Kaci

“So, I’ve been thinking,” I said as Justus opened the hotel room door. “Maybe I went about things the wrong way yesterday. With Ed Taylor.”

“Just a sec.” He turned to the waiter standing in the hall with a full tray. “Come on in, man. You can just set it on the table.”

The waiter set the tray down, and my stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before, except a few bites of dessert, because I drew the line at eating cake off the floor.

Justus took the padded black folder, and while he signed the breakfast bill, the waiter’s gaze dropped to the carpet at the foot of the bed. Where twin chocolate and raspberry smears stained the carpet. Then he picked up last night’s tray, where the misshapen remainders of our dessert had been scooped back onto their original plates. He glanced up at me with an arched brow.

I could feel my cheeks burn. “We had a little accident.”

Justus laughed as he set the bill on the used tray and handed it to the waiter. “What did you mean about Taylor?” He asked as he bolted the door behind the waiter.

I sat at the table and pulled the dome from the first plate. Waffle-scented steam puffed out at me, and it took a conscious effort not to moan with pleasure. I really like to eat. “I mean, instead of asking him to vote for your acquittal just because that’s the right thing to do, maybe we should show him that he can’t afford to find you guilty.”

Justus pulled out the chair across from me and sank into it. “And how would that be true?” He uncovered the other plate, and his western omelet smelled so good I almost regretted ordering in favor of carbs.

“Well, the best thing I’ve come up with so far is that if he votes in your favor, he could be regaining the council power alliance he lost when he got pissy because Abby choose Jace over his son.”

“You’re going to have to walk me through that one.”

“He’s said he’s open to acknowledging the Mississippi Valley Pride, right?” I said as I poured syrup over my big, fluffy Belgian waffle. “If that happens, Titus will be a council member. Which means that for the first time in the history of this country, there will be eleven Alphas, rather than ten.” I cut a bite with my fork and gestured with it. “That’s an odd number. There will never be another tied vote. And the best way for Taylor to make sure he’s on the side that wins is to make friends with the tie-breaking vote.”

“Titus.” Justus looks impressed. “And there’s no better way to do that than by voting not to execute his little brother.”

“Exactly,” I said around my first bite.

He shook a bottle of Tabasco over his omelet. “Do you think he’ll go for that?”

I frowned at his breakfast. “You didn’t even taste that before you put hot sauce on it.”

“You didn’t taste your waffle before you put syrup on it.”

“But syrup goes on waffles.”

“And hot sauce goes on eggs.” He looked right at me and shoveled a huge, spicy bite into his mouth. “Are you going to criticize my breakfast or answer the question?”

“I don’t really see that as an either/or scenario,” I said as I broke a strip of bacon in two. “But I think Taylor will go for it. That unofficial alliance will give him a very real advantage.” I ate one half of the bacon and gestured with the other half. “Titus will clearly be allied with Faythe and Marc, who share a vote, with Rick Wade, and with Bert Di Carlo. And probably with Isaac Wade, through his connections to both Rick—his dad, who’s also the council chair—and Jace—his brother-in-law. That’s five out of eleven Alphas. With Taylor as the sixth, they have a majority vote, and they’ll be able to push through any agenda they want. Unfortunately, the same would be true on the other side, should he ally with the other five Alphas.”

“Are they split that evenly on everything?”

“No, fortunately. Blackwell tends to align with Milo Mitchell, Nick Davidson, and Wes Gardner. But Ed Taylor and Jerold Pierce are issues voters.” I shrugged as I cut another bite. “Not that the others aren’t. They just tend to agree with their allies on the issues. But my point is that if Taylor aligns himself with the Blackwell camp, they’ll lose every time Pierce’s swing vote swings the other way.”

“Wow. Shifter politics makes D.C. look like playtime.”

I spoke around my bite. “I know nothing about human politics.”

“I started watching the news for a government class my first semester in college, and it was like digging a hole until you realize you’re too deep to climb out. So, you keep digging deeper, hoping you’ll find something buried in the sludge to make the effort worth it, but all you get is…filthy.”

“That’s depressing. But yeah, sounds about like Shifter politics. There’s one big difference, though. In the justice system, at least.” I dipped my last bite of bacon in syrup, then ate it.

“And that would be?” Justus watched, amused, while I chewed furiously, holding up one “wait a minute” finger.

