“No.” I didn’t bother to elaborate, because outlining my reasons would make it look like I felt the need to justify my position. Or that the matter was up for debate. Neither of which was true. “Robyn, say goodbye. We’re leaving.”
Drew opened his mouth, obviously ready to argue, but Robyn pulled him into a hug before he could. “It was great to meet you, and hopefully I’ll see you again before they drag me back to Atlanta.” She let Drew go and looked up at him with gratitude so earnest it could only be an act. A manipulation. “It’s so awesome of you to step up to help Titus. Hopefully, he won’t have to impose upon your generosity for very long.”
Drew stared at her, stunned by her blatant characterization of his tenure as temporary. In front of all of the enforcers.
I fought not to laugh out loud. Robyn might be smaller than the toms, but that woman’s mind was badass in a way that no enforcer’s claws or incisors would ever be.
She went around the room, hugging my men, saying something nice and personal to each of them, but when she got to Brandt, her hug lasted longer than it should have. Because she was whispering something in his ear.
When she finally let him go, his gaze fell on me, and he appeared—if not friendly—a little less hateful than he’d looked half an hour ago, in my study.
“What did you say to Brandt?” I whispered as I grabbed my suitcase on our way toward the front door.
“I told him that sometimes you have to trust the people you know and love, despite what logic seems to be telling you. After all, logic tells us that humans can’t turn into cats, but we all know that’s not true.”
“Wow.” I tried not to look too impressed. “Thanks, Robyn.”
She smiled as she pulled open the passenger door of my car, and a single raindrop hit the tip of her nose. “Does that mean I can ride up front? Or do I have to hide under your clothes all the way to Jackson?”
THIRTEEN
Robyn
Titus drove us south toward Jackson, in the dark and the rain, and we arrived at the Millsaps campus around ten o’clock. But the car didn’t stop.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we rolled past the campus’s concrete-and-brick welcome sign.
“My brother has an apartment off-campus. I figured we’d start there.”
Justus Alexander’s apartment turned out to be a thirteen-hundred-square-foot space with two large bedrooms, two baths, hardwood floors, and walk-in closets. I’d seen smaller houses.
“I’m guessing your brother got an inheritance as well?” I said as I ran my fingers across the granite countertops in the generous galley-style kitchen.
“Yes, but he won’t get the first lump sum until he turns twenty-five. I pay for the apartment. Which is why I have my own room, for when I visit.” Titus pushed open the door to the back bedroom and flipped a switch to turn on the light. “But I’ll take the couch tonight. You can have the bed.”
“Thanks,” I said. But I personally thought the overstuffed couch piled with designer pillows looked pretty damn comfortable—until I stepped into Titus’s room-away-from-home.
The bed was smaller—full-sized instead of king—but the mattress was tall enough that it had to be padded and the bedding looked plush and soft. And it smelled like him.
The sudden, visceral need to roll around on Titus’s comforter took me by surprise so strongly that I’d taken two steps toward the bed before I realized what I was doing. Mortified, I stopped, pivoted, then marched past him and out of the room, my cheeks flaming at the puzzled look he gave me.
And I certainly did not inhale his scent as I passed him on my way out the door.
The living room was freshly swept and smelled clean. The kitchen was spotless, and I didn’t see even a hint of dust buildup on the full-sized washer and dryer peeking from behind a set of bi-fold doors off the living room. “Your brother’s even more of a neat freak than you are.”
Titus snorted. “No, he has a bi-weekly cleaning service.”
“Of course he does.” I tried not to roll my eyes or sound too jealous of a nineteen-year-old attending a private college with no student debt, living alone in an expensive apartment with someone else to clean up all his messes.
Justus’s life was not without problems. Thus the reason for our visit.
I set my toothbrush on the glass coffee table. “Okay, I’m unpacked. So, where do we start?” Titus had been calling Justus every few minutes since we’d left the mansion, but he’d gotten no answer. “Is he onl your cell plan? Can you track his phone?”
