Authors: Nara Malone
Marcus remembered then that Marisa had been waiting for him
when he returned from Allie’s. It wasn’t the first time the she’d shifted and
gone roaming the night as a cub. They needed to find a way to contain that
power of hers until she was wise enough to use it.
Marie took a glass bowl from the bedside stand, filled it
from a pitcher and let him drink. The cool water washed the cotton feeling from
his mouth but not his brain. Marie filled in some details for him.
“I had a feeling. I get those sometimes when she’s roaming.
When she wasn’t in her crib this is the first place I looked. She was on the
bed with you when I opened the door, then you vanished and a leopard reappeared
in your place.”
It took all his will to focus beyond the beat of pain in his
head. Light streaming through the window was like knives slicing through his
eyes. He beamed a wobbly thought at her.
She understood and moved to draw the curtain. In the
darkness, he managed to gather enough energy to send more requests.
Marie,
my sweet, sit here on the bed beside me. I need your help. Just a little energy
so I can sort myself out.
“Adam said…”
There are things Adam doesn’t know or understand yet.
Trust me. Help me.
She sighed and sat beside him. He rested his head on her
lap. The peace that came with her closeness was better than a pill. Pain
receded further.
One hand on either side of my head, sweet. Yes, that’s
the way. Just let yourself be a conduit.
He flashed out and back into his
human form.
“Thank you,” he said with feeling when he could sit up and
cover himself with a sheet. She reached to help him, but he waved her back, too
aware of her embarrassment to allow it.
“How did I do that? I thought only you and Adam could shift
others.”
“You were just a battery. I did the shift. You and Marisa
show innate ability to shift others. Your aim isn’t good yet, but you’ll both
get the knack of it eventually. And how is my littlest granddaughter?” he asked
to distract her.
“She appears to be fine. Adam is riding herd on her, intent
on preventing any more surprises.”
The effort he’d expended so far left him exhausted,
trembling. She grabbed a blanket folded at the foot of the bed, shook it out
and pulled it over him. She adjusted the pillows under his head. She’d come a
long way since discovering she was more than a mere human female, but his son’s
mate still had some of those quirky human habits, like the way her cheeks
turned pink when she was presented with the naked, newly shifted form of a
male.
He squeezed her hand in thanks, waiting for his strength to
return. Human speech, pushing sound through his lips and moving his lips and
tongue to shape words felt like too much effort.
“How long have I been out?” he asked at last.
“Since Tuesday night. It’s Saturday morning.”
Saturday!
Panic propelled him from horizontal to
vertical. Allie would think… He wasn’t going to think about what Allie must
think. He had to get to her.
“Marcus, what are you thinking? Get back in bed.” He
steadied himself with a hand on her shoulder while the room rocked as if they
were in a boat rather than a house.
The bedroom door rattled and popped open. Jake ducked under
the doorframe and straightened as he stepped into the room. Human homes were
not the best fit for Yeti.
“Good, you’re awake,” Jake said.
“Jake, you’re not supposed to upset him,” Marie said, moving
in front of Jake. Marcus grabbed the bedpost to stay upright.
“Sorry, sweetie, but I have a situation he needs to know
about.”
“Thank the Mother, someone around here still has some
respect for my instructions,” Marcus grumbled.
“Jake, I need you to take me to Allie.”
“I’d do that, Magus, if I knew where she was.”
“Jake, you’re going to kill him!” Marie rose to her toes,
planted both hands against his chest and tried pushing him back toward the
door.
“Sorry, Marie, but he’s not the only one in danger now. I
went to check on Allie. Her apartment has been ransacked and she’s not there.”
Marie relented.
“Get me some clothes and get me out of here, Jake,” Marcus
said.
* * * * *
Jake helped him into the diner and Marcus propped himself in
a booth, trying to look as if he didn’t feel like he’d been sawed into sections
and stitched back together. Allie’s cell phone was going straight to voice
mail. She still wasn’t at her apartment. He worried her father had finally
caught up with her.
Franny came bustling down the aisle with a pot of coffee and
when she saw Marcus, she put the coffee down and marched toward him with an
intensity that couldn’t mean anything good.
