Rogue (15 page)

“Yeah. Thanks.” I stood, already turning to go.

“Hey, what are you gonna do when you find her?”

I answered him beneath my breath. “I’m gonna use up a few of her nine lives.”

I
thanked Jeff for his help and caught Marc’s eye from across the room. He raised one brow at me in question, and I tossed my head toward the entrance to tell him I was ready to go. He gave me a single, brief nod and tapped Kevin on the shoulder. Together, they stood, and Corinne slid out of the booth behind Marc. He offered her his hand, but she hugged him instead, standing on her toes to whisper something in his ear. Her lips actually moved that time, but I didn’t want to know what she was saying, so I turned and wound my way through a jumble of tables, heading toward the door.

We had lunch at the Cajun Bar and Grill, where Marc and I exchanged information over spicy jambalaya, doing our best to ignore Kevin’s interruptions. He was working overtime to get on our collective good side, but he might as well have saved his breath. We’d be reporting him to my father even if he’d been able to hand over the murdering tabby bound and gagged.

After lunch, Kevin drove us across the Mississippi border into Picayune, where we found Robert Harper’s apartment
with little trouble. He lived on the second floor, next door to Mrs. Grady, a friendly—and obviously bored—senior citizen who would have been more than happy to help Robby’s best friends and his little sister, Julie, make up the guest list for his surprise birthday party. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the names of any of his numerous lady friends.

According to Mrs. Grady, Harper’d had frequent overnight guests in the four years he’d lived next door, but none had stayed more than one night, and none of them came even close to fitting the tabby’s description. Evidently big brother Robby had a thing for redheads, and while he’d settle for a blonde in a pinch, he’d never shown any interest in brunettes.

However, according to Jeff’s description of the woman seen with Harper the day before, it was obvious that species trumped hair color any day of the week.

When we’d gathered everything we could from Mrs. Grady, Marc and I left Kevin in the hall listening to her party-menu suggestions while we used Julie’s key—which had actually come from Harper’s own pocket—to check out the apartment. We discovered nothing more interesting than a massive pile of dirty laundry and an unhealthy fondness for SPAM and SpaghettiOs.

We rescued Kevin from Mrs. Grady, reluctantly, and he drove us back into New Orleans, where we made a short stop for beignets and cafés au lait before heading out to catch our flight home. At the airport, Kevin pulled into a space in short-term parking and popped the trunk without getting out. I got out on the passenger side and circled around to grab our small bags from the back while Marc knelt to have a final word with Kevin through the lowered driver’s window.

“Stay close to home and keep your phone within reach.”
Marc’s voice was low and amazingly professional. “You’ll be getting a call from Greg very soon.”

“Hey, it doesn’t have to be like that,” Kevin whispered. “There’s no reason to involve Greg in this. I’m sure we can work something out, just between the two of us.”

“No,” Marc said. “We can’t.” He stood and turned his back on the prick behind the wheel, accepting the bag I handed him.

“…think you’re so much better than me,” Kevin hissed at Marc, when we were several feet from the car. “
Faythe’s
the only reason you’re even here. Without her, you’re just another stray cat licking the Alpha’s boots, one false move away from the wrong side of the river.”

“What did he say?” I demanded, turning back to face our idiot of an escort. But by the time I had him in sight, Marc was already beside the car, swinging a rare left-handed punch, because of the angle of the open window. His fist smashed into Kevin’s nose. Blood spurted all over the steering wheel, the windshield, and the front of Kevin’s shirt.

Kevin was too busy spitting out his own blood to scream, and Marc turned back toward me calmly, already wiping blood from his fist with a wet wipe from his backpack. He threw the wipe in the nearest trash can, and we continued on into the airport without another word.

I finally thought to turn my cell phone ringer back on and check my voice mail at the gate, as we waited to board the plane. There were two. Messages, not planes.

The first was from my father, telling me he’d sent Vic and Owen after yet another body, following a second tip by the same anonymous informant. They’d gone to Pickering, a tiny Louisiana town near the western edge of the Calcasieu Ranger
District of the Kisatchie National Forest. Marc had a similar message on his own voice mail.

