Rogue (Shifters #2)(48)

“Wow. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He sank onto the bed next to me to recline on one elbow. “Seriously. They’re Jace’s, and if he finds out I snatched some of his goodies, I’ll never hear the end of it.” 
“Understood.” I picked up the brownie in one hand and took a big bite, closing my eyes as I treasured the perfect, cakey texture and the smooth, creamy taste of quality chocolate. The brownie didn’t make me feel any better about Marc, but it got the taste of him out of my mouth. Which was a mercy, considering.
“Damn, those girls can bake,” I said around my mouthful.
Ethan laughed, nodding. “They’re majoring in Home Ec. Or some shit like that.”
Ha. Our mother would probably love them.
“You guys will be okay, you know,” Ethan said, pressing the paper cup into my hand. Doubtful, I drank from it without thinking to ask what it was, and nearly choked on Scotch.
“Is this Dad’s?” I asked, still sputtering as I located the bottle of Scoresby on my dresser.
“You think I’ve got a death wish?” Ethan asked. “It’s mine. And that’s all you’re getting.”
“It’s more than enough, thanks,” I said, peering at the two inches left in the bottom of the cup. I took another sip and cradled the tiny cup in both hands as I met Ethan’s eyes. “I think he dumped me.”
“I think you’re right.” He pinched a crumb from the corner of my brownie. “Seriously, though, what did you expect? How many times can you not marry a guy and still expect him to hang around?”
“You heard us?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. And it’s not like you guys were whispering.”
I set the paper cup on my nightstand and reached for another bite of the brownie. Of course he’d heard. “You really think he’ll come back?”
“Well, I didn’t say that. But it’s not like getting dumped is lethal.”
I glared at him as I chewed. “Yeah, like you’d know.”
“I’m pretty sure none of my exes have died of it,” he said. I glared harder, and Ethan smiled in sympathy. “Sorry, Faythe, but you have to admit you kind of deserved it. You did stand him up at his own wedding.”
“That was five years ago! Whose side are you on, anyway?” I snapped, reaching for the paper cup. I drained the contents in a single, scorching gulp, and Ethan nodded in approval. And a little amusement.
“There are no sides,” he said, and I kicked his elbow out from under him. He sat up, smiling faintly. “Look, I’m not saying he won’t take you back. I’m just saying it won’t hurt you to stew in your own juices until he does.”
“Thanks, Ethan. You’re a huge help.”
“No problem.” He crushed the paper cup and tossed it across the room into the trash can by my desk.
From the foyer, the grandfather clock chimed four times, and I glanced at the clock on my radio to confirm the time. Sure enough, it was four in the morning and I had yet to close my eyes for anything longer than a single blink. Wonderful.
“You’d better go get some sleep before you lose your chance,” I said, knowing full well that Michael would make Ethan do most of the day’s driving.
“Yeah, I guess.” He stood, backing toward my nonfunctional door and watching me through eyes just a shade greener than my own. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, pulling my covers straight. “I deserved it, remember?”
He grinned. “Yeah, you’re the devil’s spawn. Really, you’re lucky he didn’t call for an exorcist.”
I tossed my punching pillow at him, and Ethan laughed, dashing into the hall as the fluffy pink missile narrowly missed his head, bouncing off the splintered door frame instead. Suddenly exhausted, I got up and set my door in place, propping my desk chair against it when it wouldn’t stand on its own. I bent down for the pillow, and as I stood, my eye caught my reflection in the dresser mirror.My face was red and puffy from crying, my hair swept back behind one shoulder, framing the row of crescent-shaped scars trailing up my neck—a permanent reminder of my run-in with Miguel, the jungle cat who’d haunted my nightmares ever since. Miguel was the first stray I’d ever personally seen, other than Marc, and in spite of similar looks and a shared tendency to cuss at me in Spanish, they had almost nothing in common.
Wait…. Miguel wasn’t my first encounter with a stray. Luiz was. I’d fought him on campus and sent him packing with a broken nose. That was the night Marc showed up to haul me home. It was also only hours after I’d bitten my human boyfriend. If Marc hadn’t come for me, I’d have figured out what happened to Andrew that very night. I would have taken care of him. I would never have left him to the mercy of whatever psychotic cat happened upon him first….