Her slap came so fast Marcus wasn’t prepared to block it. He
was sure his brain dislodged, slid down his throat and hit his stomach. The
accompanying wave of nausea threatened to eject it from his body completely.
Jake caught Franny’s wrist before she could deliver a second
blow.
“You know, I feel like doing that myself some days, but he’s
fresh out of what could have been his death bed, so that’s more likely to part
him with the little sense he has left than it is to knock sense into him.”
Franny gave Marcus a visual once-over. Her gaze lingered on
his ill-fitting jeans and sweatshirt—something of Ean’s Marie had loaned
Marcus.
“Okay. You were sick. You couldn’t call her?”
Marcus swallowed and closed his eyes, still trying not to
throw up.
“Unconscious,” Jake said.
“Does why you were unconscious have anything to do with why
the police took her off, pretty boy? Or are you going to pretend you have
nothing to do with that?”
Marcus felt the blood drain from his face.
“What charge?” he asked, his voice weak, raspy.
“I can’t find out anything. I call the police station and
they tell me nothing. I went down there and they said they don’t have her in
custody and I have to discuss it with the detective in charge of the case. Only
Detective Snodgrass is not around and doesn’t return my calls. Lila tells me it
is something to do with Allie’s business card. You wouldn’t know anything about
that though, would you?”
Marcus shook his head and wished he hadn’t. Franny’s face
blurred and swam in front of his eyes.
Jake’s voice came at him from somewhere to his right. “I
know who can straighten this out. Can I trust you to keep your hands off him
until I make a couple of calls?”
He got a grudging nod from Franny. The sound of phone
buttons depressed and the resulting beeps faded as Jake moved away. Jake said
Seth’s name as he exited the diner.
Seth was the son of one of the council elders, Keeper of the
Code. Marcus wasn’t sure he trusted the heir in line to fill the role of
interpreting the Pantherian Code around his family. But he knew that even if it
required a presidential pardon, Seth had learned his way around the human world
and its myriad laws well enough that he could have Allie out of jail in an
hour. He’d just have to warn Jake to keep Seth away from Marie and the girls.
* * * * *
Allie had asked for a lawyer and as that initial request
went unanswered she assumed there was no point in carrying on about it. If she
overlooked the locked interrogation room—and really that might be set to lock
automatically—they hadn’t locked her up. She was fairly certain they had to do
something formal to take her into custody and they hadn’t mentioned a charge.
If/when they charged her she’d get more adamant about an attorney.
Interrogation rooms didn’t come with windows to the outside.
The clock was her only sense of time passing. At seven the next morning, a
woman in a pink business suit, so tight it made Lila look like a nun, slipped
in the conference room and set coffee and doughnuts in front of Allie.
“Detective Snodgrass will be back as soon as he’s out of his
meeting. He said to see if you needed anything.”
“The ladies room?”
“Oh sure. Sure. Right this way.”
Allie followed the woman out and down the hall, her body
stiff from a night spent not answering questions and long waits between
officers dropping in to fill out paperwork and “chat”.
The woman motioned to the ladies’ room door and leaned
against the wall directly across from it. “I’ll wait right here so I can show
you the way back.”
Allie was washing her face in cold water at the sink when
the bathroom door opened. She grabbed a wad of stiff brown paper towels and
patted at her face.
“Damn, girl, they must be putting you through the ringer.”
Allie looked up then and by the shocked expression on the
face of the young woman confronting her, she suspected she should know who she
was. She didn’t.
The woman glanced back at the door. “The officer in the hall
waiting for you?”
Allie nodded. “She’s a cop?”
The woman leaned back against the door. “Damn right she is.
Nice of her to tell you. What are they after you for, sugar? No wait, let me
guess, they want your dad.”
Allie crumpled the paper towels she’d been about to toss in
the trash. The scent of wet toweling lingered in her nostrils and on her tongue
like old coffee grounds. The realization this woman could tie her to Eddie made
her so dizzy she had to lean against the sink.
