Lissa came to Tank’s side. “Should we give him more?” she asked dubiously.
Tank shook his head. “He already had a double dose. He should be down. Triple could kill him.”
Sloan had also Changed back and put on his jeans, and he walked up to the shed. “Maybe I can calm him down.”
He knelt on the floor of the shed next to Xander, talking so softly that even Caitlyn’s owl ears couldn’t pick up what he was saying. Then he started stroking his friend’s fur.
Gradually, the panther stopped trembling. His eyes closed, and his muscles relaxed. The other crew members moved into the main cabin, silent and sober. Worried about their friend.
Sloan stayed, sitting with his back to the shed wall, his hand gently resting on the panther’s fur.
He was still there when Caitlyn flew away.
Chapter 3
Caitlyn flew back to the hotel room she’d rented, landing on the balcony of her top-floor room. She’d left the sliding glass door unlocked, so it was just a matter of making sure no one was around to see her quick transformation before she ducked inside.
The room was blessedly warm, but it didn’t ease the cold inside her.
She’d failed her mission. The subject hadn’t died tonight, but he was still in danger.
The subject. She’d left her clan, left the Intelligence Service, but she still had their cold, dispassionate way of thinking burned into her brain.
Sloan wasn’t a “subject.” He was a person. A person who cared about his friends, who put his own pain aside when one of them needed him.
And a ghost was trying to kill him.
What if she couldn’t save him? What if nothing she did was ever enough?
Shivering, she made her way to the bathroom, flipping on all the lights as she went, and turned the shower on as hot as it would go.
She stood under the steaming water, trying to warm herself all the way through, but the cold knot in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t go away.
Who was Kayisha? How had she died? And most important…
Why did she want Sloan McCall dead?
She climbed out of the shower when the water started running lukewarm. After she was dry, she bundled herself into her warmest sweats and made herself a cup of coffee.
Then she got out her cell phone—the burner phone she’d bought when she left the clan to go on what seemed to them like a wild, pointless scavenger hunt. She’d ditched her regular cell first thing. She might have flamed out of field agent training, but she’d learned enough to know that Jared could track it with a couple of keystrokes.
She was sure he’d already tried.
She didn’t want to call him now. She’d broken their mating pledge and left him, and that was not something Jared Donnelly would ever forgive her for.
But he was the only person who might possibly break protocol and give her what she needed to know, if she just handled him the right way.
Not that she’d ever been good at handling Jared, even when he wasn’t angry with her. He was the one who handled her.
Controlled every little thing you did, is more like it.
She was stalling, and she knew it. Straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin to give herself confidence, she called Jared’s private line. It was crazy late, but he was probably still at the office. Even if he wasn’t, she knew the private line forwarded to his cell phone.
Jared was never not working.
He picked up on the second ring. “Donnelly.”
His voice was cool and wary. A strange number on his private line would raise all kinds of red flags.
“It’s me, Jared,” she said.
“Caitlyn.” She couldn’t quite read the emotion in his voice. Relief? Anger? Suspicion?
He started in immediately. “Where are you? What happened to your cell? Tell me your location, and I’ll have someone there to get you within the hour.”
Typical. He assumed she was calling to beg him to rescue her. Naturally, though, he wouldn’t come himself. He’d want to remind her he was too important for that.
“I don’t need to be extracted, Jared,” she said. “I’m still on my mission.”
There was a short silence. Then he said slowly, as if explaining to a child, “It’s not a ‘mission,’ Caitlyn. It’s a wild goose chase. I’d hoped you’d have gotten this whole thing out of your system by now.”
This “thing.” Her greatest gift. Her sense of purpose. Her life. Get that right out of your system, girl.
He continued in the same overly reasonable tone of voice, as though she were a toddler who would fly into a tantrum when thwarted. Or a crazy person. “If you don’t want me to come get you, why did you call?”
