But our mutual death wish for Luiz didn’t make his enemy my friend.

After al , she’d kil ed three innocent toms, which a couple of my fellow enforcers refused to remember. I stayed in the guest room to make sure that when she woke, there would be at least one person in the room willing and ready to stop Manx if she tried to leave.

At 8:13 p.m., while my mother watered a pot of begonias on the windowsill, Manx finally opened her eyes, after nearly thirty hours of unconsciousness. The very first thing she said, her voice creaky and her accent thick, was “Where is my gun?”

I laughed out loud, and nearly dropped my book.

My mother spun at the sound of the tabby’s voice, and set her watering can on a nearby bookcase. “It’s locked in my husband’s desk,”

she said, crossing the room graceful y toward the bed. “We can’t let you walk around armed and loaded. That would be irresponsible.”

“Where am I?” Manx asked, pushing herself into a sitting position with her good hand. I leaned sideways to get a look at her around my mother’s shoulder. “Who are you?”

“I’m Karen Sanders, and you’re in my home. You have a broken wrist and you’ve been unconscious for a day and a half, but the doctor thinks you’re going to be fine. And so will your baby.”

The tabby’s uninjured hand flew to her stomach, where no bump was yet visible.

My mother settled into a chair by the bed. “You’re about four months along, right?”

Manx nodded, dark curls bouncing around her shoulders. “Whose is it?” I asked from across the room, and regretted the question instantly when they both tried to incinerate me with flames from their eyes.

Manx clutched her stomach tighter. “He is mine.”

My mother looked at me coldly. “What’s your name, dear?”

I blinked in surprise, my hands clenching my book. Dear? As badly as the nickname had always bugged me, I was dear. “My name is Mercedes, but I have been Manx for…very long time.” The tabby stared at her hands, fiddling with the seam of her cast.

“Which do you prefer?” My mother took a bundle of yarn and two knitting needles from the nightstand.

Manx shrugged. “They are just names.”

We sat in silence for several minutes, until I could no longer stomach all the unanswered questions. “Why were you chasing Luiz?”

My mother twisted in her chair to glare at me, but I ignored her.

To my surprise, the tabby answered, her voice hard with hatred and determination. “He is a monster. I will kill him.” She hesitated, and met my eyes, hers accusing. “When I find him again.”

I huffed. “Join the club.”

“You know Luiz?”

“You might say that.” I couldn’t resist a smile. “I broke his nose.”

Manx laughed, and the sudden joyful sound caught me off guard. “So did I.”

A grin stole across my face. She could fight. Of course she could fight.

She’d killed three toms with her bare hands. She probably only carried the gun because—according to my mother—Shifting after the first trimester could be dangerous for the baby.

I eyed Manx careful y, curious in spite of my anger and caution. Who was this pregnant woman, this girl— because she couldn’t be older than twenty—who’d fought Luiz, then chased him al over three states for the honor of putting a bullet through his head? “When did you break his nose?” I asked, more fascinated by Manx with every word she spoke.

“When he took my baby.”

“Your baby?” I glanced at her stomach, where her good hand still rested over the white down comforter, nails ragged, fingers cal used.

She smiled softly and shook her head. “My first baby. I fight him for the child. I broke his nose, and claw his arms. But he took my son anyway.” She looked at my mother through haunted eyes. “I need the gun. I cannot kill him without it, and I will not be taken alive. Not again.”

Her free hand caressed her flat stomach and her eyes hardened. “I will not lose this baby.”

Taken alive?

A sudden deluge of understanding washed over me, and I fought to keep from drowning in it. We’d been so close to the truth.

Manx was one of the missing South American tabbies. She was among the first victims of an ambitious, brutal project intended to provide breed-able tabbies to some jungle cat—likely several jungle cats—in the Amazon. Sara, Abby, and I were part of the project. But beyond that, the dead college girls and strippers were also involved, in Luiz’s attempts to create tabbies, alongside the greater plan to take them.

Somehow Manx had fought free from her captors and was now out for revenge. I couldn’t help but respect that.

“You’re safe here,” my mother said, almost crooning as she stroked the tabby’s hand. “We won’t let anything happen to you, or to your baby.”

But Manx looked skeptical. Downright disbelieving, as if the very concept of trust were foreign to her. Which was understandable, considering that she’d spent the last four years in hell. In a place where every man she saw beat her and raped her. Then one of them stole her child. Learning to trust men again would likely be the hardest thing Manx would ever do. If it was even possible.

And suddenly I understood why she’d killed the toms. I didn’t excuse it, mostly because I couldn’t picture Jamey Gardner ever hurting anyone.

But Manx wouldn’t have known that. She would only have known what she’d lived through, and was determined never to go through again.