“Yes. But I’m going to give him one more chance to answer.” He tapped a name in his contacts list, then held his phone up to his ear. It rang once from Titus’s end—then again from the front bedroom.
“He’s here?” I whispered, suddenly unnerved to realize we weren’t alone in the apartment.
“I doubt it.” Titus marched across the room and pushed his brother’s bedroom door open. “He would have heard us.” He flipped a switch on the wall, and light flooded the room.
I followed him through the doorway, then stopped short, staring at the colossal mess. “Definitely not a neat freak.” But maybe an actual freak. “Does it usually look so…?”
“Destroyed?” Titus supplied, as he ended the call, and I nodded. “His room is only ever clean on cleaning days, but this is…excessive.”
“When was cleaning day?”
He slid his phone into his pocket and stared through narrowed eyes at the mess. “Thursday. Two days ago.”
“And he’s been here since then.”
Titus dropped into a squat at the edge of the bed and inhaled deeply, to verify through scent that Justus had trashed his own room. “Yes. And he’s definitely a shifter.” He sank onto his heels. “I don’t think I truly believed it until now.”
I took a deep breath through my nose. “Wow! He smells so much like you!” Even though the lingering scent in his room could be from before Justus was infected.
“I know.” Titus stood and moved around the bed, stepping over clothing, video game controllers, and an open jar of guy hair gel on his way to the built-in shelves lining one wall beneath a row of windows.
“Can you tell who infected him?” I couldn’t detect anyone else’s scent woven through Justus’s, but that could be because I didn’t know his infector.
“No. It’s probably too faint to catch in trace scents. We won’t know until we can actually smell my brother in person, and chances are we won’t know even then. He could have been infected by someone we’ve never met. The vast majority are infected by strays totally off the radar.”
“Well, we can’t track him if he doesn’t have his phone. So, what, we just wait here for him? How long does he usually stay out?”
“He’s nineteen years old. He could be out all night.” Titus plucked his brother’s laptop from a pile of laundry on the floor. “While we wait, we snoop.”
I spotted Justus’s phone on top of his chest of drawers, peeking from beneath a battered chemistry textbook and a wrinkled jumble of note cards. The device was locked, but when I woke it up, missed call alerts lit up the lock screen. I scrolled to the beginning, past nearly a dozen calls from Titus.
“Well, we could have plenty of time to snoop.” I held the phone out so he could see the list. “He hasn’t answered a call in forty-five hours.”
“What?” Titus took the phone from me and scanned the alerts. “So, what? Justus got here right after the apartment was cleaned, tore up his room, then left, never to return? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Or maybe it does.” I knelt to pull a scrap of lace and wire from another pile of clothes and held the shredded bra up for him to see. “Unless your brother has a pretty big secret, this might be about a girl. Was he dating someone?”
“More like everyone. Justus is very…social. I probably didn’t set a good example in that department.”
A bolt of jealousy shot through me. How many girls had Titus brought home?
Titu
s scrubbed one hand over his face, and sleep deprivation seemed to catch up with him all at once. “And that’s only one on a long list of regrets over how I took care of my brother after our parents died.”
“This isn’t your fault. You didn’t infect him.” A photograph caught my eye from beneath the rim of an overturned aluminum mesh trash can, and I nearly tripped over a dumbbell on my way to it. “Are you sure he didn’t have an actual girlfriend?” I asked as I studied the photo. Which was actually half a photo, showing a smiling young brunette woman with a man’s arm wrapped around her waist. The rest of the man was on the missing half of the picture. “Because this looks like fallout from a bad breakup to me.”
“That would be a new development, but certainly possible.” Titus took the photo and stared at the girl. “So, two days ago, he trashes his room—possibly over a girl—and disappears. That night, he infects Corey Morris in the woods east of I55. How are those connected?”
“Let’s find out.” I took the laptop from him and picked my way across the cluttered floor. “In the living room.”
