Stray (Shifters #1)(29)

I caught a blur of movement as Michael’s foot shot out behind my ankles. Before I could move, he swept my feet out from under me. My backside hit the rug with a bruising thud, and my teeth snapped together, the sharp click resounding through my head. Daddy turned to look at us with a raised eyebrow, but Michael just shrugged at him. He hauled me up by my arms, dropping me onto the couch like a naughty puppy onto a pile of newspapers.
Michael straightened his suit coat, smiling, then settled onto the love seat across from me as if he were sitting down to his afternoon tea. I glared at him as I rubbed the marks his fingers left on my arms, but it was just for show. I’d learned long ago that even though Michael no longer officially worked for our father, he took his orders seriously. I defied him at my own risk.
“Is he sure?” Daddy asked, turning to face the curio cabinet so that I saw him in profile. Light from the cabinet bathed his strong features, highlighting the tension on his normally unreadable face.
Leather creaked as I leaned sideways on the couch, rubbing my tailbone while I listened closely for Owen’s side of the conversation. “Yeah. It was a jungle cat,” he drawled. “No doubt about it.”
“What about the scent?” My father glanced at me, then turned back to face the display case, as if that would keep me from hearing the answer.
“My guess would be Brazilian,” Owen said. My pulse jumped, and I sat up straighter, my sore tailbone forgotten. “But he could be from anywhere in the area. He’s definitely South American, though, and definitely a stray.”
Strays have a distinctive scent, which is easily distinguished from that of a Pride-born cat. It’s like the difference in taste between Coke and Pepsi: subtle if you never drink either, but unmistakable if you’re accustomed to one and suddenly confronted with a mouthful of the other.
Marc told me once that Pride cats smell differently to strays too, which I wasn’t surprised to hear. We have a family-specific identity—a base scent, if you will—threaded through our individual scent ID, which lets us classify a cat with his blood relatives with a single whiff.This isn’t possible with strays because they have no base scent. They have only the feline smell of werecats in general, and of themselves specifically. Which led me to an interesting thought as my eyes skimmed the family photos on my father’s desk: if Marc and I had given my parents the grandchildren they wanted, would they inherit my Pride-born scent, or his stray scent? For that matter, would they even be werecats at all? If Marc wasn’t born with a werecat gene, how could he possibly pass one on?
It was easy for me to forget, considering how long he’d been a part of the south-central Pride, that Marc was still—and always would be—a stray. Hell, I hardly noticed the difference in his scent anymore; it was just part of who he was. But with any other stray, I would detect it immediately. And so would Owen.
“What about the police?” Daddy asked. I couldn’t see his face, but the tension in his broad shoulders was obvious, even through his suit jacket.
“They don’t know what to think. The detective in charge of this one is convinced that some psychopath is keeping a jaguar as a pet and letting it eat his victims.”
I inhaled sharply, turning on the sofa to fully face my father. Daddy glanced at me over his shoulder, nodding to let me know he’d caught the plural ending, too. “Victims?” he asked, straightening stacks of paper on his desk. “Are there others?”
Static crackled over the line, then Owen’s voice came through loud and clear. “…one in New Mexico three days ago.”
Daddy rubbed his forehead as if trying to stave off a headache. “How did we miss that?”
“Well, it’s not like we have any sources in the free territories. But we probably would have missed it anyway. It was reported by the media as a typical dismemberment, as if there is such a thing. The police are keeping the cat angle quiet to weed out the nut-ball confessions.”
Daddy walked around his desk and sank wearily into his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on the blotter. “The one in New Mexico was another girl?”
“Yeah. Just like this one. Hang on a second, Dad.” More static, papers shuffling, and a muffled version of Dr. Carver’s distinctive rumbling voice. Then Owen was back. “She was a sophomore at Eastern New Mexico University, in Portales, just across the Texas border. Raped, then mauled and partially…um…consumed. A groundskeeper found her in an alley.”
