Rogue (Shifters #2)(30)

“Right.” Marc nodded.
Yet I felt compelled to correct one minor misunderstanding. “Actually, I caught Painter. Me. All alone.”
Vic grinned. “My mistake.” I smiled in acknowledgment, and he continued. “So, we think Painter is spying on the tabby, then ratting her out. But do we think she had something to do with the missing stripper, too?”
“The tabby couldn’t have killed her. Or taken her, or whatever,” Jace said. “Tandy went missing on Thursday night, around the time the tabby was busy killing Bradley Moore. In Arkansas. She didn’t get to New Orleans—that we know of—for two more days.”
“So what does the missing stripper have to do with the dead strays? Or toms?” Ethan frowned, looking at the body laid out on the bales of hay. “I guess they’re not just strays anymore.”
“Maybe nothing,” my father said. “But maybe…” He turned to face Michael, tired eyes now bright with unspoken ideas. “When we get in, I want you to do a search for missing strippers in Arkansas and Louisiana. Mississippi and Texas, too.”
Michael nodded. “No problem. You’re thinking there may be more missing than just the girl from New Orleans?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I think your mother’s right. The tabby’s looking for something. Someone. Maybe she’s looking for whoever took Kellie Tandy.”
Marc reached out for me, and I let him pull me close. “That would explain why she’s two days behind whoever took Tandy,” he said. “She’s tracking him.”
“No way.” I shook my head and felt my hair rub against Marc’s shirt. “There’s no possible way she could have tracked anyone that far.” It was incredibly difficult for one cat to track another across long distances. In the forest, it wasn’t so bad—our ears are very sharp, and the slightest sound can give away your position. However, over long distances, it’s virtually impossible. Cats can’t track with their noses like dogs can. And even if we could, we’d lose the trail the moment our prey got into his car. “Besides, that doesn’t explain why she’s killed three toms in less than a week.” 
My father clasped his hands behind his back, frowning in thought. “No, it doesn’t, and such long-distance tracking does seem pretty far-fetched, but without more to go on, I can’t see how else Kellie Tandy could be connected to the tabby.”
“Well, shi—!” Ethan shouted, snapping his mouth closed abruptly when he realized he’d almost cussed in front of his Alpha.
“What?” our father asked, waving off the social gaffe.
“I just realized that if Marc and Faythe had brought Painter back with them for questioning, instead of releasing him, we’d probably have known who the rogue tabby is three days ago.”
Well, hell. I could feel my cheeks begin to burn. Ethan was right.
Excuses tumbled around in my brain, and several jumped immediately into the spotlight, ready for use. But my father beat me to it.
“It’s not your fault,” he said, taking in both Marc and me with his gaze. “I told you to release him. You did the right thing.”
I nodded, thankful for his reassurance, but couldn’t help feeling like I’d made a big mistake. Another big mistake. Which only reminded me of the one I hadn’t yet disclosed to either him or Marc.
“Did Painter say anything…I don’t know…important, while you were driving him to the border?” Parker asked.
“Um, no.” Marc held me tight against his chest. “He was unconscious.”
Michael pushed his glasses—which I suspected were just to make him look smarter—farther up on his nose. “Unconscious? How did he happen to lose consciousness?”
“I…kind of knocked him out.” I shrugged sheepishly when Michael frowned. “He got vulgar, talking about chasing a piece of…tail. So I…” I swung my arm up, in imitation of my prize-winning right hook. But my fist froze in midair and my words trailed off, as what I’d been saying finally sank in.
Chasing a piece of ass. He’d said he was chasing a piece of ass.
“He meant the tabby,” I whispered, too surprised to manage any real volume. But it didn’t matter. They all heard me. “Painter was chasing the rogue tabby, and I knocked him out before he could tell us about her.”
Outside, cicadas chirruped, filling the silence as everyone but Marc stared at me in complete disbelief.
