Second Nature (30 page)

"Paul will take care of it," Cedric said. He gave the man at the table across from him a nod that had him hurry over to the grill.

Nervously licking her lips, Kelsey sat.

The smoky scent of the meat wafted up as Cedric cut the steak in two and nudged one half over onto the empty plate in front of Kelsey.

The eyes of every Syak in the backyard were on Kelsey. If she took a bite of the steak, she would accept much more than just his food.

"Tas..." Kelsey kept her hands tucked against the sides of her thighs, not touching the fork or the knife next to her plate.

Part of Cedric wanted to order her to eat the damn steak, but he didn't.

His cell phone rang.

Cedric cursed loudly — loud enough for every pack member to hear. In truth, it was a welcome distraction. It offered him a way to walk away without losing face in front of the whole pack. "Excuse me," he said to Kelsey, grabbed his cell phone, and stepped inside.

*  *  *

The phone was picked up after the second ring. "Jennings."

Griffin knew her tas was getting impatient, so she cut right to the chase. "I've learned a lot of new things about Jorie Price tonight," she said without identifying herself first. With his perfect hearing, Jennings would know who she was — and, of course, she was the only saru working the Jorie Price case right now.

"Finally! Investigating this writer has been like... well, like herding cats," Jennings said, and Griffin heard the smirk in his words. "So, what did you find out? Leigh said you had her check out adoption records?"

"Yes. Ms. Price was adopted when she was three. She was born in China. Her father is unknown, and she knows very little about her birth mother — only that her last name was Wang. That's where the 'W' in her pseudonym comes from." It felt strange to report the things that Jorie had told her with so much emotion last night so matter-of-factly now, but Griffin was used to it. Only Wrasa with above-average emotional control were considered for the Saru.

"Wang?" Jennings asked and laughed.

Griffin settled back against the headboard of her bed. "Yes. Something funny about that?"

"Well, in case your Chinese is a little rusty... Wang means 'king,'" Jennings answered.

"And that's funny?" Wolf humor was strange.

"Ever looked at your mother in her animal form?" Jennings asked. This time, he was the one who enjoyed her having to drag the information out of him.

Maybe working so closely with cat-shifters is rubbing off on him.
"Of course I have. What does that have to do with the name of Jorie Price's birth mother?"

"The stripe pattern on top of a tiger's head resembles the Chinese character 'wang,'" Jennings explained.

"That's just coincidence," Griffin said. This case was making less and less sense to her. Things were getting more complicated by the second.

"I didn't say it wasn't," Jennings answered. "You've met Ms. Price up close and personal. There's no chance that she could be Wrasa, right?"

That had been one of Griffin's first questions to the council too. "No chance," she said. "The Maki held a knife to her throat. No Wrasa would have been able to keep from shifting under such a direct attack." Even Griffin, who had years of Saru training, had almost shifted to fight the Maki, even knowing that the attack was part of her own plan. "No, she's human. She smells like a human."
Although a nicely smelling human.

"Then this information is just another dead end," Jennings concluded, now once again growing impatient.

"Maybe, but her father is unknown, and her mother apparently didn't want to be found. I know there could be a very simple explanation for it," Griffin said. "Maybe her father was a married man, or it was just a brief affair and he didn't want a child. And maybe her mother made it impossible for Jorie to find her because she wanted to start a new life too and didn't want anyone to know she had a child out of wedlock."

"Sounds like a perfectly logical explanation," Jennings said.

Still, Griffin couldn't help wondering. "But what if her father or someone else in her family was Wrasa? What if Jorie is part Wrasa? She has a lot of characteristics that remind me a little of a cat-shifter." Maybe that could explain why Jorie was so intuitive about the Wrasa — and why Griffin felt so comfortable around Jorie.

"You're a biologist, Westmore. You know better." There was no doubt in Jennings's voice.