Oh, fuck. My eyes closed, and my image in the mirror was swallowed by my own private darkness.
Luiz. There were no other cats on campus, or anywhere near UNT. We’d have known, if there had been. But Luiz was there. He’d been sent to snatch me, and Miguel would not have been happy with his failure. He might even have sent Luiz back for a second shot. Fortunately, I was already gone. But Andrew wasn’t. He was sick, and by then likely reeking of my base scent.
Andrew’s with Luiz. The minute the thought surfaced, I knew it was true. No wonder they were targeting strippers who look like me. They both hated me.
My new theory made perfect sense to me, but no one else was ever going to believe Luiz had been not only alive, but in our territory all this time. Undetected. The only way he could possibly have hidden from a Pride of more than thirty cats for more than ninety days was to lie low and stay in one place. But that wasn’t Luiz’s style. Three months ago, he’d been killing college girls and leaving them exposed, on some sort of assignment from Miguel. If he’d kept up his little project, we would have found him. Shit, even the police would have caught up with him eventually, which would have been disastrous.
But since the night I’d kicked Luiz’s ass at UNT, we hadn’t found a single dead college girl. Or any other sign of Luiz, until the strippers started disappearing. No one else knew he was involved with that yet, but I had no doubt. Was Luiz continuing his “work” with a new set of victims? If so, why the change in MO? And why the three-month hiatus?
Three months. I grabbed the fluffy pink pillow from my dresser and twisted it in my hands, pacing as I worked to piece together the puzzle in my head. The hiatus was Andrew’s recovery period. It had to be. Luiz had put his little hobby on hold to nurse my ex through scratch-fever.
But that was oddly altruistic for a jungle cat. Why would he give a shit whether or not one more stray survived? 
Because I’d infected Andrew. Luiz probably thought he could use my ex to draw me out. It was because of me. He had likely followed Andrew around the day after I’d left, trying to find me, and discovered what I’d done by accident.
I’d not only infected Andrew, I’d led Luiz right to him.
Furious, I threw the pillow at my headboard, irritated with the harmless way it bounced onto the comforter. The whole mess—the missing strippers, the dead toms, Marc’s…issues—would never have happened if I’d realized I’d infected Andrew.
I had to tell my father about Luiz. I was already in the hall, the tile cold against my bare feet, before I came to my senses. I couldn’t wake my father up after less than two hours of sleep to ramble on about a theory based on a hunch. I needed proof, something to validate what was otherwise merely the instinct of a vastly underexperienced enforcer.
Ryan. I had to talk to the Cowardly Lion himself. He might know something about Miguel’s plans and accomplices that would substantiate my speculation. Spinning on one heel, I ran back down the hall toward the kitchen, pausing in the foyer to glance at the grandfather clock. Even with only pale moonlight shining through the front windows, I could read the time clearly. Four-twenty-two in the morning. I probably wouldn’t see my bed again before dawn. Which was just as well, because I couldn’t have slept, anyway.
In the kitchen, I yawned as I passed the bar on my way to the basement door before my exhausted brain processed what I’d seen sitting on the long white countertop. There, next to the wall, where the guys had clearly pushed it to make room for their ice cream, was a shiny silver tray, on which sat a dinner plate, loaded with baked halibut, scalloped potatoes, and several spears of asparagus covered in cold, congealed hollandaise. Next to the dinner plate lay a linen napkin, a dinner fork, a dessert fork, and a dessert plate, empty but for a crumb of graham-cracker crust and a smear of strawberry. And a glass of tea, into which the ice had long ago melted.
Ryan’s dinner. No one had bothered to take it to him. I shook my head, half in shame and half in frustration. The fact that it lay unnoticed on the counter said that my mother had spent her entire evening in the woods. She made him a tray every night when she cleaned the kitchen, but had consistently refused to take it to him, even when my father had pushed the issue. One of us was supposed to do it, but apparently everyone’s least-favorite chore had been neglected in the excitement of the evening’s discoveries.