I settled onto the couch with Justus’s computer on my lap, and Titus headed into the kitchen. “I need a snack,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
“Always.” I opened Justus’s computer, and the screen blinked to life instantly. And asked for a password. Damn it.
“I’m no chef, but I can handle a couple of sandwiches.” Titus pulled open the fridge and rummaged inside, then set half a loaf of bread on the counter. “Ham or turkey.”
“Surprise me.” I typed “password” into the prompt screen, and was denied access to the computer. “Hey Titus, I don’t suppose you know your brother’s password?”
“No. Try his middle name.”
“Okay.” I frowned at the computer balanced on my knees. “With a first name like Justus, his middle name must be Truth, or Patience, or something like that.”
Titus laughed. “Anthony.”
“Justus Anthony Alexander,” I said as I typed his middle name into the field on the screen. “Nope. What else you got? Favorite book?”
“I’m not sure he’s read anything other than a textbook since he was about ten years old. Back then, he liked Harry Potter.”
“Okay.” I tried every character name I could remember from the series. No luck. “What’s your middle name?”
“Nathaniel. But he wouldn’t use that.” Titus looked up from spreading mustard on a slice of bread. “Try our mother’s name. Penelope.”
I typed that in, and the lock screen disappeared. “Yes!” Then I frowned. “I’m calling this a win for now, but when we find your brother, you need to tell him to use random words or phrases for his passwords.”
Titus chuckled. “When I was in college, my passwords were the first six digits of Fibonacci’s sequence or the first ten digits of pi, depending on the device.”
“And, the Nerd of the Year Award goes to Titus Nathaniel Alexander…” I said without turning away from the screen. “It looks like his computer is set to remember his other passwords, which is a security nightmare, but convenient for our well-intentioned but illicit purposes.”
“Turkey, pepper jack, and pickles. Justus doesn’t stock tomatoes or lettuce, or anything fresh. At all.” Titus sank onto the couch next to me holding two sandwiches. Each on its own paper plate. His leg touched mine from hip to thigh, and I could feel the warmth of his skin through both layers of denim. “So what do we know so far?”
I accepted my plate and set it on the couch cushion on my other side, trying not to think about how warm his leg felt. About how his shoulder brushed mine as he leaned in to see the screen. About how, if I turned, my lips would be less than two inches from his, and he’d be damn near obligated to kiss me. Or to hold still and let me do it.
“Well, it looks like he hasn’t posted on any social media in nearly a week,” I said, trying to purge thoughts that made me feel warm and raw all over. “But six days ago, he put up a shot of himself and the girl from the picture having lunch from a food truck. The caption reads, ‘Me and Ivy at Molly’s Tamales’.”
“Ivy. Shit,” Titus said around his first bite. “Wasn’t that the name of Corey Morris’s roommate’s girlfriend? The one who owned the cabin where he was attacked?”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember everything Corey had said about how he’d been infected. “I think so. Maybe it’s a different Ivy.”
Titus huffed. “That’d be a hell of a coincidence. The more logical conclusion is that Justus was involved with Morris’s friend’s girlfriend. Or she was cheating on Justus with Morris’s friend.” He leaned closer to glance at the laptop screen. “Do we have a last name?
“No, but he’s tagged her. Just a sec.” I clicked the link and took a bite of my sandwich while the page loaded. “Ivy Lowe. She’s a sophomore at Millsaps. There are several pictures of her in a dorm room, so it looks like she lives on campus. I bet her number’s in his phone. Why don’t you call her?”
Titus set his plate on the coffee table and pulled his brother’s phone from his pocket. He typed a four-digit number into the lock screen, and it disappeared.
“You knew the password?”
“No, but I can see the pattern. It was the date our parents died.”
Morbid, but understandable.
Looking over Titus’s shoulder—and breathing in his scent, inches from his neck—I could see that there was no Ivy in Justus’s short favorites menu. I took another bite, watching while Titus scrolled through the longer contacts list, then stopped. “Ivy Lowe. Cross your fingers.” He pressed call, then held the phone up to his ear, and I could hear perfectly well when her voicemail picked up. “Well, that’s not good.”
