Rogue

by Rachel Vincent

  “Yeah.” Michael put down the atlas and picked up the yellow legal pad he’d been making notes on. “Amber Cleary. She disappeared on Wednesday night, after her shift at Club Moonlight.”

  Wednesday night. A full twenty-four hours before Kellie Tandy had gone missing from New Orleans. “Where’s Club Moonlight?” I asked, pulling open my father’s top desk drawer. Inside, I grabbed a mini legal pad from the top of a small stack and slid the drawer closed. Marc handed me a pen from the jar on the desktop, and I began scratching on the lined paper as Michael flipped through his own notes.

  “Um…Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”

  “Where’s that?” Clenching my pen and notepad together in one fist, I bent across the desk for the atlas.

  “There.” Marc reached around my arm to tap a point on the map, before I’d even found the legend.

  I brushed his hand out of the way and focused on the dot his finger had been covering. Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was forty-five miles south and slightly east of Little Rock. And less than ten miles from White Hall, where Bradley Moore was murdered.

  I was starting to see a pattern, and it wasn’t pretty.

  “Okay, this is what I have so far,” I said, glancing over the barely legible scribbling on my notepad. “On Wednesday, Amber Cleary disappeared from a strip club in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The next day—Thursday—the rogue tabby murdered Bradley Moore less than ten miles away, in White Hall. That same day, Kellie Tandy vanished in the middle of her shift at Forbidden Fruit, in New Orleans. Then, on Saturday, the tabby showed up at Forbidden Fruit, where she killed Robert Harper.”

  I looked up to find both guys watching me. “Am I forgetting anything?”

  “Yeah. The other missing strippers.” Marc leaned against my father’s glass display case as he looked to Michael for confirmation. “Didn’t you say there were two more in Louisiana?”

  Michael nodded, flipping through his notes again. “Melissa Vassey never made it home after her shift at the Pegasus Lounge on Saturday night. Care to take a guess where the Pegasus Lounge is located?”

  “Saturday…” I said, my brain scrambling to assemble a puzzle we didn’t yet have all the pieces for. “Leesville, Louisiana. Or somewhere nearby.”

  Michael nodded. “Good guess.”

  “How the hell did you know that?” Confused, Marc glanced back and forth between us.

  I grinned in triumph. “It fits the pattern. A stripper goes missing, then, a day later, the tabby shows up and kills a tomcat. On Sunday she dropped off Jamey Gardner’s body in Leesville, which must mean that on Saturday, a stripper went missing from Leesville, or somewhere nearby.” I flipped my legal pad around for him to see. “But the tabby can’t be the one taking the strippers. She was busy killing Moore when Kellie Tandy went missing, and she was killing Jamey Gardner when Melissa Vassey disappeared from Leesville.”

  “So, the tabby’s alibi for kidnapping is murder?” A sardonic smile played across Marc’s lips. “That’s one hell of a defense.”

  “Not exactly exoneration, is it?” I shrugged. “But it holds up.”

  “What about Friday?” Marc asked, taking the notebook from my hand.

  “What do you mean?”

  He aimed one finger at a blank line on the legal pad. “Friday’s blank. See? No dead toms, and no missing strippers.”

  “Damn,” I plopped down on my father’s desk and took my notebook back for closer study. “You poked a hole in my theory.”

  “Only a small hole,” Michael said. “The third Louisiana stripper went missing Friday night, from a topless bar in Lafayette.”

  I stared at my brother for a moment, trying to process the new information and fit it into the timeline forming in my head. Then I twisted around and snatched the atlas from the far corner of the desk. “Lafayette.” I traced the I-10 to I-49, then north with my finger. “If you stick to the major interstates, Lafayette is on the way to Leesville from New Orleans.”

  Marc looked from me, to the map, to my hastily scribbled notes, to Michael. “So we have a stripper missing from Lafayette on Friday, but no dead tom. Why?”

  Michael shrugged. “We’re assuming the tabby’s following whoever’s taking the strippers, right?”