My hand began to shake when I saw the number the second voice mail had come from.
Andrew.
Shit. I waited to listen to the message until Marc ducked into the men’s room nearest our gate.

“I got your message, Faythe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—” His voice was interrupted by a series of loud pops or explosions, followed by the distinctive
thwup, thwup, thwup
of blades beating the air, like the rotors on a helicopter, only older and more rickety-sounding. And when silence settled in again, he went on, as if he’d never been interrupted. “—you don’t want to see me. But I’m looking forward to seeing you. Won’t be long now.” His next words were swallowed by another series of booms, just as Marc came out of the men’s room, heading right for me. Smiling, I flipped the phone shut and shoved it into my pocket as he sank into the molded plastic airport chair on my right.

This had gone too far. I would have to tell both Marc and my father about Andrew; there was no getting around that now. But I couldn’t do it in the airport, or on the plane. Marc was
not
going to react well, and shouldn’t be cooped up on a plane full of humans when he found out.

I’d tell him later, when we were alone together. Then my father.

It was going to be a long night.

By nine o’clock that evening, Marc and I were back at the ranch. My mother had held dinner for us, so the entire household—minus Vic and Owen—sat around the eight-foot
dining-room table, eating baked halibut and listening to our report.

“So, Harper left with the tabby voluntarily?” Jace asked, stabbing two spears of asparagus with his fork.

“So it would appear.” I stirred sugar into my tea as I continued. “According to Jeff-the-bartender, she was more than adequately equipped to lure any man away from his favorite stripper. Or his wife. A regular siren on two legs. Jeff didn’t know her name, but he gave me a good physical description. She’s my height. Maybe a little shorter. Long, dark, curly hair. Pale grayish eyes. Dark, exotic skin. And he said she was hot, which I assume means she’s curvy.”
Or maybe that she’s all ready to burn in hell for her crimes.

Ethan’s eyes lit up, and I rolled my own. I should have known he’d care more about the tabby’s build than the fact that she’d already murdered at least two toms. I occupied my mouth with a bite of fish to keep from telling him exactly how screwed up I thought his priorities were. He wouldn’t listen to me, anyway.

Ignoring my hormone-challenged brother, I looked toward the end of the table, where my father had sat for the past fifteen minutes, chewing quietly as he listened to my informal report. “What did your Venezuelan contact have to say?”

He set his fork on the edge of his plate and wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Nothing yet, but I expect to hear something soon. Until then, all we have to go on is your description.”

“Wonderful.” I frowned down at my halibut.

“It’s a start, which is more than we had before,” Parker said, cutting into a slice of scalloped potatoes with the side of his fork. “But I can’t believe Kevin Mitchell knew Harper was
trespassing and didn’t report it. You’d think he’d know better than that.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” I mumbled, pushing my asparagus around in a puddle of hollandaise. I wasn’t exactly eager to tell my father that Kevin blamed me for our lack of manpower. Fortunately, Marc seemed disinclined to mention it, too. I’d have to remember to thank him—after I kicked the shit out of him for trying to turn me into a stripper.

“By the way, I told Kevin to expect a call from you, Greg,” Marc said. “Very soon.”

“Oh, he’ll get more than a call.” My father’s hand paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “When this is over, he’ll get an escort to the Mississippi border and instructions to wait in the free zone until his father decides what to do with him. I’ll be on the phone to David Mitchell as soon as we finish here.”

At the other end of the table, my mother cleared her throat politely to get our attention. “What about this missing dancer?”

“Her name is Kellie Tandy, and she goes to Tulane on a partial scholarship,” Marc said. “A couple of years ago she was looking for a better-paying job to help make up for what the scholarship doesn’t cover, and her roommate convinced her to audition at Forbidden Fruit.

“When Kellie disappeared before her second set, her roommate—Ginger—called the police. They showed up at the club a couple of hours later and asked questions, and took a picture of Kellie for their file. But that was it. They seemed to think Kellie would show up in a few hours, and they told the roommate to go back to their apartment and wait.”

“I assume she never showed up?” Ethan asked around a mouthful of fish.

