Rogue (Shifters #2)(31)

“Rome, for two more days,” Michael replied, without ever taking his eyes from the screen.
“Wasn’t she just there last month?”
“That was Venice, in July.”
“Oh.” Marc winked at me. While most of the other guys were predictably envious of Michael’s wife—an actual twig-thin, doe-eyed runway model—Marc let me know over and over again how unhappy he would be with a woman like Holly. She was away far more than she was home, and Michael’s career rarely gave him the freedom to travel with her.
Marc liked me exactly where I was—in Texas. With him. Away from the eager eyes of millions of men all over the world.
I tried to take such statements for the compliment he intended them to be, instead of focusing on the underlying hint that my place was at home, with him and our future—thus far purely theoretical—children.
Perching on the edge of my father’s desk, I pulled the stand-alone answering machine toward me, noting the blinking red light. Someone had called since we’d left for the barn, and my mother hadn’t answered the phone. Why not?
Then the answer was there—obvious, in retrospect. She was in the woods. By herself. Again.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth as he read silently from the computer screen.
“Dad wants us to listen to the messages and make sure Painter’s the guy.” I swung one leg to thump against the side of the desk. “Have you heard them yet?”
“Nope.”
“Well, get ready.” I pressed the play button on the machine, a digital model that didn’t actually take a tape, and was first surprised, then pleased to hear my cousin’s voice bubble from the tiny inset speaker.
“Hi, everybody, it’s Abby.” She paused, then sighed and continued. “My mom said that if I was serious about learning to fight, I should really commit to it, so I was calling to ask what kind of punching bag you guys use. The big heavy one. And I know the school year just started, but we’ll be out for fall break in a few weeks, and I’d really like to spend it with you guys, if you don’t mind. Maybe Faythe could teach me some more of those self-defense moves. I really want to learn how to disable a guy with one kick….”
I pressed the button to save Abby’s message, then began cycling backward through the old ones, glancing at the numbers to eliminate the calls one by one, without listening to them. There was a call from Vic’s cell phone, and another one from Ethan. Next was my own number; I’d called from the airport to tell my father I’d gotten his earlier message.
I pressed the button one more time, and a fourth number appeared on the display. The time and date looked about right for the second message from the informant. So I pressed the play button.
“It’s me again. Your friendly neighborhood snitch…”
We listened in silence as Dan Painter—and it was definitely him—told us where to find the body of a werecat near the westernmost edge of the KisatchieNational Forest in Louisiana. “And there’s more information where that came from, if you’re interested. But I want something in return, so next time, you’d better answer the damn phone.”There was a soft click as the connection was cut, but right before that click there was a single, soft bang, like a gunshot in the distance. And the distinctive air-beating sound of a propeller.
I sucked in a silent breath as my blood seemed to freeze in my veins. I couldn’t swear that boom was actual gunfire, but I could swear I’d heard it before. That very afternoon, in the message Andrew had left on my phone.
Fuck.
I told myself it meant nothing. They were two different gunshots, or explosions, or whatever. Dan Painter and Andrew couldn’t possibly have called from the same town. It was just a coincidence.
Unfortunately, I didn’t believe in coincidence.
Chapter Sixteen
“Well, it’s official,” Marc said, his voice light with relief, because he had yet to notice my sudden panic attack. “Painter’s the guy. Our very own overworked, underappreciated anonymous informant. Now we just have to find him.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, still staring at the answering machine.
“What’s wrong?” Marc eyed me carefully from the center of the love seat.
“Nothing,” I said, a little too quickly. I didn’t want to tell him about Andrew until I was sure of what I’d heard on Painter’s message. “I was just thinking that the best way to find him would be to start with the number he called from.” Attagirl, Faythe. Stick to the truth. At least, as much of it as you can.
“Read me the area code,” Michael said, the disappointment on his face saying clearly that he wished he’d thought of it first.
Hopping down from the desk, I circled my brother to watch over his shoulder as he opened a new browser window and typed “reverse phone directory” into the Google search bar. When the new screen loaded, I read him the number from the display on the answering machine. Michael added the digits to his search, and sat back while the computer did all the work.
