Rogue (Shifters #2)(32)

“Not exactly exoneration, is it?” I shrugged. “But it holds up.”
“What about Friday?” Marc asked, taking the notebook from my hand.
“What do you mean?”
He aimed one finger at a blank line on the legal pad. “Friday’s blank. See? No dead toms, and no missing strippers.”
“Damn.” I plopped down on my father’s desk and took my notebook back for closer study. “You poked a hole in my theory.”
“Only a small hole,” Michael said. “The third Louisiana stripper went missing Friday night, from a topless bar in Lafayette.”
I stared at my brother for a moment, trying to process the new information and fit it into the timeline forming in my head. Then I twisted around and snatched the atlas from the far corner of the desk. “Lafayette.” I traced I-10 to I-49, then north with my finger. “If you stick to the major interstates, Lafayette is on the way to Leesville from New Orleans.”
Marc looked from me, to the map, to my hastily scribbled notes, to Michael. “So we have a stripper missing from Lafayette on Friday, but no dead tom. Why?”
Michael shrugged. “We’re assuming the tabby’s following whoever’s taking the strippers, right?”
Unfortunately, we were indeed.
“I’m betting there’s no corpse for Friday because she didn’t find a tom in Lafayette. There aren’t that many of us, and she can’t possibly run into a werecat at every gas stop.”
Though I’d come across Dan Painter’s scent in that very manner.
“Besides, we don’t have anyone living near Lafayette, do we?” I asked, glancing to Marc for an answer, because Michael had been out of the loop—for the most part—for the better part of the last decade.
“No. No one with permission, anyway.”
In the foyer, a soft click and the squeal of dry hinges signaled the front door opening.
My father stepped into the office doorway and paused when he noticed us huddled around his computer. “Wait just a minute, guys, and let’s see what Michael found out.”
Michael nudged my hip with the capped tip of his pen, and I slid off the desk and onto my feet just as Vic, Owen, and Parker followed my father into the room.
“Well?” He marched forward to take the position of power: his desk chair.
Michael stood and gave me a shove, and I followed Marc toward the love seat, pausing to grab my notes on the way past the desk.
“I’ve found three more missing strippers so far.” 
The Alpha sank into his chair, and Michael finished going over the details, then set his notepad on the center of the desk, where it wouldn’t be missed. “We’ve identified a pattern connecting the murders with the missing strippers.”
We’ve identified a pattern? I thought, glaring at my know-it-all older brother.
Marc pulled me onto the love seat next to him, squeezing my hand in sympathy, as if he knew what I was thinking. Hell, he probably did.
Dad scanned the notepad, then stood, motioning for Michael to take his seat. “I want to know why these girls in particular are disappearing. What do they have in common, other than their occupation? Are there pictures? Are they all students, or was Kellie Tandy an exception? Do they all work completely in the nude, or are some of them simply topless waitresses?”
My father turned to Vic, Owen, and Parker as he settled into his armchair. “If you go now, you can catch the eleven o’clock news. I wouldn’t be surprised if the missing strippers have made it into the national broadcast.”
Vic nodded and led Owen and Parker out the door and down the hall, presumably toward the guesthouse, where three different televisions and two computers were at their disposal, ready to be used for the greater good of mankind. Or feline-kind, in this case.
“Okay…” My father turned back to face the rest of us. “So, we’ve traced the tabby and whoever she’s following, but we don’t know who that is, or where either of them are now. Right?”
“Right,” Michael said, his fingers clacking away on the keyboard without pause.
Dad closed his eyes, obviously thinking. “So the last known location for the tabby is Pickering, Louisiana, where she left Jamey’s body. What about whoever she’s tailing?”
“Leesville, which is less than ten miles north of Pickering,” I said, glancing down at my notes. Marc shifted closer to me to see them better. “It’s where the last stripper disappeared from, and where Painter made his last anonymous call.”
“And you’re sure it’s him?” My father’s eyes opened to take us both in from his armchair. “Did you listen to both messages?”
