The Bobcat's Tate (21 page)

“Deputies are on their way to his house,” Loch said
. “I called the jewelry store. He didn’t show up for work today. His mother doesn’t know what’s going on with him, and my deputy says that woman is so confused that she doesn’t know what decade it is.”

“Wha
t do we know about Hamilton?” Tate demanded, pacing.

“We don’t have much on him after he went to Hollywood
. He was picked up a few times for soliciting young men for sex in restrooms, and for public sex in a park. He was never arrested for anything violent.”

Loch quic
kly typed something into his desktop, then he frowned and turned the screen towards Tate.

Lo
ch had called up a copy of Hamilton’s driver’s license, but something looked off.

“Wait a minute,” Tate said.
“I don’t think that’s…”

“I know,” Loch said unhappily.

Loch clicked a few keys and the picture enlarged, filling the screen.

The man in the picture wore glasses
. The nose with the familiar bump was there, the mouth shape was similar, and he looked kind of the same, but still…

Tate shook his head, and now the panic inside him was full blown.

“Loch,” he said. “That’s not the same man. It looks a lot like him, but it’s not him. The man who’s here in town…it’s not Hamilton Hooper.”

* * *

Megan felt as if she were floating underwater. The world was swimming. A spot on her outer thigh stung and ached. Her hands were bound behind her back, and they stung and itched. That meant she’d been bound with copper wire, and she couldn’t shift. As a wolf, she could defend herself. Trapped in her human form, she was helpless.

She heard heavy labored breathing next to her
and twisted to her side, and her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach. Schuyler was lying next to her. They were covered with a canvas tarp.

What was happening?

She frantically started kicking at the tarp, freeing her face.

Thick tendrils of fog wrapped around her memory, but it was starting to come back to her now
. Frank had come to meet her at the Beaudreau mansion, and she’d realized that she couldn’t make herself fall out of love with him any more than she could make herself fall in love with Hamilton. She’d snuck off to meet Hamilton for weeks, she’d kissed him, but no matter how hard she’d tried, it wouldn’t work. She wanted to love him, just so she could get over Frank, but she couldn’t.

So she’d gone to find Hamilton
at the grove where they always met to break things off, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. He’d been acting strange, all panicky and jumpy. He had asked her to leave town with him, to go on the run, but he wouldn’t tell her why. She’d said no. Frank had followed her, and she heard him shouting, and then she’d seen a strange-looking contraption in Hamilton’s hand. A tranquilizer gun.

He’d shot Frank with it. He’d shot her.

The last thing she’d heard was Schuyler’s furious voice, yelling as if from a million miles away.

Let go of my sister!

Megan used her feet to thump on the side of the van. Maybe someone would hear her.

“Be quiet back there!” Hamilton yelled from the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing? Why did you kidnap me? I said I didn’t want to go with you.”

“
That psychic, that bitch, she’s going to ruin everything. Rainbow Moonbitch. That whore. She’ll tell everybody what I’ve done. She’ll tell.”

He was talking about what had happened to Portia, Megan realized. The psychic was supposed to reveal Portia’s whereabouts
. Hamilton obviously had killed Portia, and he was afraid that the psychic would implicate him.

“
I can’t stay here anymore, and I didn’t want to go by myself,” Hamilton said. “I don’t like to be alone. I’ve never liked to be alone. My mother used to leave me alone. For days and days. Alone, alone, alone…”

“Your mother?
Betsy Hooper? No way.”

“That’s Hamilton’s mother
. I’m not Hamilton. I’m a much better actor than he is.”

Megan was silent for a minute, stunned
. When this man came to town and told everyone he was Hamilton, nobody had any reason to question him…but Hamilton had left town thirty years ago. Nobody knew what Hamilton would look like these days, and Hamilton’s mother’s brain was completely addled with dementia.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly
.
Stay calm
, she told herself.
Panicking will only make things worse
. “Why did you bring Schuyler with us? I’m the one you want.”

“You’ll be much more
Hooperative with your sister here. If you do what I say, she doesn’t get hurt.”

Megan’s heart swelled with dread. 
Hamilton was crazy. Stone cold crazy. How could she protect her sister if she was trapped in human form? “You don’t need her. She’ll just slow us down. Let her go. Just pull over and leave her by the side of the road.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. And now, you will be quiet. If you care about me you’ll be quiet
. You care about me, don’t you?”

I’ll
find a way to shift and I’ll rip your throat out with my teeth,
Megan thought, choking with fury. Out loud, she said “Yes,” and then fell silent.

Next to her, Schuyler was starting to stir.

* * *

“We’ll find them,” Loch said grimly
. “We’ve got choppers in the air, we’ve got highway patrol and deputies on every road.”

He sat behind his desk, frantically working the phones, the bones on his face rippling as he struggled to stay human.

Tate was pacing angrily back and forth, out of his mind with worry. He should be out searching for his sisters, but where? Hamilton, or rather, the man pretending to be him, had been spotted driving off the grounds of the mansion, but nobody knew which direction he’d gone.

Detectives were at the imposter’s rented house, pulling it apart in a desperate search for clues
. They’d already radioed back to report they’d found a safe hidden under the floorboards, and they’d blasted the safe open and found piles of jewelry in there. They suspected that the man pretending to be Hamilton had been switching the real jewelry from the store with fake jewelry.

They were also in communication with police in Los Angeles, who were searching the house
Hamilton had lived in out there.

