The truth was, Cassa had spilled blood herself. The truth was, once her secrets were revealed, she would die. The Breeds would never allow her to live once they knew the truth. She was lucky that the small team of Breeds who knew the truth had kept their mouths shut all these years.
She slipped past yet another Breed guard. Mordecai. One of their best trackers, rumored to be one of their most merciless Coyote Breeds. On silent feet, she moved slowly through the shadows, along the wet ground, heart racing, mouth dry, until she was a safe distance from him.
The chilly winter air gave no hint that spring was just around the corner. The cold penetrated flesh and bone, but nothing could still the excitement racing through her now. It was working. They hadn’t scented her, they hadn’t sensed her.
God, this couldn’t be possible.
Pressing her back tight to the thick trunk of a pine, she stared up at the moonless sky and whispered a silent prayer that neither one of the Breeds patrolling the area would scent her.
A drug like this could be deadly, just as her source had warned her.
Pushing away from the tree, Cassa skirted around several maples bare of leaves and dripping a chilly rain. She slid through the night.
There was a whisper of voices ahead, the sound of soft footfalls coming nearer. Ducking behind the evergreen shrubs that grew around an enclosed picnic area, she waited for them to pass.
“Are you certain of your information?” Jonas Wyatt’s voice came through the night clearly as the pair grew closer.
“Five dead, Jonas, that’s hard to mistake. Each one was rumored to be a part of a twelve-man hunting party that came together several times a year to hunt down escaped Breeds. Each one was killed in the same manner, using the same pattern. There’s no mistake.”
The voice that answered had Cassa’s heart tripping, then speeding up in awareness. She fought back the response, bit her lip and prayed that little miracle pill would cover the scent of arousal as well.
Cabal St. Laurents had a voice that made women want to melt to the floor in a puddle of orgasmic bliss. It rasped over the senses with a velvet cadence Cassa had never been able to ignore. It was a seducer’s voice, and she had been seduced long ago, even when he’d stared at her with death in his eyes.
“Hell.” Jonas paused, no more than four feet from where she crouched.
As badly as she wanted to peek over the border of shrubs, she didn’t dare. The scent of her body might be masked, but there would be no way in hell she would escape their exceptional eyesight.
“That’s a good description of what we’re facing,” Cabal answered. “It’s not over. The hunters are becoming the prey, and if the first five are any indication, we could be looking at some pretty high-profile individuals. The former mayor that disappeared last week was a well-known individual throughout the nation. We’re looking at a PR nightmare here.”
Cassa felt her mouth dry. The former mayor who had disappeared recently was David Banks, a proponent of Breed rights. He had argued for Breed Law, and had been known to host several charity parties a year in honor of the Breeds. Now he was also rumored to have been a member of a group of men that once hunted Breeds?
She could believe it. She had never liked Banks, but she knew his popularity. His smooth, charming smile and soft-spoken voice had fooled more than one journalist.
“PR is your brother’s area,” Jonas growled. “I’ll let Tanner worry about the sugar coating. I want the killer caught, Cabal. That’s your job.”
Jonas’s voice was commanding, harsh in its reminder. Yes, that was Cabal’s job, to do the things that the more public enforcers couldn’t do.
“It’s hard to do a job when there’s no evidence to go on, Jonas,” Cabal snapped, irritation clear in his voice. “There’s no DNA left on the scene, and no scent. We were notified within hours of the mayor’s disappearance. When we arrived, you could smell the scent of his terror, but the scent of his kidnapper was nowhere to be found.”
“Find something, Cabal,” he was ordered. “We’re working on borrowed time here. If you don’t find the killer before news of these murders, possibly committed by a Breed, leaks to the press, then we’re f**ked.”
“It looks to me as though we’re f**ked either way,” Cabal informed him, his voice cold. “Horace Engalls and Phillip Brandenmore are making certain of that.”
Brandenmore and Engalls, the owners of a pharmaceutical and drug research company, were under indictment for the drugging of the Breed doctor, Elyiana Morrey, and conspiracy to murder in several Breed deaths. They had been caught attempting to buy from her two assistants research conducted by Dr. Morrey, and were rumored to be researching a de-aging phenomenon the Breeds and their wives were supposedly experiencing.
There was no supposition to it. Cassa knew the truth of it. The Breeds were experiencing an aging decrease once they went into mating heat. The phenomenon was making Breed doctors crazy trying to figure it out, and sending the Breed Ruling Cabinet into a frenzy each time the gossip tabloids came up with another angle to tell the story from.
So far, it wasn’t being taken seriously. But that couldn’t continue much longer. It had been eleven years since the Feline Breed alpha had announced the existence of the Breeds. Ten years since he or his wife had aged in any noticeable way.
Cassa was one of the few people who knew the truth, and she knew the consequences of ever writing that story or revealing her knowledge of it. The nondisclosure agreement she had signed, in return for special consideration in interviews and breaking Breed stories, had been frightening. She was certain she might have signed away her soul, her firstborn child and her cat’s blood. Or something close.
“Engalls and Brandenmore are being dealt with,” Jonas drawled, his tone one of pure ice. “I’m more concerned with a rogue Breed’s indiscriminate killings. Find him, Cabal, or we could all be up shit creek without a paddle.”
Cabal grunted at that. “I thought we already were.”
“No, at the moment, we have a paddle,” Jonas informed him sarcastically. “Now find that bastard before he kills again. I’ll be damned if I want to try to clean up another mess like the last one. I’m certain there are still pieces of him missing.”
Cassa forced herself to silence. She had the pictures of that killing, she was certain she did. That one, and three others. Pictures that had been sent via secured, untraceable emails that accused the Breeds of hiding a killer.