“I need—” She stopped and took a deep breath. She had to handle this just right, or she wouldn’t get anything from him.
She used her best conciliatory tone. “Jared, you’re always so patient with me.” Not. But in his world, patience equaled not immediately forcing her to do exactly what he wanted. She went on, “But this vision—”
She heard the beginning of a sigh, quickly stifled. “Are you still worried about that? You know you need help to interpret your visions, to decide the best course of action. That’s why I’m your handler. That’s why we’re going to be mated.”
They were not going to be mated.
“I found him,” she said. “The…subject in my vision. I thought I saved him—I did save him. But he’s still in danger, Jared. I have to help him. I was hoping—”
“Hoping what? You know you have no official standing.”
Was that the tiniest bit of menace in his voice? He was losing patience with her. But she knew if she went back, if she turned this over to Jared and the Agency, they wouldn’t help Sloan. Not enough resources. Higher priority cases. She was the only one who cared.
“Hoping you could help me with some background,” she said. “He was in the military—Shifter Special Forces, I think. And there’s something from his past that’s haunting him.” Literally, but Jared didn’t need to know that. If she told him she was seeing ghosts as well as visions, he’d really think she was crazy. Crazier than he already thought she was.
“All I know is that there’s a woman named Kayisha involved,” she said. “She looked Middle Eastern, and I think she died during one of his missions. He keeps reliving it—”
“Hold on.” His voice grew urgent. “Did you say Kayisha?”
“Yes.” His interest gave her hope. “His name is Sloan McCall, and his animal is a snow leopard. There can’t be that many snow leopards in special ops. Usually they’re more reclusive, aren’t they?”
She heard a keyboard tapping—he must be at the office, in front of his computer. “Are you sure about that last name?” he asked.
Her heard dropped. “It’s what he’s going by,” she said. “There’s nothing in the system?”
There was a long silence. The keys had stopped tapping.
“Jared?”
“I’m here.” He said carefully, “Caitie, you need to tell me where you are, so I can extract you right now. If this man is who I think he is, he’s dangerous. A traitor and a deserter.” He paused. “And a murderer.”
What? That couldn’t be right. “Jared, that’s not possible. None of my intel suggests—”
Jared said sharply, “You’re not an agent. You don’t have intel, you have visions and feelings. And this man fooled everyone—his assets, his team, his handlers. Trained operatives, Caitie. Not administrative assistants who see things.”
There he was. That was the Jared she knew.
She heard him rein himself in, the condescending patience back in his voice. “Trust me, he can fool you too.”
But Sloan hadn’t been trying to fool her. He hadn’t even known she was watching him. And she’d seen that he was a kind person. Loyal. A good man who cared about his friends.
Jared read her silence as hesitation. “Tell us where you are, and come back. Let the professionals handle it.
”
Right. Come back, go back to transcribing and filing and making coffee, and let the grownups handle this. But they didn’t know the Sloan that she’d seen for the last five weeks. Something wasn’t adding up here.
“I don’t know…” she said, trying to sound half-convinced. “Can you send his file to my phone? I want to see it, see if this is even the same person. If it’s really him, and he’s as bad as you say, I’ll come in.”
“Fine,” Jared said. She could tell his patience was wearing thin. “It’s coming now. Hopefully you’ll see sense.”
Sadly, no. She never would. Not Jared’s kind of sense, anyway.
Caitlyn looked at her screen. He was sending her the data now. She barely held in a sigh of relief.
“Thank you, Jared,” she said softly. “I knew I could count on you.” She swallowed hard, trying to sound grateful and submissive. “You always take care of me.”
She could almost see him preening his feathers. “I’m glad you realize that,” he said.
“I’ll talk to you soon.” Fuck you very much.
She cut the connection and sat for a moment, thinking. He’d called her Caitie twice during that conversation. After she’d told him Sloan’s name. And Kayisha’s.
Jared only called her Caitie when he wanted something from her. Why was he suddenly trying to soften her up?
