“Don’t say it.” I glared at him, daring him to contradict me. “He’s alive. I’d know if he were dead.”

My father cleared his throat, and all eyes turned his way. “We’re assuming he’s alive, at least for the next ten hours. After the sixty-hour point, Dr. Carver says his chances drop dramatically, considering that he’s alone, injured, and has lost a lot of blood. And that the temperature has yet to rise above freezing.”

My mouth went dry, and my first attempt at speech failed miserably. So I tried again. “And after sixty hours?”

My dad looked down. He actually avoided my eyes, for the first time that I could remember.

“Daddy, what happens after sixty hours?” I demanded, scooting to the edge of the couch, trying to pin him with my gaze.

My father was exhausted, and devastated, and beyond angry at the world that had taken his son, and might yet take Marc from us. But he was still the Alpha. And finally, in true Alpha form, he looked up, pain and pity swimming in his eyes while his features held their usual firm acceptance of the inevitable. “After sixty hours, we assume we’re looking for a body.”

I couldn’t breathe. My hands shook, and cold coffee sloshed over my fingers to drip on my jeans. Then the mug was lifted gently from my hands, and Jace’s scent washed over me.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, setting the mug on the end table to my left. “There’s still time to find him. And people assuming Marc’s dead doesn’t make him dead. How often does Marc hold to the status quo?”

“Not very often.” I could barely hear my own voice, but Jace heard me, and over his shoulder, I saw my father and brothers watching me in varying degrees of grief and sympathy.

Jace nodded, smiling briefly. “So why should death be any different for him?”

I smiled back, and thanked him silently with a squeeze of his hand. Jace was right. Just because they thought we’d be looking for a corpse didn’t mean we would be.

He stepped back when I nodded, telling him I was okay. “Fine.” I looked up, and felt my gaze harden as it traveled over the faces watching me. “We’ll do it your way. But in the meantime, we can’t do anything about Kevin and whoever he’s working for without proof that they’re involved.” My focus shifted to my oldest brother. “Michael, do you think you can do anything with that chip?” I gestured to the bag he still clutched. “Ben Feldman says it’s not commercially available yet, so we need to know where it came from. And who bought it, if possible.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, when our father nodded in support of my request.

Part of me felt guilty for taking their thoughts away from Ethan in the immediate aftermath of his death, but the rest of me knew that—like me—they were better off with something constructive to take up their attention. Something to work on. Some way to impose order on the world, even as it seemed poised to crumble beneath us all.

“Good.” I nodded, satisfied for the moment. “If we can prove that trail leads back to Kevin, Feldman will tell us where to find him, and the council can’t refuse to indict him. Not if they still claim to be honorable, anyway.”

Michael opened the plastic bag, already on his way to the computer on our father’s desk, mumbling about serial numbers and credit card receipts.

I stood, struggling to hold back tears as the weight of Dr. Carver’s deadline finally truly hit me. “Now, unless you have something else for me to do, I’m going back to Mississippi to find Marc.”

“Of course.” My father stood and folded me into his arms, holding me so tight I could feel his heart beat against my cheek. “And you know I want him back alive just as badly as you do, don’t you, Faythe?”

I nodded, and my face rubbed his shirt, my jaws clenched against the sobs trying to break free.

“If I really thought we were looking for a body, I’d send someone else in your place.”

That time I heard the truth in his voice. My father still believed. At least for the next ten hours, we were on the same page.

After that…all bets were off.

Twenty-Three

On the way to my room, I passed Manx’s open bedroom door, and saw my mother and the doctor hovering over her. Mom held a tube of antibiotic cream, and Dr. Carver held a brown pill bottle. I paused in the doorway and caught a brief glimpse of Manx’s unwrapped hands, and immediately wished I’d kept walking.

The ends of her fingers were an angry, swollen red, still oozing blood, and not yet scabbed over. They looked horribly painful, yet Manx sat still on the bed with her hands in her lap, staring at the far wall as if she felt nothing.

As I watched, Dr. Carver sat next to her, and physically turned her face by her chin, until she faced him, gesturing with the pill bottle as he spoke. “Take these as needed, no more than two at a time, but if you don’t need them, don’t take them, because they’ll make you sleepy and make your thinking fuzzy, both of which will make it nearly impossible for you to take care of Des.”

As would the open wounds on each of her fingers.

But the doctor continued, still directing his instructions to the young tabby, though surely he was counting on my mother to actually remember and apply his directions. “Keep your hands elevated and take naproxen four times a day to minimize swelling. You should Shift as soon as you’re able to support weight on your hands, because that will accelerate healing.” He paused. “Manx, are you listening?”