Rogue (4 page)

Hmm, there’s an idea.
What was I supposed to do with my meager income, anyway? I lived with my parents, owned no car, and had no bills. And I hated shopping. Marc could
have
my check, especially if he’d dig the damned hole himself.

I grinned, glancing at Marc from the corner of my eye as I spoke into the phone. “Thanks for the warning. I gotta go bury a body.”

“Make it at least five feet deep,” my father said, and very few other people would have heard the exhaustion in his voice. Then he hung up. No “Thanks for giving up your weekend to do my grunt work, Faythe.” No “Have a safe drive home.” Not even a goodbye. The Alpha was all business.

A little miffed, I shoved my phone back into my pocket and met Marc’s eyes. He frowned sternly at me, but his lips held a hint of a smile. “Don’t even say it,” he warned. “I’m not digging this grave by myself. Not even for your
annual
salary. So quit looking at the dirt like it’s going to stain your soul, princess, and get to work.” Openly smiling now, he tossed me the shovel one-handed.

I caught it, though I’d literally never held a shovel before. Cats have great reflexes, which isn’t always a good thing.

He grinned, gold-flecked eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “First one to hit five feet wins.”

“Wins what?”

“A nap on the way home.”

I groaned, my good humor beginning to fade. Nothing good could come from such a wager. If I lost, I’d have to drive for the entire five-and-a-half-hour trip home. But if I won, Marc would drive, which was much, much worse. With him in the driver’s seat, I’d be afraid to blink, much less sleep. Marc’s favorite travel game was highway tag, which he played by getting just close enough to passing semi trucks to reach out his window and touch their rear bumpers. Seriously. The man thought the inevitability of death didn’t apply to him, simply because it hadn’t happened yet.

Marc laughed at my horrified expression and sank his shovel into the earth at the end of the black plastic cocoon. With a sigh, I joined him, trying to decide whether I’d rather risk falling asleep at the wheel, or falling asleep with
Marc
at the wheel.

It was a tough call. Thankfully, I had three solid hours of digging during which to decide. Lucky me.

M
arc hit five feet first, naturally, and as he grinned in triumph, completely covered in grave dirt, I dropped my shovel in defeat. I was done, and not a single threat from him could pry my tired, grimy ass off the ground. My formerly white T-shirt forgotten, I lay sweating on dew-damp grass as Marc rolled Bradley Moore into the hole, then shoveled dirt in on top of him. Then I took the keys Marc held out to me and snatched my shovel from the ground, my mood growing more foul with each step I took toward the car, in spite of my relief to be leaving the unmarked grave behind. This was
not
how I’d planned to spend my time off.

I stopped for coffee five times on the way home, and had to use the restroom at each stop. Marc slept the whole way, and his obnoxious snoring did more to keep me awake than the caffeine did during the drive from White Hall, Arkansas, to the Lazy S Ranch. My family’s property—devoid of domestic animals in spite of the title
ranch
—sat on the outskirts of Lufkin, Texas, sixty miles from the Louisiana border.

Yes, at twenty-three years old, I still lived with my parents. But so did three of my older brothers, and four of my fellow enforcers, though they technically lived in a guest house on the back of the property. The concept of a group dynamic is different for werecats than it is for humans. Pride members are very close, both emotionally and physically, especially the core group, consisting of the Alpha, his family, and the enforcers. We’ve always lived in large, mostly informal groups for protection, comfort, and social interaction. And because one of the primary duties of an enforcer is to protect and assist the Alpha, which we couldn’t do if we weren’t
with
him most of the time.

Fortunately, the advantages balanced out the drawbacks of being forever under my father’s watchful eye. Most of the time. And the number one benefit—other than free food and freshly folded laundry—was the fact that my family’s mostly wooded property backed up to the Davy Crockett National Forest and its 160,000 acres of woodland. Which made one hell of a big—and convenient—playground for a houseful of werecats.

It was nearly 10:00 a.m. when I turned Marc’s car onto the quarter-mile-long gravel driveway. I parked in the circle drive, as close to the front door as I could get and heat hit me like a blast of steam from a furnace as I opened the car door. The 102-degree-heat index was our own personal inferno, a September-in-Texas specialty, guaranteed to melt tourists where they stood. But I was a native, and all the searing, blacktop-melting blaze drew from me was a weary sigh.

My boot heels sank into the gravel as I stood, and I glanced at Marc, where he still sat snoring against the passenger-side window.
I should wake him up,
I thought. But then, he should have offered to split the drive with me.

I was too tired to go to war with my conscience, and more than a little irritated with Marc. So, I cranked down the driver’s-side window to keep him from baking and closed the door gently, smiling to myself as Marc shifted in his seat, then resumed snoring, still out cold in spite of the heat.

