Branded by Fire

"I’m guessing." She paused. "I know when my brothers used to sneak out when we were young, I always knew before my parents. Oldest sibling intuition. Maybe Nash was outside tracking Willow when they gassed the place?"

He had seen Mercy’s brothers around but now wondered what they were like. Redheaded hellions probably. "Makes sense. He steps out, escapes the gassing, comes back in because he hears something, and that’s when they attempt to grab him, not realizing there’s another kid out in the woods."

Nodding, Mercy touched the floor and came away with a thin layer of dust. "He shifted. This is from his clothes disintegrating."

Riley sniffed at the finger she held up. "I can scent denim."

"You can?" She raised it to her own nose. "I can’t."

He couldn’t help it – she brought out the wolf’s most wicked edge. "That’s because I’m older and stronger."

She shot him an evil look. "As I was saying, Nash shifted. Most likely after he ripped that chip off."

"Could’ve done it in animal form, too. Lynx are small and agile, especially when they’re pissed." He barely resisted the urge to stroke his hand down the sweep of her back and over her bottom. Mercy was beautifully built, all smooth curves and muscled grace. What would it be like, he wondered, to have the right to caress her as he pleased? The wolf was oddly intrigued by the idea.

"Hmm." She sat back up on her haunches. "But they still got him. Had to be more than one – the Alliance’s modus ope randi seems to be to overprepare rather than under."

"We’ve got enough flesh to get DNA if the attacker’s in any database." There was no question of going to Enforcement. This was changeling territory, changeling victims, therefore changeling law applied.

Not only that, but Enforcement had so many Psy stooges, nothing ever stayed secret. Until they knew what was happening, they couldn’t afford to tip off the Council. Having lost two highly trained scientific minds when Ashaya and her twin, Amara, defected, chances were the Councilors would try to commandeer the Alliance chip and Nash both.

As for the assailants . . . too f**king bad. "Don’t move the chip. There might be trace around it."

"Really?" Doing an atrocious vocal impersonation of a Southern belle, Mercy fluttered her eyelashes. "Why, I’m so glad you’re here to tell me, Mr. Kincaid – I might not have figured that out all by my lonesome."

He felt his lips twitch. "I think you have something in your eye."

He was certain he saw a flash of amusement but then she shook her head and her voice shifted to work mode, any hint of play buried deep. "The techs should do the whole house in case they left any other calling cards. Might as well call Ashaya, too, have her come out with her team."

As Mercy spoke to the M-Psy who’d mated with Dorian, Riley shifted closer – smiling inwardly at her slight responsive jerk – and bent to look at the chip. It wasn’t tiny. Maybe one square centimeter. But even without a microscope, he could see that it was a complex piece of work. Some kind of neuroinhibitor, was the current theory.

But what exactly did it inhibit?

"She’s on her way," Mercy said, folding up the phone and – surprisingly – not pulling away. Instead she pressed closer, their heads side by side. "It’s a hell of a piece of work."

Her hair brushed his arm, and he remembered how the strands had felt sliding over his skin as she kissed her way down his body that last time. "Yeah." His voice was half growl, the wolf’s frustration rising to the surface. "Let’s leave this for Ashaya and do a sweep around the house – they might’ve left a trail at their entry point."

"Nate had the men take turns doing that already – nothing."

"None of them is a lieutenant or a sentinel."

A slanted glance. "Is that a compliment?"

"No, it’s a fact." He watched her rise to her feet in a fluid move that was intrinsically feline. "I’m going to give Judd a call – he’s got contacts in the Net, can get a feel for whether this was a Psy thing."

Mercy nodded. "I’ll utilize our own contacts, too. But my gut says the Psy aren’t involved, at least not directly." Her eyes met his, the leopard apparent in the sheen of gold that overlaid her gaze for a fleeting instant. "Time to move, wolf."

Adrenaline speared through his veins as he realized she was beginning to lose the battle to rein in her own hunger. "Lead the way, cat."

Chapter 9

Mercy finished the first pass around the Baker home and shook her head. Nothing. Nada. Zip. The scent trail had had hours to dissipate. Riley silently indicated the next pass and off they went, having decided to do this in animal form. As she left, Mercy wondered what anyone would think if they saw a leopard standing face-to-face with a heavily muscled wolf.

Changeling animals were usually bigger than wild animals, but the shift did strange things to body mass and size. It was never a zero-sum equation. Though she was on the tall side of average in human form, she was smack in the middle in leopard form. Riley, however, was big – and unlike most of his brethren, he wasn’t built graceful. No, he was built for stubborn endurance – apparently, his nickname was the Wall.

No one, she thought, would ever mistake him for anything but a changeling.

Something crunched under her paw. Backing up, she brushed aside the leaves with gentle care. It was nothing. An old toy. Probably Willow’s, from the proximity to the house. They didn’t find anything in the third or fourth pass. The fifth had to be the final – they were going into more heavily populated areas.

It was on that last pass, as they were heading toward each other, that Mercy saw it. A glint of silver in the grass beside a curb on a dead-end street – one that backed onto the woods that separated the Baker home from this neat subdivision. Slowing her pace, she came to a standstill by it. With other houses so close, it could’ve been any of a thousand things. But she looked closer.