Rogue (Shifters #2)(23)

If Marc had just been thrown into a wall by a single punch, he’d have come up spittin’ and swingin’. For that matter, so would I.
Kevin looked past me as if I weren’t there, glaring at Marc. “You know, I wasn’t the one who just suggested your girlfriend take her clothes off for cash.” Although, actually, that’s exactly what he’d done. “Maybe you should have taken your irritation out on that little prick.”“He’s human,” Marc growled, his fists still clenched. “He gets an automatic walk. Once. And since I don’t plan to see him again, he’ll probably live. But this is your last warning to watch your mouth—if you want to keep your canines.”
A weak, hot breeze blew down the ally from the end opposite us, fluttering several scraps of paper and bringing with it the unmistakable stench of mold. When one of those scraps failed to settle into the shadows, my attention centered on the door Jeff had come through. A single sheet of paper flapped against the dented metal surface, hanging from a long strip of Scotch tape.
“Um, Marc?” I stepped carefully over a splintered crate on my way toward Forbidden Fruit’s rear exit. “You’re going to have to see the little prick again. Soon.”
“What?” Glass crunched behind me as Marc’s boot came down on a broken bottle. He stopped at my side, following my gaze to the homemade poster printed in black on hot-pink paper.
In the center of the page was a black-and-white photo of a stereotypically buxom blonde, smiling with her beautiful, thickly lashed eyes as well as her mouth. The caption at the top read, “Have you seen me?” Beneath the photo was the name “Kellie Tandy” and a list of her vital statistics. Below that, the poster read:
KELLIE VANISHED DURING HER SHIFT AT FORBIDDEN FRUIT ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2008.
IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION REGARDING HER WHEREABOUTS, PLEASE CALL 555-7648.
$$ REWARD $$
FOR ANY INFORMATION THAT HELPS US FIND HER.
“Remember the bundle of ones in Bradley Moore’s wallet?” I asked Marc, still staring at the poster. “The only building within five miles of that damn field was a strip club. Do you believe in coincidence?”
Marc shook his head slowly, and when his frown deepened, I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. “Harper wasn’t at the Cajun Bar and Grill. He was at Forbidden Fruit.”
Chapter Twelve
September 11th. The stripper had been missing for three days, since Thursday, the day we’d buried Bradley Moore in Arkansas. Then yesterday—Saturday—Parker and Holden found Robert Harper’s body in the alley behind the missing stripper’s place of employment. I saw no obvious connection, but like Marc, I didn’t believe in coincidence.
Kevin focused on the picture of the missing girl, and his forehead crinkled in confusion. “Wait,” he said, his voice rising in pitch as his words rushed out. “Greg said your men found a dead stray here. Guy named Harper. So who’s Bradley Moore, and what does he have to do with some psycho killing Robby Harper? And what the hell does all that have to do with a missing stripper?” 
My father had given Kevin only the information he needed to know, which included nothing about the foreign tabby or the body we’d buried in Arkansas.
“Robby Harper?” I asked, turning to watch Kevin through narrowed eyes as his familiar use of the dead stray’s name sank in. I ignored his questions in favor of one of my own. “You knew him?”
Kevin shook his head as if to clear it. “Only by reputation. He…uh, used to sneak across the boundary line every so often to party in the Big Easy. Guess there’s not much to do in rural Mississippi.”
“And, of course, you reported him for trespassing, right?” I asked, already well aware that he hadn’t.
Marc took a threatening step toward him, and Kevin shrugged, slouching back. “It didn’t seem important enough to bother Greg about. Especially considering all the trouble he was having keeping tabs on you.” He shot an accusing glance my way before turning his attention back to Marc, who represented the biggest threat. So far as he knew, anyway.
Kevin’s last statement rang in my ears, and the hairs on the back of my neck bristled. My immediate impulse was to correct his misconception with my fist, but a slow, deep breath brought my temper back under control. See, I really was growing up. Mostly.
“He was not having trouble with me,” I snapped. “And you should have reported Harper the minute he set foot in the south-central territory.”