“Right. The next day, when the police said they were doing everything they could, the roommate made up the missing person poster on her own and took up a collection from the other dancers and the Forbidden Fruit management to offer as a reward.”

“What about her family?” Parker asked. “Can’t her parents put some pressure on the cops?”

“She doesn’t have any parents,” I said, because Marc was busy chewing.

He swallowed and took a drink to clear his throat. “They died when she was sixteen, and she spent her last year and a half of high school in foster care, because her two remaining grandparents were too old to take her in. She’s a favorite among the other dancers.”

Marc’s expression was professionally detached, but I knew him too well to believe what I saw on his face. Hearing about her parents had made Marc determined to find out what happened to Kellie. He had a soft spot for orphans, because when he was fourteen, his mother was killed by the same stray who’d infected him.

“Okay, let me see if I understand everything correctly.” My father pushed his empty plate forward and leaned back in his chair. “Kellie Tandy goes missing from Forbidden Fruit in New Orleans on Thursday—the same day Bradley Moore is murdered in Arkansas—but the police won’t look for her. On Saturday, Robert Harper is lured out of that same strip club by the rogue tabby, who breaks his neck in the alley and leaves the body buried in garbage. Less than two hours later, Parker and Holden find the body and bring it back to us.” He glanced around the table, waiting for a response.

“Sounds right to me,” I said.

“Me, too,” Jace spoke up, while everyone else nodded.
Except my mother. She pushed back her chair and disappeared into the kitchen without a word. Seconds later she was back with a homemade strawberry cheesecake, which she began cutting on the oak sideboard against one wall.

“So we’re just supposed to believe it’s all coincidence?” Ethan asked, taking the dessert plate my mother handed him and passing it to Jace, who passed it to Parker, who passed it on to my father. “All this happens at one strip club in New Orleans, but we can’t figure out how it’s related, if it even is. But it has to be, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged, watching as they passed down another plate. “Well, it didn’t
all
happen at Forbidden Fruit.”

“What do you mean?” Jace asked.

Marc answered for me, placing a slice of cheesecake on my place mat. “Bradley Moore died four miles or so from another strip club in Arkansas. He had a stack of ones in his wallet.”

Ethan glanced from him to our father. “So this is about strip clubs?”

“No.” My mother set her knife and pie server in the empty half of the glass pie plate, frowning at her youngest son as if he’d just told her the earth was flat. “I would bet the location is largely irrelevant. At least to the tabby. She started in eastern Arkansas—as far as we know, anyway—then moved down to New Orleans, and in both cases she seems to have lured a stray from a strip club to kill him. But why would she go into a strip club? Why would a woman go to a strip club alone? Not just a tabby, but any woman?”

Her gaze swept up and down the table, looking at each of us in turn, including my father. No one answered, and in the silence, the low growl of a car engine rumbled from outside; Owen and Vic were back with the van.

“Faythe?” my mother asked, bringing my attention back on track as she narrowed her eyes at me. Why was she picking on
me?
No one else knew the answer, either. “Why would
you
go to a strip club?”

I frowned, trying without success to follow her logic. “I wouldn’t.”

“You went to one today,” she pointed out, her voice infuriatingly matter-of-fact, as if her statement were perfectly logical rather than a distortion of the truth.

“That doesn’t count. I was working. I went in to question the bartender.”

She nodded, apparently pleased with my answer, and picked up the silver pie server to gesture with as she spoke. “So you went into a strip club looking for a man?”

“Not like
that,
” I insisted. “I wasn’t looking for a date.”

“Did these men die of romance?” she asked, mercifully shifting her attention away from me. “Were they killed with too much wine and candlelight?” No one answered, but my father sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, glowing with pride as he watched his wife at work. “No, because this tabby wasn’t looking for a date, either.”

“She was working, too,” Marc said. “Looking for someone.” He was the first to catch on, though my father was nodding, as if he agreed. “Maybe Moore and Harper, or maybe someone else. Either way, she was hunting.”

In the foyer, the front door creaked open and Owen’s boots thumped on the tile.

Jace glanced from Marc to my mother, lowering his fork to the table with a bite of cheesecake still speared on the end. “She’s hunting strays?”