G cabot Online
Story
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Prologue
May 30, 2011 As Brad watched the three Cains devour their porterhouse steaks, he realized he should have added a couple hundred bucks to the cost of his information, just to cover dinner. They were outside a steakhouse in Dallas. The June heat meant they had the patio to themselves, which was good for privacy, but it also meant the Cains were on their second pitcher of beer—and only two of them were old enough to drink. Seventeen-year-old Carter had already gone through a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade and looked ready for a second. Brad was waiting until they’d eaten a little more before presenting his offer. It was never wise to interfere with a werewolf and his meal, and that went double for Cains. Brad was a werewolf himself, but at five-foot seven and a hundred and fifty pounds even the youngest Cain dwarfed him. The older two could eat him for dinner, then go looking for dessert. It was Carter who slowed first. He was small for a Cain, barely over six feet tall, maybe two hundred pounds. Good-looking enough that the teen server had been eying him. Must take after his mother—the Cains weren’t known for their looks. Or for their brains, and in this regard, Carter was definitely part of the family. “You said you’ve got information on some kid of Uncle Zack’s. But this here—” He pointed at the scrap of paper. “—says his last name is Souza, not Cain.” “He wasn’t raised as a Cain,” the boy’s grandfather—Theo—said. “That’s why Brad here is offering to help us get him back.” Theo was the clan patriarch. Also the brightest of the bunch, which wasn’t saying a lot, but it helped. Carter was the son of Theo’s youngest. The thirty-something guy between them was Nate, the son of Theo’s oldest. Zachary had been his middle child. Dead ten years now, when he got the damned fool idea to join an uprising against the Pack. Zack’s only known son had been killed by a rival werewolf a few years ago. The old man had taken that hard. Now Brad was offering him a replacement . . . with bonuses. “You say the boy was part of an experiment?” Theo said as he finished his steak. “Making him into some kind of super-werewolf?”