I pulled my bare feet up onto the couch cushion, hugging my knees to my chest as I leaned back against the arm of the couch. This can’t be happening, I thought. Two missing tabbies and two dead humans. All in the last three days. Daddy would never let me go now. Not that he would have anyway.
My father rubbed his chin in silence for a moment, staring down at his desk blotter. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you or Danny could get a look at her, is there?” 
Over the phone Owen shuffled more papers. “There might have been, but she was buried this morning. I already checked.”
“What about her clothes?”
“I’m sure they’re in police custody.” Owen paused while Dr. Carver said something I didn’t catch. “But Dad, the chance of there being two different psycho strays operating at the same time with the same M.O. is practically nil. It’s got to be the same son of a b—”
“I agree,” Daddy interrupted, leaning back in his chair. “I was just hoping to be able to confirm my suspicions.”
I glanced at Michael to find him staring at the rug between us, but I knew better than to think he’d zoned out. He’d heard every word Owen said, and was filing it away in his lawyer’s brain for later use. If I knew Michael, he’d know everything there was to know about both murders by the end of the day, having used every professional resource at his disposal. And when those ran out, he’d surf the Net, riding the waves of information like a first-generation digital surfer, which is exactly what he was.
“So, what do you want me to do?” Owen drawled, his accent thickened by tension.
Daddy sat up, laying one forearm against the top of his desk. “Thank Danny and come home. And tell him to keep his eyes and ears open.”
“What if the stray strikes again?”
I closed my eyes, silently praying he wouldn’t. My heart ached for Abby and Sara, and for those two human girls, who’d probably never known what hit them. If they were lucky.
The desk chair creaked, and I looked up to find my father standing in front of his desk, with his back to me. “If he does, Danny probably won’t have access to the victim. This stray would have to be an idiot to strike twice in the same state.”
“Maybe he is an idiot,” Owen said. “He’s certainly crazy.”
“Crazy, no doubt. But if he were stupid, we would have known about him before now.” Daddy’s voice was tight with anger. He was mad at himself; I could hear it in the way his words were clipped short. He was angry that he hadn’t known about the stray sooner, and about the girl in New Mexico. “Come on home.”
“There’s a flight out at nine,” Owen said, his words coming faster than usual. He must have recognized the anger, too. “I should be home by eleven.”
“Fine.” Daddy dropped the phone into its cradle and stared at it. I heard his heartbeat slow, then steady, and I knew he was counting silently in an attempt to rein in his temper. His shoulders rose and fell with each deep breath as he prepared to turn from one problem to face another: me.
“Faythe, this is not a good time for your theatrics,” he said, tugging down his jacket sleeves.
He was right about that; my timing was awful. But there was nothing I could do about it now, short of backing down completely. And that wasn’t an option. Not if I wanted him to ever treat me like an adult.
I set my feet on the floor and started to stand, but one glance at Michael froze me in place. He would follow the letter of Daddy’s law until otherwise instructed. So I took a deep breath and launched my argument from the couch, substituting good posture for the erect stance I would have preferred.
“I’m not being theatrical,” I said, doing my best to project a respectful tone into my voice. “I’m completely serious. I’m leaving.”
My father finally turned to face me, and the gravity in his expression made my mouth go dry. “Stop arguing on autopilot and listen to what I’m really saying.”Nervous and curious in spite of my determination to stand my ground, I nodded. Could he possibly be saying something other than the usual no?
My father eyed me somberly, as if to convey the weight of what he was about to say through expression alone. “Freedom from the Pride doesn’t mean true freedom for you.” I started to argue, but he cut me off. “What would happen if I let you strike out on your own in a free territory? Do you think the strays would respect your wishes? Would they leave you alone?” He paused, but I made no reply. I was too busy thinking.
“Whether you see it or not, you have choices here. I do care what you want. But the strays in Mississippi won’t give your rights a second thought. They’ll care what you’re worth, and how having you would affect their rank among the others.”