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W
e arrived at the Roswell airport with an hour to spare, and since we had no luggage to check, we made a quick trip into a gift shop for an extra T-shirt and toiletry essentials for me—the guys had what little they needed in their backpacks—then picked up a new cell phone for Jace at a kiosk near our gate. Our plane left on time, and after a short layover in Dallas, we settled in for a longer flight to Lexington.

The plane had a row of three seats on one side of the aisle, and two on the other. Jace and I had adjoining seats on the two-seat side, with Marc right in front of us. But when we boarded the plane, Marc took Jace’s window seat, and tossed an offhand gesture toward the one he’d passed over.

Jace scowled but took the seat in front of him without comment. For which I was endlessly grateful.

“So, what’s the plan from here on out?” Marc asked once we were in the air, as a pair of flight attendants began the beverage service at the front of the plane. “What kind of proof are we looking for?”

I’d thought it over during my long walk from the thunderbirds’ nest, but had yet to hit upon a stroke of brilliance. Or even sufficiency. “Um…I was thinking we could find the feathers Brett was going to bring.”

“Why would Malone keep them?”

“I’m kind of hoping he never found them. Brett said he had them hidden, and right now Kaci’s life is riding on the hope that Brett died before he could retrieve them.”

As Marc thought, his expression cycled through doubt, skepticism and raw fear. For Kaci, most likely. I’d never seen him afraid for himself, because Marc was truly, completely selfless. Except where our relationship was concerned.

Finally he faced me, leaning with his temple against the back of his seat. “Do you have any idea where he hid them?”

“I was hoping Jace might have a little insight to share with us.”

“How ’bout it, Hammond?” Marc kicked the back of Jace’s chair. Jace dropped his seat back as far as it would go, wedging it against Marc’s knees. “Damn it!” Marc shoved Jace’s headrest, but Jace only grinned at me through the now-wide crack between his seat and the vacant one next to him.

“I don’t know. Under his mattress? That’s where he used to hide stuff he didn’t want Mom to find. If you want anything more creative than that, I’ll have to think about it. After my nap.” With that, he winked at me and leaned against the window, out of sight, without raising his seat.

“What the hell is his problem?” Marc shoved Jace’s chair one more time, then twisted to face me more fully, obviously uncomfortable in his newly tight quarters. “I swear, if he wasn’t a damn good fighter, I’d send him home and ask for Vic instead.”

Several minutes later, after the flight attendant had made another round, I leaned in to Marc.

“You think Jace fights better than Vic?” I hesitated to ask, because Jace wasn’t sleeping yet. I could tell by the rhythm of his breathing. But my curiosity got the better of me.

Marc shrugged. “He put up a pretty good effort yesterday.”

“You
fought
Jace yesterday?” Why had neither of them told me?

“We were just sparring. We had to do something while we waited to hear from you and Kaci, and we both had energy to burn. It was either spar or fight over the motel television’s remote.”

I hesitated, glancing through the crack between the seats again at what little I could see of Jace. He’d gone completely still. Listening. “And he was good?”

Marc nodded. “Put me flat on the ground twice. He’s different since Ethan died. He takes everything more seriously. He’s out for Malone’s blood, and I’d bet my canines he’ll get it.”

I nodded thoughtfully, and Jace relaxed. No doubt Marc was right on all counts—he was attributing the obvious changes to Ethan’s death and Malone’s power play. So far, he was only missing one piece of the puzzle that Jace had become: me.

“So, why did my dad send Jace instead of Vic?” Vic and Marc had been partners for years, and even if Marc didn’t know the details, he knew that Jace’s feelings for me went beyond friendship.

“Because Kaci responds best to him. I think she has a crush on him.”

“Yeah.” I smiled a little at that, and couldn’t help missing—just for a moment—the days when a girl’s innocent crush was as complicated as my own personal life ever got. “But she’s not really thinking along those lines right now. Because of Ethan.” And because of everything else that had gone wrong.

By then, Jace’s breathing had evened out, and his hand had gone slack on his own thigh. Finally I could relax with Marc, confident we weren’t being overheard. Not by Jace, anyway.

