Shift (Shifters #5)(42)

Jace glanced at his watch. “About twenty minutes. How long do you think it’ll take him?”
“Normally I’d say about an hour, but he’ll rush this time. We may have another half hour.” I swished my arm faster and willed the tub to fill. “I think we’ll all be a lot happier if I’m out of this cast—and the tub—before he gets back.”
“No argument there.” Jace frowned. “Not that I can’t take him. This just isn’t really…”
“I know. And I don’t want you to take him. Or vice versa. Which is why I need this to work fast.” I wiggled my fingers, trying to work water into the cast from that end, to speed up the process. “Your new phone has Internet, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Can you find out how long it’ll take to drive back to New Mexico from here?” Because we couldn’t just knock Lance out and drag him onto the plane.
Jace dug his phone from his pocket and spent the next five minutes typing with his thumbs. “Shit.” He glanced up, and the bad news was obvious in his expression. “Twenty-three hours, if we drive straight through. Which we can do, if we drive in shifts, but…”
“But that means we can’t wait until dark to go after Lance.”
He shook his head. “Not if we want to get there while Kaci’s still breathing.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the edge of the tub as the water lapped at my navel. “Okay, so we go as soon as I’m healed.” Or at least healed enough. “But we’ll have to get Lance alone. We can’t take them all on at once.”
“Yeah. We’ll think of something.” He started to put his phone away, but I shook my head.
“We should call my dad. I’ll talk to him, if you want. He’s probably gonna be mad, too, but I can leave you out of this. I won’t tell him you helped me.”
Jace shook his head, and his gaze held mine with a substantial weight. A determination I almost didn’t recognize in him. “I’m in this with you, Faythe. The whole way. This is the only option we have. He’ll see that. And if he doesn’t…” Jace shrugged and grinned again. “We’ll both be in trouble.”
My heart beat so hard it ached. He wasn’t supposed to be like this. Jace wasn’t supposed to be so…wonderful. Distancing myself from him wasn’t supposed to be so hard…
I was starting to think that giving him up would be like giving up air—and I already felt like I couldn’t breathe. 
“Okay. Call him.”
Twenty-Two
Jace autodialed, and I stirred the water with my cast. When my father answered, I turned the faucet off with my foot. The bath wasn’t as deep as I like it, but it covered my arm, and I wanted to be able to hear both sides of the conversation.
“Hey, Greg, it’s me.”
“Jace? You have an update?”
“Yeah. We’re in a motel, about twenty minutes from…Cal’s place.” Which was once Jace’s home. “We found the feathers, so we’re all good on that front, and there’s no way the council will be able to argue with the evidence. But…we don’t think it’ll be enough to convince the thunderbirds. They can’t distinguish werecats by scent.”
My father sighed, obviously frustrated. “I’ve been having similar thoughts.” Then, more distantly, “Michael, did you hear that?”
“Yeah. Let me think for a minute. I’ll come up with something.”
“We have an idea.” Jace glanced at me and smiled reassuringly. “We want to go after Lance.”
“Go after him?” My father’s footsteps stopped, and I could easily picture his skeptical frown.
“Bring him in. Take him to the thunderbirds.”
“I see.” There was a moment of near silence, but for the water swishing around—and hopefully inside—my cast. “Put Marc on the phone.”
Jace sat on the edge of the tub, and my left hand brushed his thigh. “He went out for first-aid supplies.”
“Who’s hurt?” My dad’s voice rose, and the distant scraping of Michael’s pen against paper paused.
“It’s just a scratch, Daddy,” I said, knowing he’d hear me. “My arm went through a rotten board in the deer stand where we found the feathers.”
My father’s long sigh was more of a plea for patience. “Jace, is it just a scratch?”
Jace shrugged and mouthed a silent apology to me, then answered. “It’s really more of a gash. The length of her forearm.”
I lifted my right arm from the water to flip him off, but I’d expected no less. If he’d lied to our Alpha, I would have lost respect for him.
“Put Faythe on the phone.”
