Cipher

Andrew and Miguel did.”

“Good luck with—” A pained grunt swallowed the words as he stumbled and pressed his fingers to his forehead with a grimace. “Damn it.”

“Julio?” Instinct drove her a step closer to him. Training prompted her to go for her phone, urged on by the sudden flash of Julio’s fear. Get the phone, call for help. Better to feel stupid if nothing was wrong than to-“Run. ” He blindly shoved the keys at her. “Get the car and go.”

His fear vanished, swallowed whole, and the abrupt silence was so unnerving she fumbled with the keys. Something tingled over her skin, like getting in the way of one of Jackson’s spells, and Kat shuddered as her phone slipped from her fingers.

Silence. Stillness. The calm before the storm, and she made it three steps before magic snapped through the air, painful enough to drive her to her knees. Physical discomfort faded under a wave of suffocating claustrophobia, and Kat screamed as she threw herself against the harsh cage that had snapped shut around her mind.

With Alec stuck in New York most of the time, Jackson had to work twice as hard to keep up with the clients at their small investigative firm. Alec’s name was still on the window, but it was a one-man show these days.

Andrew fidgeted in the office chair and looked at the piece of paper Jackson held out. “What’s that?”

“It’s a cashier’s check.” He waved it harder, then sighed and laid it on the desk. “Alec had me get a couple for Patrick and Anna, and they deserve it for the work they did in tracking down that cult. I already sent McNamara his, but I thought you could just give this one to Anna.”

“Okay.” Andrew picked it up and blinked at the amount printed on it. “The Conclave pays well for that stuff, huh?”

“Didn’t come from the Conclave.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “They wouldn’t pony it up because Anna’s still persona non grata up there. They consider her a defector, at best, and we all know how they feel about rogue threats. Alec paid up.”

“It’s hard to think of her that way.” It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done anything. The Conclave had trained her to be an assassin, and she’d quit on them. She wasn’t a person to them, not anymore—she was a time bomb with legs. A sobering reality, and a reminder that things in their world weren’t always what they seemed.

“The Conclave’s ineffective,” Mackenzie pointed out from her perch on Alec’s abandoned desk. “Do you know how long it takes for them to work through their so-called justice system? It’s been a year and a half since the mess went down with the cougar Seer, and they’re still holding the wolf who worked for him. Alec told me some of the people in their holding cells have been there a damn decade.”

“A big reason Alec and Carmen had to get up there,” Jackson drawled. “Even if it left me holding the bag here.”

Andrew tapped the edge of the name placard on the desk. “Can you hire someone to help you?”

“I’ve got some feelers out,” he admitted. “With the kind of cases we get, it’s not really as simple as hiring a newbie with a fresh PI license. I need someone like McNamara.”

He was practically brooding. Andrew hid a smile. “So ask him to join up.”

“Can’t. He’s not one for operating inside the normal boundaries of the law, you know.”

“Right, that might be an issue.”

“You’ll find someone, baby.” Mac’s fond smile faded. “In the meantime…can I give Mr. Council here a piece of my mind, yet?”

“Only if you promise to keep it civil, darlin’.”

“I’m always civil.” But when she turned her gaze on Andrew, she looked damn near feral. “You know how Jackson and I have been chasing down rumors of orphaned cougars? Turns out it’s not as easy as it should be, because this country is lousy with orphaned shapeshifters.”

That he could believe. “What sorts of situations are you finding?”

“A lot of wolves. Some who have one or both parents who were turned, then ended up on the wrong side of the local pack structure. Some who are on the streets, or group homes.” She glanced at Jackson.

“We found one in an orphanage last week.”

Andrew sat straighter. “Shit. How old?”

“Eight.” Mackenzie’s voice took on an odd note—almost like the protective purr of a mama cat over her cub. “Once Jackson’s got everything tied up here…I think we’re going back for him.”

If he grew up alone, there was no telling what would happen to the boy. “I think it sounds great.

Where’s the orphanage?”

“Colorado.” She leaned forward again. “But it’s not enough. Even if we save one of them…we need something here, in town. While you and Alec are throwing around all this money, throw some at all the damn kids who get left behind because our screwed-up world keeps killing their parents.”

“I’ll check with Alec, see what we can do. When it comes to orphaned kids, though, finding the money might be the least complicated part of it all. Those kids can’t just disappear from society, so it’s all got to be legal.”

“People have been throwing money at problems like this for years,” Mackenzie replied. “And there’s Carmen’s cousin, Veronica. She’s got a legal degree from a top school and understands. I bet I can talk her into helping me. But the wolves are the only ones who can protect and fund it.”

“Kenzie’s already got it figured out,” Jackson said affectionately.

His wife smiled. “Because you helped.” Turning back to Andrew, she raised both eyebrows. “I was lucky. I got adopted by people who loved me and took care of me. Even if we can’t give them all families, we can give them chances. So help me make it happen.”

“All right. I’ll try.” Andrew’s phone vibrated and then rang, and he tilted his head toward the back room as he dug it out of his pocket. “May I?”

Jackson waved him back, his attention on his computer. “Knock yourself out.”

It was Patrick calling, and Andrew’s gut clenched as he answered. “Hello?”

“We fucked up, Callaghan.” Patrick’s voice was rough. Choked. “We missed something.”

The knot in his stomach seized. For one breathless, agonizing second, he was sure he was going to puke all over the boring office carpet, but his voice—when it came—sounded steady enough. “What happened?”

“Ben is missing, and I found his girlfriend in their apartment. Her neck’s broken.”

Lia. “Fuck.” Andrew’s hands started to shake. “Does it look like a burglary gone bad? Anything like that?”

“What it looks is well-planned.” A motor revved in the background. Patrick’s voice evened, turned cold and detached. “I’m about to get on a plane back to New Orleans. Can you call Anna and have her start trying to track down properties attached to any of the IDs we found? Or anyone related to them?

Once I’m in the air, I’ll send her what I’ve got.”

“Right after I’ve called Kat,” he promised. “We’ll regroup when you get here. We’ll—” His throat closed. “We’ll find Ben. I swear that we’ll find him.”

Andrew had already speed-dialed Kat’s cell phone by the time he reached the doorway back into the office, and the pale faces that greeted him removed the last of his hope that Ben and Lia had run afoul of some new and unknown threat.

Jackson held up a faxed page. “My contact in Biloxi says the ME’s office started the autopsies on the bodies from Pass Christian. Two of them had already been autopsied once, so they rushed tissue samples through the toxicology lab and found significant amounts of embalming fluid in seven of them.”

“That’s why they burned them.” The numb words seemed to come from someone else. Some where else, miles away. “Most of them were already dead.”

“And they staged it to look like a group suicide.” Jackson swore.

Andrew started as the ringing in his ear gave way to Kat’s outgoing voicemail message. “Try calling Julio. He’s with Kat, he’s—” Stupidly, he ended the call and redialed her number. “He’s with Kat.”

Mackenzie already had her phone out. “On it. I’m sure they’re—” Her voice cut off. Julio’s outgoing message spilled out of her earpiece, quiet and even more damning because the phone hadn’t rung at all.

Andrew moved without thinking, straight for the door. “Get Anna on the phone. She and Patrick have to run