My boots clomped as I trudged up onto the porch, and when I opened the front door, cool air rushed out to meet me. I sagged in the doorway for a moment, one hand on each side of the frame, letting the artificial breeze dry my sweat and chase away the heat that had been slowly draining my vitality.

In my room near the end of the long central hallway, I stripped completely, tossing my dirty clothes into a pile by the door. I considered putting them in the hamper, but since I had no plans to ever wear them again, going through that much effort seemed pointless.

I glanced around the room, happy to find everything just as I’d left it. My books—hundreds of them—were crammed two rows deep into my only bookshelf, the extras stacked horizontally wherever they would fit. My bed was unmade, because I hadn’t made it, and because I’d refused to let my mother into my room to clean since my first week home, when I’d realized she was using housework as an excuse to spy on me.
That
could not continue. Besides, I was damn well old enough to clean my own room. Or to
not
clean it in peace. So I’d told her to stay the hell out. She’d frowned at my language, but complied.

At my dresser, I paused to take off my watch and caught sight of my own reflection. I looked like shit. Dirty, sweaty, tangled, and…still wearing the diamond stud earrings I’d put on in concession to my original plans for the night before. It was a miracle I hadn’t lost them both—along with half my
earlobe—to Dan Painter’s temper and desperate, flailing fists. Or his teeth.

As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I’d been completely unprepared for my run-in with Painter. After we dropped off the stray, Marc had laughed at my bewildered expression as he’d pulled item after item from a trunk emergency kit, the likes of which I’d never seen because I’d never had reason to use one. The kit included two shovels, a roll of 3 mm black plastic, duct tape, black jeans and a black T-shirt, a pair of old sneakers, and an ax.

I didn’t ask what the ax was for, because I doubted its uses involved fallen tree branches and cozy campfires. Regardless, Marc was nothing if not prepared. He was like an overgrown Boy Scout. A Boy Scout with gorgeous gold-flecked brown eyes and glossy black curls crowning a physique solid enough to stop a fucking freight train. A Boy Scout who could bring a girl screaming with a single lingering glance…

Okay, he really had little in common with the Boy Scouts, other than the whole overpreparedness thing. And his damned emergency kit hadn’t kept me from letting him bake in his own car, now, had it?

Thoroughly satisfied with my revenge, I dug out a change of underwear and a nightshirt and tossed them onto my bed, then plodded into my private bathroom and straight into the shower. Ten minutes later, I stepped out into the suddenly frigid bathroom, soaked but smelling of lavender-scented soap, rather than sweat and dirt. To a cat’s sensitive nose, smelling good is very, very important, especially in human form, where body odor, unlike personal scent, isn’t socially acceptable.

I was reaching for my robe when the first few grunts of
Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” rang out from my cell phone. I pulled my robe from its hook and shoved my arms through the sleeves on my way out of the bathroom. In the middle of my bedroom floor I glanced around for my phone, my focus sliding over my dresser, bed, nightstand, and wall shelf before finally landing on my desk.
There.
Only lower.

My gaze dropped to the clothing I’d kicked off to the right of my door. Squatting in front of the pile, I searched my jeans pockets frantically, wondering who the hell would be calling me at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday. Unfortunately, I no longer had much contact with the world outside of the Lazy S, and my fellow enforcers wouldn’t bother knocking on my door before barging in, much less calling first.

Maybe it was Abby. She’d spent most of the summer on the ranch, recovering from her ordeal at Miguel’s hands with a fellow survivor—me. And she’d called me at least a dozen times in the three weeks she’d been home, with little to say except that she was fine. She seemed content to hear that I was fine, too, and to listen to me prattle on about my endless, exhaustive training.

But Abby should be back in school by now, so who…

Sammi.
A smile formed on my face in spite of my fatigue as I thought of my college roommate, and how long it had been since I’d spoken to her.

My fingers closed around the phone and I flipped it open without bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?” I said, fully expecting to hear Sammi’s perky, full-speed chatter from the other end of the line.

“Miss me?” The man’s voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words.

The unexpected voice—and the angry question—surprised
me so much that I fell on my tailbone, smacking the back of my skull against the edge of my desktop. Confused, and still rubbing the new bump on my head, I held the phone at arm’s length to read the number on the screen. I didn’t recognize it.

“
Should
I miss you?” I asked finally, pressing the phone against my ear.

“I guess that’s a matter of opinion, Faythe. My idea of what you should do obviously has little in common with your own.”

Irritation flared in my chest like heartburn. “Who the hell
is
this?” I demanded, half convinced that my judgmental caller had the wrong number, even though he knew my name.

Deep Throat clucked his tongue in my ear, and I gritted my teeth against the intimate sound and feel of his disapproval. “How soon they forget,” he whispered, and the enmity in his tone chilled me.

