Shift (22 page)

“Okay. Never mind. I can do this myself. I’m sorry.” My cheeks flamed, and I turned, then winced as I reached for the button on my jeans.

“No, wait.” He took a deep breath and pulled me gently toward him by my right elbow, just above my cast. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?” I asked again, and this time he nodded confidently. I had my doubts, but I could pretend if he could. “Okay. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Not what I usually like to hear while I undress a woman…” But he was grinning again, and I exhaled in relief. I could handle a joking Jace.

He unbuttoned my pants with perfunctory speed, and I bit my lip to hold back a groan as he pushed them slowly over my hips, touching me as little as possible. His attempt at chaste assistance was more like a criminal tease.

My jeans pooled at my feet and I stepped out of them, and Jace leaned back with one hand on the faucet. “How hot do you want it?”

I rolled my eyes and indulged a smile, trying to break the tension. “Does nothing you say sound innocent?”

He returned my grin. “Not if I can help it.”

“I need it pretty warm.”

He turned on the water, tested it with one hand, then adjusted the temperature and plugged the drain. “So…what exactly are we doing? I know you’re covered in blood, but I’m assuming this is about more than hygiene?”

“Yeah.” I held up my cast. “We’re soaking this bitch, so we can cut it off.”

“Faythe…”

But I interrupted, wishing it wouldn’t hurt to cross my arms beneath my bra. “I’ll have to Shift to heal this one, anyway.” I held up my throbbing, stinging left arm. “So it only makes sense to heal them both at once, right?” He started to talk again, and again I rushed to cut him off. “And don’t tell me I shouldn’t Shift at all. I’m
not
staying behind, and you guys need to know I can take care of myself when we go after Lance. Otherwise I’ll be a distraction and a hindrance. I’m doing this, no matter what you say.”

His grin was back. “I was just going to tell you you’re brilliant.”

“I—” I blinked. “You were?”

“Yeah. If I knew how to get the damned thing off, I’d have suggested it before you climbed up the deer stand and nearly got yourself killed.”

“Oh.” Well,
that
was a pleasant surprise.

“But, you know you’re going to have to Shift several times, right? Like, a dozen or more. And it’ll hurt like hell, assuming it even works on a broken bone.”

He spoke from experience. But if he could handle the pain, so could I. “I know. Let’s get this over with. And hey…you know Marc’s gonna be mad, right?”

Jace shrugged. “He stays pissed at me.”

I laughed. “Yeah, me, too. Help me out.” I turned my back to him and released the front clasp of my bra with my right hand, then let him slide it carefully over both arms. Then I used that same hand to push down first one side, then the other of my black boy shorts until they fell to the floor.

The tub was only a few inches full, but I stepped in, anyway, because that was better than standing there naked while he tried—and failed—not to stare at me.

The hot water felt great on my legs, but I had to scooch down to submerge my cast as the water ran. I set my left arm carefully on the edge of the tub and glanced at Jace as he settled onto the closed toilet seat with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, guy-style.

“How long has Marc been gone?” I swished my cast in the water and wiggled my toes in the flow from the faucet.

Jace glanced at his watch. “About twenty minutes. How long do you think it’ll take him?”

“Normally I’d say about an hour, but he’ll rush this time. We may have another half hour.” I swished my arm faster and willed the tub to fill. “I think we’ll all be a lot happier if I’m out of this cast—and the tub—before he gets back.”

“No argument there.” Jace frowned. “Not that I can’t take him. This just isn’t really…”

“I know. And I don’t
want
you to take him. Or vice versa. Which is why I need this to work fast.” I wiggled my fingers, trying to work water into the cast from that end, to speed up the process. “Your new phone has Internet, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Can you find out how long it’ll take to drive back to New Mexico from here?” Because we couldn’t just knock Lance out and drag him onto the plane.

Jace dug his phone from his pocket and spent the next five minutes typing with his thumbs. “Shit.” He glanced up, and the bad news was obvious in his expression. “Twenty-three hours, if we drive straight through. Which we can do, if we drive in shifts, but…”

“But that means we can’t wait until dark to go after Lance.”

He shook his head. “Not if we want to get there while Kaci’s still breathing.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the edge of the tub as the water lapped at my navel. “Okay, so we go as soon as I’m healed.” Or at least healed
enough
. “But we’ll have to get Lance alone. We can’t take them all on at once.”

“Yeah. We’ll think of something.” He started to put his phone away, but I shook my head.

