The Vixen's Lead (Kit Davenport Book 1)

by Tate James

  Lucy rolled her eyes; she’d never been a fan of my melodrama. She knew I wouldn’t turn down any food if hungry, no matter how subpar it might be. She was the same. A carryover from our childhood in the foster home where we’d starved between meager meals and savored every little morsel.

  “Drop off with Marius didn’t happen, though,” I admitted reluctantly, bracing for the scolding she was undoubtedly going to give me. “He called right before I got to our rendezvous point and said the client couldn’t collect from him until Thursday and he ‘isn’t comfortable holding the goods for that long.’” The middleman was a slimy bastard, but he was a necessary layer of security to keep our less than legitimate transactions from biting us in the ass later.

  Lucy stared at me and sat forward, disbelief sharp on her pixie face. “Please tell me you did the sensible thing and stored the ring in a safe location and didn’t bring it back to school with you...”

  Well, since she told me to tell her the sensible thing, I said nothing and studied the new poster she’d pinned on the wall. Her screech threatened my hearing. “Ugh, you are unbe-fucking-lievable sometimes! Give it to me.”

  I fished the stolen jewelry out of my bra, where I kept it tucked safe in a little velvet pouch, and handed it over to her. She snatched it out of my hand and spun back to her computer desk, digging around in the drawers until she pulled out one of those little metal detection wands.

  “I’m fairly sure we already know it’s made of metal, Luce.” What was the big deal? She made a dismissive noise in her throat and didn’t answer me. A few seconds later, the little wand changed from a steady, slow beep to a high-pitched whine, and Lucy flung it aside in exchange for a magnifying glass.

  “Kit, you flaming idiot, this has a tracking device embedded in between these ugly green stones.” Before she even finished her sentence, I swiped the ring off her palm and tossed it into the glass of soda sitting beside the computer monitor.

  We both sat silent for a moment, watching the brown carbonation bubbles form and reform on the priceless ring in the bottom of her glass.

  Finally, Lucy said, “Not... the smartest course of action. I would have suggested leaving the tracker active until you could lead the trail away from Cascade Falls, but what’s done is done; there’s definitely no rescuing a delicate piece of technology like that from the sugary depths of my soda.”

  “Oh.” Once again, I’d acted without thinking. “Shit. Yeah, fair point; that would have been smarter.”

  Lucy shrugged and waved her hand as if to brush the problem off for another day and changed the subject. “So, I have lined up our class schedules so that we have our lunches together every day. I figure, seeing as you no longer have Ryan to keep you entertained, you’re going to have a whole lot of time for hanging out with little old me.” She grinned, knowing how annoyed I was that my friend with benefits from the previous year had graduated and left me rather bereft in the romance department.

  Due to our negligent upbringing at Mother Suzette’s, neither Lucy nor I had really attended school until after we were rescued from her foster home. Sure, she had us enrolled but a few measly bribes had the right people looking the wrong way. When we were first admitted to CFA, we had both been drastically behind in our classwork. We’d worked our butts off to catch up, but the lack left us almost a year older than the rest of our senior class. I’d never had a taste for younger men, and Lucy seemed to take almost perverse pleasure in what was looking like a very dry year ahead of me.

  I pouted and pretended to cry. “Lucy, how will I survive with only you to entertain me? And no, do not even think about suggesting I start batting for the other team. That pool is all yours to swim in, thank you very much. Maybe fate will be kind and give us a really hot TA for Mr. Crowley’s math class.” I perked up at the idea; it could happen. Mr. Crowley was well overdue for retirement at the tender age of eighty-seven, but I suspected he wouldn’t take a break until the day he died.

  Lucy rolled her eyes as she fished the ring out of her glass. “You look like crap. Go to bed.”

  “You’re so complimentary sometimes, Luce.” I laughed, leaving her room. “But you have a point. I’ll see you tomorrow, and hopefully that tracker isn’t going to cause us too much trouble!”

