Justus

Letting Kaci walk out that door was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. Harder than leaving behind everything I’d ever owned and every friend I’d ever had. Harder, somehow, than preparing to say goodbye to my brother forever, via text.

Yet not as hard as seeing her take off that ring. All because of a bottle of vodka.

She was right. Alcohol was the devil.

But there was nothing to do now except put her out of my head. So I exhaled all things Kaci Dillon, double checked the room to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and hooked my duffle over my shoulder on my way out the door.

By some miracle, the elevator was empty, which left me nothing to do during the ride down but think about her. Which was why I thought I was hallucinating when the doors slid open in the lobby and Kaci was standing right in front of them.

Her eyes widened when she saw me. She grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the elevator to the immediate right. Behind a pillar.

“I was afraid you’d be coming down in one elevator while I went back up in another,” she whispered fiercely, peeking out at the lobby from behind the pillar.

“I’m right here. What’s wrong?”

“Enforcers.” She pointed, and I followed her finger to where Vic stood near the main entrance, talking to Chris. “They haven’t caught my scent yet, but they know we’re here, and I heard Vic ask someone over the phone if he’d made it to the airport yet. You’re not going to make your flight. We’ll be lucky if we make it out of the hotel without an enforcer escort.”

“We?” I couldn’t resist a smile, despite the very real sense of urgency.

Kaci rolled her eyes. “I’m still going back to the ranch. But I told you I’d help you get out of the country, and I keep my promises.”

“Maybe this is a bad time to point this out, but last night you promised to love, honor, and cherish.”

“One more word, and I swear I’ll punch you.” She glanced at the ring on her finger in sudden fascination. “I’m guessing this thing would leave one hell of a mark.”

“Am I allowed to comment on the fact that you’re still wearing it?”

“Rumor has it this rock is worth eight grand. Which makes it the most valuable thing I own by about six thousand dollars. Like I’m going to take that off before I figure out what to do with it.”

“Now who’s married for the money?” I teased her.

She gave me a low-pitched growl, still watching Vic and Chris from behind the pillar. “We are not married.” Then she grabbed my arm and started running. “Come on!”

Though every instinct I had said our best escape plan did not include barreling through the lobby of Caesar’s Palace at full speed, dodging women in four-inch heels and families full of bored kids staring at iPad screens, I had little choice but to hang on tight and follow her.

Now that I had her back, I wasn’t letting her go again.

I glanced around the lobby as we ran, hoping that Vic and Chris had left, and that was why Kaci had decided to make a run for it. Alas, they’d only wandered over to the concierge, probably to show pictures of their “missing little sister,” or whoever they would tell people Kaci was.

Because even if she was a man-eater, she was their man-eater.

Though I felt bad about that thought as soon as I’d had it. Marc and Faythe loved her like a daughter. Vic loved her like a sister. It was mostly the younger generation of enforcers who’d turned out to be whiny, thoughtless assholes.

We were halfway to the entrance when the echo of our pounding steps caught Vic’s attention, and he turned. Then he grabbed Chris by the arm and pointed straight at us.

“Come on!” Kaci breathed, too softly for any of the nearby humans to hear.

I kicked in more speed and suddenly I was pulling her.

“Jared!” Vic shouted, as footsteps pounded across the lobby toward us, and I had an instant to wonder who he was shouting at. Then a large man in a black t-shirt and jeans—enforcer clothes—stepped right into our path.

Kaci squealed, startled as she skidded to a stop in front of him, and he grabbed her arm. “Be smart, kitten,” he growled, too low for anyone else to hear.

“If I scream, you go to jail,” she whispered, staring up at him as if he were nothing more substantial than a shadow in her path. Her nerve was kind of awesome.

“You won’t do that. You’re in the wrong here, and you scared Faythe to death.”

“Let. Her. Go,” I growled, and several people turned to look. Because I had not yet mastered the art of speaking beneath the human range of hearing.

“You’re in enough trouble already.” Vic stepped up to my right side. Chris hemmed me in on the left, and suddenly our only way out became a very public scene, after which the police would probably discover my fake ID. And arrest me.

“Miss, is everything okay?” a security guard asked as he approached.

Kaci looked right at me. I shook my head, but the determined light in her eyes refused to die. So I was surprised when she said, “Yes.” Then she jerked her arm from Jared’s grip and he had no choice but to let her. “My brother’s being a bit of an ass. But I’m fine.”

“Come on, sis.” Jared gestured toward the front door, and Kaci and I were escorted back through Caesar’s Palace toward the parking garage, passing restaurants, gambling floors, and shops, by a very conspicuous team of three identically dressed werecat enforcers.

People probably thought hotel security had caught us counting cards.

