SevenMarkPackAttackMobi (21 page)

“From what I hear, that’s about the top of the line. Well, except...” She bit her lip.

“Except who?” That had me curious.

She shrugged. “Leer.”

Leer. Alpha at Pack City. I knew him well. In fact, I counted him among my few real friends. He knew Amber and had never introduced us? I wondered why not.

“And maybe Jack, now that I think about it,” Amber added as an afterthought.

“Jack?” That bitch knew way too many alpha males as far as I could see. “Jack
who
?”

She arched away from me. “You don’t know Jack?” A serious frown furrowed between her eyebrows. “Where have you been?”

“The tundra, remember?”

I didn’t know Jack, at the moment, but I made plans to get up to speed fast.

“Oh.” She, too, looked out at the press conference. I could tell something that had been said had caught her attention. She asked, “Giselle, are you listening to this?”

“Hm? No. I’m tuning everything Hood says out. Why?”

“Because they just asked him how long he’s been seeing you, and if it was love at first sight.”

Giselle perked up. But as we all put our attention to listening, it became evident that he’d already answered and they’d moved on. Hood, suave when he wanted to be, asked if the reporters could recommend any great places for him to take his bride and wedding party. The man was too smooth.

Giselle asked, “What did he say?”

Amber, smug, said, “Uh-uh. You’ll have to ask him, or read about it in the morning papers.”

Giselle playfully kicked at Amber. “Give.”

“No. I’m serious.” Amber promised, “But you’ll be happy about his answer.”

That seemed to deflate the minute bit of pleasure Giselle had been ready to have. She flopped back, pouting, “He probably lied anyway.”

“Hood?” Amber grinned. “Lie? No, not him!”

Giselle crossed her arms and looked away.

Amber said, “You know, I find that Hood actually tells the truth about one hundred percent of the time.”

It was true. We all knew it. He was a master at words, though, and twisting the truth to suit him.

Giselle set us straight, “The problem is, he works from his own dictionary.”

“That’s where you come in, Giselle.” Amber seemed amused, “A woman’s place is to help a man define...things.”

As you may have guessed by now, the female psyche and philosophy is beyond me. The minute they started in on this, I tuned them out. And yeah, maybe I was supposed to be listening in, but remember, I’d been told to get after harnessing my mind block. I chose that moment to do it.

In any case, Frank and Hood joined us. Then they climbed out at the hotel, as if they were the only ones in the car, and they led the press aside. The car moved on to another door and we got out. I took the women upstairs. That hotel room wasn’t half as grand as Caesar’s had been.

Like the caged wolf that I was, I paced the floor. I put in a few calls. The news I got was good, and bad. I needed to work off a few frustrations. My blood pressure rose. The women, annoyed by my pent up energy, and tight lips, I think, took themselves off to another room. Separate rooms for naps. They locked the doors.

I did some pushups. And then some crunches.

And finally, finally, Hood and Frank showed up. I told them, “My guys have tracked down a few bastets. They’re squealing like pussies.”

“Shit,” Hood said. “That was fast.”

Frank cautioned us, “Maybe too fast. Ever think we’re being set up?”

We’d all thought it. I agreed wholeheartedly. “Yeah. But we can’t ignore it. We gotta go question them.”

“Look,” Hood said. “No one even knows you’re here yet, Mark. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“He can’t stay under for long, though,” Frank said, “Or people will think we have a second CEO gone missing.”

“No, of course not,” Hood agreed. “What I was thinking was...”

Clarifying that point, I said, “I called in to Wolf E.”

“I’m sure the bastets tracked that,” Hood said.

“I’m sure they knew exactly who was on the plane and what room we were going to,” Amber came out of her room, padding barefoot in a sun dress, over to the room refrigerator, and pulled a water bottle out. Unscrewing the top, she said, “My brother’s here.”

“Brother?” I know I keep protesting this, but really, I’m not stupid. As soon as I said it, I realized that she meant the other scenter. I redirected, “Tell me how you came to be working for garou and he for the bastets?”

She shrugged. “Stronger genes? He’s a Mama’s boy? Who knows?” She swigged down half a bottle of that water.

Hood asked, “Giselle in the other room?”

