Pride (13 page)

Jace smiled in sympathy. “I’ll help you get dres—”

“Out,” Marc snarled. “I’ve got it covered.”

Jace closed the door as he left and Marc was already rooting through the suitcase on my dresser for something suitable. “How ’bout
this?
” He held up a new pair of low-slung red satin pajama pants, clearly trying to picture me in them.

I grinned. “That’s fine. Find the shirt and help me change.” I’d planned to wear the real pj’s around the cabin to tempt him. But I hadn’t counted on injury dictating the timing.

A minute later, I stood in nothing but the scarlet pajama halter top and my underwear. My heart lurched when Marc knelt in front of me. My breath lodged in my throat when his hands slid slowly up my thighs and over my hips, pulling the waistband of my pants into place. His fingers scorched my skin, yet left chill bumps in their wake, and I nearly moaned aloud when he sat back, dropping those gifted hands into his lap.

I gripped the headboard, hoping he’d think the throbbing in my stomach was what threatened my balance. But it wasn’t. As usual, my problem was Marc, and the taste he’d just given me of what we used to share. But a taste wasn’t enough, not then, and not ever. I wanted the whole damn meal.

Frantic for some semblance of self-control, I stared into the mirror, silently ordering myself to forget about Marc and focus on the job at hand. And when that didn’t work, I flexed my stomach, counting on the fresh wave of pain to ground me.

It worked, and I sucked in an agonized breath.
Son of a bitch!

Marc stood and I had to look up to meet his suddenly grave expression. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, rubbing my arms, as if to warm them. “It won’t be pretty.”

“I know.” I’d never seen an actual interrogation, but I knew the basics of what it would entail, and I knew that watching Marc beat information out of a bound and helpless man—even one who’d nearly disemboweled me—would likely horrify me.

I also knew it was necessary. We needed information. The stray probably had it, and almost certainly wouldn’t want to part with it. The lives of the human men and women scouring the mountain were worth more than the comfort of one man who might know something that could save them.

No
real
enforcer would be squeamish about doing what had to be done. And red satin pj’s notwithstanding,
I
was a
real
enforcer.

Marc saw the decision in my eyes and nodded solemnly. Without another word of protest, he scooped me into a careful cradle-hold, and I smiled through the pain as he edged us out the door into the living room.

He carried me past the stray, who still knelt—naked—on the floor, then lowered me into the chair Michael had taken from the breakfast table. I sat nearer the kitchen than the couch, well out of the action, should something go wrong. But I was out of bed and officially part of the proceedings, so I was pretty pleased, all things considered.

Now if only those damn pills would kick in…

Michael and Jace took up posts on either side of my chair, while Lucas sank onto the couch behind the kneeling stray, one hand on the prisoner’s bound wrists, to hold him in place. Marc assumed the position of honor in front of our unwilling guest. He towered over the stray, who hung his head, refusing to look at any of us.

“Let me explain how this works.” Marc’s voice was colder and more detached than I’d ever heard it. “We ask the questions. You get one chance to answer on your own. If you don’t take that chance, I convince you to cooperate. This can be as
easy as you want to make it. Of course, the opposite is also true. Ready to give it a shot?”

The detainee made no response.

On the edge of the room, my father stood with one arm folded over his chest, the opposite hand stroking the graying stubble on his chin. “Let’s keep this one neat, please.” He paused to survey the arrangement of old, worn furniture and the dingy walls. “I don’t want to have to repaint the place before we go, like in Abilene.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Marc nodded grimly, and the stray’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

Repaint?
I didn’t even want to
know
what they’d had to cover up in Abilene.
Maybe I’m not as ready for this as I thought…

M
arc stood in front of the stray kneeling naked on the floor. “What’s your name?” he asked. The stray didn’t move. Didn’t even acknowledge the question. “Your name, or your nose.” Marc’s fingers popped as they curled into a fist at his right side, and my mouth went dry.