I leaned on Marc’s shoulder, and he curled his fingers around mine where they stuck out from my cast. He stared at my left hand, and I knew he was picturing his ring there. But I’d never actually worn it on my finger. It was on a silver chain in an envelope in the top drawer of my dresser.

“I was half-afraid they’d taken you both straight to Malone,” Marc whispered, leaning his head against mine. “I thought we’d have to execute a full-scale rescue.”

“You think it’d be that easy?”

Marc thought as the flight attendants pushed the cart closer. The metallic rattle and the hiss of soda being opened almost drowned out his words. “I think taking you would be the biggest mistake he’s ever made. Possibly his first real tactical error.”

I pulled away and twisted to meet his heated gaze. “Why is that?”

“Because nothing could make us fight harder than getting you and Kaci away from him. Me. Your dad. Hell, even Jace. Taking you would have been the last mistake Malone ever made.”

The instant the plane landed, we became guilty of trespassing. In the south-central Pride, such an offense was punishable by immediate capture and expulsion, for a first offense. Unfortunately, since trespassing is not a capital crime, the exact consequences were left up to each individual Alpha. And something told me Malone wouldn’t be quite as forgiving as my father.

In fact, I had no doubt he’d kill Jace and Marc on sight and trump up a charge later—unless either his wife or daughter was there to object. And something told me Malone wouldn’t mind if it took a bit of
subduing
to get me under control, so long as no permanent damage was done. Because he had plans for me—or at least for my ring finger and my uterus.

Which made me the member of our team with the least to lose, since I had no intention of actually serving my sentence.

Since he hadn’t yet been officially rehired, Marc didn’t have his business credit card, so Jace put the rental car in his name. He looked a little too eager for the privilege—until we got to the parking lot and Marc held the back door open for me. Jace grumbled about being treated like a chauffeur, so I made Marc sit up front with him, so I could stretch out in the back.

A nap would have been awesome, but I had a feeling we’d need every minute of the two-hour drive ahead to plan our next moves.

The Appalachian Pride was headquartered in the southern end of Clay County, Kentucky, about a hundred and ten miles southeast of Lexington. It was nearly two in the morning by the time we left the airport. We’d spent almost nine of our allotted forty-eight hours and the return trip would take at least that long, which left us roughly thirty hours to find the evidence and get the hell out of the Appalachian territory in time to save Kaci. And that would be cutting it close.

Kaci was thirty-nine hours from death. I was thirty-nine hours and one minute from a total breakdown.

We stopped for burgers at the first all-night fast food place we found, using the drive-through to keep from leaving our scents on the door handles and seats, or even lingering in the air. The last thing we needed was for one of Malone’s toms to tip him off before we even got to his property. The chances of any of his men actually living in middle-of-nowhere Kentucky were slim to none, but considering the stakes at hand, Murphy’s Law seemed more like a guarantee.

“So, you grew up running around the Appalachian foothills?” Marc said a few miles later, folding the wrapper back from his burger.

Jace nodded and swallowed his own bite, one hand holding the top of the steering wheel lightly. “Technically, this is the Cumberland Plateau.”

“Whatever.” I loosened my seat belt and leaned forward to be sure I wouldn’t miss anything. Like Marc, Jace hardly ever spoke about his past. They both knew everything about my childhood, but I knew nothing about Marc’s and only that Jace’s father had died when he was a toddler, and still an only child. “Did you run with your brothers?” Surely half brothers were better than no brothers…. “Did Malone let Melody run with you guys?”

“Sometimes, and almost never.” He frowned, and I thought he’d clam up when he took another big bite of his burger. But then he swallowed, and in the rearview mirror, I could see that his eyes were focused more on the past than on the road. “Cal didn’t let Melody do much of anything. But then, she was only seven when I left. Not old enough to Shift, or do much more than get on your nerves.”

“Wow, you must have been a
great
big brother.” I smacked him on the head.

Jace shot me a mock glare in the rearview mirror. “She’s
Calvin’s daughter
. You’ve seen
The Omen
, right?”

“She can’t be that bad,” Marc said, around his last fry. “She’s your mother’s, too.”

Jace frowned. “I wish she were a little more like my mom. Hell, I wish my
mom
was more like my mom right now.”

