Shift (26 page)

When Marc came out of the bathroom, I was seated at the table with a plastic cup of ice water. “I got you an ’06 Explorer. Tinted windows. They threw in the cargo net for free.”

Jace nodded. “That should work. It’ll be faster than a van.” He turned toward me. “I gotta go. Wish me luck.”

My heart thumped in fear for him as I shoved my chair back. I crossed the room in several quick steps and went up on my toes for a hug, pinning the towel between us before it could fall off. “Please be careful,” I whispered as his rough cheek brushed mine. “Ethan’s death was all I can take.”

“Me, too.” He squeezed me so hard it hurt, but I didn’t complain. Some part of me knew there was a good chance I’d never see Jace again.

I let him go and tightened my towel. Jace looked at Marc over my head, and I followed his gaze. Marc’s jaw was tight, his stance tense. But his hands hung loose at his sides. He wasn’t pleased by the hug, but wasn’t going to deny either of us a goodbye. Not under the circumstances. Not that he could have stopped it.

“Play it smart, Hammond,” Marc said at last.

Jace nodded and held his gaze. “Take care of her.” Neither of them looked at me; they were too busy staring at each other, each sizing the other up. Or maybe warning him.

“You know I will. If she’ll let me.”

Jace gave a short laugh, then looked at me, one hand on the doorknob. “Let him.”

I nodded. Then he was gone.

Tears stood in my eyes, and a huge lump had formed in my throat.

“Eat something,” Marc said, and I realized I was still staring at the door.

I started to argue—I was more nauseated from exertion than hungry—then realized I’d just said I’d let him take care of me. So I sat at the table as he unwrapped another biscuit. There was no microwave, so I ate it cold, while Marc avoided my eyes from the other side of the table.

“Marc?” I asked when I was finished, wadding my wrapper awkwardly in one hand. His silence could not be good.

He finally looked up, watching me in equal parts fear, anger, and grief. “He loves you.”

I closed my eyes and counted to five, then forced them open again. Made myself meet his gaze. “I know.”

Marc shook his head, his brows drawn low. “I mean, he really loves you. It’s not just some instinctive need to possess the tabby, now that he’s coming into his potential. He’s
in love
with you.”

“I know.” My throat wanted to close around my next breath. “Could you please stop saying it?”

“When were you going to tell me?”

My heart ached. My eyes stung with unshed tears. My throat burned from holding back words that needed to be said. “What was I supposed to say? You already knew. You beat the shit out of him for it.”

“No.” He stood and stomped away from me until he got to the wall, then turned abruptly, anger flashing behind the gold specks in his eyes now. “I beat the shit out of him for being careless. It’s his fault Miguel got to you.”

I could have argued that point all day, but we’d honestly already beat it to death, so I kept my mouth shut.

“I knew he had a crush. A stupid, little boy’s crush on the unattainable. But this is different, Faythe. This is
dangerous
.” He rubbed his forehead as if he was fending off a headache. “Does your dad know?” Then, before I could answer. “He knows.”

I shook my head, but Marc ignored me. “That’s why he sent him. Sent both of us. He knows we’d die to protect you.”

“I don’t want that.” My tears finally overflowed, and I wiped my cheeks with my scarred left arm.

Marc watched me, and I saw the very moment when his expression went unreadable. He’d closed me out and the room was colder from his silence.

We couldn’t go on like this. I had to tell him as soon as Kaci was safe—assuming we survived the next day….

T
he sun was warm, but the northern wind was cold and bitter, even on the short walk to the rental car. During my last Shift, Marc had scrubbed blood from my jacket so the scent wouldn’t attract unwanted attention, but that left my sleeve damp and my arm cold.

As Marc drove, my thoughts raced, circling the risks we were taking like buzzards around a fresh kill. If anyone spotted us, we were dead. We were deep inside enemy territory, and both sides had long since dropped any pretense of polite politics or manners. Jace’s mother seemed to be the only one still clinging to such fragile reassurances, and I think that was solely the product of her own denial. She could not believe that her husband would order one of their sons to kill the other. And if she couldn’t face the truth about Brett’s death, she couldn’t possibly understand what Jace was risking by coming to visit.

Even if he wasn’t really making a social call.

I held Marc’s backpack on my lap, fingering Jace’s duct tape through the thick material. I was already wearing the brace on my right wrist, and it smelled like him, just because he’d taken it out of the package for me. The rest of the car smelled like Marc, and like the unseen traces of my own blood, still lingering in the backseat.

Neither of us spoke. We’d both said so much already, and the confession I still held inside was so staggeringly awful that I could hardly grasp the consequences of voicing it. Yet keeping my secret was unbearable. It had turned to acid in my gut and was surely consuming me from the inside out.

Did Jace feel the same? He must. He’d wanted me to tell Marc all along—had been waiting on me to find the right time and place.

But there was no right time, and certainly no right place. As badly as it hurt to keep quiet, I was starting to believe that we could never tell Marc what had happened. Not because he might leave me. Not because he’d probably hate me. Not even because of what it would do to the Pride.

If I told Marc, he and Jace would fight, and one of them would die.

