Kevin shook his head as if our scuffle had never happened, and shot Dan a bitter scowl as he tore a two-foot length from a roll of duct tape. “I had no idea until Painter showed up at the back door with your backup slumped on the porch like a rag doll.”
Dan shrugged apologetically, still wiping his nose. “I didn’t have a chance to call without being overheard.”
Kevin sighed. “You know what they say about good help….” He held the first strip of tape out in my direction, and when Yarnell took one hand off me to take it, I twisted from his grip and swung around in as powerful a roundhouse as I could muster.
But Yarnell was ready this time. He caught my foot in midswing with his good hand, absorbing my momentum with a jarring thud of steel-toed boot against bare palm. Then he twisted my leg, and pain shot through my ankle as I lost my balance. I landed hard on my chest, and when my chin hit the floor, I bit my cheek.
I was still struggling to spit out my own blood and draw a breath when Yarnell’s weight dropped onto my back. He yanked brutally on my arms again, and my wrists were tightly taped before my double vision merged. My ankles were bound a minute later.
Duct tape is strong, which is why my own Pride used it to bind trespassers resisting removal. But the interesting thing about that particular kind of tape is that, for all its strength, because of its distinctive weave, a single weak point would be enough to start a tear. Which is why we—and evidently Peter Yarnell—used multiple layers. The chance of a single weak point repeating in each layer was virtually nil.
And I didn’t exactly have a history of good luck in the first place.
When I was secure, though still thrashing, Yarnell hauled me up by my arms and shoved me down on the couch, my hands pressed into the cushions at my back.
Across the room, Dan caught my eye as he nursed his broken nose. “I don’t understand,” I said, practically daring him to meet my gaze. “You made a list of strays for us. You fought alongside us in the ambush! And the whole time you were feeding Kevin information?” And suddenly I remembered Dan sitting at Marc’s kitchen table, his phone in front of him. The bastard hadn’t been playing Tetris!
Dan shrugged, but looked distinctly uncomfortable discussing his part in the whole thing. “I had nothing to do with the ambush. Kevin set that up on his own, after I told him you guys would be coming through town. I stopped to make sure Manx and the kid were okay, then it was either fight with you or admit I was spying for the other side.” He wiped a smear of blood from one cheek, then dropped his eyes. “And I gave you a list of strays I thought knew nothing about the chips. Feldman was a surprise, of course. Just my luck.”
“Wow.” I allowed myself a small moment to gloat. “You’re a piss-poor spy.” Except for the fact that he’d infiltrated my Pride’s home base—the first successful penetration by a hostile stray. Ever. Damn it.
I glared up at Dan, cursing myself mentally for not seeing this coming. And no one even knew where we were, since I hadn’t really called my father.
Except for Dr. Carver… How long would it take him to figure out something had gone wrong, and call for help?
“You know, she’s right! I don’t think you’ve been pulling your weight around here lately,” Kevin said, glaring at Dan as if their conversation had never been interrupted. “Didn’t you let her beat the living shit out of Pete the other day?”
Dan rolled his eyes, looking more than a little irritated. “What did you want me to say? ‘Faythe, lay off him. He’s my secret partner in crime.’?”
But Kevin continued as if he hadn’t even heard. “And they were not supposed to be in my house.”
“How was I supposed to stop them without tipping them off?” Dan demanded, dropping into one of Yarnell’s overstuffed armchairs, his bloody towel hanging limply from one fist.
“You could have at least gotten the tracker away from her.”
“She never put the damn thing down!”
“He’s right.” I shrugged—an awkward movement with my hands pinned behind me—only then remembering that I still had the gadget in my pocket. “I can be pretty difficult to reason with.”
“And pretty damn hard to shut up.” Kevin crossed the room to stand in front of a mirror hanging over an occasional table against the far wall, turning his head to examine his crooked nose. “Who the hell am I going to get to set this again—” Kevin froze, as what he’d said sank in, and I was pretty sure I knew what he’d just remembered. “Fuck. Dan, go get the doctor before he realizes something’s wrong and calls in backup.”