Then I made him wait a little longer while I washed the bacon down with half my orange juice. “In the shifter justice system, you’re presumed guilty until proven innocent. Which means the burden of proof is on the accused.”

“What does that mean for me, in terms of the trial?”

“I’m not sure. I guess we should call Michael Sanders. Faythe’s brother. He’s an attorney. You don’t really have the right to an attorney in front of the tribunal. At least, not the same way you would in a human courtroom. But he’ll probably get to stay with you, to advise you.”

Justus swallowed his last bite of omelet and set his fork on his plate. “Yeah, I was supposed to have a meeting with him, so he could prep me.”

“When was that?”

“Yesterday.”

I groaned. “That would have been good to know. Maybe we can reschedule. This probably counts as an emergency situation.”

“You really think fleeing to Las Vegas counts as an emergency?”

I shrugged as I plucked my phone from my pocket. “I think I can spin it that way.” And frankly, I was pleased that he was even willing to discuss actually standing trial. I pulled up Michael’s contact information and tapped his phone number. He answered on the second ring.

“Hello? Kaci?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“I hear you’re having a bit of an adventure.”

For a second, I thought he was being condescending. Then I realized it was probably perfectly reasonable to characterize a trip that includes two stolen cars and being chased through the lobby of Caesar’s Palace as an adventure. “Yeah, I guess. I just wanted a vacation, but you gotta roll with the punches, you know?”

He laughed. “Is Justus there with you?”

“Yeah. That’s actually why I’m calling.”

“Tell him he’s eighteen hours late for his appointment. If I didn’t already have today off, I wouldn’t be free for what I assume is an emergency phone consultation?”

“How’d you guess?”

“I remember falling in love with Holly. If I’d had to choose between standing trial for my life or running off with her, I might have done the same thing.”

Falling in…

I glanced across the table at Justus, and he only smiled at me. Unflinchingly. Totally not denying that he was falling in love with me. Which usually happens before anyone buys a ring.

“Okay. Anyway…” I put my phone on speaker mode and set it on the table between us. “Justus is kind of considering actually showing up for his trial—”

Michael snorted. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“—and we have a few questions. So, the randomly drawn tribunal members are Blackwell, Di Carlo, and Taylor. You know more about them than I do. How do you feel about that draw? How tough will this actually be?”

“It’s a decent draw. Blackwell’s a lost cause, but Bert Di Carlo will be a pretty friendly face. Taylor’s your real challenge.”

“That’s what Kaci said,” Justus told him with a wink at me.

“She’s a smart girl.”

“Not that I don’t love the flattery, but we’re kind of in a time crunch here. The trial’s in five days—I assume you’ve heard—and two sets of enforcers are looking for us. So, what we really need to know is, how can we get Taylor to find Justus innocent?”

“Well, he’s not innocent, strictly speaking,” Michael said. “From what I understand, he’s already admitted to what he did, and there are witnesses, at least in Drew’s death.”

“Robyn and Titus,” Justus said. “But they’ll both testify on my behalf.” Yet I could tell from his frown that he still didn’t want to involve his brother.

“Yes, but unless they’re willing to lie, that won’t help. And if they are willing to lie, we can’t use them. An Alpha lying under oath will do way more harm than good. To both of you. The goal here is to find a way to present the truth—always the truth—in a way that will exonerate Justus. Absolve him of blame for what he admits he did.”

“Then what do you suggest?” I asked.

“We need to give the tribunal a reason to find Justus’s actions justified. Then he can be found innocent by reason of…something. Traumatic stress. Temporary mental incapacity. Whatever the circumstance actually was.”

“I’m not mentally incapacitated,” Justus growled.

“That just means that in the moment you committed the crime, your understanding of right and wrong was overruled by some other factor that was beyond your control,” Michael explained. “But it has to be something sympathetic. It can’t just be that you were so mad your anger overtook your ability to reason. That, we just call murder.”

“Drew deserved what he got,” I told Michael. “If they’ll just listen to Justus, they’ll understand that.”

“Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean no crime was committed. The problem is that even if the council would undeniably have voted to execute Drew, Justus didn’t have the authority to do that on his own. Not only did he commit murder, he deprived the council of the opportunity to do its job. He essentially usurped their authority, and that’s probably going to stick in their collective craw.”

“That wasn’t my intent,” Justus said. “I wasn’t thinking about the council when I killed Drew. I didn’t even know it existed.”