My mind refused to move beyond that certainty. I couldn’t entertain the idea of an “after,” and wasn’t even sure there would be one. So the Confession remained a hulking, dark cloud on my mind’s horizon, a distant goal I was afraid I might never actually meet.

When we turned onto the old country road we’d traveled the night before, Marc turned on the radio rather than speak to me. I shrugged out of my jacket and took off my brace, then stared out the window while I concentrated on Shifting just my right arm.

In the motel, I’d Shifted into and out of human form four times, for a total of eight transformations. The first four were the most physically painful experiences I’d ever had in my life, but after that, the pain began to ebb until—with the last one—Shifting almost felt normal again.

The gash in my left arm was completely healed, and the long, jagged ridge of a scar could easily have been a month old. There was no more pain, and I had regained all muscle control, except for an annoying—and hopefully inconsequential—weakness in my pinkie finger. It stuck out just a bit now, when I formed a fist, but didn’t seem to hinder normal activity. That had been my biggest fear—the possible loss of function or flexibility in my left hand—and that had seemed likely in the beginning, when I couldn’t make my fingers obey orders from my brain. But in the end, I was both grateful and relieved to have avoided catastrophe. No pun intended.

My right arm was another story. After eight Shifts, it no longer hurt to move my hand and I had regained most of the flexibility in my wrist. But the injury still felt very tender, and I was afraid that overuse—or even short-term stringent use—could lead to further, and possibly permanent, damage.

“What are you doing?” Marc glanced at my arm, and his question broke into my concentration. My palm shortened and my fingers lengthened. Fur never got the chance to sprout.

“Just trying to be ready.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong on Jace’s end, and if that happened, we all needed to be able to fight.

Marc sighed, and I had the overwhelming urge to touch his jaw. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and the stubble on his face had bypassed the painful, scratchy phase and slid right into soft-and-sexy. “Let’s just forget about it for now, okay?” he said, and I realized we were talking about Jace again. About our little problem, and the desperate need for some kind of a resolution. Of the sort that wouldn’t get anybody killed. Or even dumped, preferably.

“Okay,” I agreed, because there was really no other option.

Marc nodded decisively. “We’ll shovel his emotional shit after this is all over. For now, let’s just focus on getting the job done. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to concentrate. Right?”

“Right.” I’d become a parrot. I almost asked Polly for a cracker.

“I know this can’t be easy for you, either,” Marc conceded, and his reasonable tone made me want to cry. “He’s put you in a tough position. Put all of us there, really. Not that he meant to…”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

“Yeah.” Marc linked his fingers through mine on the center console. “Sorry.”

At not quite three in the afternoon, Marc parked the rented SUV on an overgrown dirt trail that ended several hundred feet into the woods, about a quarter-mile from where we’d parked the night before.

“Maybe we should Shift.” I stepped onto the forest floor and my hiking boots crunched into several small pinecones. “If this goes bad, we’re going to need claws.”

Marc shook his head, then drained the last of his coffee, watching me from the other side of the vehicle. “You need to conserve your energy, and you should try to keep your weight off that wrist until it’s fully healed. Besides, if nothing goes wrong, Jace may need extra hands to help with Lance.”

“Okay, you Shift and I’ll stay like this. Best of both worlds.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Marc stripped and handed me his clothes, then dropped to his knees in the fallen pine needles. I dug in his pants pocket for the rental keys, then stuffed his clothes into the backpack he’d stocked with bottles of water and snack bars, and locked up the car.

When he’d Shifted, Marc rubbed the entire length of his body against my leg, and I let my hand trail through his fur, all the way to the tip of his tail. He purred noisily, then walked off into the woods, expecting me to follow.

“Wait. We’re early. Let’s take a peek at the compound before we head to the deer stand.” Though, the term
compound
was a bit flattering for Malone’s collection of buildings.

Marc shook his head firmly and kept walking.

“We won’t get caught. I just want to get close enough to make sure he’s not in any trouble. I need your eyes and ears. Come on.”

Marc refused to turn back, so I headed west without him. Before I could count to five, he huffed, then jogged after me so silently I never would have known he was there, if I hadn’t been listening for him. Pine needles don’t crunch like dead leaves.

Marc whined when he came even with me, and I understood the gist, if not the specifics. “I’ll be careful. And thank you. I feel horrible sending him in there alone, with no backup. That’s not how we work.”

After that, we hiked in silence, out of caution this time, rather than discomfort. I scratched his head and ran my fingers down his back whenever the opportunity presented itself, and he rubbed against me almost as often. It was a much more pleasant silence than the one in the car.

We’d gone less than a mile and a half when Marc went suddenly still but for his ears, which swiveled toward the north. I froze, following his lead, though I couldn’t yet hear whatever had put him on alert.

He tossed his head in the direction his ears were pointing, and we headed that way, slowly, to be sure we didn’t make any noise. We’d only gone a couple hundred feet when the afternoon quiet was shattered by the unmistakable thunk of a shovel into soil, followed immediately by the dull thud of dirt being tossed to the ground.

I knew those sounds. Hell, I’d
made
those sounds. Someone was digging a hole. Never a good sign.

