Shift (Shifters #5)(49)

“Is Cal okay with it? Did you ask him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jace,” Patricia snapped. “I don’t need to ask him if my own son can come home. You’re always welcome here. When can you come?”
Jace lifted his head and met my gaze as Marc pulled out the third stitch. I nodded, the best I could do to tell him he could back out if he wanted to. We could find another way. He shook his head; Jace was fully committed. “I’m already here.”
Patricia Malone burst into relieved, overwhelmed sobs, and Jace slid one strong hand over his eyes to hide the tears he didn’t want us to see. Marc busied himself with the fourth stitch, but I could tell by his determination not to look up—and by the fact that he pinched my skin along with the thread—that he was listening, too. And that he was not unaffected. 
“Where?” Patricia asked, when she had herself under control. “Where are you?”
“I’m…around. I just…I wanted to make sure Cal’s okay with this before I come over.”
His mother clucked her tongue. “I told you he’s fine with it.”
“No.” Jace wiped his eyes and frowned at nothing. “You didn’t. I don’t want to make things worse.”
He was telling the truth. But he was also setting it up perfectly. Malone would be less suspicious if he knew Jace was reluctant to come in the first place. And it wouldn’t hurt if he thought his stepson was afraid of him. Malone could not know what a serious threat Jace had become, or he would never let his guard down enough to let Jace leave his sight.
“You won’t. Come home, Jace.”
Jace hung his head, hiding most of his face behind his hand and the small phone. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
He sat in the bathroom for several minutes after the phone call, then he closed the door and I heard water running in the shower. And I might have heard him crying softly, though I couldn’t be sure.
“He’ll be fine,” Marc whispered while the water ran. “He’ll do his job. Better now than ever.”
“I know.”
Marc was working on the last zag of my massive new scar when the bathroom door finally opened. Jace stepped out in a clean change of clothes from his carryon, wearing his business face—completely void of emotion. Which is how I knew he was both nervous and eager. And dreading every second of the most personal assignment he’d ever accepted.
“How long will it take you to get there?” I’d slept through most of the drive to the motel, so I had no clue how far we were from Malone’s home base.
“About fifteen minutes.”
Which meant he’d have to leave in about forty. “That’s not enough time. I can’t fit in enough Shifts to fully heal before then.”
“I know, but I can’t just pop in and ask Lance to get in the car. I have to be there a little while. Talk to my mom. Deal with Cal. Let everyone think I’m really there because of Brett.”
I started to protest, but Marc was faster. “He’s right. But we only have one car.” He looked up from my arm, now focused on Jace. “You’ll come up with another one—one without Faythe’s blood in the backseat—and we’ll meet you out there once she’s good to go.”
“We need to leave town by four-thirty to be sure we’ll make it to the nest in time,” I said. “That gives us an hour of padding for bathroom breaks, and that’s cutting it pretty damn close.”
Jace glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to noon. “We’ll aim for four, for the takedown,” he said, and his eyes narrowed in concern as his focus settled on me. “Can you be ready by then?”
“I sure hope so.” I could think of very few things I wanted to do less than spend the next four hours Shifting with a broken arm. “Where should we meet you?”
“At the deer stand.”
I frowned over what felt like too big a risk. “What if they’ve already found our scents there?”
“Then we’re already screwed,” Marc answered, and Jace nodded grimly.
I swallowed, and my throat felt thick. “Okay. So, all we need is a car.”
“I saw a rental place about a quarter mile east of here,” Marc said. “They had several vans and SUVs in the parking lot. You can probably get something with tinted windows and plenty of room in back.”
Jace nodded. “Walking’s a bit of a risk, but since everyone knows I’m coming to town now, they’ll all probably stay home, waiting to see Cal’s head explode. Or waiting to see him kill me.”I frowned, and Jace shook his head. “I’m kidding. He wouldn’t kill me.” I raised both brows, and he shrugged. “Okay, he’d totally kill me. But not in front of my mom. I’ll stick close to her until I’m ready to head out with Lance.”
“What if Lance won’t go?”