Jared led us into the garage, and the moment we were out of sight of security, he grabbed Kaci’s arm again.

“Southwest Pride?” I asked, my voice echoing over an expanse of parked cars, and he nodded. “How’d you know we were here?”

“We triggered the LoJack in Chris’s car,” Vic said. “When we realized it was at the airport, we checked outgoing flights and alerted Alphas in all of those territories.”

“We have two Pride members living in Vegas,” Jared added. “The moment we heard you might be out here, we started circulating your picture. A poker dealer at Caesar’s recognized you in a matter of hours. They don’t get many guys your age betting six figures in a single hand.”

“Huh.” I shrugged, reluctantly impressed. “Good work.”

Vic snorted. “You, I get,” he said. “You’re young and stupid, and facing trial. But you?” He tapped Kaci’s shoulder. “How’d he get you to go along with this?”

She shrugged. “That was my idea. I’ve never been to Vegas.”

“What the hell is there to do here, for a kid?”

“Oh, fuck.” Jared stopped walking and grabbed her left hand. “Look at this shit.”

Vic gaped at the ring. “Kaci…” Then he turned and grabbed me by the throat so fast I never even saw it coming. He slammed me into a concrete pillar between two cars, and the force was like a sledgehammer swung at my skull, even though he was using his left hand. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“Nothing!” Kaci jerked free of Jared and pulled on Vic’s arm, while I focused on bringing my double vision back together. “Let him go.”

Vic turned to her, his fist tight around my trachea, and it took every bit of self-control I had to remain perfectly still. Because if I’d learned anything about dealing with angry cats who outrank me, it was do not make things worse. “Is that thing real?” he demanded.

She frowned at the ring. “Yeah, it’s, like, a full carat, I think.”

“Not the diamond,” Vic growled. “The wedding. Did you really marry this little prick?”

Twenty-four hours ago, he’d been giving me advice like a friend, and now he was calling me names. Not that I could blame him.

“I know a guy who can undo this in forty-eight hours.” Jared grabbed Kaci’s arm again. “No one even has to know. You take him in your car, I’ll take her, and we’ll meet—”

“No!” Kaci shouted as he started hauling her away from me. And that was all I could take.

I grabbed Vic’s left wrist and twisted as hard and as fast as I could. His bones cracked as they broke, yet his fingernails still drew blood as I ripped his hand from throat.

“Fuck,” Vic muttered through clenched teeth as he clutched his broken wrist to his chest. “Chris.”

Chris came at me, and I spun on one foot, then kicked him in the chest with the other. He flew backward several feet and landed on his ass on the trunk of a car across the aisle, more stunned than hurt. By some miracle, the car had no alarm.

“Let her go,” I growled.

Jared froze. Kaci gaped at me.

“Son of a bitch.” Vic glanced from me to Kaci, then back, still holding his wrist above the level of his heart, to slow the swelling. I could read pain in the tension in his jaw, but none of that bled through into his voice. “Justus, think this through. We didn’t know you could fight. That was our mistake, but we know now. There are three of us. We can take you down if we have to, but not without hurting you. And no one wants that.” He glanced at Kaci, and I followed her gaze to see pure terror in her eyes.

She was afraid they would hurt me.

“Especially your new bride,” Vic added. “So why don’t you make this easy on everyone and just get in the car.”

“Fine,” I growled. “But she and I go in the same car, or I break every bone I can before you take me down.”

“No,” Jared barked.

Vic rolled his eyes at the Southwest enforcer. “Yes. Be smart, man. They’re already married, and he’s clearly not going to hurt her.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I wasn’t sure he knew how sincerely I meant that until he gave me a solemn nod.

“Not gonna lie, kid,” Vic said. “You two messed things up pretty bad.”

Kaci huffed. “There’s no rule against us getting married.”

“But there is a rule against either of you coming into the Southwest Territory without permission from both your Alpha and mine,” Jared insisted. “If Blackwell presses charges, that’s one count for you, and one more in a long list for your new husband.”

“Let her go,” I growled again, but Jared only stared right at me without releasing Kaci’s arm.

“Let her go, man,” Vic snapped. “We’ve got them. There’s no need to make this any worse than it is.”

“Fine.” Jared glared down at her. “You better not run.”

“She’s not going anywhere without him,” Chris said with a nod at me. And the fact that even he could see that made me feel oddly optimistic about my new marriage, in spite of the fact that my bride was desperate for an annulment, and we were being taken into custody and charged with trespassing—a very serious offense in shifter circles, where territorial boundaries meant much more than the lines on a map would suggest.

“Sorry about your wrist, man,” I said as Vic and Chris escorted me toward the car behind Jared and Kaci, who now walked on her own.