The stray scowled up at Marc, defiance stark in his bearing, in spite of his nudity and humbled pose. “You have no right to—”

Marc glanced at my father, who nodded, and my throat constricted around the heart-size lump lodged in it.

“Wrong answer.” Marc’s fist flew. Bone crunched. Bright red droplets sprayed his jeans and the floor. The stray gurgled, coughing and choking on his own blood as it poured down his face and over his chest.

My eyes closed and I swallowed back revulsion.
It’s part of his job,
I told myself, uncomforted by the truth much as I was by the necessity. And by the knowledge that in the line of duty, I’d punched several strays in search of a name. But I’d never made one kneel naked and bound on the ground before me, and that part of the procedure bothered me more than I wanted to admit. It reminded me
of a time when
I’d
been bound and at the mercy of a man standing over me.

Jace’s hand landed on my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to look at him. His face was carefully blank, a skill I envied.

“Your name,” Marc repeated, and I turned my attention back to the spectacle in progress, which didn’t appear to be upsetting anyone else.

“Zeke.” The stray spit blood on the floor at Marc’s feet, eyeing him in defiance, which I had to kind of admire. “Radley. Zeke Radley.”

“And what are you doing here, Mr. Radley?”

The stray cleared his throat and spat more blood on the floor, tossing a strand of brown hair from his forehead. “I was chasing a downed alien spacecraft.” No one seemed very amused by Radley’s ill-timed attempt at humor, least of all Marc, whose arms bulged in anger. But the stray was unperturbed. “I thought this was free territory. Was I wrong?”

“Where did you hear that?”

Radley shrugged, which looked painful with his hands taped behind his back. “Some cat told me. Did I cross some kind of boundary? If so, you guys do a piss-poor job of marking your territory. No pun intended.”

On my left Jace growled, and Lucas smacked the back of Radley’s head with one huge hand. “You’re in no position to smart off.”

Radley ignored Lucas in favor of Marc, who looked amazingly calm and in control. “You didn’t answer the question,” the prisoner said. “Is this your land or not?”

“No.” My father clasped his hands behind his back, standing straight and tall in his suit and tie, even at three in the morning. “This is not our land. But this is my
daughter
—” he gestured toward me with one outstretched hand “—who now has twenty stitches in her stomach, thanks to you.”

My left hand settled lightly onto my abdomen.
Twenty? Really?

Radley rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes at my father, Alpha of the south-central territory and head of the Territorial Council. Sure, I did that all the time, but I’d also peed on his lap when I was two. No one else got away with such disrespect toward an Alpha, which meant Radley either didn’t know who my father was, or didn’t care. Either could have been true, because most strays didn’t understand the werecat social hierarchy, and those who did had little reason to respect our Alphas.

Still, I wasn’t the only one surprised into silence.

“That was an accident!” Radley snapped, shuffling on the floor to find a more comfortable position for his bruised knees. He glanced from my father to me, then back to my father. “I was just trying to get out of there alive, and I knew they wouldn’t hurt me while I had
her
.”

“Why did you ‘have her’ in the first place?” Marc demanded, his voice low and dangerous.

“She set me up. You
all
set me up. You dangled bait in front of my face, and now you want to know why I took it!”

I tried not to squirm. He was right; we
had
set him up. Was it possible Radley knew nothing about the missing hikers and the slaughtered cop? Could he have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time? That was almost too much of a coincidence to believe.

“You didn’t have to chase her.” Jace squeezed my shoulder protectively. “Why did you?”

Radley huffed impatiently, which seemed odd coming from a man in his position. “Look, you assholes may have dinner with a tabby every night of your life, but for a tom like me, running into a puss like that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” His gaze raked over me boldly, as if we weren’t surrounded by five other tomcats, including my father. And Marc.

Well, at least he’s honest
. I had to give him that.

Jace seemed much less inclined to give him a break. “So you followed her because you’ve never seen another tabby?”