“Too late for that,” I bluffed, smirking at Kevin’s newly mutilated reflection. “My dad knows exactly where we are, and he’ll have backup here within minutes.”
“She’s right.” Dan glanced back and forth between us, new worry lines bisecting his brow. “She called her dad before we left.”
“Did you see her call Greg?” Kevin demanded, and Dan shook his head. “Then she didn’t call him. This little bitch is known for insubordination, and her dad would never approve such a risky stunt, for fear of precisely this.” Kevin turned to face the room slowly, his arms spread to indicate my unfortunate predicament.
“Vic’s expecting to hear from me soon, and if he doesn’t, he’ll know something went wrong.”
“Now, that I believe. But how on earth will he find you?” Kevin heaved an exaggerated shrug and pouted in mock distress. Then he dropped the facade and turned an angry look on Dan. “Her father has no idea she’s here. And neither does anyone else except the damned doctor. So go get him.”
I could have told him that Vic had the address, but I was afraid if he knew that, he’d move us. Then we’d be screwed.
Dan nodded curtly, and jogged through the kitchen toward the back door.
“Don’t forget this!” Kevin called, and Dan turned just in time to catch the syringe Kevin had pulled from his pocket. “If you can’t con him into coming peacefully, knock him out and throw him over your shoulder.”
Dan shoved the syringe into his pocket and slammed the door on his way out, and suddenly I understood why both Marc and Jace were sleeping so soundly.
“Watch the back window,” Kevin ordered, and Yarnell wandered into the kitchen as our Pride’s most notorious traitor sank into the armchair to the left of the couch, his elbows propped on widespread knees. His eager gaze focused on me, and Kevin opened his mouth. But I cut him off, stalling for time in hopes that Dr. Carver would come of his own volition, thus conscious and able to fight.
True, he hadn’t worked as an enforcer in nearly a decade, but hopefully fighting was like riding a bike. Only more painful.
“So, you knew Marc was alive the whole time, and that we knew about the microchips?” I said, cocking my head at Kevin.
He grinned and took the bait, evidently eager to show off his evil skillz, now that the damsel was officially in distress. “About the microchips? Yeah. Dan told us Ben Feldman showed you his. But the real irony is that Feldman asked me not to tell anyone else about it!” His smile made me want to puke, but I kept my face blank. “I can’t believe he cut it out of his own back. That fucker’s hard-core. Seriously, Feldman’s the scariest damned altruist I ever met. Dealing with him takes real finesse, and getting him implanted was a huge pain in the ass. He was a pretty high priority, though, because he’s unpredictable.”
So Feldman wasn’t in on the microchip conspiracy…
“But no, we didn’t know Marc was alive until Dan told us where to find Adam Eckard’s body. But then finding Marc was easy enough, thanks to the tracker. Ironic, huh? He nearly died fighting Eckard before we could get him implanted, then Eckard’s chip leads us right to him.”
“You really weren’t trying to kill him?”
“We were during the ambush. And I can’t even begin to explain how hard it is to get that many strays to work together, even fighting against a common enemy.” Marc, of course.
“I assume it was easier with Dan’s help,” I spit.
“Nah.
He really wanted nothing to do with that. He didn’t want the baby caught in the cross fire. I think he feels loyal to Manx, since she didn’t kill him when she could have.” Kevin shrugged. “But when that didn’t work out, the powers that be decided it might be more interesting to track him. See if we could catch him breaking the rules. Maybe sneaking into Pride territory to see his girlfriend.” He raised one accusatory eyebrow at me, but before I could argue that that wouldn’t have happened, Yarnell called out softly from the kitchen.
“Hey, Mitchell, they’re here, and the doc’s walking tall.”
“Oh, good!” Kevin grinned as he stood, looking giddy enough to bounce off the walls. “Now that the loose ends are all tied up, the real fun begins.”
“What fun?” I demanded, but Kevin was already walking away from me.
“Keep her quiet,” he muttered on his way across the room.
