Psy & Changelings 06 - Branded by Fire

missed the smile tugging at the curve of her lips.
     
     
    Mercy checked her phone when they got back to the car. “Falcons postponed,” she told Riley. “Meet’s set for day after tomorrow instead.”
    “Must’ve been something big,” Riley murmured. “They’ve been working for months to reach this point.”
    Agreeing, Mercy cleared the message. “I’m thinking we get a Rat to call in an anonymous tip on the body. No use leaving him out there to rot. Who knows what’s in his system.”
    “I have to meet more of these Rats. Teijan wasn’t what I was expecting.”
    Mercy made the call before answering him. “They don’t like you wolves as much as us leopards,” she said, closing her phone. “Apparently, you’ve been known to threaten to skin any Rat you see sniffing around.”
    Riley gave a grim smile. “That was when they were spies with no allegiance to anyone. Now they’re valued associates.”
    Mercy snorted, but the cat was intrigued by his logic. As agile as it was, it needed a mate who could match it mentally as well as physically. “Getting back to the body—I can’t quite figure out how this guy fits into the recent slew of Psy going nuts. You heard of anything going down where the perpetrator wasn’t found?”
    “No.”
    “Me, either. But it’s not like Enforcement sends us memos.”
    “What about that cop?”
    “Who? Max?” Mercy frowned. “He went back up to New York.”
    “He might have contacts.”
    Mercy nodded. “I’ll ask Clay to tap him. But if the Psy decide to hush it up, no one will know anything.” She blew out a frustrated breath.
    “Mercy.” A tone so restrained, it spoke of the greatest emotion.
    “What is it?”
    “Am I out of the hole I dug myself with the last op?”
    “Maybe.” But she couldn’t help it—he was so serious. Reaching across, she brushed her fingertips over his jaw, tenderness tugging at her very soul. It would, she thought, be so very easy to hurt this man and never know she’d done it, he held everything so close. “You’re out of that hole.”
    He winced. “You found out.”
    “How long did you think the mating dance was going to escape my notice?” She folded her arms, though she wanted only to stroke him.
    “Can we talk about this later?”
    “Hmm.” She glanced at the kit he’d put on the backseat. “After we drop off the samples.”
    “I’ll get one of my men to take it up to Sierra Tech. Work for you?”
    Mercy nodded. Most of the respected R & D company was commercial, but a small area had been set aside to research things the packs needed to know. Since DarkRiver and SnowDancer paid for that section out of their own funds, the minority shareholders weren’t bothered. And both packs had a place where they could get work done in efficient privacy. “Let me call Ashaya and tell her about the samples. She’ll probably want to head up.”
    As she was finishing the conversation with the M-Psy, she remembered something else. “Did you manage to talk to Nash again?”
    “Yes, but he wouldn’t share any details of his research over the comm link,” Ashaya replied. “I’m sorry—I know you need more to evaluate his protection needs.”
    “Not your fault.” She leaned back against the seat. “Let me see if I can set up a face-to-face. Might get something that way.”
    “Good luck.”
     
     
    The NetMind came calling while Faith was sitting in the office Vaughn had rigged for her—an office she absolutely adored, because it was as wild as the man who was her mate, being situated in a hollow cavern off the spectacular main cave that Vaughn had made into a home. The walls in this cavern glittered with embedded minerals, setting off the glow in the thin tubes threaded through the walls of the entire “house.” Those tubes provided both heat and light in an eco-friendly way, leaving her cocooned in warmth.
    It was, she thought, just one element in the whole that added up to a feeling of total safety. No one would dare touch her now that she belonged to Vaughn, but it was nice to be able to work without any worry whatsoever—the route to her and Vaughn’s home was booby-trapped in every way you could imagine, and some most people never would.
    Lying back in her favorite easy chair, she began to go through the list of forecasts she’d been requested to make. She never made any business predictions alone, of course. There was always the potential for a Cassandra Spiral, the major mental cascade that could