change my mind, then raced back down to the foyer to pull my boots on.
Steele followed me just moments later, thankfully wearing more clothing, and led the way to a ruby-red Mustang that I'd never seen him drive before.
"Is this new?" I asked, sliding into the passenger seat and buckling my seat belt.
Steele buckled himself in, then turned over the engine with a rumble. "Not new, but I haven't driven her in a while. We decided to start changing it up with cars, though. Create less predictable targets."
I nodded my understanding. "Keep them away until we're ready to go on the offensive. Good thinking."
He shot me a smile, and we glided down the driveway to our front gate, waving at the guard as he let us out.
"I'm actually glad to get a few minutes alone with you," Steele told me as we drove out of the mansion district. "Not that this morning with Kody didn't blow my fucking mind"—he shot me a wicked grin, and my pulse raced in response—"but I need to explain that shit about the dead cat."
Oh yeah. That.
"If it's dragging up painful memories—"
"It is," he agreed, "but I still need to tell you. You don't remember anything about that time, so it's unfair of me to withhold information."
I disagreed; I didn't need to know everything. But he seemed determined to tell me. "Okay. So, why the dead cat? Why Lucky Cat on the bullet? I assumed he was just implying you had nine lives, but you guys seemed to read more into it."
Steele jerked a sharp nod, his hands flexing on the steering wheel. "Arch mentioned I used to call you Cat back then, and he said that he told you about your last night with us."
I cringed, ashamed of eleven-year-old me for running to the cops and getting Archer halfway killed. "Yeah, he explained."
Steele pulled in a deep breath and released it in a long sigh. "So, Rachel always had a crush on Arch. He never paid her any attention; she wasn't one of us, you know? She went to Rainy Prep and only hung out with us when she was feeling guilty."
Surprise rippled through me. "Rachel was at Rainy Prep? I never knew that." They were the sister school to Shadow Prep, where I'd gone to high school. Surely our paths would have crossed somewhere.
"She was four years above you," Steele reminded me. "Anyway, she developed this huge crush on Arch around the time we were thirteen, and it just got worse the more he ignored her. When she came around that night, she saw how he was with you, or how we both were, really." He shrugged.
I wrinkled my nose. "Was that a bit weird? I was just a kid."
Steele barked a laugh. "Okay, hindsight and extensive self-reflection has afforded me this level of insight. What we were feeling back then was love like a... I dunno, kindred spirit connection thing. It wasn't a sexual, creepy, predator thing." He shot me a grin. "That came later."
"Okay, so Rachel was jealous?"
Steele grimaced. "Understatement. When she worked out that it was you who'd called the cops on Damien, she blew up, wanted to run straight into the Reapers HQ and tell them it was you, not Arch."
"So why didn't she?" Because shit, I would have deserved it.
He sighed heavily. "I threatened her—made her scared enough that she'd keep her mouth shut. We had a huge blowup on the lawn outside Damien's house, where we'd been staying with you. When it clicked with Rachel that Arch had deliberately taken than beating to save you, she was..." He trailed off, lost in the memory for a moment.
I didn't want to intrude on his thoughts, but I also didn't want to leave him alone with them. So I just reached out and placed my hand over his where it rested on the gear shift.
He glanced down, then turned his hand over to link our fingers and rested our combined hands in his lap.
"Anyway, she knew I called you Cat. I'd basically stopped calling you anything else by that stage. I finally laid it out to her that we would protect you no matter what the price, and she shut down. I could tell she was hurt that I'd basically chosen some random kid over my own twin, but I couldn't take the words back. The last thing she said before leaving that night was that you must be one lucky Cat."
Lucky Cat.
Fucking hell. It'd all been in capital