I started to move forward again and Marc stepped in front of me, blocking my path—a clear order for me to stay back. “Like hell,” I whispered, and pushed him firmly out of the way. But before I could take the next step, a voice carried through the woods, on the tail of another clod of earth hitting the ground.

“That’s deep enough. It’s not like the fucker’s going to dig himself up.”

“Cal said six feet,” a second, much deeper voice replied, and I didn’t recognize either tom. Malone had hired new enforcers.

“He’ll never know,” the first voice said, and Marc took a careful, silent step forward. “It’s not like he’s gonna come out and bury the body himself.”

“If he does come out here, you’ll be the next one in the ground, Jess,” Deep Throat said.

I followed Marc, careful to step where he had and watch for twigs and pinecones, which would crunch and give us away. Who the hell were they burying? Not Brett. Surely his mother would demand a proper funeral for her second born.

“I don’t get why he keeps killing his own boys,” Jess said, and metal clanked, like he’d dropped his shovel on top of something.

Malone had killed another of his sons?
Not Alex
. He was too loyal to his father. Like some kind of wind-up soldier, marching without any thought for the orders he carried out.

Marc was a full body length ahead of me now, but I was still moving forward, my attention split between the overheard conversation and every element of nature with the potential to make noise beneath my foot. It was sooo much easier to be stealthy in cat form.

“Jace isn’t his,” Deep Throat said, and I froze with one foot still in the air.

Noooo
. Pain shot through my chest, constricting it, as if my heart no longer had room to beat. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see beyond consuming pain and denial.

“He’s Patti’s, from her first husband,” Deep Throat continued as my eyes closed, denying tears an exit. Crying wouldn’t help. Anger would. “Jason Hammond.”

“What happened to him? Cal get him, too?”

Marc’s tail twitched, recapturing my attention, and I realized I hadn’t moved since I’d heard Jace’s name.

They’d killed Jace.

A storm of rage rolled over me, drenching me with hatred. I’d kill every bastard involved. Including Calvin Malone.

“Nah,” Deep Throat said as I inched forward, rage racing through my veins, hotter than blood, more potent than adrenaline. “He went out after a stray with his enforcers and got killed on the job. Cal was there. He had to tell Patti.”

Malone had been one of Jace’s dad’s enforcers? If that was true, what were the chances that Jason Hammond’s accident was really an accident?

Jess huffed. “Hammond must have been an idiot, just like his kid. Like anyone believes Jace is here for the funeral. Cal’s right—he’s a fucking spy.”

Wait! Jace
is
here for the funeral? Did that mean Jace was still alive?

I took careful steps until I reached Marc, then reached out to squeeze his shoulder. He nodded. He’d caught it, too.

“What’s Cal gonna tell Patti? She’s upset, but she’s not stupid. She’s gonna notice another son dying, and coincidence ain’t gonna cover it.”

There was a flash of motion between the branches, then the crack of plastic as Deep Throat opened what sounded like a bottle of water. “Jace won’t die. He’ll disappear, and she’ll assume he went back to his Pride.” We inched forward more and were now close enough to hear him gulp from his bottle. “Let’s go,” Deep Throat said, and I caught another glimpse of movement between two thick pines. I ducked, hoping he hadn’t seen us. Deep Throat was a short, thickly muscled tom in his early thirties. “If we hurry, we can still watch. They won’t be able to do it until they get him away from Patti.”

Something else thunked to the ground, and Marc glanced up at me. I nodded and held up three fingers, then dropped the third, beginning a silent countdown.

Jess and his partner came into full view between two trees. Jess was taller and well built, like most enforcers, but not as thick as Deep Throat, who drank from his water bottle as they walked.

Marc’s tail twitched silently. I dropped the second finger.

My pulse tripped in anticipation. I dropped the last finger.

My heart beat once more. Then I leaped between the trees.

Marc landed first, two feet from the shorter, thicker tom. Both men spun around, and Deep Throat dropped his bottle in surprise. Marc was on him in an instant.

I swung my left fist the moment I landed. My blow landed on Jess’s jaw. His head snapped back. I swung lower, and buried my fist in his gut.

Jess grunted, but his return punch flew fast and low. His fist slammed into the left side of my rib cage. My breath burst from my throat and my feet actually left the ground.

I landed on my ass in a pile of pine needles. Jess dropped on top of me. I threw another left into his ribs. His next blow hit the side of my head, and everything went hazy. Color faded. His face blurred over mine. I shoved against his chest with my good arm, but Jess only laughed. “Well, who the hell are you?”

My head swam, then rolled to the side. Marc was there, his tail swishing furiously several feet away. But he couldn’t see me; he was backing the big guy into a tree. I was on my own.

“What’s your name, pretty puss?” Jess leered down at me, pinning me with his full weight on my hips and restricting my chest.

Move!
I commanded my arms, but they were slow, the message from my brain sluggish.

“You idiot, that’s Faythe Sanders,” Deep Throat said, and Marc’s growl deepened. Pine needles whispered, stirred by the furious sweep of his tail. “Who else could it be?”

Ha! I had a reputation.
Which you’ll lose pretty damn quickly if you don’t get your
ass
off the
ground!