“Just a minute.” Jace covered the mouthpiece and knelt beside the tub. “Can you hold it?”
Not comfortably. But if I made Jace hold the phone, my dad would be focused on how badly I was hurt, rather than what I could accomplish once I’d healed. “Put me on speakerphone.”
Jace raised one eyebrow but complied, setting the phone on the tiny bathroom counter.
“I can hear you, Dad. Go ahead.”
“Why am I on speakerphone?”
“Because I’m in the tub. I don’t want to drop Jace’s phone in the water.” It was the truth. Just not the whole truth.
“And you’re in the tub because…?”
“I’ve found they come in handy for keeping oneself clean.” Technically not a lie…
Michael snorted, but my father was much less amused. “Faythe…”
“Fine. I have to Shift to heal the gash in my left arm, and I can’t do that with a cast on. So I’m going to heal both arms with one Shift.” Or maybe more like a dozen Shifts. “I’m soaking my cast so we can cut it off.”
“Somehow I don’t think Dr. Carver would approve of your timing or your methods.” He sounded weary, but in good humor, which was probably due entirely to the fact that they were no longer being attacked by kamikaze thunderbirds.
“I know, and I wish the doc were here.” So I wouldn’t be bathing naked in front of Jace, while on the phone with my father and brother. Our conversation had completely redefined the word awkward, and we hadn’t even gotten to the hard part. “But Carver’s not here, and we’re on a pretty tight timeline. And we need all three of us in good working order, so I’m doing what has to be done.” I hesitated, and took a deep breath. “Is any of that a problem?”My dad sighed again, and I could almost see him scowling as he debated the possible answers. “The whole thing is one big problem, Faythe. You’re deep in enemy territory, injured, and too far away for me to help. You’re nothing but a stroke of bad luck away from being caught, and if that happens, we’ll have to go full-scale against Malone in the next day and a half, because when the thunderbirds figure out you’re not coming back, they’ll relaunch their offensive, and we won’t have the manpower to get you out. Am I missing anything?”
“Um…we’re pretty sure that if we’re caught, they’ll execute Marc and Jace on sight for trespassing. And the thunderbirds will kill Kaci.”
“And there’s that…” Michael said, no trace of humor left in his voice.
I took a deep breath and held it for a count of five. “I get it, Dad. We’ve re-created mission impossible, and if you have a better idea, I’m all ears. But from where I’m sitting—” or lying, in a lukewarm bath “—our options are pretty limited, and our time is running out.”
Leather creaked as my father sat in his favorite chair. “Are you neglecting to mention an easier way any of this could be done? Either your cast, or finding better evidence?”
Whew, an easy one. “Not to my knowledge. Believe it or not, I don’t try to do things the hard way.” It just works out that way most of the time. “I don’t know what else we can do for evidence, short of convincing Malone to confess, or another one of his men to defect. And I don’t see either of those happening this decade, much less in the next few hours.”
“You still have nearly a day and a half.” I could practically hear the frown in my dad’s voice.
“Not if they’re going to drive.” Michael had obviously guessed the rest of my plan. “It’s not like they can shove Lance in a suitcase and check him at the airport with their other baggage.”
“Not that we aren’t tempted…” Jace smiled at me from the edge of the tub.
“Okay, so you’re going to need to move quickly. I assume you’re not expecting Lance to simply volunteer his services.”
I forced a laugh. “We’re anticipating a bit more trouble than that.”
“And you’re prepared to use aggressive persuasion?”
I exhaled slowly and phrased my response carefully, hoping to hide my discomfort with handing a fellow werecat over for execution, even though it was my own proposed operation. “With your permission, we’ll use the least amount of force necessary to get the job done.”
My father’s hesitation that time was brief. “Since I see no other option, you have permission. But, Faythe, have you thought this through? You’re talking about taking a Pride cat from his own home, against his will. There’s no way to pull that off without anyone noticing, and even if you get away clean, as soon as they figure out what happened, every tom in the Appalachian territory will be after the three of you. And there’s no way I can get backup there in time.”