“I’ve got to go,” Tate said desperately
, pacing the floor of Loch’s office. His wolf was clawing inside him, and he had to force it back down. He needed to be human now, to think clearly; if he let his beast break free, furious as he was, he’d be a wild, raging monster, likely to turn on whoever was closest to him. “I can’t just sit here on my ass. I’ve got to go find them.”

“I understand, Tate, but we have no idea which direction they went,” Loch said.

The door to the office opened, and Tate jumped, swinging towards it with a growl. His family was in danger. His vision swam red and black, and he wanted to kill.

It was
Lainey. He took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm.

She was talking, and he could barely hear a word, with the fear and anger roaring in his head.

“Tate, listen to me. Listen. Are you with me?” she said urgently.

“I’m
—yes. What is it?” He tried not to snap at her.

“The Cypress Woods
Witch. When she was talking to me in the car, she warned me about the wolf in sheep’s clothing. She said that he wanted to take the lambs deep into the earth, where the river runs red,” Lainey said. “So let’s say this guy is the black sheep, and Megan and Schulyer were the lambs–how would he take them deep into the Earth? What’s the red river?”

Loch leaped to his feet.

“The Crimson Caves!” Tate shouted. “There’s a tunnel system that leads to a river. The mineral deposits make the river look red.”

He and Loch practically made scorch marks as they raced ou
tside to Loch’s car.

Loch radioed the dispatch center as they peeled out of the parking lot, shouting instructions
.

Tate clutched at the arm of the seat,
then realized that his nails had turned to claws and he was shredding the upholstery. What he wanted to do was sink those nails, and his fangs, into the kidnapper’s flesh. His vision swam with fury as he imagined the taste of Hamilton’s blood, laying open his neck to the bone, Hamilton lying beneath him in a pile of unrecognizable flesh…

He dimly realized that he’d shifted, that he was a massive gray wolf shaking with murderous fury in the seat of Loch’s car, and Loch was saying something on the phone.

He forced himself to shift back, his fangs receding into his gums, his skin going smooth, claws disappearing into his fingers. Shreds of upholstery and yellow chunks of foam were scattered on his lap and on the floor.

Loch was slowing to a stop in the parking lot by the trail that led to the Crimson Caves
. Other deputy’s cars were pulling in at the same time.

Loch’s face was set in grim lines as he tossed the cell phone onto the dashboard and parked.

“What?” Tate yelled at Loch.

Loch didn’t answer, just scrambled out of the car, slamming the door behind him, and Tate followed suit, almost naked, the shreds of his clothing hanging off him.

“What is it? Tell me!” Tate demanded.

“The police in L.A. found blood splatter in
Hamilton’s home. They also found fingerprints in that house which match the fingerprints we ran in the jewelry store – they’re the fingerprints of a coyote shifter from Missouri, Bernard Lambert, who is wanted in connection with the disappearance of a half-dozen young men and women.”

Without another word,
Tateshifted into wolf form, not bothering to strip his clothing off first.

He could feel the rage rippling through his body. Now was the time to unleash his beast; he’d tear the flesh clean off Hamilton’s
bones.Loch shifted, too, and the men dashed off into the woods, ears tucked back against their heads, fur bristling with fury, followed by a pack of deputies. Their howls of rage tore through the air.

Megan sucked in gulping breaths of humid summer air. They paused in front of the gaping entrance to the Crimson Caves. The imposter, who said his name was Bernard, had parked his car, hauled them out, and marched them through the woods. He had a backpack slung on his back and carried the tranquilizer dart gun in his hand, not that he needed it. He’d been right; with Schuyler there, Megan wouldn’t try to fight.

Megan’s wrists itched and stung as if she wore bracelets of poison ivy
. She’d struggled to free her wrists from the copper wire, with no luck. The sun beat down on them, and sweat poured down Megan’s face, plastering her hair to her head. They were all breathing hard. He’d made them march double-time, glancing over his shoulder frequently.

Bernard still looked as handsome as a movie star, but now Megan could see the craziness blazing in hi
s eyes. How had she missed it before? Had it always been there? She shuddered to think of the few times they’d kissed, his hand cupping her face, tongue caressing hers. Now in memory, she thought of a viper wriggling in her mouth.

“All right, kids,” Bernard said with a mad, fake cheer in his voice. “Into the tunnels we go.”

“They’ll find us, you jackass. They’ll follow our scent,” Megan snapped.

“Of course they will, sooner or later. This is the end for me. I’ve been running so long, and now I’m at the end of the road.” His voice was high and sing-song
. “You’ll be with me at the end. It’s the end for us. I don’t want to be alone.”

He looked at the cave mouth, dripping with green vines
as sinuous as writhing snakes. It yawned open like a hungry mouth which would swallow them whole.

His voice turned
flint-hard and angry. “Let’s go.”

Megan
steeled herself. This was it, then. She’d have to make a stand. If they went in there, they’d never come out.

“No,” she said firmly
. She’d have to attack him in human form, hands tied behind her back, which was suicide, of course. She’d do her best to distract him while Schuyler ran for it. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all she had. She’d give it everything she had. She’d go down fighting.

She felt Schuyler
behind her back, felt her sister fall against her hands, her fur rubbing against her, her cold wet snout nuzzling her.

Wait, her fur?
Her wet nose? How the hell had she shifted?

Schuyler nipped at the copper wire binding Megan’s hands,
yelping in pain as her mouth came in contact with it. Megan could feel the wire tearing. Bernard’s eyes went wide with shock and rage.

“What are you doing? Stop that
.” Bernard raised the tranquilizer gun.