“We should call my dad. I’ll talk to him, if you want. He’s probably gonna be mad, too, but I can leave you out of this. I won’t tell him you helped me.”

Jace shook his head, and his gaze held mine with a substantial weight. A determination I almost didn’t recognize in him. “I’m in this with you, Faythe. The whole way. This is the only option we have. He’ll see that. And if he doesn’t…” Jace shrugged and grinned again. “We’ll both be in trouble.”

My heart beat so hard it ached. He wasn’t supposed to be like this. Jace wasn’t supposed to be so…wonderful. Distancing myself from him wasn’t supposed to be so
hard
…

I was starting to think that giving him up would be like giving up air—and I already felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“Okay. Call him.”

J
ace autodialed, and I stirred the water with my cast. When my father answered, I turned the faucet off with my foot. The bath wasn’t as deep as I like it, but it covered my arm, and I wanted to be able to hear both sides of the conversation.

“Hey, Greg, it’s me.”

“Jace? You have an update?”

“Yeah. We’re in a motel, about twenty minutes from…Cal’s place.” Which was once Jace’s home. “We found the feathers, so we’re all good on that front, and there’s no way the council will be able to argue with the evidence. But…we don’t think it’ll be enough to convince the thunderbirds. They can’t distinguish werecats by scent.”

My father sighed, obviously frustrated. “I’ve been having similar thoughts.” Then, more distantly, “Michael, did you hear that?”

“Yeah. Let me think for a minute. I’ll come up with something.”

“We have an idea.” Jace glanced at me and smiled reassuringly. “We want to go after Lance.”

“Go after him?” My father’s footsteps stopped, and I could easily picture his skeptical frown.

“Bring him in. Take him to the thunderbirds.”

“I see.” There was a moment of near silence, but for the water swishing around—and hopefully inside—my cast. “Put Marc on the phone.”

Jace sat on the edge of the tub, and my left hand brushed his thigh. “He went out for first-aid supplies.”

“Who’s hurt?” My dad’s voice rose, and the distant scraping of Michael’s pen against paper paused.

“It’s just a scratch, Daddy,” I said, knowing he’d hear me. “My arm went through a rotten board in the deer stand where we found the feathers.”

My father’s long sigh was more of a plea for patience. “Jace, is it just a scratch?”

Jace shrugged and mouthed a silent apology to me, then answered. “It’s really more of a gash. The length of her forearm.”

I lifted my right arm from the water to flip him off, but I’d expected no less. If he’d lied to our Alpha, I would have lost respect for him.

“Put Faythe on the phone.”

“Just a minute.” Jace covered the mouthpiece and knelt beside the tub. “Can you hold it?”

Not comfortably
. But if I made Jace hold the phone, my dad would be focused on how badly I was hurt, rather than what I could accomplish once I’d healed. “Put me on speakerphone.”

Jace raised one eyebrow but complied, setting the phone on the tiny bathroom counter.

“I can hear you, Dad. Go ahead.”

“Why am I on speakerphone?”

“Because I’m in the tub. I don’t want to drop Jace’s phone in the water.” It was the truth. Just not the
whole
truth.

“And you’re in the tub because…?”

“I’ve found they come in handy for keeping oneself clean.”
Technically not a lie
…

Michael snorted, but my father was much less amused. “Faythe…”

“Fine. I have to Shift to heal the gash in my left arm, and I can’t do that with a cast on. So I’m going to heal both arms with one Shift.” Or maybe more like a dozen Shifts. “I’m soaking my cast so we can cut it off.”

“Somehow I don’t think Dr. Carver would approve of your timing or your methods.” He sounded weary, but in good humor, which was probably due entirely to the fact that they were no longer being attacked by kamikaze thunderbirds.

“I know, and I wish the doc were here.” So I wouldn’t be bathing naked in front of Jace, while on the phone with my father and brother. Our conversation had completely redefined the word
awkward
, and we hadn’t even gotten to the hard part. “But Carver’s not here, and we’re on a pretty tight timeline. And we need all three of us in good working order, so I’m doing what has to be done.” I hesitated, and took a deep breath. “Is any of that a problem?”

My dad sighed again, and I could almost see him scowling as he debated the possible answers. “The whole thing is one big problem, Faythe. You’re deep in enemy territory, injured, and too far away for me to help. You’re nothing but a stroke of bad luck away from being caught, and if that happens, we’ll have to go full-scale against Malone in the next day and a half, because when the thunderbirds figure out you’re not coming back, they’ll relaunch their offensive, and we won’t have the manpower to get you out. Am I missing anything?”

