Prey by Rachel Vincent

him, hobbling along with my arm intertwined with Marc’s. “Seriously, though, will you tell Kaci I’m fine? We’re all fine. And we’ll be home in a couple of days, good as new.”
    “Will do.” Ethan followed Jace outside, to where my father’s van was now parked next to Vic’s Suburban. “Mom said she fell asleep playing PS3 after dinner.”
    I frowned, shivering in the sudden cold as I gripped the door frame. “I’ll talk her into Shifting when I get back. One way or another.”
    Ethan opened the passenger-side door as Jace started the engine. “I know.” My brother grinned one last time as Jace backed my dad’s ancient van out of the parking space. Then they were gone.
    I closed the door and twisted to find Marc watching me with a new heat in his eyes. So we picked up right where we’d left off….
    Six hours later, my cell phone rang out from the dark. I sat up, blinking, and reached over Marc to feel around on the nightstand, aiming vaguely for the bouncing, glowing mound of plastic.
    I couldn’t reach it, so I levered myself over Marc with my elbow in his chest. He grunted and his eyes flew open, and I gasped when my bad leg twisted beneath me, because I still hadn’t found a chance to Shift. But then my fingers closed around the phone andI eased my weight back onto the mattress, flipping the phone open without reading the name on the display.
    “Faythe?” It was my dad, and he sounded infinitely more alert than I was. Which was probably a very bad sign.
    “It’s five in the morning, Daddy.” I shrugged when Marc rubbed sleep from one eye and mouthed, What’s wrong?
    “I know what time it is,” my father snapped, and his tone brought me instantly awake. “Ryan’s gone.”

Five
    “W hat?” I said, as Marc sat up and clicked on the lamp on the nightstand.
    I’d expected to hear that Kaci had Shifted, or that Jace and Ethan had arrived home safely with the bodies. Or even that they’d been pulled over on the way home and arrested on some weird murder and illegal-corpse-disposal charge. But I didn’t quite know how to react to the news that my middle—and least favorite—brother, Ryan, had pulled a Houdini. “How?”
    “I honestly don’t know. I was up tending the incinerator, and went down to the basement for spare flashlight batteries, and he was just gone. The cage door was standing wide open, and the lock was missing.”
    Damn. But why would he take the lock?
    Ryan had spent the past six and a half months locked up in our basement prison cell, as punishment for playing the role of spy and jailer in a scheme to kidnap several U.S. tabbies—including me—to be sold toAlphas in the Amazon. When we’d caught him, he was thin and weak. But he’d grown healthier in captivity, eating my mother’s cooking, despite the lack of sunshine, fresh air and exercise.
    But that did not explain how he’d escaped. The cage was built to stand up to toms in the prime of life, fueled by rage and fear. He should not have been able to break the lock on his own, and he had access to nothing with which to pound it off.
    “Any idea how long he’s been gone?” I asked, rubbing my forehead in frustration.
    “Owen took his dinner down at seven, and everything was normal. So it could have been anytime in the past ten hours.” The weariness in his voice spoke volumes, and had little to do with the early hour or lack of sleep. With my father’s position on the Territorial Council so tenuous at the moment, Ryan’s escape was a blow he really couldn’t afford. Malone would use that as just one more piece of evidence that my father was an incompetent Alpha. Which was not true.
    “Did he leave a trail?” Marc ran one hand through short curls he’d probably forgotten he’d sheared.
    My father sighed over the line. “Yes, but it did little good. Owen tracked him for about a mile and a half, then lost the trail shortly after he found his clothes. It looks like Ryan Shifted and took to the