  Unfortunately, we were indeed.

  “I’m betting there’s no corpse for Friday because she didn’t find a tom in Lafayette. There aren’t that many of us, and she can’t possibly run into a werecat at every gas stop.”

  Though I’d come across Dan Painter’s scent in that very manner.

  “Besides, we don’t have anyone living near Lafayette, do we?” I asked, glancing to Marc for an answer, because Michael had been out of the loop—for the most part—for the better part of the last decade.

  “No. No one with permission, anyway.”

  In the foyer, a soft click and the squeal of dry hinges signaled the front door opening.

  My father stepped into the office doorway and paused when he noticed us huddled around his computer. “Wait just a minute, guys, and let’s see what Michael found out.”

  Michael nudged my hip with the capped tip of his pen, and I slid off the desk and onto my feet just as Vic, Owen, and Parker followed my father into the room.

  “Well?” He marched forward to take the position of power: his desk chair.

  Michael stood and gave me a shove, and I followed Marc toward the love seat, pausing to grab my notes on the way past the desk.

  “I’ve found three more missing strippers so far.”

  The Alpha sank into his chair, and Michael finished going over the details, then set his notepad on the center of the desk, where it wouldn’t be missed. “We’ve identified a pattern connecting the murders with the missing strippers.”

  We’ve identified a pattern? I thought, glaring at my know-it-all older brother.

  Marc pulled me onto the love seat next to him, squeezing my hand in sympathy, as if he knew what I was thinking. Hell, he probably did.

  Dad scanned the notepad, then stood, motioning for Michael to take his seat. “I want to know why these girls in particular are disappearing. What do they have in common, other than their occupation? Are there pictures? Are they all students, or was Kellie Tandy an exception? Do they all work completely in the nude, or are some of them simply topless waitresses?”

  My father turned to Vic, Owen, and Parker as he settled into his armchair. “If you go now, you can catch the eleven o’clock news. I wouldn’t be surprised if the missing strippers have made it into the national broadcast.”

  Vic nodded and led Owen and Parker out the door and down the hall, presumably toward the guesthouse, where three different televisions and two computers were at their disposal, ready to be used for the greater good of mankind. Or feline-kind, in this case.

  “Okay…” My father turned back to face the rest of us. “So, we’ve traced the tabby and whoever she’s following, but we don’t know who that is, or where either of them are now. Right?”

  “Right,” Michael said, his fingers clacking away on the keyboard without pause.

  Dad closed his eyes, obviously thinking. “So the last known location for the tabby is Pickering, Louisiana, where she left Jamey’s body. What about whoever she’s tailing?”

  “Leesville, which is less than ten miles north of Pickering,” I said, glancing down at my notes. Marc shifted closer to me to see them better. “It’s where the last stripper disappeared from, and where Painter made his last anonymous call.”

  “And you’re sure it’s him?” My father’s eyes opened to take us both in from his armchair. “Did you listen to both messages?”

  “We only heard the last one, but it’s definitely him,” I said, annoyed when Dad looked to Marc for confirmation of what I’d said. As if my word alone wasn’t good enough.

  “So we know who the informant is, and we have a description of the tabby. The only one we know nothing about is whoever she’s following.”

  “Well, we do know something,” Marc said, glancing at the n
otebook balanced on my knee. “He’s taken a stripper in a different town for each of the past four nights. If he sticks to his pattern, he could be taking another one right now. But we have no idea where he is.”

  “Okay, so trace his path.” Dad templed his hands beneath his chin, his most familiar I’m-thinking gesture. “Maybe we can make an educated guess based on that.”

  Maybe we can at that. I dropped the legal pad in Marc’s lap—in case he needed the cheat sheet again—and stood. My father’s gaze followed me as I passed his chair, and I heard the springs creak as he turned to watch me. Stopping in front of the huge oak desk, I spun the atlas around and pulled it close.