“I know. Fortunately, there’s another way this could work out. They could find you guilty, but have a justifiable reason to go easy on you. Which would give them a chance to save face, without ignoring the relevant extenuating circumstances.”

Justus exhaled, staring at my phone. “How easy on me are we talking?”

“Probation, ideally. Or supervised training. Or even house-restriction, if it’s in friendly quarters.”

“And how do we make that happen?”

Michael sighed. “You two need to understand that none of this is a guarantee. In fact, it’s all a long shot. Deep down, several members of the council believe that strays are inherently more violent and less prone to civilizing influences than natural-born cats, and that’s what they’re going to see when they look at Justus. No matter how he answers their questions. They’re going to view this as further proof of the beliefs they cling to, because they can’t think of themselves as the ‘good’ guys unless they have some other portion of society to point out as ‘bad.’”

“But Taylor claims he doesn’t believe that,” I told Michael. “He said he thinks that accepting strays as citizens is inevitable.”

“That’s not exactly the same as saying that’s how he thinks it should be. You’re going to have to hold his feet to the fire. Remind him of his responsibility to vote his conscience, then give him no excuse not to.”

“Okay.” But I wasn’t quite sure how to do that yet. “Thanks, Michael.”

“You’re welcome. And Kaci?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t tell you to come home. You broke the law, and the longer you run, the worse that looks.”

“Are they going to charge her with anything?” Justus’s forehead furrowed with concern for me.

“They have grounds to charge her with trespassing and theft, but I haven’t caught wind of any actual plans to do that. Though, I’m not on the council, so I probably wouldn’t hear about that unless someone asks for legal advice.”

“Okay. Thanks, again Michael.”

“Wait, before you go, may I ask what your plans are?”

“Umm…” I took him off speaker and held the phone to my ear. Not that Justus couldn’t hear him like that. The conversation just felt more personal that way. “We’re still discussing it.” I stood and began stuffing my pajamas into my backpack. “Faythe said she thinks that if he runs, they’ll let him go. But if I go with him, they’ll chase us. Do you agree?”

“Yes. Look, I know this isn’t what you two want to hear, but the best thing you can do is go home, wait for the trial, and take whatever you have coming for trespassing. That’s not a capital offense. It could just be a slap on the wrist.”

“Okay. Thanks for the advice. I gotta go.”

“I know. Love you, kiddo.”

“I’m not a kid. But I love you too.” I hung up my phone and slid it into my back pocket, and when I looked up, I found Justus staring at me. “What?”

“Did Faythe really say that?”

“Yeah.” I sank onto the end of the unmade bed, careful not to step on the raspberry carpet stain. “I wouldn’t blame you if you still want to go. But that’s why I can’t go with you.”

“You’re coming with me, or I’m not going. I’m never leaving you again, Kaci.” He took my hand and pulled me up until I stood wrapped in his arms. My head on his shoulder. Breathing him in. My heart felt…swollen. Too big for my body. “Maybe we should take our time today. We’re still eight hours from Denver. That gives us most of the day to figure out what to do before we have to make a decision.”

“Well, we only have two choices,” I said into his shirt. “Fly out of Denver—we’ll be in the free zone until right before we cross the city limits, remember?”

He nodded, and the stubble on his chin caught in my hair.

“Or head south through the free zone and cross directly into the South-Central territory. If we’re caught there, they’ll take us back to the ranch. If we’re caught in any other territory, they don’t have to turn us over to Faythe and Marc. At least, not without some negotiating. Crossing shifter territorial boundaries isn’t like crossing from one state into another. Alphas are an absolute authority, as long as they don’t violate the council’s rules. Tensions can run thick.”

“So I hear. Okay, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait.” I stepped out of his embrace. “I want to call Ed Taylor again, after what Michael told us.”

Justus looked skeptical. “Okay. I’ll finish up in here.”

While I called Taylor, he checked the bathroom, to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind. This time, the phone only rang once.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Taylor, it’s me again.”

“Hi, Kaci. What can I do for you today?” He sounded oddly chipper for someone I’d threatened during our last phone call. He must have been pretty confident that he could find a reasonable excuse to find Justus guilty.

But I could sound chipper and confident too. “Really, it’s what I can do for you.”

“And what is that?”

“I’m going to help you vote your conscience.”