Vic shrugged. “Occupational hazard. Gotta say, I’m impressed. I had you pegged for a rich college boy who never got his hands dirty.”

“You had me pegged right,” I admitted. “If you add ten years of private MMA training to that. Which, incidentally, shifter strength has greatly enhanced.”

Jared stopped next to a clean, ten-year-old Honda Civic, in a horrible, outdated shade of blue, and opened the back door. “Get in,” he growled at me.

“Her first.” I was half convinced that if I got in, he’d slam the door on me, then put her in another car.

Instead, he opened the front passenger door for her.

Kaci sat up front, and I slid into the seat behind her. “I don’t think he likes me,” I leaned forward to whisper into her hair.

She snorted. “Picked up on that, did you?”

Jared slammed my door, then Kaci’s, and as he walked around the vehicle, he pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’m calling this in,” he told Vic over the roof of the car. Then he opened the driver’s side door, because it was one hundred and ten degrees in Vegas in the summer. Even in the parking garage, shielded from direct sunlight.

Vic was already on his phone, and with the door open, I could hear both conversations, but I tuned out Jared’s to focus on what Vic was saying to Marc. “Yeah, we got ‘em, but things are…complicated.”

I couldn’t make out Marc’s reply.

“Her left hand’s sporting a piece of ice big enough to sink the Titanic, and he’s exhibiting telltale but disproportionately violent behavior in her defense.” He paused. “Bastard broke my wrist.”

The only part of that I disagreed with was “disproportionately.”

I was concentrating so hard that it took me a second to notice that Kaci was subtly, slowly inching her way toward the driver’s side of the car. Over the central console.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

She glanced at me in the rearview mirror and pressed one finger to her lips. Then she lifted her other leg over the console and sank into the driver’s seat.

Kaci took a deep, silent breath. Then she leaned out of the car and snatched the key ring dangling from Jared’s hand, so fast my eyes couldn’t follow the motion.

“What the—?” He spun around, still on his phone, as she slammed the driver’s side door and poked the lock button. “Kaci!” he shouted. “Open the door!”

Instead, she shoved the key into the ignition, shifted into gear, and backed out of the tight parking space as if she’d been born driving in reverse.

“What are you doing?” I repeated.

“Kaci!” Jared dropped his phone and pounded on the door as she shifted into DRIVE. Then she took off through the garage, way too fast, following the signs marked EXIT.

I twisted in the backseat to see Chris sliding behind the steering wheel of his rental car, while Jared and Vic spoke frantically into their phones.

“Escaping.”

“Well, you better escape faster, because they’re coming after us.”

Through the rear windshield, I watched Vic sink onto the front passenger’s seat next to Chris, but Jared was still pounding on one of the rear windows, while the other two seemed to be trying to figure out how to unlock his door. My guess was that they’d engaged the child safety locks, in anticipation of having Kaci and me in the back seat.

Kaci slammed her foot on the gas again and we spun around a curve in the garage, heading downhill. Then we shot out into the parking lot and headed left, toward the road.

I sank into the center of the back bench seat, staring at her in the rearview mirror. “You just stole a car.”

“It wasn’t my first time.” She shrugged as she took the next left, and traffic thinned out a little. “They won’t report it. We don’t take shifter business to the police.”

“Yeah, but the council will be pissed.”

Another shrug. “What are they going to do? Ground me? I never leave home anyway.”

“They could declaw you. Or lock you up.” My blood boiled at just the thought.

“Nah. Those are only for capital crimes. Which means I have nothing to lose by helping you get out of the country.” She took the next right, a little too fast. “Can you come up here and navigate, though? I’m totally winging this, and I have no idea where I’m going.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror again but saw no sign of Chris’s rental car, so I climbed over the center console, careful not to elbow her in the head, and pulled my cell from my pocket. “Where are we going?” I asked as I opened the map app.

“I don’t know. But we can’t fly out of Vegas. They’ll be watching the airport. Can you exchange your ticket for a flight out of another airport without your brother finding out?”

“Should be able to. He doesn’t have access to my frequent flier account. Give me a minute…” I dragged the map around a bit, then started typing. “It’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Los Angeles. We could fly out of LAX.”

“You. Not we,” Kaci said. But she didn’t sound mad anymore, and where I didn’t hear an outright refusal, I chose to see hope. “But if that’s the closest airport, they’ll be watching it too. Try Phoenix.”

I typed some more. “That’s five hours from here. If LA’s too close, won’t Phoenix be too?”

“It would be, if Arizona didn’t take up half of the biggest free zone in the country.”

“What?”

“Which way, Justus? Point me at Phoenix.”

