Stray (Shifters #1)(47)

“Better than you do.” He stared at his feet, scuffing the toe of his sneaker on the crack in the floor.
My heart clawed its way up my throat. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Trying to get closer to my brother, I shuffled sideways, moving my hands arm over arm from one bar to the next.
“Nothing.” Ryan shook his head, and I was reminded of a child shaking an Etch A Sketch to clear it. When he finally met my eyes, his own were blank, as if he’d done exactly that. “Look, I’m only trying to help. Don’t make things any harder than they have to be, okay? This isn’t the time to make trouble.”
Funny, I couldn’t think of a better time to make trouble.
“How could you do this?” I demanded, trying to rattle the bars. They wouldn’t budge, and that only made me angrier. “How could you sell me out?” I didn’t have words strong enough to tell him how pissed off I was. How betrayed I felt. But if he’d come just an inch or two closer, I could sure as hell show him.
“I had nothing to do with it.” He stared at me boldly for the first time. “I never even mentioned you, but when Miguel found out about Dad, he put it together.”
“Who told him about Daddy?” I did my best to look curious rather than enraged as I lowered myself to the floor, hoping to appear less threatening off my feet.
Ryan shrugged, and his shirt drooped at his throat, exposing too-well-defined collarbones. “My guess would be Eric,” he said, sitting on the ground across from me. “But it could have been anyone. There isn’t a cat in the country, stray, wild or Pride, who doesn’t know that Greg Sanders is head of the territorial council.”“Did you at least try to stop them?”
“You can’t stop Miguel,” he said, frowning at me as if I should have known better.
“Shit, Ryan, you didn’t even try?” I slammed my fist into the ground and regretted it almost instantly. The rough surface of the concrete skinned the outside edge of my hand, leaving it raw and slowly oozing blood. Wonderful.
“What was I supposed to do, suggest an alternate choice? Would you really have wanted me to trade you in for someone else, maybe even younger than Abby?”
Of course not. I let silence answer for me, but my anger at him didn’t fade. Ignoring him, I dug through my fast-food bag for a napkin, and used it to dab at my raw skin.
“Besides, I thought they’d never get another shot at you once you went home.”
My head snapped up, my hand forgotten. “Another shot?” He knew about the stray on campus?
“Yeah, Miguel had someone watching you at school, waiting for an opportunity that never came.”
Never came? He didn’t know I’d been attacked? Apparently they weren’t the best-organized criminal cartel. Or maybe Miguel hadn’t been sharing information with his toadies.
Ryan shrugged, as if none of that mattered. “And if you’d stayed put, like you were supposed to, they never would have gotten a second chance.” He smirked, accusation clear in the curve of his mouth. “But you couldn’t, could you? Dad puts you under house arrest and round-the-clock supervision, so you sneak out just to prove you’re still up to the challenge.”
Enraged, I jumped to my feet, and he mirrored me from the other side of the bars, automatically taking a defensive stance. “So it’s my fault I’m sitting in a cage in some filthy basement in Mississippi?” I growled, throwing the blood-smeared napkin at him because I had nothing else to throw. But then I froze, staring at him as the growl faded from my throat. Wait. What was that he’d said?
Ryan caught the napkin in his palm and crushed it, his fist hanging in the air like an unspoken threat. He came a step closer, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “How’d you know we’re in Mississippi?”
“How did you know about the house arrest and babysitting?” I countered.
He dropped the napkin, and it rolled to rest against one of the bars. “You first.”
“Deductive reasoning. It’s a perk sometimes available to those of us on the top rung of the evolutionary ladder.” And you just confirmed it, I added silently.
He cleared his throat, glancing away. “Deductive reasoning for me, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bullshit, Ryan. You couldn’t deduce your own name if it wasn’t written in your underwear.” I lunged at him, smashing my chest into the bars. My fingers grazed the front of his shirt, and he backpedaled quickly out of reach. “Who have you been talking to?” I demanded, stepping back from the bars to glare at him. 
