“She has to be. Why else would Abby wear that jacket, if not to cover Robyn’s scent at the crime scenes? She’s protecting her roommate.” That was the only conclusion that made sense. Abby would definitely risk her own life to protect those she loved. Including the roommate who’d helped bring her out of her shell her freshman year, then had seen three of their friends killed for no reason other than their proximity to Abby.
“Why wouldn’t she tell us? Why wouldn’t she tell you? I mean, why hide a new tabby from the people best equipped to protect her?” Teo asked, and my head spun as I tried to pull all the facts, theories, and assumptions into line. I could only think of one reason Abby would keep her secret from me, even after we’d gotten together. After I’d told her I loved her and had threatened to kick her out of the Pride.
“Abby’s hiding Robyn because she’s the one who infected her.” Infection was a capital crime, punishable by execution, if the council convicted her.
My hands clenched into fists at just the thought of this new threat. If Abby had infected Robyn, she’d done it by accident, and I could not let her pay for that with her life.
Teo’s brows rose. “Wait, you think Abby bit her?”
“Abby bit who?” Warner called from the top of the steps, his head hidden by the empty boxes I’d asked him to bring down.
“Robyn,” Teo said. “But we don’t think that’s true, right?” He glanced at me as Warner dropped the empty boxes at his feet. “I mean, that’s just a theory.”
I shrugged, trying to look less apprehensive about that possibility than I really was. “They are roommates, and Abby’s been known to have nightmares. If she partially shifted in her sleep, and Robyn tried to wake her up…who knows? It happened to Faythe.”
“Yes, but that was a boyfriend bitten in the height of passion with teeth she didn’t realize had shifted. Total fluke,” Teo insisted, as he pulled open the bottom file cabinet drawer. “Although come to think of it, the stray she infected turned out to be a psychotic killer too.” He dropped the first file folder into the box. “Maybe it’s a good thing most tabbies don’t get out much, if they’re all gonna infect their friends…”
Warner made an amused noise at the back of his throat. “If it were that easy to infect a woman, Jace would have made enough tabbies by now to keep our numbers well out of the endangered range. Right?”
I answered with a growl.
“Regardless, we’re ninety-nine percent sure Robyn’s the stray who’s been killing the hunters, and that Abby was trying to cover that up,” I explained for Warner’s benefit. “That’s why she signed on as an enforcer and why she just had to come to both of the crime scenes.” Hargrove’s house and Darren’s lake cottage.
“So, then, why get herself fired, if being an enforcer helped her keep us in the dark?” Teo asked.
“Well, as an enforcer, she would have had to go back to the lodge with us, when what she probably wanted was to go check on Robyn, to make sure she’s not out killing more people,” Warner suggested as he began pulling the photos from the wall. He held up a picture of Robyn and Abby walking together on campus, and I took it from him.
“If she thought Robyn was going to kill again, Abby would have fought harder to stay on campus when I came to pick her up.” I studied the photo, where Abby had her arm around Robyn’s shoulders, even though she was the smaller of the pair. She was clearly comforting her roommate. Guiding her, even. Robyn didn’t look like a cold-blooded killer. She looked like a traumatized, confused young woman who didn’t know how to handle what was happening to her. Which was something Abby would understand.
Abby seemed to be acting as the new shifter’s mentor or counselor. There was no way she would have participated in Robyn’s crimes, even knowing what the hunters had done, but she would help cover for Robyn, especially if it was her fault Robyn had become a shifter. And she would try to stop Robyn from killing again.
And she would damn sure try to protect Robyn from the hunter coming after her.
“That’s why she got herself fired!” My hand slammed into the taxidermy table hard enough to send a jolt of pain into my shoulder. “Because she knew Darren was going after Robyn, not Melody, but she couldn’t tell us that without admitting that Robyn was the rogue stray.” That she’d known who the murderer was all along and had been covering for her.
“Oh, shit.” Teo froze in the act of pulling another picture from the board. “That’s why she didn’t want to be sent home. There was nothing she could do for Robyn from South Carolina. Especially since her cell phone is ruined, and she doesn’t have any of the stored numbers memorized. She can’t even call to warn Robyn.”
And neither could we. “Damn it! We sent backup to the wrong tabby.” I turned to Teo, already pulling my phone from my pocket. “Call Titus and have him send his men to the Lexington campus instead of the lodge. Abby said Robyn was staying in the dorm over the holiday.” Which made sense now. A newly infected stray would have a hard time hiding his—or her—condition from her family in close quarters. “With any luck, the campus will be mostly deserted.”