  3

  The first two days of the school year passed uneventfully, other than finding out that Mr. Crowley hadn’t added a sexy TA to assist in his classes. Instead, he’d had a heart attack over the break, which really sucked. Although we had all joked about him teaching until he died, he was also one of our favorites, and his extra tutorials were the only reason I had caught up so fast in his classes. In his place, the school had hired a younger and far too attractive for his own good teacher named Mr. Gregoric. When we’d walked into his class the morning before, Lucy had shot me a look of warning, but it was unnecessary. There were some lines I wouldn’t cross, and jeopardizing a man’s career was one of them. A girl has to have some standards, right?

  During lunch on Tuesday, Lucy and I soaked up the last of the summer sun on the grass in front of the cafeteria. More than forty-eight hours had passed since I’d stupidly drowned the tracking chip, but so far no black-clad SWAT agents had kicked down my door, so things were looking good. Admittedly, we were less concerned given the fact that even if they did follow the tracker to Cascade Falls, they were hardly going to look twice at a lithe, five foot eight red-headed senior and her minuscule, blue-haired best friend. Thanks to my best friend’s cunning forethought back when we’d started our thieving game, we had dropped several false witness statements that would hopefully keep suspicion firmly away from us.

  Lucy cast a casual glance around us, her manner relaxed. But I knew her; she was always cautious and never shared anything if others could overhear. “How did the drop go with Marius yesterday?”

  “Bit weird,” I admitted, frowning and rubbing my forehead to try and ease the brewing headache. “He was super jumpy, but it all went textbook smooth, so God knows what his deal is. We should probably look at using someone new though, just in case?”

  “Okay, I will sort someone out. On that subject, we’ve got a potential job contract.”

  Propping myself up on my elbows, I studied her expression. “How do we feel about taking another job so soon after trackergate?”

  Lucy shrugged. “We’ve already covered our asses, remember? Besides,” she continued, “it looks like an easy, in-and-out data retrieval job with basic security. Some CEO of a rival company wants evidence of tax evasion to shut his competition down, and apparently the files are stored on a secured server in the basement of their office block. It fits our criteria.”

  I chewed my lip, thinking it over. Our thieving was for more than fun and definitely wasn’t for the money. Everything we earned illegally was donated to several children’s charities, which we routinely visited to check the funds were being used well.

  No, it was entirely a personal vendetta for both of us, and if Lucy said a job “fit our criteria,” then it meant the people we were stealing from were on our list. Jobs for the men on our list didn’t come up every day, so I just couldn’t let the opportunity slide.

  “Go ahead and accept; it sounds easy enough.”

  Closing my eyes and laying back on the grass to soak up a little more of the weak sunlight, I was annoyed when a shadow fell over me and didn’t move. Squinting, I found a pair of well-polished Oxfords near my head. Shading my eyes with a hand, I found a handsome man in his mid-twenties with hipster black-framed glasses and floppy brown hair.

  “Hi, Mr. Gregoric,” I greeted him, curious what had brought him over to us during lunch. “Did you need something?”

  “Christina Davenport, right? And Lucifer Jones?” He cocked his head to the side as though unsure, but his gaze was confident.

  “Kit,” I corrected, “and Lucy.”

  He smiled smoothly and nodded acknowledgement. “Of course. You two seem to be a bit secluded from the rest of your senior class. I noticed
in class you don’t ever seem to interact with them beyond what is required.”

  Lucy and I both stared at him. What point was he trying to make?

  “Do you think that has anything to do with your upbringing?” He inquired, rather rudely.

  I decided not to respond. How dare he suggest Lucy and I were socially inept due to our abusive childhoods? Lucy seemed to feel the same, and we let the silence sit, allowing it to grow heavier.

  “Was there something you needed, Mr. Gregoric?” I said coolly, ending the oppressive quiet and suddenly no longer feeling so friendly. He peered at me for a moment more, and I could have sworn his eyes briefly filled with the red-brown color of his iris, totally obliterating the whites and stretching the pupils like you’d see on an animal. I gasped in surprise and tried to get a closer look, but the second I blinked he had turned on a charming smile and his eyes were totally normal again, like flipping a switch.