“No one,” he insisted, but I’d already figured it out. Of the enforcers, only Marc was privy to privileged information about the council’s plans, and he would never talk to Ryan. But there was one other person who had a history of involvement with the council and in whom my father confided…
“How long have you been in contact with Mom?”
Ryan flushed, and at first I thought he’d refuse to answer. Then he hung his head in defeat, a gesture left over from childhood. “Almost eight years.”
“So you’re still Mommy’s boy.” I couldn’t resist a satisfied grin. For years I’d dreamed of being just like Ryan, gutsy and independent. And he’d been faking it the whole time. Mom had been secretly helping him out. No wonder she wouldn’t talk about him. She was afraid of incriminating herself.
Furthermore, my brother’s admission brought up a disturbing new question: Had Mom known what Ryan was doing? There was only one possible answer. No. She hadn’t had a clue. Mom was no doubt doing what she thought best for the whole family, trying to convince her second-born to come home. Unfortunately for us all, it hadn’t worked.
Ryan glowered at me. “She sends me money. And she talks, mostly about you and the golden boy.”
I blinked in surprise, caught off guard by the depth of his anger and resentment, still thriving after all these years. “You’re doing this because of Marc?”
“Marc.” Ryan laughed bitterly and for a moment I thought he’d barked at me. “This has nothing to do with Marc. It doesn’t even have anything to do with me. I didn’t do this to you.” He leaned forward, over-pronouncing each word to make sure I got the picture. “I’m not in charge.”
I stared at him, absorbing the truth of his statement. Ryan, powerless? That was easy enough to believe. “Then help us,” I said, challenging him to take a stand for once. “Open the doors and let us out.”
He flinched, his expression bitter. “I don’t have a key. Miguel won’t give me one.”
Damn. “Okay then, tell Mom where we are. Please, Ryan.”
Behind him, Abby gripped the bars of her cage with tiny, white-knuckled fingers, waiting for his answer just as desperately as I was.
He shook his head. “Dad would put a price on my head. You know he would. Even Mom couldn’t stop him.”
“What do you think Miguel’s going to do when I tell him you’ve been talking to your mommy?”
Ryan just looked at me, but something in his expression was off, something about the tight line of his mouth…
“He knows, doesn’t he?” I said, my inner lightbulb blinking to life. “You son of a bitch, you’ve been using Mom to spy on the council. And she was only trying to help you, trying to get you to come home.” I rammed the bars again, bruising my shoulder, and Ryan took another step back, farther out of my reach.
“She’s the only reason I’m alive,” he said, his voice calm, resigned. His shoulders slumped as his eyes traveled up to meet mine. “A couple of weeks ago, I ran into Miguel outside a bar in New Mexico. He was about to kill me when I told him I had connections in the south-central territory and a source on the council. I told him they’d miss me and hunt him down.
“He didn’t care about that—wasn’t the least bit worried about being caught. But he wanted information. He wanted to know what the council was doing, what strays they were watching and who they had patrolling each territory.” Ryan stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged apologetically. “I had no choice, Faythe. And I didn’t hand you over to him. You did that yourself.”He backed toward the stairs slowly as I blinked at him, trying to come up with something to say to convince him to help us. Nothing came to mind. He was right; no matter what he did now, he was dead. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go call Mom. I’m sure she’s had a rough morning, and will need someone to talk to.”
“Don’t do it, Ryan,” I said, dismayed by the desperation in my voice. “Don’t spy for them.” But I knew it was useless; he’d already made his alliance. He was more scared of our father than of Miguel. And so help me, I couldn’t really blame him for that.
“It’s all I’m good for, Faythe,” he said. Without another word, he jogged up the steps and into what I assumed was the kitchen, slamming the door shut on the dark, and on us.
Twenty-One

Alone with Abby again, I dropped onto my mattress and unwrapped my burger, determined not to dwell on Ryan’s betrayal. I had no doubt he’d get what he deserved in the end, whether from my father or from Miguel. Or from me.
My burger was tasteless, in spite of the tantalizing aroma of grilled onions, but I ate it anyway. “You should eat that,” I said to Abby between bites.