“Um…we’re pretty sure that if we’re caught, they’ll execute Marc and Jace on sight for trespassing. And the thunderbirds will kill Kaci.”

“And there’s that…” Michael said, no trace of humor left in his voice.

I took a deep breath and held it for a count of five. “I get it, Dad. We’ve re-created mission impossible, and if you have a better idea, I’m all ears. But from where I’m sitting—”
or lying, in a lukewarm bath
“—our options are pretty limited, and our time is running out.”

Leather creaked as my father sat in his favorite chair. “Are you neglecting to mention an easier way any of this could be done? Either your cast, or finding better evidence?”

Whew, an easy one. “Not to my knowledge. Believe it or not, I don’t
try
to do things the hard way.” It just works out that way most of the time. “I don’t know what else we can do for evidence, short of convincing Malone to confess, or another one of his men to defect. And I don’t see either of those happening this decade, much less in the next few hours.”

“You still have nearly a day and a half.” I could practically hear the frown in my dad’s voice.

“Not if they’re going to drive.” Michael had obviously guessed the rest of my plan. “It’s not like they can shove Lance in a suitcase and check him at the airport with their other baggage.”

“Not that we aren’t tempted…” Jace smiled at me from the edge of the tub.

“Okay, so you’re going to need to move quickly. I assume you’re not expecting Lance to simply volunteer his services.”

I forced a laugh. “We’re anticipating a bit more trouble than that.”

“And you’re prepared to use aggressive persuasion?”

I exhaled slowly and phrased my response carefully, hoping to hide my discomfort with handing a fellow werecat over for execution, even though it was my own proposed operation. “With your permission, we’ll use the least amount of force necessary to get the job done.”

My father’s hesitation that time was brief. “Since I see no other option, you have permission. But, Faythe, have you thought this through? You’re talking about taking a Pride cat from his own home, against his will. There’s no way to pull that off without anyone noticing, and even if you get away clean, as soon as they figure out what happened, every tom in the Appalachian territory will be after the three of you. And there’s no way I can get backup there in time.”

“I know.” I leaned my head against the back of the tub and stared at the dingy foam ceiling tiles. “We don’t have it all figured out yet.”

“And then there’s the political fallout,” Michael said. Over the line, a door closed, cutting off background noise I’d barely noticed before. The office was now off limits to eavesdroppers, and my father and brother were presumably the only ones in the room. “We’re talking about Parker’s brother. Jerold Pierce’s son. Since Blackwell’s remaining neutral…” Thank goodness he was there when Brett gave us the full scoop on his father…. “Pierce is now the swing vote. If we turn his son over to the Flight, we can pretty much forget about him siding with Dad over Malone for council chair.”

“But does that even matter?” My bathwater was cooling, and I desperately wanted to warm it, but we all needed to be able to hear one another clearly. On the bright side, my chill bumps were helping distract me from the agony that was my left arm. “We’re talking about civil war, Michael. The vote is moot at this point. Whoever wins the fight will be council chair. If there’s even a council left to lead afterward.” Assuming there was anything recognizable left from our culture, once the blood had soaked into the ground.

Michael groaned with impatience. “But who do you think is going to win the war, if one side has more allies than the other?”

Shit
. My eyes closed as his point sank in. “Okay, so if we turn Lance in, Pierce might throw his manpower behind Malone, which means he’ll have a larger contingent than we will.”

“There’s no ‘might’ to it,” Michael insisted.

“Of course there is.” I rolled my eyes. Michael was ever the voice of doom, but he was only seeing half the facts. “Why would Pierce turn against us for turning Lance in, when Lance effectively sentenced our entire Pride—including both a defenseless tabby cat and his own
brother
—to death by letting Malone blame this whole thing on us? Why would he side with Lance and Malone over Parker and us? Especially considering how many fewer people will die if the thunderbirds know who really killed Finn?”

Michael started to answer, but Jace spoke up softly. “Do you really think Calvin’s going to tell Pierce the truth about why we gave Lance to the Flight?”

Shit!
My head was spinning with details—or maybe with blood loss—and it was getting hard to hold all the facts in my mind.

“Of course not. Malone will accuse us of trying to save ourselves by turning the thunderbirds against him. Which is exactly what
he
did to
us
.” I let my head fall against the edge of the tub again, and my teeth ground together so hard my jaws ached. “But that doesn’t change anything. If we turn Lance in, Pierce will fight with Malone against us. But if we don’t, there won’t be enough of us left to fight Malone at all. And we’ll lose Kaci.”