“I wasn’t aware that I needed help with that, but I’m listening. How do you plan to help?”

I sank back onto the edge of the bed. “To get to that answer, first let me ask you a question: What would it take for you to believe that Justus deserves to be acquitted?”

“Well, I’m not sure…”

“Please don’t say you can’t imagine a scenario in which he’d deserve to be acquitted, Mr. Taylor. Because that would make it sound like you’ve made up your mind about him before the trial even starts. And I’m sure that’s not the case.”

He chuckled. “Kaci, have you ever considered becoming an attorney?”

“You know, I just might. So. What would you need to see or hear to convince you that Drew Borden’s death was justified?”

“I would need to hear that his execution had been ordered by the council—which I know for a fact did not happen—and that the circumstances were too dire to justify carrying out his execution in a more secluded place.”

“Okay. Thanks. And on the lesser charges? Infection?”

“Kaci, those are not lesser charges. It’s a capital offense to infect a human. Especially a woman, because infecting a human woman has always led to her death. Well, until Robyn, anyway.”

“Yes, but surely you don’t think he can be held responsible for infecting people, when he didn’t even know that was a possibility?”

“Ideally, we’d like proof that he didn’t realize that scratching or biting spreads the werecat infection. It’s unfortunate for Justus—or perhaps convenient?—that the one man who could testify to that has died. At Justus’s hands. Er…jaws.”

“I can assure you that is not convenient,” Justus said from the bathroom, where he’d been staring into the tub for far longer than it should have taken to make sure I hadn’t forgotten my shampoo.

“However,” Taylor continued, and I couldn’t tell whether or not he’d heard Justus. “I, personally, would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that for the first three cases of infection. The ones that happened at the cabin, where he was evidently manipulated into going.”

“He wasn’t just manipulated. Drew infected him on purpose, then sicced him on his girlfriend and her real boyfriend. He created a weapon, then he unleashed it, with a very specific and destructive purpose. Justus was a victim in that.”

“Like I said, I think he could make an effective argument to that effect—as you just did—for the first three cases. But that fourth infection. The kid at the party? Justus would need to prove that he was still acting involuntarily, even though he was evidently sane and reasonable enough to carry on his normal human life between the two incidents.”

“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”

“I’m glad I could help.” Though he didn’t sound entirely sure about that. “And I look forward to seeing you and Justus both at his trial.”

“Uh huh,” I said, in as non-committal a tone as I could muster. In case Justus still decided to run. “Bye.” I hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment, processing.

“Learn anything helpful?” Justus closed the bathroom door and glanced around the rest of the hotel room.

“I assume you heard the whole conversation?”

“Yup.” He grabbed my hairbrush from the top of the dresser and dropped it into my backpack. “But I suspect you and I processed that information pretty differently.”

“Probably.” I zipped up my backpack and tossed it over my shoulder. “So, what happened with the last guy you infected? If we’ve talked about that part, it’s been lost to the dark, dark abyss of the other night.”

Justus picked up his duffle, evidently satisfied that we hadn’t left anything behind. “Exactly how every groom dreams his bride will describe their wedding night.”

I laughed as I stepped into the hall and held the door open for him. And as I took his hand, I realized I hadn’t laughed so much with anyone in my life, other than little Greg. And toddlers don’t count. They’re all adorable.

“That guy’s name was Elliott Belcher.” At the end of the hall, Justus pushed the elevator call button, and it opened immediately. “I didn’t know him, and I only met him briefly at Titus’s house, after everything went down. He’s a member of the Mississippi Valley Pride now, and Titus says he’s doing great.”

The elevator doors slid shut, and I pressed the L button. “How’d you wind up infecting him?”

“I didn’t mean to. I was at this after-hours party at a museum, trying to get drunk.” I arched both brows at him, and he rolled his eyes. “I know, I know. But I had no idea what was happening to me. Every shift into cat form that I’d made had been involuntary. I’d figured out how to shift back, but not why it was happening in the first place, or how to stop it. Drinking was the only thing that still made sense. Only it was suddenly super hard to achieve a buzz.”

The elevator slid slowly down from the fourth floor, and I glanced at our reflections on the mirrored wall. He had one arm around my waist, his gorgeous gray eyes totally trained on me, and we looked fucking adorable together.