Jace shrugged again. “He will. And if he tries to balk, I’ll take him aside and tell him I have a private message from Parker. He’ll want to hear that, either because he still gives a shit about his brother, or because he’ll see Parker as a way to gather intel on the enemy.”
Marc crossed both arms over his chest. “And if something goes wrong?”
Jace’s jaw tightened. “Plan B. Fight hard and run like hell.”
My stomach flipped and twisted. If something went wrong, we wouldn’t make it out alive. I had no doubt of that. Marc and Jace would die. Kaci would die. And if I couldn’t escape, I’d eventually have to make them kill me. If my choices were death or Calvin Malone, I’d choose death, hands down.
I Shifted into and out of cat form twice more before Jace left, and during my last Shift, Marc went into the bathroom and closed the door to call the car rental place while Jace was still there to watch me Shift, just in case.
After my fourth set of Shifts, the pain in my right arm had downgraded from motherfucker-it’s-breaking-all-over-again to it-merely-hurts-like-hell. I lay naked and sweating and gasping on the floor, my eyes closed, counting my own racing heartbeats in an effort to slow them.
“You okay?” Jace knelt on the floor beside me and ran one hand gently over my shoulder. It was a casual gesture, and one any of my fellow enforcers would have made in his position, with me lying there in obvious pain and exhaustion. But his touch raised goose bumps on my overheated skin, and my heart raced in spite of my best attempts to calm it.
“Physically? Yes. Probably. Except for the fact that I don’t want to move. Ever again.”
He chuckled, and his voice went deep and wistful. “You’re amazing, Faythe.”
I turned my head just enough so that I could peer up at him. “Says the man about to walk into the lion’s den armed with nothing but hope.”
“And faith.” Something about the way he said it made me wonder if he’d spelled it with a Y in his head. “How could I be afraid to face Cal when you faced down a whole Flight of thunderbirds with nothing but a cell phone? And look what you’re putting yourself through to save Kaci.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I got her into this. I have to get her back.”
“You were trying to keep her away from Calvin.”
“Yeah, that went well.” 
“It’ll work out,” he insisted, as Marc’s voice echoed from the tiny bathroom while he haggled with the rental car clerk. “We’ll make it.”
I sat up, and he wrapped the towel around me. I was tired of wearing white cotton, but saw no use in putting on the only set of clean clothes I had, when I was just going to get sweaty all over again with the next few Shifts.
When Marc came out of the bathroom, I was seated at the table with a plastic cup of ice water. “I got you an ’06 Explorer. Tinted windows. They threw in the cargo net for free.”
Jace nodded. “That should work. It’ll be faster than a van.” He turned toward me. “I gotta go. Wish me luck.”
My heart thumped in fear for him as I shoved my chair back. I crossed the room in several quick steps and went up on my toes for a hug, pinning the towel between us before it could fall off. “Please be careful,” I whispered as his rough cheek brushed mine. “Ethan’s death was all I can take.”
“Me, too.” He squeezed me so hard it hurt, but I didn’t complain. Some part of me knew there was a good chance I’d never see Jace again.
I let him go and tightened my towel. Jace looked at Marc over my head, and I followed his gaze. Marc’s jaw was tight, his stance tense. But his hands hung loose at his sides. He wasn’t pleased by the hug, but wasn’t going to deny either of us a goodbye. Not under the circumstances. Not that he could have stopped it.
“Play it smart, Hammond,” Marc said at last.
Jace nodded and held his gaze. “Take care of her.” Neither of them looked at me; they were too busy staring at each other, each sizing the other up. Or maybe warning him.
“You know I will. If she’ll let me.”
Jace gave a short laugh, then looked at me, one hand on the doorknob. “Let him.”
I nodded. Then he was gone.
Tears stood in my eyes, and a huge lump had formed in my throat.
“Eat something,” Marc said, and I realized I was still staring at the door.
I started to argue—I was more nauseated from exertion than hungry—then realized I’d just said I’d let him take care of me. So I sat at the table as he unwrapped another biscuit. There was no microwave, so I ate it cold, while Marc avoided my eyes from the other side of the table.