I was starting to see a pattern, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Okay, this is what I have so far,” I said, glancing over the barely legible scribbling on my notepad. “On Wednesday, Amber Cleary disappeared from a strip club in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The next day—Thursday—the rogue tabby murdered Bradley Moore less than ten miles away, in White Hall. That same day, Kel ie Tandy vanished in the middle of her shift at Forbidden Fruit, in New Orleans. Then, on Saturday, the tabby showed up at Forbidden Fruit, where she killed Robert Harper.”

I looked up to find both guys watching me. “Am I forgetting anything?”

“Yeah. The other missing strippers.” Marc leaned against my father’s glass display case as he looked to Michael for confirmation. “Didn’t you say there were two more in Louisiana?”

Michael nodded, flipping through his notes again. “Melissa Vassey never made it home after her shift at the Pegasus Lounge on Saturday night. Care to take a guess where the Pegasus Lounge is located?”

“Saturday…” I said, my brain scrambling to assemble a puzzle we didn’t yet have all the pieces for. “Leesville, Louisiana. Or somewhere nearby.”

Michael nodded. “Good guess.”

“How the hell did you know that?” Confused, Marc glanced back and forth between us.

I grinned in triumph. “It fits the pattern. A stripper goes missing, then, a day later, the tabby shows up and kills a tomcat. On Sunday she dropped off Jamey Gardner’s body in Leesville, which must mean that on Saturday, a stripper went missing from Leesvil e, or somewhere nearby.”

I flipped my legal pad around for him to see. “But the tabby can’t be the one taking the strippers. She was busy killing Moore when Kellie Tandy went missing, and she was killing Jamey Gardner when Melissa Vassey disappeared from Leesville.”

“So, the tabby’s alibi for kidnapping is murder?” A sardonic smile played across Marc’s lips. “That’s one hell of a defense.”

“Not exactly exoneration, is it?” I shrugged. “But it holds up.”

“What about Friday?” Marc asked, taking the notebook from my hand.

“What do you mean?”

He aimed one finger at a blank line on the legal pad. “Friday’s blank.

See? No dead toms, and no missing strippers.”

“Damn.” I plopped down on my father’s desk and took my notebook back for closer study. “You poked a hole in my theory.”

“Only a small hole,” Michael said. “The third Louisiana stripper went missing Friday night, from a topless bar in Lafayette.”

I stared at my brother for a moment, trying to process the new information and fit it into the timeline forming in my head. Then I twisted around and snatched the atlas from the far corner of the desk.

“Lafayette.” I traced I-10 to I49, then north with my finger. “If you stick to the major interstates, Lafayette is on the way to Leesvil e from New Orleans.”

Marc looked from me, to the map, to my hastily scribbled notes, to Michael. “So we have a stripper missing from Lafayette on Friday, but no dead tom. Why?”

Michael shrugged. “We’re assuming the tabby’s following whoever’s taking the strippers, right?”

Unfortunately, we were indeed.

“I’m betting there’s no corpse for Friday because she didn’t find a tom in Lafayette. There aren’t that many of us, and she can’t possibly run into a werecat at every gas stop.”

Though I’d come across Dan Painter’s scent in that very manner.

“Besides, we don’t have anyone living near Lafayette, do we?” I asked, glancing to Marc for an answer, because Michael had been out of the loop—for the most part—for the better part of the last decade.

“No. No one with permission, anyway.”

In the foyer, a soft click and the squeal of dry hinges signaled the front door opening.

My father stepped into the office doorway and paused when he noticed us huddled around his computer. “Wait just a minute, guys, and let’s see what Michael found out.”

Michael nudged my hip with the capped tip of his pen, and I slid off the desk and onto my feet just as Vic, Owen, and Parker followed my father into the room.

“Well?” He marched forward to take the position of power: his desk chair.

Michael stood and gave me a shove, and I followed Marc toward the love seat, pausing to grab my notes on the way past the desk.

“I’ve found three more missing strippers so far.”

The Alpha sank into his chair, and Michael finished going over the details, then set his notepad on the center of the desk, where it wouldn’t be missed. “We’ve identified a pattern connecting the murders with the missing strippers.”

We’ve identified a pattern? I thought, glaring at my know-it-all older brother.

Marc pulled me onto the love seat next to him, squeezing my hand in sympathy, as if he knew what I was thinking. Hell, he probably did.

Dad scanned the notepad, then stood, motioning for Michael to take his seat. “I want to know why these girls in particular are disappearing.

What do they have in common, other than their occupation? Are there pictures? Are they all students, or was Kellie Tandy an exception? Do they al work completely in the nude, or are some of them simply topless waitresses?”

My father turned to Vic, Owen, and Parker as he settled into his armchair. “If you go now, you can catch the eleven o’clock news. I wouldn’t be surprised if the missing strippers have made it into the national broadcast.”