“So, what, we’re thinking that Justus followed them out here, maybe to confront them, maybe to confirm his suspicions? Then he got upset and lost control?”

Robyn shrugged. “That’s happened to me.”

“That’s happened to all of us. But most of us don’t kill.”

“I don’t think he meant to.” Robyn gestured to Ivy’s arm again. “Her gun didn’t work, yet he barely scratched her. If he was newly infected himself and didn’t have the benefit of the counseling and information you give your new strays, he probably had no idea that scratching her would kill her. He may even have been defending himself from a rifle used as a baseball bat.”

“Okay.” The temptation to cling to her interpretation of events was strong. I didn’t want to think that my little brother had become a murderer. But I couldn’t just dismiss the other possibilities because I loved Justus. “We’d know for sure if we could find him.”

“He’s not the only one missing. According to Corey Morris, Leland was with Ivy in the cabin when he was infected.”

“You think Justus infected him too?”

Robyn shrugged. “Chances of him leaving unscathed are slim, right?”

I nodded. Especially if he was sleeping with Justus’s girlfriend. Even in humans, that kind of betrayal often led to violence. To a newly infected shifter unable to control his instincts and urges…?

“This is why the Pride has to be recognized. New strays need structure and assistance. Education. Support. If Justus and whoever infected him knew what they were becoming, they wouldn’t have spread the infection.” I had to believe that.

“Agreed. So, what do we do with her?” Robyn braved another glance at the body. “I assume we can’t call the police.”

“You assume correctly. If she made it to the morgue, at the very least, they’d put out a warning about large cats, and hunters would flock to the area hoping to bag one.”

“So what are we supposed to do with her? We can’t leave her here.”

“We’ll bury her. We can do that, at least.”

“But this is her family’s property,” Robyn pointed out. “When they realize she’s missing, won’t this be the first place people look? They’d notice a fresh grave.”

“Yes, but we’re burying her out of respect and to delay the inevitability of discovery, not to hide anything,” I explained. “An autopsy would turn up no evidence of foul play, other than the burial itself, and if they test her blood, the lab will likely assume the sample was contaminated by the cat that scratched her.” I shrugged. “The cops will have a mystery, but no true crime to investigate.”

I glanced around, hoping for a throw blanket or something to cover her with, but there was nothing except the bedding she was already lying on. “Hopefully there’s a shovel in here somewhere.”

The cabin itself turned up nothing more useful than a few large spoons in a drawer beneath the microwave. But a small shed stood in the clearing out back, and inside we found an ax for chopping firewood and two shovels.

One of them was broken.

While I started digging the grave, among the trees well behind the shed, Robyn wrapped poor Ivy in the blanket she’d died on and brought her outside.

“She can’t have been dead for more than a day,” Robyn said as she carefully laid the body on the ground, near the still-shallow hole. If she weren’t a shifter, she never could have carried a woman nearly her own size down the stairs by herself, in a cradle hold. “How can she possibly smell so bad?”

“From the amount of ash in the fireplace, I suspect the fire burned for a while after she died. That would have kept the cabin warm, even with the door ajar, which accelerates the decomposition process.” I threw another shovelful of dirt onto the growing pile next to the grave. “Even so, we’re much more aware of the smell than any human would be.”

Robyn brushed her hands down the front of the black wool coat she’d borrowed from me. “I think you’re going to have to burn this. And not just to get rid of evidence.”

“Fortunately, Justus has a fireplace.”

For a while, I dug in silence, except for the thunk of the shovel into the soil and the chorus of crickets. Robyn stared at the blanket-wrapped bundle, and she was quiet for so long that I started to worry.

“You okay?” I finally asked, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from my forehead, in spite of the cold.

“Is this what would have happened to me, if I hadn’t survived scratch fever?” Her voice sounded strained. “Would Jace and Abby have buried me in an unmarked grave in the woods where I died?”

“You didn’t die.”

“But if I had?”

She was going to make me say it. “If you’d died, then yes. They would have done the best they could by you, which probably would have meant digging two feet deeper than the six-foot hole I’m digging for Ivy.” I’d never had to dig an entire grave on my own. In the past, I’d had enforcers with shovels of their own to help. The work wasn’t difficult, with a shifter’s strength. But it was tedious.

“What about her family?” Robyn asked. But what she really wanted to know about was her own family, in the event of that hypothetical death. “They’ll never know what happened to her, will they? She’ll just be…gone.”

“With any luck, yes.” I pushed the shovel into another clump of packed earth and wrenched more dirt loose. “At least this way, they can hope she’s still alive somewhere. Isn’t that better than knowing how she died?”

“No.” Robyn didn’t hesitate. “False hope is never better.” She stood and brushed dirt from her pants and the back of my coat. “Here, let me dig for a while.”

“No need. I’m nearly done.”

“I’m bored.” She took the shovel from me, and after five minutes of watching, I was ready to pull clods of dirt from the earth by hand, just to have something to do.

“Why don’t you see if there’s anything to drink in the cabin?” she said when she noticed me fidgeting.

“Thirst-quenching or recreational?”

“Thirst-quenching.” She pushed hair from her face and left a smear of dirt across her forehead. “You know. Because of all the shoveling.”