“Look, baby, you probably don’t remember me. You were just a
little girl the last time I saw you. You didn’t even have boobs yet. I used to
work for Eddie, back before I got clean and straightened up. I’m a social
worker now.”
“I don’t know anyone named Eddie.” Allie twisted the towels
in her hands to keep them from shaking.
“Really? He had a kid looked just like you. She’d be your
age now.”
Allie kept her eyes down, shrugged. “Sorry, wrong girl.” She
kept her chin tucked to her chest, moved toward the door, but Ms. Social Worker
wasn’t budging.
“I heard your daddy is bad off, cancer or something. Maybe
they figure he’s easy pickin’s now.”
Allie didn’t know if it was truth or a trick. She was so
headachy from hunger that she couldn’t think straight. She held to her lie.
“You’re mistaken.”
“Okay. Maybe so. My name’s Billie. You decide you need some
help call down to Social Services and ask for me.”
The female officer came in then and Billie stepped aside
when she asked Allie if she was done. Allie wasn’t keen on her return to the
bleak little room that had the scent of fear and poverty embedded in the walls,
but she was happy to escape Billie.
Alone again, and back in her hard plastic chair, Allie put a
hand to her stomach. The scent of doughnuts and coffee had it cramping. She hadn’t
eaten the meal they brought last night. She hadn’t planned to eat the breakfast
either. She didn’t know how her passive defiance would help, but she’d resolved
to stick to water until they let her go.
How long could they keep her over something as small as a
business card at a crime scene? She had ideas about how the card wound up
there. Ideas related to the fact that the crime occurred a few hours after
Marcus had left her Tuesday night. In the early hours of Wednesday morning to
be exact. Throw in that she hadn’t seen Marcus since and it wasn’t a big leap
in logic to suspect he had something to do with it. Should she be relieved that
he’d been running from trouble instead of her? She didn’t know.
She knew what was most important—people who keep their
mouths shut go home. People who talk either go to jail or to a shallow grave in
the woods. Those were facts of life.
A uniformed officer opened the door and waved Allie out.
“Got a lawyer out here insisting you asked for him. Is that right?”
Allie nodded. She didn’t know who or how, but she was taking
any ticket out that came her way. She followed the officer to her rescuer.
A familiar Texas drawl had her smiling before she turned the
corner and saw her rescuer at Detective Snodgrass’ desk. Seth.
“You crossed way over the line keeping her here all night,”
he was saying. “Where’s the warrant for the search of her apartment?”
“What search?”
The sudden tension, not evident in body but crackling in the
air around Seth, made Allie stumble.
The guard caught Allie’s elbow. Seth paused, sent Allie a
questioning look.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“What search?” Snodgrass asked.
“I was told that you searched her place.”
“Yeah? Who told you that?”
“She’s free to go?”
“Why are you changing the subject?”
“A more interesting question might be did you ever tell my
client she could leave anytime she wanted?”
Snodgrass shrugged. “She never said she wanted to leave.”
“Right.”
Seth aimed a megawatt smile at Allie. “Hey there, Allison.
How’d you like a ride home?”
Allie could imagine that was the kind of smile that coined
the term “winning smile” and she didn’t doubt it must have swayed a jury or
two. She nodded but held her silence until they were outside breathing sweet,
spring air. She turned her face to the sun, eyes closed, and savored the
moment. She never thought she could be so desperate for the sky above her and
the smell of fresh air.
“You’ve rescued me again.”
“You’re sure winding up in some rough places lately.”
Seth’s winning smile was back. She wondered how to ask,
politely, how much all those megawatts would cost her. She imagined legal fees
would eat up any extra salary she was earning for the next several months.
As if he’d read her mind, Seth said, “A mutual friend
mentioned that you’d been answering questions at the Greyville police station
for an awfully long time. I just dropped in to check everything was okay.”
“I appreciate that and I can handle things from here. Please
send a bill for your trouble.”
“The mag—” he stopped himself and started again. “Marcus
sends his best. And trust me, if you wind up needing anything more than just me
reminding the officers they have to respect your legal rights, he can afford to
spring for your fees.”