I tapped the directions icon on my phone and set it in the cup holder in the center console. A second later, directions appeared, pointing us toward US highway 93. “I didn’t realize there was a third free zone.”

“Well, there is, kind of, and it’s three times the size of Titus’s Mississippi Valley Territory.”

Though until the council officially recognized Titus’s Pride, everyone on this side of the border still called it the Mississippi free zone.

I frowned at her profile. “What do you mean by kind of?”

“Arizona and a huge swath of land surrounding the Four Corners—Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico—are considered a werecat free zone, and nothing will change that. Because a large part of that land is actually thunderbird territory.”

“Holy shit. Seriously? So we’ll be trading werecat enforcers for giant birds who pluck people from the ground like flying monkeys?”

Kaci laughed. “Not exactly. Unless something’s changed since I was kidnapped, the thunderbirds are based just east of Alamogordo, New Mexico. About four hours south of Santa Fe. Which means that Phoenix is pretty much a best case scenario for us.” She put on her blinker and merged smoothly onto the highway. “The council has no manpower or infrastructure in place in the western free zone. Thunderbirds keep the stray cat population down out there, and they do patrol the skies at night, but unless we get close to their nest or attack one of them, they should leave us alone.”

“And you think we’ll be safe there?”

“No.” Kaci glanced in the rearview mirror, then eased her foot off the gas a little. “We won’t be safe until you’re out of the country. But the Council doesn’t know for sure where we’re going, so they’ll have to split up their manpower to cover all their bases. Even if they send someone to Phoenix—and that’ll probably be Vic, Jared, and Chris, since they’re closest—we have a head start on them. And they still have to do something about Vic’s wrist.”

“Okay, but can’t they just fly someone straight to the Phoenix airport to watch for us?”

Kaci scowled at the highway. “Crap. Yeah, that’s a possibility. They could station a man at every terminal to watch the TSA checkpoints—the bottleneck you’d have to go through. But if they do that at Sky Harbor and LAX, they’ll be using up a lot of manpower, in addition to checking bus terminals and car rental places. Also, eventually TSA will get suspicious of a guy who stands around and never gets on a plane.”

“Shit.” I glanced around Jared’s car, noting the phone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter, a pair of running shoes on the rear floorboard, and the satellite radio receiver stuck to the dashboard with a suction cup. “This isn’t a rental. This is Jared’s personal car, which means he might be able to track it. We have to find another car.”

She shook her head as she smoothly changed lanes again. “We can’t steal from a human, Justus. That’ll get us arrested. We’re going to have to rent one.”

“Won’t work. You can’t rent a car without a credit or a debit card, and Titus is authorized on both of mine.”

“I have a debit card.” She shrugged. ‘I don’t have much money, but it’s probably enough.”

“You have to be twenty-one to rent a car.”

“Are you serious?” Kaci turned angry eyes on the road. “So, eighteen is old enough to vote or to die for your country, but not old enough to drink, or gamble, or rent a fucking car?”

I laughed. “We Americans value our constitutional right to be completely inconsistent and hypocritical.”

“I’m American enough to know that no such right exists in the constitution.”

“It’s in the fine print, spread out across a bunch of different amendments,” I said, but she only growled in response.

“You have to tell the rental place where you’ll be turning the car in, right? So, if we rent a car using your credit card and fake ID, we’ll basically be telling you brother where we are, and where we’re going.”

“Or…we’ll be sending them on a wild goose chase. We could just tell the rental place that we’re driving to Nebraska, or Chicago.”

“Even if your brother believes that, the council won’t. They’ll know that our most likely destinations from Las Vegas are Los Angeles and Phoenix. They’ll expect us to try to throw them off.”

“Okay, so let’s do what no one expects.”

She glanced pointedly at the ring still sitting on her left hand. “Because that worked out so well last time.”

“I think it did. And so could this. If they expect us to head to the nearest airport so I can catch an international flight, let’s do the opposite. Let’s drive for a while. Let’s tell them we’re going to Phoenix, then take a road trip to an airport they wouldn’t expect. Like Denver. That’s an international hub, but it’s also at least a full day’s drive from Vegas.”

Kaci seemed to be thinking about it as she stared at the road. And finally she nodded, then glanced at me with a smile. “A road trip. We’ll be in the free zone right up until we get to Denver, which is on the western border of the Plains Territory, but north of the thickest concentration of thunderbirds. That’s perfect.”

I couldn’t agree more. With stops for food, gas, and sleep, the drive to Denver would give me another full day to convince Kaci that the ring on her finger wasn’t a con. That I wanted the money, but I wanted it for us.

That she shouldn’t just put me on a plane—she should get on a plane with me.