Was Sloan more important than she’d realized?
She checked to make sure Jared had sent her the real file, and downloaded it onto a thumb drive. Then she reset the phone to its factory settings, wiping all the data.
She packed up everything she had and left the hotel, paying her bill with a credit card. Jared could trace the phone’s location anyway, now that he had the number, so there was no point in wasting her cash.
She got more cash—her full daily maximum—from the ATM in the lobby, before Jared could think to shut her down.
Then she walked away into the night, throwing the prepaid cell into the dumpster as she passed by.
Sloan might be a traitor. And a murderer. And she might go back to her clan, one day.
But not tonight. Not until she knew what was really going on with Sloan McCall and his ghost.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Sloan woke up way too early. He rolled over, groaning, hoping he could get Flynn to let him blow off work at the construction company today.
Hell, after last night, he needed the break. He’d come this close to being thrown off a cliff by a fucking nightmare, and his best friend had almost lost himself in Crazytown. It was after four a.m. when Xander spontaneously Changed back to human in his sleep. Sloan had carried him into his trailer and put him on the couch, covered with an old quilt, before crawling into his own bed and passing out.
Now he staggered out into the living room, still in his boxers. The couch was empty, the quilt crumpled on the floor.
No Xander.
Sloan ran his hand through his hair. There was no telling how Xander would wake up after an episode like that, or what he’d do. He better go look for him.
Thunk.
Shit. He knew what that sound meant. Muttering curses under his breath, he found a pair of jeans on the living room floor, yanked them on, and headed for the front door.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
The living room wall shook slightly with each blow.
He stepped out on the porch into a misty spring morning, sunbeams barely peeping through the new leaves. Xander was standing about twenty feet away from his trailer, throwing knives into the side of it.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The damn panther walked over and yanked the knives out, and turned to go back and do it again.
“Fuck it all, Xander,” Sloan said. “I told you not to do that. You’re messing up my siding.”
“This dump needs re-siding anyway.” Xander didn’t look at him.
Thunk.
Sloan assessed the situation in Xander terms. Throwing knives? Bad sign. Not making eye contact—also bad. Deliberately annoying Sloan? Good. So far, he was at about 66% on the explode-o-meter. And it was only seven a.m.
Sloan sighed. He was tired and depressed, and he was in no mood.
“Did you want something?” he asked. “Or are you just trying to reduce my trailer to splinters for fun?”
Xander threw a knife. Thunk.
“You’re out of coffee.”
Sloan knew that Xander knew that Sloan always went up to the main house for coffee in the morning. Asking for coffee here meant he wanted to talk.
Wanting to talk was good. This morning’s Xander explode-o-meter dropped to 50%. Progress.
“I have some in the freezer,” he said.
“You’re supposed to keep it in a cool, dry place.”
“Fuck off. What are you, El Exigente?” He was rewarded with a tiny twitch at the corner of Xander’s mouth, that could possibly be construed as the beginning of a smile. Explode-o-meter, 40% and still dropping.
Sloan went back in his trailer and made coffee, to the sound of Xander’s knives hitting his siding. Well, the trailer wasn’t a dump, but it did need to be re-sided.
He poured the coffee into two travel mugs and brought it out to the porch, parking himself in a stray sunbeam that was hitting the porch railing just right. It was actually kind of a nice morning. Just way too early to be up after last night’s shitstorm. His cat yawned inside him, wanting to curl up for a nap in the sun.
You and me both, buddy.
Xander gathered up his knives and came to sit on the opposite rail, where Sloan had set the other coffee cup.
They sat and sipped, listening to the sound of last night’s rain dripping off the leaves. Sloan didn’t ask any questions; Xander would talk when he was ready.
Finally Xander said quietly, “I’m thinking of leaving the crew.”
Sloan’s stomach dropped. Xander was his best friend, one of the closest friends he’d ever had. And his panther was a mess. How the hell would he survive without a crew who understood him?
