His focus shifted from me to Marc—who growled—then back to me. But his mouth remained closed.
I shrugged. “Your choice.” I swung the branch at his shoulder with both hands, my left arm carrying most of the force. Deep Throat brought his arm up in self-defense. The thick end of the branch slammed into his forearm hard enough to smash the stick. And his ulna.
The tom screamed once, then cut the sound off with a display of willpower I couldn’t help but admire. His arm swelled almost instantly. I swallowed my horror and observed the damage with a buffer of detachment. His arm looked…bent. And not at the joint.
“Your name,” I said calmly, while he stared at me in growing fear and anger.
“Gary Rogers.”
Good boy. He gave up both names at once.
“Gary, is Jace still alive?”
“I don’t know,” he said. I knelt to pick up another thick branch, and he rushed on. “Really. They’re waiting until his mom’s out of earshot. He may still be okay.”
“Where is he?”
Gary shrugged. “He could be anywhere.” I lifted the new branch. “But Cal won’t let him sleep in the main house. He’s probably in the back outbuilding.”
“Thank you, Gary.” I lifted the limb and swung before he could protest. The branch slammed into his head. Gary crumpled to the ground.
I glanced at Marc and dropped the branch. “Let me tape them up, then we’ll go.” We couldn’t afford for them to wake up and alert the rest of their Pride, and I wasn’t going to kill either of them now that they were no longer an immediate threat.
Marc’s backpack lay on the ground where I’d dropped it during my leap into the clearing, and I dug through it for the duct tape. Marc kept watch over Jess while I taped Gary’s mouth and bound his ankles, moving awkwardly to spare my right wrist. Then I rolled him over and taped his wrists behind his back, taking no particular care with his broken arm.
Jess got the same treatment, but when I stood to stuff the tape back into the bag, Marc nudged the unconscious tom with his nose and whined.“He’s out cold,” I said, zipping the bag. “Let’s go.”
But Marc only sniffed Jess’s hands, then looked up and pointed his muzzle at my chest.
I rolled my eyes, finally understanding the question. “Yeah, the bastard groped me. But I broke his balls. I’d say we’re even.”
Marc shook his head and continued to sniff the tom’s hands, then whined at me some more.
I exhaled slowly, dread sinking through me at his insistence. He wouldn’t leave until I’d said it. “Right thumb to left nipple. But he’s paid for—”
Marc shook his head again, then bent with his mouth open. An instant later, something snapped, and the scent of fresh blood flooded the clearing. Jess’s body shuddered and his eyes flew open, then he began to thrash and moan behind the duct tape gag.
Marc backed away and something small and crimson fell from his mouth onto a bed of pine needles, now stained with blood. He ran his barbed tongue over first one side of his muzzle then the other to clean it, looking perversely satisfied. I glanced at Jess’s hands, and nausea rolled over me.
His right hand was pouring blood from the gory stump that had once been his thumb.
Twenty-Seven
Before we left the clearing, I bandaged Jess’s thumb with a torn strip of his shirt and some duct tape and patted down both toms for anything useful. I took a folding knife from Gary, then pulled both toms’ cell phones from their respective pockets and checked their text messages. Gary had none. If he’d ever sent a text, I found no sign of it. I dropped his phone on the ground and stomped it to pieces, so it couldn’t be used against us when he woke up.
Jess, on the other hand, obviously had an unlimited texting plan. Kind of funny, considering he’d now be texting one-handed.
Marc whined in question as I typed, ignoring the residual pain in my right wrist. At least I still had both thumbs. “He has a bunch of texts from Lance. I’m asking if they’ve taken care of Jace yet.”
The reply came an instant later. Not yet. Soon.
I read it to Marc, then typed some more. Still digging. Wait for us.
Lance’s second response came just as quickly. No promises…
“He’s still alive, but not for long. Come on.” I slid Jess’s phone into my left hip pocket and started off through the woods with Marc at my back. We moved as quietly as possible, but neither heard nor smelled any other Appalachian Pride members. A mile and a half from Jace’s premature grave, the sound of a car engine warned us that we were getting close to the house.