Then Ethan snorted. “Isn’t that a bitch?” He grinned, his expression one of dark amusement—as if he appreciated the irony—rather than actual anger. But I would have understood anger. I’d screwed up the entire investigation, before I even knew there was one.
“I swear on my life that I do not do these things on purpose,” I said, letting my head fall back to rest on Marc’s shoulder as his arms wrapped around me. I hated feeling like my fellow Pride members spent most of their time cleaning up my mistakes. I was better than that, and I wanted them all to know it.
“Of course you don’t,” Jace said. I lifted my head to look at him, encouraged by the understanding in his voice, and was even more relieved to find sympathy in his eyes. “You had no way of knowing all this was going on. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She didn’t do anything right, either,” Michael mumbled, still staring at the body of his childhood friend. I wanted to snap at him but resisted the impulse. I wasn’t the real source of his anger; that much was obvious.
“Jace is right,” my father said, eyeing Michael in compassion, rather than irritation. “She couldn’t possibly have known.” Bending, he reached for the plastic hanging over the bales of hay from beneath Jamey Gardner’s body. He pulled up first one side, then the other, until Jamey was completely and respectfully covered.Standing, my father headed for the door, motioning for Michael to join him. “You can use the computer in my office to run a search on missing strippers. I want names, locations, dates they went missing, ages, and anything else that might be relevant. Get pictures, if you can find them.”
Michael took off through the western field at a jog, headed toward the main house.
“Ethan, you and Jace go fill your mother in on what we have so far, and see if she’s thought of anything else we can use.”
Ethan nodded, and he and Jace took off down the dirt path, behind Michael.
My father turned to me and Marc next, and my hands began to sweat from dread that he would put us on another plane. Fortunately, he had something else in mind. “Will you recognize Dan Painter’s voice if you hear it again?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. And Marc’s chest shifted slightly at my back as he nodded.
“The informant got my machine both times he called, and I saved the messages.” My father paused, looking deeply into my eyes to convey the importance of what he was about to say. “I want you two to listen to them and tell me whether or not the voice on the machine belongs to Dan Painter. We have to confirm the informant’s identity before we proceed any further, because if he isn’t Painter, we’re looking at this all wrong.”
“No problem,” Marc said.
My father nodded, satisfied. “Good. Go.”
Marc and I headed toward the house together, while Owen, Vic, and Parker hung back to hear whatever instructions our Alpha had for them. A warm summer breeze blew through my hair as we walked through the field, bringing with it the scent of summer wheat, dirt, and trees. And Marc, because he was upwind from me, though only by an inch or so.
“Jace is right,” he said, probably unaware how odd that statement sounded, coming from him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. This is not your fault.”
“The hell it isn’t.” I refused to look at him, staring straight ahead at the house, rising slowly from the waist-high field of grass around us. “If I hadn’t knocked Painter out, Jamey and Harper would both still be alive right now.”
Marc stopped abruptly, turning me by my shoulders to look at him. “Maybe. They might still be alive. Or, we might have learned what the tabby looks like, and nothing else. You don’t know that Painter could have given her to us. And you don’t know that we could have stopped her.”
True. I didn’t know that for sure. But I felt it with every beat of my heart. I’d messed up. Bad.
I’d made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life—hell, most of them in the past few months alone—but I’d never been responsible for an innocent person’s death before. Not even indirectly. And the guilt from knowing I might have saved Robert Harper and Jamey Gardner was making me sick to my stomach. As in, seriously nauseated. 
And unbelievably pissed off. When we found this tabby, she’d get much more than a piece of my mind. She’d get a piece of my fist—right through her pretty little neck.
In the office, Michael sat behind our father’s desk, clicking away at the computer with his right hand, and making notes with his left. Ambidextrous freak. He nodded at us when we came in, then went right back to work.
I made my way straight to the massive oak desk, while Marc settled onto the leather love seat. “Hey, Michael, where’s Holly?” he asked, twisting to face us both.