Xander took another swallow of coffee, staring off into the woods.
“Shit,” Sloan said finally. “You can’t do that to me, man. Who the hell is going to stop Lissa from drowning us all in crew pep rallies and holiday cheer?”
That got another almost-smile out of Xander, but it didn’t last long. After another silence, he said, “Ever since I was Turned, I’ve been looking for somewhere to belong. Somewhere my cat can settle. And I thought I found it here.”
“You did find it,” Sloan said. “You’re part of this crew. Last night doesn’t mean—”
Xander interrupted him, shaking his head. “It’s not just last night. At first, the crew bond settled me down. But then Tank and Lissa bonded, and now Jasmin has Brody. I can’t handle all this fucking love and happiness. My cat can’t handle it.”
He ran one finger around the edge of his mug. “It’s not like I don’t want them to be happy,” he said. “I like Lissa. And even Brody isn’t as much of a pecker as I thought he’d be.”
Sloan huffed a half-laugh at that. Brody was a former Nashville wolf, and the Nashville pack was known for being peckers of the highest degree.
Xander continued, “I don’t even mind how stupid they all look, with their gooey eyes and mushy expressions.” He rubbed a spot on the side of his coffee mug, and then said very softly, “I want that.”
Sloan went completely still. He’d never heard Xander say anything like that before. Xander always pretended he didn’t need anyone.
It made Sloan have to face that hole in his own heart.
Another minute ticked by, and then he said, “Me too.”
Xander raised his head, and he looked directly at Sloan for the first time that morning. “Yeah, but you’ll find someone,” he said. “You’re fucked up, sure, but not any more than Tank or Jasmin.” He snorted. “Hell, maybe less than Jaz.” He considered. “And she got Brody. He’s almost normal, except for that occasional Monster Wolf thing he turns into.”
&nbs
p; Sloan shook his head. If Xander only knew. “I’m more fucked-up than any of you.”
Xander shook his head. “If Tank and Jaz could find someone, you will. And then it will be just me and Flynn, and I can’t see me and the Lion King ever being bros. Especially if he won’t put his fucking dick away.”
That did make Sloan laugh. Flynn hated wearing clothes, and he was always forgetting to put pants on. No shifter was shy about nudity, but there was only so much hairy swinging dick a guy could deal with seeing from his friends, and Flynn tended to exceed his quota.
Sloan said, “First of all, I’m not fit to have a mate. And second, you’ll always be my bro. You can’t leave. Who will help me steal lumber from Tank, and prank Jaz and Brody?”
Xander said, “They won’t miss that.”
“They’d miss you,” Sloan said quietly. “We wouldn’t be the same without you.”
Xander shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not going yet. I just thought you should know I was thinking about it.”
Sloan didn’t know what to do. Nothing he said was making any difference. “Maybe your cat will settle down,” he said helplessly.
“Maybe.”
From across the clearing came Flynn’s bellow. “Sloan! Are you fucking going to sleep all day?”
“Oh,” Xander said. “And I was supposed to tell you that Flynn wants you to meet him in the cabin ten minutes ago, because he wants to finish up at the McCarthy job site today.”
“Sloan!” Flynn bellowed, louder.
Sloan heaved himself off the porch railing. “Coming!” he shouted.
To Xander, he grumbled, “You couldn’t tell me that first thing? Fuck you. I should never have made you coffee.”
Xander grinned. “Be a good kitty, now, or I won’t tell you what I ordered sent to the restaurant for Jaz and Brody’s grand re-opening.”
Sloan shoulder-checked him at the top of the porch stairs, bounding down first. “What did you get? I hope it’s dirty and inappropriate.”
Xander rolled his eyes. “Of course. It had to be either dirty and inappropriate, or knives. And they already have knives. Because, restaurant.”
Bad Blood Leopard (Bad Blood Shifters Book 3) Page 2