“Maybe she’s in class.” I licked a smear of mustard from my upper lip, pleased to find him watching my mouth.
“At ten-thirty pm?”
I shrugged. “Maybe she’s studying. Or working. Or driving with her phone on do not disturb.” I took another bite and spoke around it. “She’ll probably text you back any minute in all caps, yelling at Justus for whatever he did to break them up.”
Titus glanced at me with one brow arched. “You’re assuming he broke them up?”
“Your brother trashed his room, shredded his girlfriend’s underwear, and infected a stranger. Even if he didn’t mean to be, chances are that he was the problem.”
“If that’s true, she may have blocked his number.” Titus frowned. “We probably shouldn’t show up at her dorm room in the middle of the night.”
“No,” I agreed. “But I might be able to ‘run into’ her tomorrow on campus.”
“And how would we know where she’d be?”
“Through the miracle of cyber-stalking. How do you think I tracked down certain dead psychopaths who shall remain nameless?”
Titus laughed, then waved one hand magnanimously at the computer on my lap. “Go for it.”
While he finished his sandwich, I scrolled through Ivy Lowe’s posts on every social media account I could find for her. In spite of their apparent breakup, she and Justus were still friends online, so I was able to see pictures that would otherwise have been hidden on her private accounts.
“Well, Ivy plays tennis for Millsaps, but she doesn’t win much. On the weekends, she works at a vintage clothing store. And she eats enough ice cream to keep a dairy farm in business all on her own. Not that you can tell it from her pictures.” I frowned as I took another bite of my sandwich. “Maybe it’s low-fat yogurt.”
“Can you tell where she gets it? We could people-watch at an ice cream place tomorrow.”
“I can’t see the name of the shop, but it has a pink logo, with—”
A phone rang, and I thought it was Justus’s until Titus pulled his cell from his pocket. “It’s Faythe.” His heartbeat took up a rapid, stressed cadence, and mine raced to match its pace. And again, that connection surprised me. Do all Pride cats have sympathetic physical reactions to their Alphas’ stress? Or excitement? Was that part o
f some weird Pride bonding?
Did my reaction mean that my feline half recognized Titus as its Alpha? Or was the connection more personal in nature?
My pulse raced even faster with that thought.
“What are you going to tell her?” I asked, dragging my thoughts back on track.
“I don’t know. But I owe her an explanation.”
I grabbed his phone and pressed the button to reject Faythe’s call.
“Robyn!” Titus took his phone.
“You can’t tell her much without incriminating your brother, so let her get the scoop from Jace and Abby for now. We’ll call her when we have more information.”
He scowled, disapproval radiating from his gray gaze, and I had to push past my inner cat’s instinct to cower. But then he took the laptop from me and set it on the coffee table, next to my toothbrush. “If that’s the plan, let’s go get that information.”
When he stood, I stood with him, my pulse racing again. After two months of metaphorically sitting on my hands at the Di Carlo compound, a chance to play detective with Titus—and help his brother, a fellow stray—felt like waking up from a psychological coma. “Where? How?”
“We’re going to start in the woods east of I55. If Justus infected Corey Morris there, it might be his regular hunting grounds. For however long he’s been a shifter.” His eyes narrowed in thought. “I have no idea how long that is. How can I not even know how long ago my own brother was infected?”
“This isn’t your fault, Titus.” I sat again and opened the laptop. “If we’re going to the woods in the middle of the night, we need a plan. Or at least a starting point.”
“Okay…” He sat next to me again, his warm leg pressed against mine, and watched while I pulled up a map of Jackson, Mississippi, online and clicked on the satellite filter. “Okay, east of I55. North or south of the city?”
“South. Isn’t that what Morris said?”
“I think so.” I zoomed in and panned around in the wooded areas until I found a cabin. The satellite view wouldn’t let me see the small building up close, but it gave me the longitude and latitude.
Blind Tiger Page 16
