“Should I call Abby’s dad?” Warner asked, already holding his own cell, but I shook my head.
“He’ll have to tell the rest of the council, and we’re not doing that to Abby until we’ve heard her side of the story.”
“But she’s probably already on her flight home.”
“Then we’ll bring her back. Book a return flight as fast as you can, and I’ll tell Lucas to stay at the airport and wait for her.” I shoved the picture of Abby and Robyn into my pocket on my way up the stairs.
I was halfway across the kitchen, about to call Lucas where the signal was stronger, when my phone rang and his name appeared on the screen. “Luke!” I said into the phone. “I need you to stay at the airport and wait for Abby. Warner’s going to—”
“We never made it there,” Lucas said, his voice even gruffer than usual with anger and fear.
“Why not?”
“Abby’s gone, Jace. I had to leave her in the truck while I bought clean clothes, and when I got back, she was gone. I found her scent in a gas station bathroom across the street and her clothes in a plastic bag behind a Dumpster a quarter mile away. That’s where I lost her trail.” Because unlike dogs, cats can’t track by scent.
“Where are you?” I demanded, my heart hammering against my sternum.
“About half an hour from the airport, west of highway 75.”
“So, she’s in cat form, in the middle of Lexington?” Damn it, Abby! “She’s headed for campus. I need you to follow the route she’s most likely to take on foot, and see if you can catch up with her. If you haven’t found her in an hour, go straight to campus. To her dorm.”
“Why would she go there?”
“Because her roommate, Robyn, is the rogue stray.”
“Wait, what? A female stray?” After a short pause, he exhaled heavily. “Jace, tell me you don’t think Abby infected her.”
“I don’t know.” But it worried me that he’d jumped to that same conclusion. “Abby’s been covering for her from the beginning, and now she’s headed back to campus to protect her from Darren. He wasn’t going after Melody; he was going after Robyn, which means the hunters knew she was a shifter before we did. The rest of the council is not going to like that.”
“That’s why she killed Hargrove. To keep him from telling you about Robyn,” Lucas said, and from over the line came the sound of flesh hitting flesh as he smacked his own forehead. “She just kept saying she’d had to do it, but that’s not like Abby.”
“I know. And the only reason I can think of that she’d try to protect Robyn by herself is to hide the fact that she infected her roommate.”
Lucas groaned. “What’s going to happen to her, Jace?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do everything I can to protect her from the council, but we have to find her first.”
“I’m on it.”
“Luke, no one else knows about this. Just you, me, Teo, and Warner. I’d like to keep it that way until we’ve had a chance to talk to Abby.”
“No arguments here. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Good.” I hung up the phone as Teo stomped up the stairs, carrying a manila envelope stuffed with pictures from the basement. “Did you hear that? This is officially a need-to-know situation, and no one but you, me, Warner and Lucas needs to know.”
“But Jace—”
“I’d do the same for any of you. We protect our own.”
“She’s not yours anymore,” he pointed out gently as I reached for the backdoor knob. “You kicked her out of the Pride, remember?”
“That does not mean she isn’t mine.”
SIXTEEN
Abby
The only unlit entrance to the dorm had an actual knob rather than a lever or a push bar, and my paws couldn’t operate it. Cursing silently, I huddled in the bushes next to the entrance, in the rain, and shifted back into human form. If anyone had been walking by? they would have heard a strange series of gristly pops and animalistic moans as my body rearranged itself, sucking fur back into my pores and spitting red curls out of my scalp. Shortening my feet and retracting my claws.
Though it took more effort than simply letting the process happen, I kept my feline eyes, as well as some small internal bit of cat hearing, because those would give me most of a cat’s sensory advantages in my human body. The best of both worlds. And I was going to need every advantage I could get.
Naked, shivering, and instantly soaked again, as soon as I stepped out of the building’s shelter, I jogged up the narrow steps and through the back door into the laundry room, hoping someone my size had left something—anything—in one of the dryers. In what was likely the only stroke of luck I’d ever have again, I found a load of Robyn’s workout clothes in the last dryer on the left. Her yoga pants and sports bra were only a size too large.