As a Wrasa scientist, Griffin knew that humans and Wrasa having children together was impossible. They didn't belong to the same species or even to the same order. The rare one-night stand between humans and Wrasa had never led to a pregnancy. "Still... I want to be sure," Griffin said. Too many doubts and questions were running through her mind where Jorie was concerned.

"Okay, then get a DNA sample from Ms. Price and send it to our lab. That should take care of your concerns." It was clear that Jennings didn't believe that Jorie had even one drop of Wrasa blood. "What else did you find out?"

To her surprise, Griffin found herself reluctant to tell Jennings. It was very personal information. Still, it was information that could save Jorie's life. "The newest scene has the first kiss between Quinn, the shape-shifting main character, and her human love interest."

"And?" Jennings asked, clearly not interested in hearing about human ideas of romance.

Griffin had made the same mistake. Whenever Quinn and Sid had a more personal interaction in the book, she had skipped ahead. "They're both women," she said.

Silence spread between them.

"Her main character is a lesbian Wrasa?" Jennings laughed. "Are you sure you aren't her informant?"

Wolf humor!
Griffin thought again. He didn't get the importance of this revelation. "We need to talk to Allison DeLuca again," she said. "She had to know that the novel is lesbian fiction. Do you have any idea why she hid that very important information from you?"

"She didn't," Jennings said calmly.

"What?" Her fingers almost lost their grip on the phone. "You knew? Then why isn't that information in your report? We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if —"

"No. It changes nothing," Jennings interrupted.

Griffin pressed her fist into the pillow, fluffing it with more force than strictly necessary. As a straight man, he wasn't aware of the peculiarities of lesbian fiction. But why hadn't he ever asked her about it? Why hadn't he wanted her to know? "Of course it does. It drops the threat level to almost nothing. Ms. Price's book will be published in a niche market. If she's lucky, she'll sell one thousand copies. There'll never be a large audience, a fan club, or a movie. It's not even sure it will ever be published."

"Even one thousand copies are one thousand too many," Jennings said with steely determination. "It would take just one human getting suspicious when Ms. Price's description of shape-shifters fits his weird neighbor just a little too well. If the book is published, it could cause a chain reaction of rumors, suspicions, and investigations. We can't take that risk. We have to protect our people."

He's trying to manipulate me, appeal to my protective instincts,
Griffin realized. She knew all the tricks of manipulation. Still, it didn't mean he couldn't be right. The Wrasa had based their lives on a fragile balance, which could easily be destroyed forever. Gathering more information couldn't hurt.

"Besides, I told you before that her book is not really what's important." Jennings's growl rumbled through the receiver. "Ms. Price still has information about us that she shouldn't have. She might have connections to an inside source, and she's not afraid to go public with her information. She's a threat!"

"I don't think there is an informant," Griffin said and patiently laid it out for Jennings. "There's no Wrasa scent around Ms. Price's house, no e-mail or phone contact, and no notes on any meeting with a Wrasa informant. Leigh checked out every Wrasa that Ms. Price ever came in contact with." Well, everyone but two. She had e-mailed back a "kiss my ass" when Griffin had told her to investigate Rhonda and her mother. Leigh's loyalties were to the pride first and foremost, so it hadn't surprised Griffin. Another computer specialist had confirmed Martha's and Rhonda's claim to hardly know Jorie. "If anyone gave her information about us, I'm sure Ms. Price isn't aware that he's not human. We should call off the investigation."

Her breathing caught in her chest while she waited for Jennings's answer. She didn't have to wait long.

"Call it off? Great Hunter, no!" Jennings's voice cracked with the force of his determination. "There are too many inconsistencies to just let it go. If you're reasonably sure there's no traitor — or at least no one we can get a hold of — then your next task is to destroy the manuscript, including all the backups, and kill the writer."

The little hairs on the back of Griffin's neck tingled. She realized that she hadn't been prepared for that order. "Kill her?" she croaked through a constricting throat. No. This wasn't right. "Now we're already killing people because they have the bad luck to just guess right or for being very intuitive?"