“Did you come up with any other missing strippers?” I asked, watching as a progress bar began to fill on-screen.
“Yeah.” Michael extended both hands above his head, stretching like a cat asleep in the sun. “One from Arkansas, and two more from Louisiana.” He paused, tilting his head down to peer over his useless glasses at the information now available on the screen. “Here you go.” He nodded toward the flat-screen monitor. “Painter called from a pay phone in Leesville, Louisiana.”
And though it obviously meant nothing to Michael, according to the on-screen map, Leesville was less than ten miles north of Pickering, where the tabby had left Jamey’s body.
“The first call came from somewhere in Arkansas, didn’t it?” Marc asked, finally pushing himself off the sofa to join us at the computer. 
“Yeah. Um…” Michael reached across the disturbingly neat desk and pulled the huge atlas toward him. It was already open to the Arkansas page, and my father had circled two towns in red ink. One of them was Dumas, the small town just southeast of Pine Bluff, where I’d first smelled, then spotted Dan Painter when we stopped for gas. The other was—
“White Hall,” Michael said, finishing my own thought. “Isn’t that where you guys found Bradley Moore?”
“And where we buried him.” Marc ran one hand up my arm, and I struggled to return his smile. “That makes sense. Moore was murdered in White Hall, and Painter saw it happen, so of course he’d call from there.” I twisted in Marc’s arms to face my brother. “You said you found a report of a missing stripper from Arkansas…?”
“Yeah.” Michael put down the atlas and picked up the yellow legal pad he’d been making notes on. “Amber Cleary. She disappeared on Wednesday night, after her shift at Club Moonlight.”
Wednesday night. A full twenty-four hours before Kellie Tandy had gone missing from New Orleans. “Where’s Club Moonlight?” I asked, pulling open my father’s top desk drawer. Inside, I grabbed a mini legal pad from the top of a small stack and slid the drawer closed. Marc handed me a pen from the jar on the desktop, and I began scratching on the lined paper as Michael flipped through his own notes.
“Um…Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”
“Where’s that?” Clenching my pen and notepad together in one fist, I bent across the desk for the atlas.
“There.” Marc reached around my arm to tap a point on the map, before I’d even found the legend.
I brushed his hand out of the way and focused on the dot his finger had been covering. Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was forty-five miles south and slightly east of Little Rock. And less than ten miles from White Hall, where Bradley Moore was murdered.
I was starting to see a pattern, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Okay, this is what I have so far,” I said, glancing over the barely legible scribbling on my notepad. “On Wednesday, Amber Cleary disappeared from a strip club in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The next day—Thursday—the rogue tabby murdered Bradley Moore less than ten miles away, in White Hall. That same day, Kellie Tandy vanished in the middle of her shift at Forbidden Fruit, in New Orleans. Then, on Saturday, the tabby showed up at Forbidden Fruit, where she killed Robert Harper.”
I looked up to find both guys watching me. “Am I forgetting anything?”
“Yeah. The other missing strippers.” Marc leaned against my father’s glass display case as he looked to Michael for confirmation. “Didn’t you say there were two more in Louisiana?”
Michael nodded, flipping through his notes again. “Melissa Vassey never made it home after her shift at the Pegasus Lounge on Saturday night. Care to take a guess where the Pegasus Lounge is located?”
“Saturday…” I said, my brain scrambling to assemble a puzzle we didn’t yet have all the pieces for. “Leesville, Louisiana. Or somewhere nearby.”
Michael nodded. “Good guess.”
“How the hell did you know that?” Confused, Marc glanced back and forth between us.
I grinned in triumph. “It fits the pattern. A stripper goes missing, then, a day later, the tabby shows up and kills a tomcat. On Sunday she dropped off Jamey Gardner’s body in Leesville, which must mean that on Saturday, a stripper went missing from Leesville, or somewhere nearby.” I flipped my legal pad around for him to see. “But the tabby can’t be the one taking the strippers. She was busy killing Moore when Kellie Tandy went missing, and she was killing Jamey Gardner when Melissa Vassey disappeared from Leesville.”“So, the tabby’s alibi for kidnapping is murder?” A sardonic smile played across Marc’s lips. “That’s one hell of a defense.”