Mateo shrugged. “Honestly, though, I don’t think we’re going to need them. It doesn’t make any sense for Darren to strike us at the lodge. That’s the best-defended spot in the whole territory. It doesn’t fit his MO.”
“No, it doesn’t.” The hunters had only taken stragglers before. Lone strays. Our enforcer Leo on vacation, when he’d had no backup or partner. The most daring thing they’d tried so far was the attempt to catch Abby in the woods. They’d been willing to dispense with her human friends in the process, but they’d brought three armed hunters in order to kill one small tabby.
It made no sense that Darren would be willing to charge into the Appalachian Pride capital—a property crawling with large, angry enforcers—by himself.
“Did Hargrove actually say Darren is going after Melody?” Teo asked, his focus skipping from photo to photo taped up on the wall.
“He said they were going after ‘the other tabby.’ That has to be Melody. There are no other tabbies in the Appalachian Territory. Or within driving distance in any of the other territories.” I frowned, going over what he’d said word by word. “But that doesn’t make any sense either, because he said we’d left her undefended. Actually, he said we’d left ‘them’ undefended, but Abby’s the only tabby who hasn’t had round-the-clock protection in years.” And if I could go back and change that, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
“So, Darren’s going after a tabby he thinks is undefended, but we don’t know for sure that Melody’s the one he’s after?”
I nodded, though that made little sense.
“Wait.” I spun to face the rest of the underground room. “He said they’d taken pictures of both of the tabbies, and that they’d never seen a single tomcat in all that time.”
“But these pictures are all of Abby.”
“I know. There must be more somewhere.” I crossed the room pulled open the top filing cabinet drawer, then started thumbing through the three hanging folders. They held nothing but receipts for equipment and hunting gear.
“We’ve been through all of that,” Teo said. “There were no pictures.”
“I know. But we’ve missed something.” Something Abby hadn’t missed. Something that had upset her badly enough to make her kill.
I slammed the first drawer and squatted to sort through the middle drawer. “They know that most tabbies would be easy prey, if they can catch one unguarded, and they seemed to think they’d done that. But Melody’s never been unguarded, and Hargrove never actually said her name. He just said they were going after the ‘other’ tabby. Then Abby killed him, and I couldn’t ask—”
I dropped onto my knees as the obvious conclusion fell into place. “She killed him to keep him quiet.”
“Jace…” Teo sounded doubtful, and I could understand that. It was hard to think of Abby killing anyone out of anything other than self-defense or PTSD, but it was becoming increasingly clear that she’d thought this out, evidently on the fly. “To keep him quiet about what?”
“The other tabby’s identity. It has to be.” She’d figured out what we hadn’t.
“But why would Abby do that? The more of us who know who they’re after, the better protected she’ll be. Who’s the closest of the other tabbies?”
I had to think about that. The East Coast Territory bordered ours, but Abby was their only tabby. The Southeast Pride—Mateo’s home territory—also shared a border, but they’d lost their tabby, his sister Sara, to the same monsters who’d kidnapped Faythe and Abby almost five years ago. That left the New England and Great Lakes Prides, but their capitals were both more than a day’s drive away. If he’d headed to either of those territories, Darren would never make it back by nightfall, which had been his plan, according to Hargrove.
“There’s no one else close enough.” I stood and shoved the middle file drawer closed. “This doesn’t make any sense. It’s someone Abby knows”—though all the tabbies knew one another—“and someone within a day’s drive. And someone the hunters found undefended long enough to camera-stalk.” My focus strayed to the stalker wall again, searching for a photo we’d missed. One that wasn’t of Abby.
But they were all pictures of Abby. The only other girl in any of those photos was her roommate Robyn, and Robyn was…
Human.
“Oh, shit, Mateo, we’ve messed up.” I was across the room in an instant, gloved hands pressed to the grisly surface of the taxidermy table as I stared at the wall above it. “I’ve messed up.”
“What? How?”
“It was here the whole time.” I pulled a picture down from the wall and held it out to him. The image was taken through the window of Abby’s dorm room, and it showed her sitting on the edge of her bed, with one arm around her roommate. Her crying roommate. Her crying roommate who had smudges of dirt on her hands and…was that blood on her mouth?
The focus wasn’t sharp enough for me to tell for sure, but suddenly, every move Abby’d made—every lie she’d told—came through in perfect clarity.