  “Yes, sorry, I came over to let you know that Headmaster Spotswood wants to see you after lunch, Kit.” The sun must have been making me delirious because his teeth looked awfully sharp when he smiled.

  I shook my head to clear what must have been light spots on my vision, then nodded in acknowledgement and waited to see if he had anything else to say. He stood there for a few moments more as if debating what to say, but eventually he just nodded awkwardly back at me and left.

  “Well, that was fucking weird,” Lucy muttered, and I wholeheartedly agreed with her.

  “Did you see anything weird with his eyes?” I chewed my lip as I asked the question, not wanting to sound like I was losing my mind.

  “No…” she replied slowly. “You’ve been asking that a lot lately. Is everything okay with you?”

  I snorted a laugh. Where did I even begin? I was literally seeing things. Ever since my eighteenth birthday, I had been seeing and experiencing all sorts of strange things. Considering I could quite literally heal myself and I had way out-of-proportion speed and strength, if I thought things were strange then they were seriously strange. Still, I didn’t need to dump my possible mental breakdown on Lucy’s lap, so I just shrugged and gave her a forced smile.

  “Yup, all good. Just need to get more sleep.”

  The bell chimed, signaling the end of our lunch period, so Lucy and I packed up our things and headed back inside. She left me at the door to our next class, and I continued on towards the Headmaster’s office. My low heels made a hollow clicking sound against the marble floors as I took my time wandering down the corridor.

  Our school uniform code was fairly relaxed about adding your own personal touches, and while I wasn’t comfortable spending Jonathan’s money on most things, I definitely made an exception for shoes. Maybe I was making up for lost time, having lived in holey hand-me-downs for so long. Either way, my shoe collection was something to be envied. Today I had on my classic pair of low, closed-toe, black leather Louboutins with a cute ankle strap over my white knee-high uniform socks.

  Our Headmaster’s office was at the end of a long corridor lined with class photos from the past hundred-odd years as well as oil paintings of the school’s founders. Presenting myself to the secretary, I wondered again what he needed to speak with me about so early into the school year. Surely it was too soon to have gotten myself into any trouble. Anything was possible, though. Ancient Ms. Flowers, who looked like she may be fossilized to her office chair, gave me a terse nod and waved towards the closed office door with her perpetually displeased expression.

  I tapped lightly on the office door before letting myself in. The office was a lovely room, filled with light from the huge bay window and smelling of old books, thanks to the obligatory collection of encyclopedias stacked on the bookshelf. A short, rotund man with a meticulously trimmed white beard, Headmaster Spotswood looked up as I entered, and smiled warmly. “Kit, I see Nicholas found you!”

  I assumed he meant Mr. Gregoric, so I smiled politely and nodded. There were two boys sitting in the chairs in front of the Headmaster’s desk, but all I could see from where I stood was that they had very similar haircuts and broad shoulders.

  “This is Christina Davenport; she is also a senior and shares some of your classes. She will be taking you on a quick tour of the school this afternoon and will be your go-to for any questions you might have about Cascade Falls Academy while you get settled in.” He continued, looking at the two in front of him. I raised an eyebrow at the headmaster, seeing as I wasn’t known to be the most responsible student on campus. On the other hand, if it got me out of classes for the afternoon, who was I to question his decisions?

  “Kit, I’d like you to meet Caleb and Austin King. They are new students here this year, and as they’re already a few days late starting, I would like them to get their bearings this afternoon so they can catch up on classes tomorrow. I trust you will show them everything they need to know.” This last sentence was delivered with a stern note of warning in his voice that told me not to fuck around.