  “Okay. He drove south from Arkansas, all the way to New Orleans.” I traced the interstate down through the state line and into Louisiana. But then I had to stop and flip through the atlas pages to find Louisiana. “From New Orleans, he probably followed I-10 to Lafayette, then went north—not sure how—to Leesville.”

  My finger hovered over Leesville. “From there, he could go east on Highway 28, or turn either north or south on 171.”

  “I don’t think he’ll go back east,” Marc said, closing his eyes as he leaned his head back against the sofa cushion. “He seems to be working his way west.”

  To Texas. I was unwilling to vocalize such a thought, at least until I’d either confirmed or dismissed my suspicion involving Andrew.

  “Maybe so.” I exhaled deeply to slow my racing heart, then propped one hip on the edge of my father’s desk—hoping to look completely relaxed—and pulled the atlas onto my lap. Michael scowled, but went back to information-gathering when I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “South of Leesville, there’s nothing but more small towns and large patches of forest, until you hit I-10. From there, he could go back east toward New Orleans—which we all agree he probably didn’t do—or west, in which case he’ll wind up in Beaumont, then Houston.”

  Marc ran one hand through his dark curls, then leaned his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes again. He looked exhausted. I knew exactly how he felt. “Well, the closer he gets, the easier he’ll be to find,” he said.

  Oh, shit. I didn’t know where the stripper-kidnapper was going, but I was starting to seriously suspect he was somehow connected to Andrew. And I knew exactly where Andrew was headed.

  Here.

  “Anything new on those dancers yet, Michael?” my father asked.

  My brother nodded without looking up. “Yeah. Just a second.”

  Hopping down from my father’s desk, I dropped the atlas on the blotter and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” my father asked, and I heard springs creak as he stood behind me.

  “To the guesthouse for a soda.” My sneakers squeaked on the tiles in a fast, irritating rhythm.

  “You need some help?” Marc called. I didn’t answer.

  At the end of the hall, I pulled open the back door and shoved the screen out of my way. It slammed shut behind me as I dashed down the steps, wondering where to go next. The guesthouse was out of the question; Vic, Parker, and Owen were in there scrounging up news reports. The barn was a definite no, too; it seemed very wrong to interrupt Jamey’s eternal rest with my own problem, no matter how serious it was.

  At a loss for where to go, I settled for a patch of grass to the left of the back porch, against the rear wall of the house. An owl hooted his greeting as I flipped open my phone, my heart thudding in my ears. I scrolled through the missed calls, thankful for the well-lit LCD screen. It didn’t take long to find the voice mail from Andrew. The one I hadn’t entirely listened to in the airport.

  Not listening was no longer an option. Maybe it never had been.

  Holding my breath, I pressed a button and brought the phone up to my ear, my hand shaking. I focused on the tree line ahead, waiting for the message to play.

  “I got your message, Faythe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—” Again his words were cut off by what sounded like gunfire and helicopter blades—the same sounds we’d heard on Painter’s message to my father. “—you don’t want to see me. But I’m looking forward to seeing you.” More explosions, and blades beating the air. “—take care of something tomorrow, but then I’m all yours. Won’t be long now.”

  Another series of bangs, and this time the beating sound—obviously some kind of aircraft—faded off into the distance over the line. Whatever those sounds were, Andrew was much closer to the action than Painter had been.

  “—can’t wait to show off my new look. I think you’re really going to like it. How could you not, right?”

  The message ended with a short buzz of static, a muted click, then silence. Then a soft female voice came on the line, asking if I’d like to save the message. I pressed the yes key and flipped the phone closed, my hands still shaking.

  My breath came in quick, panicked bursts, and I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. The fingers of my left hand traced the rough lines of mortar behind me. I focused on the harsh, gritty feel, using it to assure myself that I was awake. That I wasn’t in the middle of some terrible nightmare. That I hadn’t dreamed the horrible voice mail.

  And I hadn’t.

  Somehow, though he’d been human when I left him, tucked safe and sound among his textbooks, tennis courts, and completely nonlethal lattes, Andrew was now a tomcat. An honest-to-goodness, motherfucking, scratch-fevered stray.