Yarnell raced in from the kitchen and was on me before I could yell to warn Dr. Carver. He pulled me onto his lap on the couch and shoved the end of Dan’s bloodstained towel into my mouth, then clamped his hand over it. My shout came out as a muffled moan, and no amount of struggling could dislodge Yarnell’s grip on me, though his still-healing ribs must have been in agony.
Kevin stopped beside another armchair and squatted to pull something from behind it. My eyes widened when I saw the tire iron Dan had been carrying, and I wasn’t much comforted when he took the time to wrap his own bloodstained towel around the business end of the tool.
“Shh,” he said, eyes wide, one finger pressed to his lips. “I’m hunting wabbit! But we don’t want Carver dead until he’s fixed my nose, now do we?” Kevin stood flat against the wall, where I could see him, but someone coming through the back door would not.
I thrashed harder, but Yarnell’s grip on me only tightened until I was afraid he’d break my ribs. Unfortunately, there was no time for a partial Shift, or any other offensive measure.
The kitchen door opened, and Dr. Carver’s voice reached my ears. “Where is she?” Then his gaze landed on me, and his forehead crinkled in confusion. “What the hell—”
I screeched wordlessly in warning as he passed through the doorway, but it did no good.
“What’s up, Doc?” Kevin swung the tire iron like a baseball bat. The towel-wrapped steel connected with the side of Dr. Carver’s skull, and the doctor collapsed onto the carpet with a muffled thud.
Noooo! I screamed in my head, but the audible portion was nothing more than an inarticulate groan.
“Tape him up and toss him into the tub,” Kevin ordered, and Dan stepped forward reluctantly, a fresh roll of duct tape in one hand.
Yarnell copped a generous feel of my inner thigh, then shoved me off of his lap, onto the center couch cushion, where I fell over on one side, unable to right myself without the use of my hands. Tears formed in my eyes and ran sideways across my cheeks as I watched Dr. Carver—my last hope for help from the cavalry—hauled down the hall.
“Now…” Kevin said, slinking across the room toward me, the rings around his eyes darkening with each second as he took the towel out of my mouth. “Let’s get down to business….”
Twenty-Seven
“Here’s how this is going to work.” Kevin stopped three feet in front of the couch, squatting to put himself at eye level with me, my face half-buried in the cushion. “I’m going to ask the questions, and Pete’s going to make sure you answer them.”
“And let me guess,” I said, my words slurred with the left half of my mouth pressed into the upholstery. “If I play nice, you’ll let me go, but if I don’t, you’ll kill me.”
“No.” Kevin shook his head firmly and hauled me upright by one arm, so fast my vision swam. “You’re going to die either way. I can’t see any way around that, considering how much you know about all this.” His open arms took in the whole room, indicating their little conspiracy.
“Kevin…” Dan began, and my gaze found him slouched in a chair across the room. “You said she’d get to go home….”
“Yeah, well that’s before she wound up in the middle of all this! If you’d kept her out of the way like you were supposed to—if you hadn’t blown your fucking cover—she’d get to go back to Texas with you tonight. But you fucked up, so she has to die along with her collection of adoring tomcats.”
Dan flinched and avoided my eyes.
“It’s a shame,” Kevin continued. “Considering how badly we need tabbies. But when Dan brings the bodies of Greg’s Pride cats—including his precious kitten—back home, the Alpha will be so grateful for your compassion and so impressed by your loyalty that he’ll accept you into the Pride. Hell, he’ll need you. Which will put you in the perfect position to extract both of the other tabbies, when their guard is down and you’ve gathered enough intel…”
Shit. Kaci and Manx. Were they the point of this whole operation?
No, they couldn’t be. The microchips were implanted long before the council decided to remove Kaci. So maybe they were just part of it.
The lines in Dan’s forehead deepened, and for a moment, determination flickered behind his dark brown eyes. “Kaci’s just a kid, Kevin….”
“Exactly.” Kevin whirled on him, legs spread wide to take up as much room as possible in imitation of an aggressive Alpha stance. “And kids need proper care, which she is not getting in the south-central Pride. The council’s already ruled to remove her, and you have the chance to succeed all on your own, where Calvin Malone’s highly trained team of enforcers failed.”