In the past year, there had been a few times when she had thought the kill order had been given too soon, too lightly. The maharsi had always been their early-warning system. With them, being overly cautious hadn't been necessary, because the maharsi let them know what to do and what to avoid, which humans might be a danger and which weren't. Now every little thing could turn out to be a threat. They had lowered their standards in what they perceived as a threat, and the measures they took in keeping themselves safe had escalated.

At first, Griffin hadn't been sure whether it was her own thinking or the rest of the world that had changed. But now they had crossed a line.

"Guess right?" Jennings repeated, a low growl in his voice. "You saw for yourself that she gets too much right for it to be mere coincidence."

"And that's reason enough to kill her?" Griffin's own voice got louder too. "And then next time, we'll go one step farther and kill a human who gets just a few details right. Where will this end? Do you want to kill off all writers of paranormal fiction?"

"Rubbish! You have your orders, Saru!" Jennings said, the authority of a long line of Saru officers in his voice.

This was one order that she didn't want to follow blindly. "I think we need more —"

"More what?" Jennings interrupted. "More time? More information? We don't have any more time, and you've been there for two weeks already without getting any useful information. How much longer do you think she'll believe you're a wildlife biologist on vacation?"

He was right, of course. Jorie wasn't stupid. She wouldn't believe that a forest ranger had more than three weeks off in a row. Still, the decision to kill a human should never be made lightly — and it wasn't Cedric Jennings's decision to make. She knew how the Saru chain of command worked, and Jennings, while aiming high, was still not at the top of the hierarchy yet. "I don't think there's enough evidence to make such a decision yet. Shouldn't you discuss it with your superiors and the council first?"

She held her breath until he finally answered, "I will. But don't get too comfortable in that hotel the council is footing the bill for. Continue your investigation. And be ready to execute the kill and get out of town as soon as I call."

"Understood," Griffin gave the only possible answer to a direct order. Jennings's last words echoed through her mind for the rest of the night.

CHAPTER 13

T
HE MOIST SOIL felt good under her paws as she stalked up a hill, carefully setting each paw so she wouldn't rustle the leaves and scare away the deer that was browsing just a few trees away.

She froze, one paw inches from the ground, when the deer lifted its head and stopped chewing. The deer's ears turned, but not in her direction.

Her own ears swiveled.

Someone was breaking through the undergrowth, trampling on branches and leaves.

Human!

The deer dashed away, disappearing into the forest.

Her muscles tensed. She wanted to give chase, but her survival instincts were stronger and told her to stay and hide from the human. A snarl of annoyance pulled her lips back. She crouched down on her belly, her fur almost blending in with the fall leaves.

Human footsteps on the forest floor came closer.

She got ready to sneak away and vanish into the forest when the wind turned and carried the scent of the human to her. It was a familiar scent — and one she didn't like. Her muzzle opened in a low growl, revealing long canines. Her paws flexed and unsheathed long claws. She longed to leap out from under her cover and drive the human from her territory.

The rational part of her held her instincts in check. She ducked beneath dense shrubs.

The human passed within two feet of her, never knowing she was there, just a few paw lengths away.

Easy prey.

She lay in cover, her sharp gaze following his every move as she had the deer's before.

Without any awareness of the danger he was in, the human bent down, picking a wildflower here and there. Slowly, he wandered out of sight.

Her tail twitched as she fought the instinct to follow and hunt him down. Only when she couldn't see or smell him any longer did the urge lessen.

Slowly, careful not to slip into hunting fever, she stalked the human, following him to the edge of the forest. A snarl vibrated through her chest when he walked toward one of the houses, but she stayed back, hiding behind a tree.

A small something dashed through a shrub close to her.

Prey.

Her powerful muscles bunched. She almost pounced, hungry and irritated.

At the very last moment, a familiar scent drifted up to her nose. It evoked an image of coconuts and a walk through the forest in springtime. Inches from the smaller cat, she stopped and chuffed a greeting at it.

The startled cat hissed. It backed away and, as soon as it was a few feet away, turned and ran back the way it had come.