The stray blinked, and indecision flashed across his face so fast I wasn’t sure I’d seen it in the first place.

Whatever he’d started to say was gone, but Radley’s confidence was back, bolstered by another dose of anger and resentment. “I followed her because she looked upset. She ran off by herself. It’s not safe for a girl to be on her own in the woods at night.”

“I’m not a
girl,
” I snapped, but my ferocity floundered as Radley’s nostrils flared, obviously taking in my scent. Marc tensed, and I rushed on before he could interrupt. “In fact, I’ve probably been alone in the woods more times than you’ve pissed in private.”

“Lovely, Faythe,” Michael murmured on my right as Jace nearly choked trying to hold back laughter.

“And completely beside the point.” My father frowned sternly, then faced the prisoner, dismissing me entirely.

Marc cleared his throat, drawing Radley’s attention away from me and pulling the interrogation back on track. “So you followed her to
protect
her? What were you going to do—serve her cocoa, then walk her home?”

I laughed aloud, drawing more disapproving glances from my father and Michael, and another stifled chuckle from Jace.

“I don’t know.” Radley sniffed at a drop of blood trailing from his nose. “I didn’t have a plan. I just saw her run off, and when neither of you went after her, I figured
someone
should.”

“It was an act—you said it yourself,” Marc growled through gritted teeth, and I knew it irked him to let Radley think I’d run to get away from him.

The stray shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less. “Whatever. I didn’t think she should be alone in the woods.”

Jace inhaled softly, and his hand tightened briefly on my shoulder. “Why were you following us?”

“Because I’m not as dumb as I look.” Radley lowered his weight, so that he sat on his feet. “If you saw three strange cats walking through your territory, wouldn’t you follow them?” He bent to one side, extending his arms behind his back so we could all see the tape binding them. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t stop there.”

“This isn’t your territory,” Michael pointed out calmly, ever the voice of reason.

“It’s as much mine as it is yours.”

Even more so,
I thought, but had the good sense to keep my mouth shut for once.

Marc nodded. “Fair enough. So you followed her—for her own protection, of course…” The sarcasm in his voice could have sliced through glass. “Why was she running from you when we found her?”

Radley shrugged. “How should I know? I must have scared her. I didn’t mean to though.” He peered around Marc’s arm to address me directly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“The hell you didn’t!” I leaned forward in my chair, and the medication-dulled pain in my belly roared into focus with the sudden movement.
Damn it!
I pressed one hand to my stomach, breathing deeply until the sharp throbbing ebbed. When I looked up, everyone in the room was watching me, including my father, which reminded me that no one had heard my side of the story yet. “He wasn’t going to let me leave. He was trying to take me somewhere.”

Radley shook his head, this time rolling his eyes at me. “There was someone else out there. Another cat,” he said. His eyes were wide and earnest, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trying a little too hard to convince us. Still, there
had
been another cat…

Marc glanced at Jace, and I knew they were thinking the same thing I was.

“I was trying to stop her from running off again,” Radley
continued. “For all I knew, she’d run right into that other cat, and I doubt he’s as friendly as I am. Not that being friendly’s helped
me
much today.”

If he was telling the truth, we were seriously mistreating Zeke Radley. But though I couldn’t find an inconsistency in his story, neither could I swear it wasn’t a lie. I couldn’t read Radley, and that knowledge gnawed at me from the inside, mirroring the now mercifully dull pain in my stomach.

Though I could interpret neither my father’s expression nor my brother’s, Marc wasn’t buying Radley’s innocence in the least. “Maybe you should have Saint Zeke tattooed on your rump…” he muttered, turning away from the bound tom in disgust and frustration.

Facing me now, Marc closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. When he opened them a second later, his face was carefully blank, his hands open at his sides instead of curled into fists. He turned slowly, ready for another round of questions. “Where do you live, Radley?”

“Nearby, for the moment.”