“Come on, Faythe.” Kevin crossed his arms over his chest, as if unaware that Marc was prepared to maim him if he couldn’t justify his failure to report the trespasser. “We all know you have your father over a barrel. You won’t settle down with a decent tom, for no reason anyone else understands, and he can’t make you, so the best he can do is try to keep tabs on you until you listen to reason and give him some heirs.”
A grinding sound met my ears, and it took me a long moment to recognize it as the sound of my own teeth gnashing together. I was struggling to keep a grip on my rage, but that wasn’t easy to do with Kevin flaunting the fact that my personal life was about as private as a celebrity sex video.
“Rumor has it your dad’s had you under round-the-clock surveillance for the last five years just to keep you safe and in one place. If that’s true, he’s not only been consistently one man short, but he had to break up a team of enforcers to keep one man free to watch you prance around campus with all your college buddies. Greg hasn’t had the manpower to check out every trespassing report in years. Because of you.”
Even as I shook my head in denial, fury sending sparks of indignation up my spine, part of me wondered if he was right. Had I kept my father from doing his job? Had I forced him to divide his loyalties between me and the rest of the Pride? Had I compromised the security he worked so hard to give us all?
I hadn’t meant for any of that to happen, for my decisions to affect everyone else so drastically. Yet they had. I’d just wanted a little freedom, but the entire Pride had paid for my liberty. If an ass-clown like Kevin Mitchell had seen that, why the hell hadn’t I?
Fortunately, Kevin was so consumed in his own defense that he noticed neither my fury nor my self-doubt. “I was doing your father a favor.” He crossed his arms, as if determined to make himself believe the load of cow shit he was shoveling. “I’m perfectly capable of keeping an eye on the odd stray who wanders across the border without having to bother Greg. If there was a real problem, I’d have given him a call. But there wasn’t. I had it under control.”
Marc took another step forward, and Kevin mirrored him with another step back, flinching and uncrossing his arms when he bumped into the Dumpster. Marc stared down at him, gold-flecked eyes glittering in rage and unspoken challenge. “Then how do you explain Harper winding up dead in an alley?”Kevin held up his hands, palms out. “I had nothing to do with that. I wasn’t here yesterday. I have no idea who killed him.”
Stunned, I blinked at Kevin, and from the corner of my eye I saw Marc stiffen. He’d heard it, too. “You weren’t here yesterday?” he growled. “Meaning you were here on other days? With Harper?”
Kevin stuttered as comprehension surfaced in his eyes. Finally, he understood how deep his pile of shit was. And he had no idea how to dig himself out of it.
“Spit it out, Kevin.” I made no move to intercede as Marc closed in on him. Marc was the better bad cop, anyway—not because I couldn’t carry it off, but because he wasn’t believable as a good cop. “Did you and Harper go to Forbidden Fruit together? Were you strip-club buddies?”
“Don’t bother. The answer’s obvious,” Marc spat, his voice dripping with disgust. He watched Kevin the way a cat watches a mouse he plans to play with, rather than eat. “The only thing I don’t understand is why a prissy little snot like you would hang out with a scratch-fevered stray.”
Kevin glanced at me around Marc’s shoulder, having evidently decided I was the lesser threat. I saw no reason to disillusion him. “He paid me.”
I cocked my head in mock confusion. “He paid you to hang out with him? Isn’t that a little ‘desperate-schoolboy’?”
Kevin glared at me, shaking his head as sweat dripped down his hairline. “He paid me to keep my mouth shut. To let him cross the lake and hang out in a city that doesn’t roll up its sidewalks at 9:00 p.m.”
“And you went with him?” I asked, prodding him on.
“Yeah, to keep an eye on him. So what if I got paid? Your dad should be paying me, anyway.”
“Why weren’t you with him yesterday?” Marc asked.
Kevin stared at the ground, nudging a broken bottle with one foot. “My boss called me in to work, so I couldn’t go. I had no idea he was dead till Greg called last night.”
Marc lunged forward, and his fists slammed into the Dumpster on either side of Kevin’s head, leaving two deep dents in the metal. “If you’re lying, you’ll walk with a limp for the rest of your life.”
Kevin glanced anxiously at Marc, then around him at me, and his left eyebrow began to tic. “It’s the truth.” Though he was clearly angry, his voice came out in a high-pitched whine. “You want to see my fucking check stub?”