  I gave him my best butter-wouldn’t-melt smile, then my jaw almost hit the goddamn floor when the new students in question stood, then turned to face me. Identical twins in every way I could currently see, Caleb and Austin King were easily the most mouth-wateringly handsome men I had seen in a long time. Actually, ever. Who was I kidding? Cascade Falls was a very small town, and they definitely did not grow them like this around here. Over six feet tall with dark hair, longer on top and shaved up the sides, and builds more suited to firefighters or Navy Seals or other equally sexy occupations.

  They definitely did not look at all like high school seniors. I fought my way back from my perusal and cleared my throat a couple of times before I felt confident enough to speak.

  In the meanwhile, one of them watched me with an amused, emerald green gaze, and the other just looked bored and a bit pissed off. Giving myself a minute to gather my scattered thoughts, I instead turned back to the portly administrator with a bright smile in place.

  “Sure thing, Mr. Spotswood. Do you have a copy of their schedules so I can point out the right classrooms?” Spotswood raised his eyebrows, looking surprised at my helpful suggestion, but held out a slip of paper to me that made me lean past the twins to accept. Being in such close proximity to two such good-looking guys was making my skin tingle, so I politely nodded to the Headmaster and gave the new students a small, tight smile before leading them out of the office.

  As we passed the pursed face of the Headmaster’s secretary, I attempted to break the ice and clarify their names, as I was likely to get them mixed up if I left it any longer.

  “So, Austin,” I said to the twin who looked less bored and annoyed, hoping I had remembered who was who. “Where did you guys move from?”

  “Caleb,” he corrected, giving me a lopsided grin, and I made a quick mental note that Caleb was the friendly one. “And we come from all over. Here and there, you might say.”

  My face flushed with heat under his intense gaze and I broke eye contact, starting swiftly down the hallway and hoping they followed. One of the twins released an appreciative hum. Walking ahead of them was giving them a prime view of my ass, and all of a sudden my skirt seemed way too short. Or not short enough. I was undecided. Either way, my imagination could feel their gazes on my derrière like laser beams. Taking a deep breath, I straightened and pasted on my most polite and welcoming mask as we approached the first set of classrooms.

  “So, in this wing we have all of our math and science classes, and you will be in…” I consulted their class lists in my hand. Shit, they were both in Trigonometry with me and Lucy; different Anatomy class though. I stopped briefly outside the door to my usual Trig class and could see Lucy making faces at me through the glass. “Room 309, right here and room 311 for Anatomy, which is two doors down. You’ll find CFA is pretty relaxed with seniors, which is cool. We are allowed to take lunch and study periods off campus and can come and go as we like on weekends and before curfew. You just need to sign in and out with the gate secur
ity.”

  Caleb made a polite noise of acknowledgement, but Austin didn’t look like he was even listening, which got under my skin just a little. I continued rattling off dry facts about the school as I lead them through an ivy covered outdoor walkway and towards the adjoining Arts building where they would have English and History classes.

  “Do you have a lot of wildlife around the school?” Caleb’s question made me jump a little, as neither twin had actually spoken since I’d started my rambling commentary about the school, and I stopped to look around for what wildlife he was talking about. Across the grass from us, a large red fox sat placidly under a tree, like he was watching us while his bushy tail flicked up and down rhythmically.

  “That’s weird,” I murmured, frowning, “Foxes are primarily nocturnal animals; it’s pretty rare to see them outside during the day and even rarer when there are people around. I hope he’s okay…” Maybe I should see if I could get him some food or something. It would be rude not to, considering I was using his image for my secret identity, The Fox. I could imagine hunger would be the main reason such a skittish animal would be out in daylight. As I was racking my brain for what a fox might like to eat, a loud, exaggerated yawn interrupted. Whipping around to face these two godlike men, I narrowed my eyes, temper flaring at the surlier of the two, whom I had no doubt was the yawner.

  “I’m sorry; am I boring you?” I snapped at him.

  “Oh thank God.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “I thought you hadn’t noticed!”

  Before I could bite back at him, his twin stepped between us and smiled blindingly, drawing my attention back to him. “What my charming brother means to say, is that schools are fairly much the same no matter where you go. You see one, you’ve seen them all. Don’t you think?”