banishment, and I’d never seen him look more frustrated.
All heads turned my way as I thumped to the hardwood floor from the last carpeted step. “Is this about Kaci?” I whispered.
“Yeah, I found—”
I cut Michael off with a curt toss of my head toward the door as I marched past him, snatching my jacket from the back of an armchair on the way. “Let’s take it outside. She can hear bits of everything said down here.” To my amusement, they all followed me through the kitchen and into the backyard without a word of protest.
We wound up beneath the high, broad branches of an old oak, and I gave myself mental kudos for picking the side of the building the tabby couldn’t see from her window. Michael stopped in front of me and the Alphas re-formed that same semicircle around him, Jace and Dr. Carver hovering around the edges.
“I found her,” Michael announced. “Kaci, with a K and an I, and Dillon with two L’s.”
“Yeah?” I’d been expecting that, of course. “What’d you find?” My gaze strayed to the thin stack of papers in his right hand. On the front page, a black-and-white school photo of a young girl stared up at me. It was upside down from my perspective, and her face was much fuller, eyes glittering with innocence and unspoiled youth. But it was Kaci, without a doubt.
Michael handed me the top sheet—an online-newspaper printout—and I turned it around to stare into Kaci’s eyes while he spoke. “The Dillons were big news in their little town a couple of months ago. They even made a few of the papers down here.”