“We only heard the last one, but it’s definitely him,” I said, annoyed when Dad looked to Marc for confirmation of what I’d said. As if my word alone wasn’t good enough.
“So we know who the informant is, and we have a description of the tabby. The only one we know nothing about is whoever she’s following.”
“Well, we do know something,” Marc said, glancing at the notebook balanced on my knee. “He’s taken a stripper in a different town for each of the past four nights. If he sticks to his pattern, he could be taking another one right now. But we have no idea where he is.”
“Okay, so trace his path.” Dad templed his hands beneath his chin, his most familiar I’m-thinking gesture. “Maybe we can make an educated guess based on that.”
Maybe we can at that. I dropped the legal pad in Marc’s lap—in case he needed the cheat sheet again—and stood. My father’s gaze followed me as I passed his chair, and I heard the springs creak as he turned to watch me. Stopping in front of the huge oak desk, I spun the atlas around and pulled it close.
“Okay. He drove south from Arkansas, all the way to New Orleans.” I traced the interstate down through the state line and into Louisiana. But then I had to stop and flip through the atlas pages to find Louisiana. “From New Orleans, he probably followed I-10 to Lafayette, then went north—not sure how—to Leesville.”
My finger hovered over Leesville. “From there, he could go east on Highway 28, or turn either north or south on 171.”“I don’t think he’ll go back east,” Marc said, closing his eyes as he leaned his head back against the sofa cushion. “He seems to be working his way west.”
To Texas. I was unwilling to vocalize such a thought, at least until I’d either confirmed or dismissed my suspicion involving Andrew.
“Maybe so.” I exhaled deeply to slow my racing heart, then propped one hip on the edge of my father’s desk—hoping to look completely relaxed—and pulled the atlas onto my lap. Michael scowled, but went back to information-gathering when I stuck my tongue out at him.
“South of Leesville, there’s nothing but more small towns and large patches of forest, until you hit I-10. From there, he could go back east toward New Orleans—which we all agree he probably didn’t do—or west, in which case he’ll wind up in Beaumont, then Houston.”
Marc ran one hand through his dark curls, then leaned his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes again. He looked exhausted. I knew exactly how he felt. “Well, the closer he gets, the easier he’ll be to find,” he said.
Oh, shit. I didn’t know where the stripper-kidnapper was going, but I was starting to seriously suspect he was somehow connected to Andrew. And I knew exactly where Andrew was headed.
Here.
“Anything new on those dancers yet, Michael?” my father asked.
My brother nodded without looking up. “Yeah. Just a second.”
Hopping down from my father’s desk, I dropped the atlas on the blotter and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” my father asked, and I heard springs creak as he stood behind me.
“To the guesthouse for a soda.” My sneakers squeaked on the tiles in a fast, irritating rhythm.
“You need some help?” Marc called. I didn’t answer.
At the end of the hall, I pulled open the back door and shoved the screen out of my way. It slammed shut behind me as I dashed down the steps, wondering where to go next. The guesthouse was out of the question; Vic, Parker, and Owen were in there scrounging up news reports. The barn was a definite no, too; it seemed very wrong to interrupt Jamey’s eternal rest with my own problem, no matter how serious it was.
At a loss for where to go, I settled for a patch of grass to the left of the back porch, against the rear wall of the house. An owl hooted his greeting as I flipped open my phone, my heart thudding in my ears. I scrolled through the missed calls, thankful for the well-lit LCD screen. It didn’t take long to find the voice mail from Andrew. The one I hadn’t entirely listened to in the airport.
Not listening was no longer an option. Maybe it never had been. 
Holding my breath, I pressed a button and brought the phone up to my ear, my hand shaking. I focused on the tree line ahead, waiting for the message to play.
“I got your message, Faythe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—” Again his words were cut off by what sounded like gunfire and helicopter blades—the same sounds we’d heard on Painter’s message to my father. “—you don’t want to see me. But I’m looking forward to seeing you.” More explosions, and blades beating the air. “—take care of something tomorrow, but then I’m all yours. Won’t be long now.”