Marc shrugged. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to take our word for it.”

My father shook his head, frowning down at Harper, as if the victim were to blame for the faintness of the mystery scent he carried. “That’s not good enough. This same cat is responsible for murdering both strays.

On our territory. We can’t let that continue, nor can we let it go unpunished, and if we’re going to stop him, we have to know who he is.

Or what he is. I have to smel his scent.”

Resolute now, his jawline firm, my father turned sharply and marched away from us. I watched him go, noting the determination in his stride and the final-sounding thump each time his heels hit the ground. But I didn’t understand what he had in mind until he turned into the last empty horse stall on the right and dropped out of sight.

He was going to Shift.

In cat form, all of his senses would be heightened, even above the elevated sensitivity he had on two legs. My father wanted to give his feline nose a chance to succeed where the human version had failed.

As we stood around looking at one another, waiting for our Alpha to finish Shifting, my gaze returned to the body, and my thoughts to the scent in question. The smell was strongest on Harper’s neck, where he would have been gripped by his murderer. That made sense. What didn’t make sense was the fact that the smel was also noticeable—at least to me and Marc—on Harper’s hands, yet we’d found no defensive injuries.

“Hey, guys?” Six heads turned my way. “Harper has the kil er’s scent on his hands, so he must have touched the bastard. But he has no blood or obvious tissue beneath his nails, and no defensive injuries.” I paused to give them a moment to digest what I’d said. “Why would Harper touch his kil er, yet make no attempt to protect himself?”

In the back of my mind, I noted the whisper of claws scraping hard-packed dirt as my father neared the end of his Shift on the other side of the barn.

“The most obvious answer is that he trusted his murderer,” Owen drawled, shifting his cowboy hat back and forth on his head with one rough, tanned hand. “Knew him personally.”

I nodded. Marc had drawn the same conclusion about Moore in Arkansas. “Yeah, that makes sense—for a Pride cat.” My brothers and fellow enforcers were very close. They’d been friends and housemates for years, and in a Pride, a connection that strong came with a lot of physical contact. “But both Harper and Moore are strays. Loners,” I continued. “They were born human, and human men don’t touch one another much. They may shake hands, but that would only put the scent on Harper’s right hand. Right?”

Jace nodded, clearly following my train of thought. “So why would Harper touch his killer with both hands, if not to fight him off?”

“Exactly.”

A huffing sound drew our attention toward the rear of the barn and I turned to see my father padding toward us, his paws silent on the packed-dirt floor.

Even in his midfifties, my father was impressive and physically intimidating as a cat. He wasn’t as long as Owen or Marc, but he was bulky and solid, and obviously powerful. Like all werecats, Daddy’s fur was sleek and solid black, with no spots or rosettes. But unlike the rest of us, he was easy to identify from a distance, even with the wind blowing his scent the wrong way. As he’d aged, my father had developed a streak of silver fur behind each ear, the exact shade and placement of the two most prominent streaks of silver in his hair.

As he slunk toward us, moving graceful y across the floor, I thought about the difference between the life of a Pride Alpha like my father and that of a stray like Harper. My father had everything: respect, responsibility, power, and more friends and family than he knew what to do with. By contrast most strays were socially isolated and constantly at risk of losing everything to a faster, stronger stray. Which raised a very important question: Who the hell would a wary loner trust?

Someone he has no reason to fear, I thought, surprised by how obvious the answer seemed in hindsight. But who was that? Who didn’t a stray fear?

My father paused at the edge of the ring we’d formed around the corpse on the floor. He took us all in with a single, sweeping glance, then padded directly to the body, bending to place his nose less than an inch from Harper’s neck. His long tail swished slowly behind him, and his nostrils twitched as he inhaled, sniffing to isolate the scent none of the rest of us could identify.

And still the gears in my brain spun furiously. I was on to something, and I couldn’t let it go, even when my father raised his head from the body, huffing in triumph.

Who’s strong enough to break a stray’s neck, yet seems harmless enough to put him at ease? Who can get close enough to touch a stray tomcat without setting off his inner alarm? And just like that, I knew the answer: I could.

The kil er wasn’t a tomcat at al . She was a tabby.

Chapter Ten

My father reemerged from the empty horse stal on two legs, wearing a satisfied, cat-who-ate-the-canary look— and little else. He’d taken the time to pull on his pants, but the remaining parts of his suit—including socks and tie— lay draped across his left arm, his shoes hanging from the fingers of his right hand. We were getting a rare glimpse of our Alpha at his informal best, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“The scent was definitely there,” he said, walking toward us from the other end of the barn in long, confident strides.

“It was faint, but unmistakable once I caught it. We’re not looking for a stray after all.” He paused dramatically, and I was amused to realize my father was dragging the moment out to prolong the tension. It was working. All eyes were on him, and Ethan actually leaned forward in anticipation.