“And Manx?” I asked, curious to know how he could possibly put a positive spin on her forcible removal.
Kevin twisted to glare at me over his shoulder, then turned back to Dan. “Manx has paid for her crimes. She lost her claws. Do you really think it’s fair for her to be stuck in the middle of a war zone—once the fighting starts—when she can’t defend herself anymore? Or her baby?”
Damn. I was almost impressed. If Kevin had shown so much potential as an orator while he was a member of our Pride, my father might actually have found some use for him.
Or not. We weren’t big on moral ambiguity in the south-central Pride, and that included propaganda. But it was the propaganda itself that caught my attention.
“Fighting?” I tried to keep my voice calm and steady.
“Oh, come on, Faythe!” Kevin stepped back so he could see both me and Dan. “We all know the war is coming, but I don’t think even Calvin Malone could have foreseen your father throwing the first punch.”
“Malone started this!” I shouted, straining desperately against my bonds. I felt helpless, worthless, without the use of my hands. “His tom killed Ethan in cold blood!”
“Ethan died because he stood in the way of an authorized mission. The official first strike will be when your father invades the Appalachian territory. And thanks to Dan, we know that’s exactly what he’s planning.”
Dan had the grace to look guilty as hell while judiciously avoiding my eyes.
“And when your father makes his move—an illegal breach of another Pride’s territorial boundary—the entire council will unite against him.”
I shook my head with feigned confidence, while my aching heart withered in my chest. “Uncle Rick will never go along with that. Neither will Bert Di Carlo.”
Kevin shrugged smugly. “If they side with your father—supporting his treachery rather than the council’s authority—they’ll be removed from power just like he will, and their territories will be redistributed once the council membership is settled.”
“That’s not going to happen!” I spat, glowering at Kevin in the most frustratingly impotent moment of my life. “No one but your dad and Calvin Malone will support this war once they hear how Ethan really died. He was pounced on from above—murdered in cold blood. My father and I saw it with our own eyes.”
“Unfortunately, you won’t be there to testify, and after the council hears the intelligence we’ve gathered against your father, the Alphas won’t be
lieve a word he has to say.”
My pulse jumped, in spite of my best effort to steady it. “What intelligence?”
Kevin’s gaze narrowed on me. “That’s where you come in.”
“Oh, the whole Q and A bit?” I rolled my eyes, trying to look calm and fearless, while my heart raced like a scared rabbit’s. “What’s my motivation to play along, if you’re just going to kill me anyway?”
On the edge of my vision, Dan went stiff, and I took heart from his reaction. He was clearly uncomfortable with the thought my murder—as was I, for the record—which definitely gave me something to work with. But should I appeal to his sympathy, or his faltering sense of honor?
“Pain,” Kevin said, and I blinked at him in confusion, trying to haul myself back from thoughts of escape long enough to make sense of that one word.
“Huh?”
“Pain is your motivation,” he clarified. “Pete’s looking forward to beating a little compliance into Greg Sanders’s infamous shrew before I give him the all clear to take whatever else he wants from you. The more you talk, the less opportunity he has to hit you. Is that motivation enough?”
My heart slammed against my chest, and my hands began to sweat against the soft gray upholstery at my back, but I forced confidence into my expression, crowned by two eyebrows arched in challenge. “Knowing that either way, this party ends with my rape and murder? No. There is no motivation strong enough to guarantee my cooperation.”
“Yeah?” Kevin smiled viciously. “Let’s give it a shot anyway….”
I shrugged, bolstering myself with bravado, since I had nothing else left to work with. “I’m not exactly new to being threatened. Or punched.”
Yarnell’s leering grin widened. “Sounds like she likes it rough.”
I never said I liked it that way….
“Well then, she’s in luck.” Kevin paced in front of me again, arms crossed over his chest. “Ryan’s missing again, isn’t he?”
“What?” I was honestly thrown off by his first question; Ryan’s was the last name I’d expected to hear from Kevin’s mouth.
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