We slowed and veered toward the growl of the engine as it first idled, then died. Minutes later, the evergreen foliage began to thin, and a simple, black-shingled roofline came into view.
“There it is,” I whispered, dropping into a crouch as Marc came to a silent stop beside me. A few shuffled steps later, the compound came into view. And compound was really the only word to describe Malone’s property.
I knew from what little Jace had said about his childhood that when his father was alive, his Pride’s enforcers had lived in a converted barn behind the main house. But after Malone’s ascension to Alpha status, the barn had fallen into shameless disrepair and had to be torn down eight years later. Since money was tight in the territory, to replace the barn Malone had brought in two used doublewide mobile homes and had them set permanently into the ground and bricked up to the bottom of the windows.
The result was definitely nontraditional, and I’d heard people openly question the longevity of the housing arrangement. But the advantage to us was obvious. The back outbuilding was almost completely shielded from the main house by the middle one. If Jace was in the last one, we might just be able to get to him without alerting the rest of the Pride.
From where we stood near the tree line, we could see all three buildings from the side. “We should approach from directly behind the back building,” I whispered, then glanced up to find that Marc was already on the move. I rushed after him, careful to avoid anything that could crunch beneath my boots, and we hiked a quarter of the way around the property.
The middle building had almost disappeared behind the rear trailer when hinges squealed suddenly, then a door slammed shut. I froze, Marc at my side.
“…just thought you might want to make something special tonight. You know, since Jace is home.”
“Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, but he always did like homemade stew. And maybe I could make some potato bread to go with it.”
My heart ached at the familiar voice. Patricia Malone. A moment later, she appeared between the last two buildings, heading toward the side yard of the main house. She was facing away from us, but even from behind I could see that she was thinner than I remembered, her brown hair now streaked with gray.
Alex Malone guided her gently but firmly by one arm, encouraging her and making suggestions for Jace’s homecoming dinner.
“Shit. They got rid of Patti,” I whispered, and Marc whined. We watched as the Malones circled the middle building and disappeared from sight, veering toward the back door of the main house. “Let’s go.”
From the edge of the woods at the back of the property, we could see through the windows of the last building. Unfortunately, two of them were covered by threadbare but mostly opaque curtains, and a third was a total blind spot, thanks to a set of plain white miniblinds. But two others were uncovered, and by some stroke of luck, one looked into the kitchen, the other into the living room.
I was starting to wish we’d brought binoculars when a blur of movement drew my focus to the larger of the two windows, and I saw Jace sink onto the couch in the living room. He looked exhausted, and tense, and nervous.
I pulled my own phone from my right hip pocket and started typing again. Marc glanced over my shoulder, reading along.
They think U R a spy. We’re out back. Can C U thru window.
I sent the message, and an instant later, Jace sat straighter on the couch and leaned forward to pull his phone from his back pocket. He flipped it open and went stiff—which is exactly why I hadn’t texted Jace earlier. I didn’t want his reaction to give us away before we were close enough to help.
But then Jace’s posture relaxed, and he flipped his phone closed without glancing toward the window. Playing it cool. He said something to someone across the room, and though I couldn’t read his lips from that distance—probably couldn’t have, anyway—whatever he said evidently raised no suspicions in whoever else was in the room.Jace leaned forward and drank from a can on the table, then said something else to someone we couldn’t see. And when no one attacked him in the next two minutes, my attention began to wander. “Look.” I pointed, and Marc’s gaze followed my finger toward the four cars lined up side by side next to the last building. Jace’s was third, but I didn’t recognize the others.
There were probably several more parked in front of the main building, but while there was nothing I could do about those without getting caught, I might be able to disable the other three with minimal risk.
Marc’s nose nudged my arm as I dug through the backpack for Gary’s folding knife. “I’ll be right back,” I whispered as my hand closed around the cold steel. I set the bag on the ground next to Marc and flipped open the blade as he began to growl softly, warning me not to do anything stupid.