Ethan’s left hand brushed my leg, then closed around the back of my knee. He tugged me forward. I leaned back to counter and snapped one cuff over his right wrist. He pulled harder, and I slid onto the mat with my left leg folded beneath me.
My brother tossed his weight over me, and we rolled. His elbow hit my ribs. His skull slammed into my right cheekbone, but I held on to my cuffs. Dizzy now, I stuck one knee out to halt our roll. We stopped with him facedown, me straddling his back again, and this time I didn’t hesitate. I pulled his left arm back and snapped the other cuff closed over his wrist.
Then I stood and backed away, waiting for the sparks. Waiting to gloat as he ranted and raged, demanding to be let loose.
Instead he shook with laughter.
I stared at Ethan for a moment, a little disappointed, then turned when I heard Kaci giggling behind me. “That was awesome!” she yelled, on her feet now, the cocoa forgotten.
“I agree.” Ethan’s words were muffled with half of his face pressed into the mat, and I turned to find him watching me, now lying on his right shoulder. “That was damned impressive.” He smiled, looking almost as pleased as he would have been had our positions been reversed. “But let’s not tell anyone, ‘kay? We’ll keep this a private victory, just between the three of us.”
“No way!” Kaci shouted, grinning so hard her cheeks were flushed with excitement. Or maybe with the cold. “Faythe owns you! I wish I had a camera. Wait till Jace—”
Ethan’s phone rang, Puddle of Mudd singing “She Hates Me.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Whose ring is that?”
He let his head hit the mat. “Angela’s.”
Kaci glanced at the bench press, where two cell phones lay, alongside her hot chocolate and two bottles of water. She picked up his phone and glanced at the display, her eyes shining in mischief. “You want me to tell her you’re all tied up?”
“No!” Ethan shouted, scooting awkwardly across the mat on his side. “Don’t answer it. She wants to ‘talk about our relationship.’ I’ve been dodging her calls all week.”
I rolled my eyes and dug my handcuff key from one side of my sneaker. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell her you’re no longer into white rice? Or that you’re moving to Yemen? Or whatever you tell those poor girls when your attention span turns out to be smaller than your—” I hesitated, censoring myself on Kaci’s behalf “—IQ, and you get bored with them?”
“No.” Ethan went still as I freed his hands, then he sat up, rubbing his wrists as Puddle of Mudd played on. “It’s easier to avoid her calls until she gets the picture on her own. That way, no one gets dumped. Really, I’m doing her a favor.”
“You’re an ass.” I was seriously considering answering his phone myself. But then the ringing stopped, and Kaci dropped the phone onto the padded bench next to mine. “And just for that, I’m not letting you up next time.”
Ethan had barely regained his feet when I rushed him. My shoulder slammed into his chest. I drove him backward onto the mat again, and his breath exploded from his chest in a massive “oof.”
“Yeah!” Kaci shouted, and I twisted to see her standing again, her smile almost as big as mine.
But I shouldn’t have looked.
Ethan grabbed my left shoulder and rolled me over, sitting on my thighs. “So much for a challenge,” he taunted.
I retorted with my fist.
My first blow landed on his ribs, and I shoved him off me. But before I could flip him onto his stomach and go for my cuffs again, more music rang out from the bench next to Kaci.
Papa Roach, singing “Scars.” That was my phone. Marc’s ring.
I was halfway to the bale of hay when something hit my back, fast and hard. I fell face-first onto the mat, Ethan’s weight pinning me.
“You’re too easily distracted,” he scolded. “Are you going to ask the bad guys to stop beating on you for a minute so you can answer your phone?”
I twisted beneath him but couldn’t get any leverage; he’d pinned my arms to my sides. “Get up!” I shouted, as loud as I could with his weight constricting my lungs. “That’s Marc!”
Ethan slid off me reluctantly. “You don’t see me going all starry-eyed when my girlfriend’s on the line,” he huffed.
“You’re not even taking her calls.” I glanced at Kaci and held my right hand up, palm cupped. “Toss it here, please.”
Her aim was good, but mine wasn’t. The phone flew past my hand and landed on the mat behind me. Ethan dove for it, an impish grin lighting his whole face. But I was faster. My fingers closed around the plastic just as his closed around my arm, and I put the phone in my other hand, flipping it open as Ethan groaned in defeat.
The look on his face was so comical that I was laughing when I spoke into the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Faythe? Is that you?” At first I didn’t recognize the voice, either because I was expecting Marc’s, or because the speaker sounded so panicked. But understanding didn’t take long. “This is Daniel Painter.” He huffed into the phone like he’d just run a marathon.
My heart stopped beating for a moment, even as my pulse tripped so fast the surge of adrenaline actually hurt. “What’s wrong?” I shoved Ethan when he tried to snatch the phone from me, still playing around. But my tone froze him in place, and the smile drained from his expression. He glanced at my phone, and I knew he was listening in.
“Marc’s gone, and there are two dead toms in his living room.” Painter’s words all ran together and at first I thought I’d misunderstood him. I must have misunderstood him. “Some of the blood is theirs, but lots of it is his, too….”
There was blood?
My heart seemed to burst within my chest, flooding me with more pain and confusion than I could sort through at once. I fell off my knees onto my rump and could barely feel the mat I sat on. My hands tingled as if they were on hold, waiting to receive signals from my brain, and I was afraid I’d drop the phone.
Painter was still talking in my ear, babbling words I couldn’t understand. Phrases that wouldn’t sink in. Bastards. Dead. Blood. Missing. I could barely hear him over the static in my head, the ambient noise of my own denial.
“Faythe!” Ethan muttered. I blinked and shook my head, then forced my eyes to make sense of his face. “Slow him down. Make him give you the facts.”
Right. The facts.
And just like that, the world hurled itself back into focus around me, the entire barn tilting wildly for a moment before everything seemed to settle with an eerily crisp clarity. I met my brother’s eyes, thanking him wordlessly for the mental face-slap. “Take Kaci upstairs and get Dad. I think he’s in the barn.”
By the time I’d gotten a deep breath, Ethan was on the bottom step, one hand beckoning Kaci to follow him, the other flipping open his own phone, because he could call the barn much faster than he could get there, even with a werecat’s speed.
“Faythe?” Dan was shouting now and I took a moment to be grateful that I got a strong signal in our basement. “Are you there?”
“I’m here. Calm down and explain it to me slowly.” I stood, and almost lost my balance when one foot hit the concrete floor and the other sank into the thick mat. “Marc is gone, but you smell his blood. Is that right?”
“It’s everywhere,”