“I can smell it from here,” I said. Marc hadn’t asked me to come closer, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Does it smell like a stray to you?”

I inhaled deeply, mentally sorting through the smells I already knew.

The strongest was Marc. Musky and masculine, his scent was as familiar as my own. It was also blended with mine, the result of every kiss and embrace we’d shared since my last shower. Which we’d also shared, come to think of it.

Next, I filtered out the scents from the field around us, so pervasive I barely noticed them without conscious effort. I identified trees, grass, dirt, fresh dew, and several small rodents, mostly rabbits and mice.

On the body itself were several more scents, including Mr. Moore’s cologne, the oppressive stench of cigarette smoke, and a strong, minty breath spray. What was left after I’d sorted out al of those smells was the one Marc meant. It came from the stray, but was not his personal scent. It was something else. Something definitely feline, and rich, and pungent. Almost spicy…

Shock jolted up my spine, cold and numbing. Terror ripped through my chest. For one long moment, my heart refused to beat, and I could do nothing but stare at the corpse. I knew that scent. One aspect of it, anyway.

“Wel ?” Marc asked, staring at me as I stared at the body, my eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Foreign cat.” I stood and stumbled back a step, too horrified to form a complete sentence.

“What?” Marc glanced up at me sharply, then back down at Moore.

“No. It can’t be. Luiz is long gone. We would have heard about him by now if he were still around.”

Luiz was one of a pair of jungle strays who’d invaded our territory three months earlier, kidnapping and raping at will. I’d fought him once, and won, but he got away and we hadn’t heard from him since, a fact that scared me more than I was willing to admit out loud. And fucking pissed me off.

“It’s not Luiz.” I was certain of that much. The scent was very faint—meaning the murderer had only briefly touched the victim—but I knew two things without a doubt. The scent was not from a native cat, and it did not belong to Luiz.

“There’s barely a trace of a scent.” Marc shook his head slowly, but his stare never left Moore’s neck. “I don’t see how you can tell a damn thing about it.”

“I can tell.” I’d only met Luiz once, but that was plenty. If I lived to be two hundred, I’d still remember his scent on my deathbed. It was permanently imprinted on my brain, alongside such innocent memories as the taste of my first kiss—Marc—and the flavor of my first snow cone—blue raspberry.

“Fine.” Marc nodded, glancing up at me. “It isn’t Luiz. But is it a stray?”

Against my better judgment—and in spite of an irrational urge to run, or at least find a weapon—I knelt for a stronger whiff of the scent. It didn’t help. “I don’t think so. There’s something…weird about the smell.

It’s a foreign scent, but it’s also…more. If that makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Marc said as I stood and backed away from Moore’s corpse. “But you’re right.” He still knelt by the body, looking at it rather than at me as a light breeze ruffled tall blades of grass against his jeans.

“There’s an element to it that I can’t quite place.” He leaned back on his heels, frowning in frustration. “What’s his name?”

“Bradley Moore.” I slipped my hand into my pocket, feeling the slick surface of the plastic card, now warm from my own body heat. “He’s from Mississippi.”

Marc nodded, as if he’d already known that last part. It wouldn’t be too hard to guess. Mississippi was the nearest free territory, unclaimed by any Pride. And because it had the mildest climate of any of the free territories, it was home to the largest concentration of strays in the country, mingling with the human population like the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing.

We were less than forty miles from the Mississippi border, where interstate travelers were welcomed across the state line by a seedy-looking strip club, at which Moore had no doubt planned to spend the bundle of ones in his wallet. At least that much of his plan for the evening was clear. Unfortunately, a stack of one-dollar bills did nothing to answer the other questions pinging around my brain like the little silver balls in a pinball machine.

“Well, let’s get going.” Marc stood and brushed his palms against his legs, as if he could wipe the feel of dead flesh from his hands like road dust. I knew exactly how he felt. “It’s a shame the son of a bitch didn’t have the courtesy to give him a decent burial,” he said. “We do that much even for trespassers, and this asshole couldn’t be bothered to bury a friend.”

I blinked at Marc’s tone, so low and gravelly. And angry. Then his meaning sank in. “You think Moore knew whoever killed him?”

“How else could the kil er have gotten so close to him?”

I thought about that for a moment, still rubbing the license in my pocket as I stared at the ground near poor Mr. Moore’s head. “No defensive wounds,” I said finally. I took another deep breath, again searching with my sensitive nose for any sign of blood. I still found none.

“No blood beneath his nails or in his mouth. He didn’t fight back.” Marc was right. They’d probably known each other. But how was that even possible? How could an American stray have become friends with a foreign cat who had no business in the United States, much less in the south-central territory? And what were they both doing on our land?