  And he was headed my way.

  Seventeen

  No. I shook my head in denial, though no one was there to see it. That’s not possible. Yet it was true, nonetheless.

  They don’t even know about me, do they? You never told them. The words from my last conversation with Andrew played though my head, and they made so much more sense in retrospect. He wasn’t talking about our relationship. He was talking about his new species. He seemed to think I knew what he’d become, and had been keeping it from my family. But I hadn’t known. How the hell could I have known?

  Chill bumps popped up all over my arms and legs, in spite of the hot Texas night. This couldn’t be happening. Andrew was human when I left campus. Absolutely, positively one hundred percent human. No fur. No claws. No canines.

  So when had that changed? And who changed it? I rubbed both my arms at once, trying to offset the chill spreading over me from the inside out.

  Andrew’s family was from Tennessee, which belonged to the Midwest Pride, and he went to school in Texas, which was in our territory. So unless he’d been to one of the free zones lately, he was pretty unlikely to have ever met a stray.

  That left only one other possibility. As badly as I hated to admit it, he could have been scratched by a Pride cat. But the chances were slim. Creating a stray carried an automatic death sentence, and very few Pride cats were willing to take that kind of risk. Very, very few.

  And it’s not like strays could be created by accident. An infectious scratch or bite could only be delivered in cat form, so casual physical contact with humans—such as a rough round of sex or even a fistfight—couldn’t possibly result in the creation of a stray.

  So where could Andrew have come into contact with a werecat in cat form? Any werecat?

  I refused to believe that my ex-boyfriend had been targeted by chance; that was like saying Lincoln was just in the wrong theater at the wrong time. Someone had intentionally dragged Andrew into werecat business, and whoever the bastard was, his fate would be sealed once we got one good whiff of Andrew. The infector’s base scent would be forever threaded through that of his victim—however lightly—just as Marc’s scent carried a permanent reminder of the stray who’d killed his mother and infected him.

  It was a bitch of a double whammy, and the reason more than a few strays never came to terms with their new identity. But in this case, the scent trail would help us catch the slimy prick who’d put an end to Andrew’s human existence. At which point we’d end his own. An eye for an eye.

  Tell Marc
I’ll see him, too. I think he and I have a lot to talk about.

  Shit. The very thought of that conversation introduced me to all new levels of stress. And humiliation. And…

  An ache began behind my eyes and quickly grew into a searing, throbbing pain and pressure. My right hand clenched my phone, and my left flew up to feel my eyes, which seemed unchanged. For several moments I was blind, dependent on the rustle of leaves in the wind to assure me I still stood in my own yard. Panic set in and I almost screamed, terrified by the claustrophobic sensation of the sudden, nearly complete darkness.

  But then the pain subsided, and my vision improved dramatically. Light flowed back into existence rapidly, but gently. I eyed the trees beyond the guesthouse, and saw each leaf in eerily crisp focus, from the thin green veins to the spiked, serrated edges. Cracks in the tree bark seemed surreal in their rough, ragged detail. Every blade of grass at my feet stood out in vivid contrast to those around it, each rendered in a different shade of green as the available light struck them at slightly different angles.

  I glanced up, expecting to see the moon breaking free from its cloud cover. But it hadn’t. If anything, the clouds had thickened, as forecast by the local weatherman, who’d predicted an unseasonably strong storm overnight. Yet I could see almost as if the sun were up, though my vision was tinted in shades of blue and green.

  My eyes had Shifted. I was sure of it, though I couldn’t tell any difference in my face without a mirror to stare into.

  Though several of our oldest legends hinted at the possibility, there were no other partial Shifts on record, and as far as I knew, I was the only werecat to ever experience one. I’d done it twice before, both during times of extreme stress, yet in spite of several concentrated efforts since that last time, I’d been unable to repeat the feat.

  Because of that, the Territorial Council had refused to believe my partial Shift was anything more than the delusion of a desperate tabby in a desperate situation, even with both Abby and Marc vouching for me.