My heart ached for him during the uncomfortable silence that followed, and Marc stared out his own window, lost in his own thoughts. He never spoke about his mother or her murder, and I never knew how to tactfully broach the subject.

“What about your brothers?” I asked finally, when Jace wadded his burger wrapper and tossed it into the front floorboard at Marc’s feet. Marc growled and made no effort to put it in the empty paper bag. “I know Alex is no gem, but Brett’s…”

Oops
. But it was too late to take back the mention of his murdered brother, so I finished with the only thing that seemed both true and appropriate. “I was starting to like Brett.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Jace sipped from his soda, then set his cup in the drink holder and flicked on his brights as we pulled ahead of the only other vehicle on the dark road. “I was almost four when Brett was born, so I was closer to him than to the rest of Cal’s kids.”

His phrasing stuck in my head; he didn’t consider himself one of them. I’d always known that, but hearing him say it wrung sympathy from my heart.

“Brett and I hung out a lot when we were little. But the others were a lot younger than me. They spent more time with Cal, and by the time most of them could speak, they talked to me just like he did. That bastard taught them to talk about my dad—” Jace broke off and stared out the windshield in silence, and the speedometer crept toward eight-five.

Then he spoke again, so suddenly I actually jumped in the backseat. “Those hills are the only reason I survived long enough for Ethan to get me out of there. For your dad to hire me.” Jace exhaled, and Marc turned from his window to watch Jace in what could only be sympathy. “I practically grew up on the side of the mountain. Every time Cal would start in on me and I couldn’t take another word from him without throwing a punch, I’d just Shift and run to the hills. I’d climb until I was too tired to move. Those hills saved my life.”

Or, knowing what I now knew about Jace’s fighting skills, maybe they’d saved Cal’s life.

“So, you still know the area?” Marc asked, ever focused on the goal at hand.

“As well as anyone who still lives there. Better than most.” Jace wasn’t bragging; he was simply stating a fact.

I sent a silent thank-you to my father for sending him. Marc and I would probably have bumbled our way into some serious trouble without him.

“What about Brett?” I leaned forward with an elbow on each of the front seats. “Did you think of anywhere he might have stuck those feathers? Other than beneath his mattress?”

Jace hesitated, but I recognized an idea in the artful dart of his gaze from mine in the mirror. He wasn’t sure. In fact, he was so unsure he didn’t even want to mention it. But however small it was in his mind, his idea was the only one we had.

“Jace?” I prodded, and he looked at me reluctantly as our speed dropped back toward eighty.

“It’s not going to be there. We’ll waste hours hiking through the woods in the dark, uphill the whole way, freezing our asses off, and it won’t be there.”

“Where?” Marc asked, half a second before I would have said the same thing.

Jace sighed, still staring at the road. “There’s this old deer stand. It’s really just a platform and three wobbly rails for walls. If it’s even still standing. We weren’t supposed to go past the property line—the other side is public hunting ground—but that old deer stand was too much to pass up. Brett and I would raid the castle tower and storm the fort all weekend, by the time he was five or so.”

“Your mom let a five-year-old and a nine-year-old wander the woods alone?”

Jace shrugged. “She didn’t know. She was busy with the younger ones, and so long as we showed up again for dinner, she’d assume we were playing near the tree line. It seems stupid and dangerous now, but then…”

“Sounds like fun,” Marc said, and I smiled, pleased that the two of them could be civil when it really mattered.

“Yeah. It was.” Jace smiled distantly, as if he’d just then realized the truth in his statement. “There was an old wooden chest up there. We used it as an armory. Brett had a couple of toy pistols—you remember those pop guns?—and I had this plastic retractable knife….” Jace’s voice faded again, and I spoke up to prompt him.

“And you think he might have hidden the feathers in there?”

“No.” Jace shook his head firmly. “I doubt the old stand is there anymore, and even if it is, Brett probably hasn’t thought about it in a decade.” The present tense did not escape my notice, and judging by the look Marc shot me, it hadn’t escaped his, either. “I know I haven’t. But it’s the only place I can think of.” He shook his head again. “It’s a total waste of time. It won’t be there.”