“So, I was at this museum party, finally actually starting to feel the vodka, and this song started playing. I can’t even remember what song it was now, but the moment I heard it, I started flashing back to the woods. To what happened at the cabin with Ivy and her…boyfriend. They must have been playing that song in the cabin, or something, because hearing it triggered a shift.

“I ran out, with my hand shoved into my pockets so no one could see that my nails were turning into claws. Everyone seemed to think I was going to puke—I’d had half a bottle on my own by then. I wound up in the alley behind the museum, hidden by the trash bin, and there was nothing I could do but let it happen.”

“Right there in the middle of Jackson?”

“Yeah. It was kind of terrifying. Anyway, when it was finally over, I stood up and had to pull what was left of my clothes off with my teeth, you know?”

I did know. The same thing had happened to me with my very first shift. The one I hadn’t known was coming.

“That’s a very surreal moment, when you’re shaped like a cat, but you’re still wearing human clothes, and suddenly you don’t seem to fit into either world.”

“Exactly. I remember that.”

The doors slid open, and we stepped into an empty hallway at the back of the lobby, but Justus lowered his voice, just in case. “Anyway, I was just going to hide there until I’d regained enough strength to shift back. But then this guy came around the corner of the Dumpster. It was Elliott, and he was puking. He didn’t notice me until he was done. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was boxed in by a fence, the building, the trash bin, and him. And I was still a little drunk. Then he got scared and grabbed this long board sticking out of the Dumpster. He started swinging it at me. There were nails sticking out of the end, and he actually grazed me.”

Justus pushed up his short sleeve to show me a thin white scar on his left shoulder. “So, I swiped at him. I didn’t even think about it. I mean, there was no human thought process, like, ‘What should I do now?’ My paw just shot out, and I smacked him. I didn’t even realize I’d actually scratched him until I met him in the basement of Titus’s pool house.”

“Then there was no malice,” I summed up in a whisper, running my finger over his scar. “You were acting in self-defense, and you had no idea you could infect anyone. Do you think Elliott would testify to that?”

Justus shrugged. “I have no idea what he remembers.”

“Well, we could call your brother and ask to talk to him.” I glanced at the front of the lobby, then at the door leading to the lot in back, where we were parked. “Why don’t you check us out, and I’ll bring the car around front. It’s my turn to drive.”

“You’re not old enough to drive a rental,” he teased.

“Neither are you. Give me the keys.”

He gave me the keys and a kiss. I lifted his duffle off his shoulder and hung it over my own, opposite my backpack. “See you in a minute.” Then I headed out the back door, while he went toward the lobby.

In the parking lot, I popped the trunk with the button on the key fob and dropped our bags inside. Then I slammed the trunk and looked up—

Someone grabbed me around the waist. I opened my mouth to scream, and a hand clamped over my mouth. Panicked, I inhaled through my nose and instantly recognized the scent of the hands that held me.

Jared lifted me off the ground, and I kicked and thrashed, and though my shoes slammed into his shins a dozen times, he never even flinched. He just shoved me head-first into the open back seat of his car, then slammed the door.

One glance told me it was the very car we’d stolen and left for him in the parking lot of the fast food taco place, only since then, he’d screwed a rough-cut plexiglas panel into the backs of the front seats, separating me from him like a cab driver from his customers.

I pulled on the door handle, but nothing happened.

“Child safety locks,” he said as he slid into his seat behind the wheel. The passenger seat next to him was filled with a large, unmarked cardboard box.

“I can pull the handles right off,” I threatened.

“Yes, you probably can.” He shoved his key into the ignition and started the car, then backed smoothly out of the parking spot. “And that will get you into a lot more trouble. But it won’t get you out of this car. So buckle up.”

“Let me out!” I yelled, as close to his ear as I could get.

“Shout all you want.” He shoved something small and green into his left ear—an ear plug. “But if you do anything to wreck this car and either of us gets hurt, the Southwest Pride is fully prepared to charge you with reckless endangerment.”

“You stupid son of a bitch, you have no right—”

Jared took the curve around to the front of the parking lot too fast, and I had to grab the door handle to keep from falling over. As we pulled out onto the street, I turned to bang on the rear windshield, shouting Justus’s name. I could see him through the front window of the hotel, paying for our incidental charges. I shouted as hard as I could, but there was too much distance between us. Too many doors and windows.

“Say goodbye,” Jared taunted. “The next time you see your poor groom will be at his execution.”