Bewildered, and now truly pissed off, I glanced at the phone again, hoping to identify the number on second glance. I couldn’t, yet the caller obviously knew me. In fact, he spoke as if I should have been expecting his call. As if we were picking up an old, unfinished conversation…

And suddenly I knew.
Andrew.

Shock knocked the breath from my lungs. The phone slipped from my hand and landed in my lap, then cartwheeled to the floor with a carpet-muffled thud. Miraculously, it remained open.

I’d never heard my human ex speak a word in anger before, and the rage in his voice rendered it completely unrecognizable.

For a moment, I simply stared at the phone, too astounded to move. I hadn’t spoken to Andrew in three months, since before I’d quit school and agreed to work for my father. Hearing from him now was odd and uncomfortable, especially considering how mad he obviously was.

But then, that last part was at least partially my fault.

After surviving a beating from Miguel, taking a life in defense of my own, and becoming the country’s first and only female enforcer, I was no longer the same girl Andrew once knew. The entire college experience—including the exotic-because-he’s-normal human boyfriend—seemed really
tame,
and much less relevant to my new life. Which was actually my precollege life on steroids.

I’d tried to tell Andrew I was leaving school, and that Marc and I had gotten back together, but Andrew hadn’t answered his cell phone, and his roommate didn’t know where he was. And honestly, I thought it would be easier for all concerned if I let my efforts rest there, so we could all move on in peace.

Clearly I was wrong.

“What, all of a sudden you have nothing to say?” Andrew said, breaking into my thoughts. “
That’s
certainly new.”

So is your attitude.
I picked up the phone and held it to my ear, unsure what I was going to say until the words came out of their own accord. “Andrew?” I asked, the gears in my brain grinding almost audibly as I tried to reconcile this bitter, sharp-tongued man with
my
Andrew, who was sweet, and funny, and…
nice.
I couldn’t do it.

“So you
do
remember me?” His sarcasm was every bit as sharp as my own claws.

“Of course I do.”

“I haven’t forgotten you, either.” He didn’t sound very pleased by that fact, and at the moment, the feeling was mutual.

Before I could reply, a harsh rustling sounded in my ear, as if he’d covered up the phone on his end of the line. Then I heard indecipherable angry words, and the line went silent. No static, and no breathing. He’d hung up.

The words
end call,
printed across the screen on my phone, confirmed it.

At least a minute later, my bedroom door swung open to smack against my knees, and Marc stuck his head around the edge to see what he’d hit. He found me still staring at my phone, my robe gaping open across one thigh. “You have to push the buttons to make that work,” he said, his expression completely serious.

“Thanks, smart-ass.” I shook my head to wake myself up. Fatigue and the shock of hearing from Andrew had pulled me past the end of my energy reserve.

Marc offered me his hand as he stepped into the room. I took it, and he hauled me up. He would have pulled me into an embrace, but I aimed a pointed glance at his grime-covered clothes and stepped back, banging my hip on the corner of my desk. “Something wrong with your phone?”

“Nope. I was just checking the charge.” I trudged over to my dresser and dropped the phone next to my watch, going for nonchalance as I opened the top drawer and grabbed underwear at random. But my faux casual gesture was pretty much ruined when I realized I already had a clean pair waiting on the bed.

I couldn’t tell Marc about the phone call, because he’d assumed from the beginning that I’d ended things with Andrew properly. I hadn’t lied, exactly. I just hadn’t corrected his assumption. And really, was it my fault he’d made an ass out of us both?

“Oh.” Marc pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on top of my pile of clothes.

“You have your own shower.” I crossed my arms over the front of my robe to hold it closed. I couldn’t concentrate on being irritated while he was half-naked, and he damn well knew it.

Marc gave me a sly grin and kicked the door closed with his foot. “I’m borrowing yours. It’s the least you owe me after leaving me to sweat to death in that crematorium of a car.”

I shoved the extra pair of underwear back into the drawer. “Serves you right for sleeping through the entire trip.”

“I’ll make it up to you.” His jeans fell to the floor, and my eyes trailed after them helplessly, hypnotized by the golden-brown color of his skin. No fair tempting me while I was too weak to resist.

Fortunately, I knew how to play that game, too. I let my robe fall open, framing my body with lavender terry cloth. Marc came forward with his arms outstretched, lust in his eyes and impatience in his step.

I held him at arm’s length. “Not while you smell like an enforcer.”

He groaned and backed toward the bathroom, his eyes holding mine captive. “I’ll be back in two minutes. Time me. Two minutes.”

I laughed. “Two minutes, or you’re out of luck.” I let the material slide off slowly. The shower was running by the time my robe hit the floor, but I was too tired to chuckle as I pulled a nightshirt over my head and stepped into my underwear. I slid beneath my covers with thoughts of Marc in the shower, slick with soap and water, and scented by my shampoo.