We all looked at him. He always seemed to know where she was, but he looked uncertain. He admitted, “She’s ignoring me. Like I was the one to pass out last night.”

I said, “She made it up to you this morning, though, right?”

He growled and went to the bedroom door, tried the level, and hit the door with a fist. “Giselle, let me in.”

Amber’s amusement, once again, was barely contained. I thought, you’ve got a wicked mean streak, bitch.

“It’s a trap. You’re right on that, Hood.” She tipped her head, apparently mind talking or listening to a voice we couldn’t hear. “Your boys think they’ve got the upper hand, but they don’t. They’re being watched by...” she frowned. “Somebody named Felini. That name ring a bell?”

Hood stepped back and kicked the bedroom door open. “Giselle?” A minute later he was rushing back into the living area, livid as hell. “She took off!”

I jumped to my feet. “How?”

Frank, too, was up and moving. Amber was scrambling for her room, screaming, “Wait. I’ll get my shoes.”

Hood told Frank in no uncertain terms, “We’ve got to find her.”

Frank and I, both, took Amber by the elbows. We didn’t want her getting away from us, too, but she was our best bet for tracking Giselle. Oh, we could all follow a trail, but the cats wouldn’t be so stupid as to make it that easy--if they had a hold of her.

Amber dug her feet in, insisting a minute in the room Giselle had been taken from. The balcony was open. There was no scaffolding out there for window washers, or visible fire escape, or any other means a normal being would take to leave an upper floor room.

Hood growled at me, “I told you to keep an eye on her.”

“You didn’t tell me I had to worry about her taking off! Or that she could scale a vertical wall like Spiderman.”

Amber said, “More like Catwoman.”

“There!” She leaned toward a building three blocks down. “She’s gone that way.”

We took off at a run, through the hall, down the stairs. Elevators take a lot longer than a wolf on a downhill run. As we went, I asked, “Tell me again why she’s taken off?”

“Just to piss me off,” Hood said.

“You think that’s all she lives for?” Amber growled and sprinted ahead of us. I’m not kidding, the largest one of us all. She zipped around a corner.

Hood said, “Oh, shit!” And in a flash, he shifted to lupine.

Frank followed suit, and I, of course, one beat behind, thought,
What the fuck?
But I shifted too, and bounded around the corner. To my big surprise, I saw what looked like a cat tail rounding the far side of the building. Hood and Frank went that way.

St. Louis is filled with dark, dingy alleys. They’d shot off into one. I pulled myself up and tried to think. I shifted to human again, back tracked for my clothes, which I’d literally run out of. At least I hadn’t gone crinos and shredded them. I scooped the other clothes, too. Amber must still have her dress on. But her shoes were there. I wondered why she bothered to put them on, if she was gonna run right out of them?

I felt a little like Prince Charming, questioning where the girl of my dreams had disappeared to. I dressed. You see, tracking people is really what I do. Outthinking them, that’s how I stay alive. I think, normally, Hood calculates, and I know Frank does. But that was an emotional moment for Hood--when he found Giselle missing. Like my panic when Amber took off.

Pondering if Amber and Giselle worked both sides of the fence, I took my time following the trail. After all, if a fast run would catch the girls, Frank and Hood could handle them. And if not? Eventually, I’d get there. Not that I was thinking about heroism. I was just working it all out.

It didn’t make sense that they’d all shoot up a single street. I know how a quarry moves. Zigzagging, crossing trails, circling back. Once I’d canvassed the area, I took up around a corner, the most likely place of intersection as far as I could figure.

A car went past, radio blaring a newscast about wolves sighted within city limits. I saw people scattering, diving in buildings.

I wished I had a pack of smokes. Not that I smoked any more. I’d given it up when I realized my enemies could smell me coming by virtue of that alone. But I really craved a cig then. I’d dropped the pack of clothes and leaned against a brick wall. I keened my ears to listen for sounds of running, after the initial panic attack of the average person on the street.

I wondered if I’d miscalculated. If they weren’t circling back? I figured Frank could call me if he wanted me somewhere. I still had my cell.

But about the time I reached in my pocket to check it, I heard something. A cat squall.
Amber?
Without a thought, I peeled my clothes and nearly broke my neck shifting to crinos in a dead run toward the sound.