I sat up and opened my eyes, pleased to find Jace’s gaze still steadily trained on mine.

“And, Daddy, I’m not willing to lose Kaci.”

“That’s what I was waiting to hear,” my father said, and his statement carried the bold weight of finality. He sounded almost as relieved as worried. “This is a tough call, Faythe, but it’s your call—yours and Marc’s and Jace’s—and I need you all to be sure. I think you’re doing the right thing, but I’m not going to ask you to kidnap a Pride cat and deliver him to his death if you don’t agree.”

I hesitated, and Jace’s hand wrapped around the fingers of my left hand. He squeezed gently and smiled. He had my back, no matter what. “All right. We’re going to do it. Assuming Marc’s with us.”

“He will be,” my father said. “He’ll always stand with you, Faythe.”

“I know.” I dropped my gaze from Jace’s. I couldn’t help it, though his hand was still warm in mine.

“Okay, I’ll cash out your plane tickets and see if there’s anything I can do to help you get out of the territory once you have Lance.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Be careful and keep me updated.”

“I will.”

Jace ended the call, and I turned the faucet on to heat up the water.

Fifteen minutes later, my cast was soft enough to bend with my bare hand, so Jace dug up a pair of scissors from the desk in the main room. They were old, and neither sterile nor sharp, but it was either that, or gnaw the damn thing off with my own teeth.

Jace took off his shirt and tossed it onto the bedroom floor to keep it dry, then helped me turn to face the side of the tub. I propped my cast on the edge, fist to fist with my gored left arm. “I’ll try not to move your arm, but your bone hasn’t fully mended yet, so this might hurt,” he said.

“I don’t care.” It couldn’t hurt worse than the other one. And if it could, I didn’t want to know that in advance. “Just do it.”

His brows rose and one corner of his mouth quirked up. “Again, not my favorite words to hear from a naked woman.”

I laughed, grateful for Jace’s apparently effortless ability to break the tension. Not that he always employed that particular skill to my satisfaction…“Okay, here goes.” He started at the elbow end of my cast. The lower steel blade was cold as it slid against my skin beneath the warm, soggy padding and firm-but-pliable plaster. Jace squeezed the blades together, and muscles shifted in his bare arm as he forced the dull scissors through the cast. I held my breath, waiting for pain, but he was very careful and I didn’t feel a thing.

Several endless minutes later, the scissors split the last inch of plaster just below my knuckles. “Almost done.” Jace slid the blade in next to my thumb for the last snip, and a second later it was all over. I wiggled my thumb while he carefully pulled my cast open through the new split down the middle. “Okay, lift your arm.”

I did, again bracing myself for pain that never came, and he slid the cast gently off my hand, where the plaster was bisected but not truly splayed. “Wow. I look…wrinkly.” From the water, of course. My hands and feet were wrinkly, too. Other than that, my newly exposed arm didn’t look much different from the rest of me. I hadn’t worn the cast long enough to get a tan line—we didn’t do much sunbathing in February—and I couldn’t tell from looking that it had ever been broken. Or that it might still be.

“Does it hurt?” Jace asked.

I grinned. “Not my favorite words to hear from a guy while I’m naked.” I couldn’t help it. We’d indulged in innocent flirtation since I was fourteen years old, and just because the “innocent” part no longer strictly applied didn’t mean the habit was dead.

His blue eyes glittered as he set the wet cast on the floor. “I take it that means no?”

“Which you’re obviously used to hearing from naked women…”

“Oh, now you’re just playing dirty.”

My grin widened, and my gaze tracked him as he leaned back to set the scissors on the counter. “I’m trying…”

Jace’s fingers trailed a strand of hair down my back and into the warm water. “Watch out, or I might decide I need a bath, too.”

“It would take a lot more than that to clean you up.”

“Oh? What would you suggest?”

“A bar of soap for your mouth, and a sponge on a ten-foot pole for the rest of you.”

“Ten feet?” Jace eyed me with a mischievous glint. “You flatter me—but not by much.”

We were still laughing when the hotel door creaked open.

“Shit!” I whispered, and Jace stood so fast I thought he’d slip on the wet floor. My heart thumped so hard I swear the bathwater rippled with each beat. I hadn’t heard the car pull up. Or maybe I had. Several had come and gone since Marc had left, and I’d stopped paying attention.