“On this mountain?” Marc swung one hand toward the window to indicate the swath of forest barely visible in the dark. Radley sighed and nodded, so Marc continued. “A cabin? A house? What?”

“Anyplace that will keep me warm for a few hours. I don’t have the deed, if you know what I mean.”

We knew what he meant. He was a drifter.

While most strays used the stability of an established human lifestyle to balance out the volatility of life as a stray, some new werecats never readjusted to a normal human existence after being infected. Drifters roamed from place to place, hunting when they were hungry, sniffing out water when they were thirsty, sleeping wherever they found warmth, and only venturing into human society when they were too
lonely to think straight. However, attempts at socialization rarely lasted long for a drifter, because he would soon come to realize all over again that he had little in common with the human world, and thus no real place in it. And back to the woods he would go.

But Radley didn’t strike me as a typical drifter. His hair was trimmed and his teeth were in good shape, both of which are hard to accomplish in an existence with no scissors or toothbrushes.

“Where are you from?” Marc asked.

“My birthplace.” Radley smirked.

“Specifically…?” Marc rolled his shoulders, making it clear that he was ready for more
persuasion,
should it prove necessary.

Radley licked blood from his lips in a slow, deliberate motion. Then he closed his mouth and met Marc’s eyes boldly.

Marc shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to lose
my
canines. But that’s your call.” He uncrossed his arms, elbows bent, fists clenched. He dropped one hip and leaned in for a kick, no doubt aimed at the stray’s jaw.

My father went completely still. Jace’s hand tightened on my shoulder in anticipation. My breath caught in my throat. My brother Ethan told me once that Marc could throw a kick with enough precision to knock out a single tooth. But I had no desire to see it happen.

“All right!” Radley shouted, wincing back from the blow before Marc could release it. “Vancouver! I’m from Vancouver, but I moved closer to the mountains several years ago.”

Most strays eventually wound up living near large forested regions of land, where they could roam in cat form without too much risk of being spotted.

Marc nodded and relaxed his stance. “Better.” He glanced over his shoulder at my father, brows raised in question. Daddy nodded for him to continue, his satisfac
tion with the progress evidenced only in the relaxed line of his forehead.

Marc turned back to the job at hand. “Canada, huh? You wandered a good way from home, Radley. What the hell are you doing here? Other than searching for aliens among us.”

“I needed a change of scenery.”

“Why?” Lucas jerked back on the stray’s wrists, so that he almost lost his balance. “Things get too hot for you up there?”

Radley opened his mouth to answer, but Marc cut him off. “Think carefully before you speak. It’ll only take one phone call to verify whatever you tell us.” With the Canadian Territorial Council, of course. If he’d ever caused trouble in his homeland, they’d have a record of it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Radley glanced from face to face in apparent confusion. “I just needed a change. How many times can you sniff the same trees and hills before dropping dead of boredom?”

Either he was telling the truth, or he was a
really good
liar. And it irked me that I couldn’t tell which it was.

“So, what, you wanted to sniff
different
trees and hills?” Marc sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. How long have you been here?”

Radley shrugged. “In the U.S.? Or on this mountain?”

“Both.”

“I crossed the border a few weeks ago. Why? What’s all this about, anyway? You guys set me up, knock me out, drag me up here, and I wake up with my hands and feet taped together in human form. How the hell did I even
get
hands, anyway? I have no memory of Shifting. And what the hell do you people want?” Radley sat on his heels and stared up at Marc defiantly. “I’m not answering any more of your questions until you’ve answered a few of mine.”

“If you like your face intact, you’ll do whatever you’re told,” Lucas said.

My father studied Radley with his eyes narrowed in thought. “We forced your Shift,” he said finally. “The process was overseen by my personal physician. You were perfectly safe, I assure you.”

I frowned at my father, confounded by his sudden—and much more thorough than necessary—explanation. But he was still watching the stray, his face now deliberately blank.