Accidentally Catty (37 page)

Shaw nodded in understanding, worried Daniel would become more upset. He chose a soothing tone when he said, “It only makes sense you’d look for me at Katie’s clinic.”

“I was so distraught, but I do remember the lovely women who were with her. Friends of hers, I suppose. I especially remember the dark-haired beauty whose mouth rivals that of a foghorn.” His voice rose in an uncannily familiar hitch and fall. One Shaw knew now he’d heard on many occasions.

Shaw found, though he didn’t know this man, he was angry in a sudden rush that his grandfather had been so brutally assaulted. “Nina. That was Nina,” he said on a grin. “So did this—your coma—happen because of me?” The notion had troubled him since he’d found out Daniel was his grandfather and was involved in some kind of research.

“Bah! No, son. This happened because of me. It’s my own doing that you’re in such danger, both you and Dr. Woods. You showing up was merely coincidental.”

Shaw’s eyes narrowed, his senses on red alert. “Danger? From whom?”

Daniel’s remorse was a palpable thing. “From Nissa.”

Shaw’s eyes went wide. “My mother?”

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no!” Daniel barked, his thin chest heaving.

“Easy, Danny. You heard what the doctors said. You must take it easy.” Esmeralda squeezed his hand.

His chest shuddered in and out before he said, “No, son. Nissa isn’t your mother.”

 

 

‟SHAW’S
mother?” Katie crowed.

The woman’s expression grew sour as she circled Katie, her face turning harder with each perusal of Katie’s face. “I’m not his mother. I’m his stepmother. An unwilling one, at that.”

Katie gawked, her eyes wide. “That wasn’t you in the picture in Daniel Green’s office at the animal park?”

She sneered. “Of course not. That was Leticia Green. Mother to that bastard Shaw and daughter to Daniel Green.”

Shaw had never mentioned a stepmother. He sure hadn’t mentioned an evil one. There was a poison apple in this scenario, she just knew it. Her heart began to crash. “So what exactly do you have to do with all of this?”

Nissa slipped her foot under the chair on wheels and pulled it to her. She dropped down in it with a sigh, her lumpy form spreading, the teddy bears on her collar mocking Katie. “Daniel Green is responsible for not only ruining my marriage but throwing his whore of a daughter in my husband’s face. That’s what I have to do with it.”

Ohhhh. Infidelity. A woman scorned. Yeah. Nina was right. It always did come down to a woman. “So you’re angry that Shaw’s mother, Leticia, stole your husband?”

She waved a pudgy hand in the air in indifference. “Oh, no. I’m long over that. I was angry. Very angry. In fact, so angry I killed Leticia.”

Katie fought a gasp. Be gentle with the lunatic. “I could see that. I mean, infidelity is a crime of the heart. It really sucks. I think there should be a law against it, and anyone who participates in ruining a marriage should get their due. Total exoneration.”

She smiled. Like some maniacal grandmother who’d just baked cookies with the blood of innocents. “You’re lovely. Just lovely. I like you, Katie Woods.”

Nice. Good. Friendships were forming. “In the name of liking me, could we loosen these handcuffs? They’re a little tight and as a result, constrictive.”

“No.”

Okay, if she kept this up, BFF-dom was officially off the bargaining table. Katie nodded, ironically relaxed and calm though still so sleepy. “Understandable.” She yawned. Not because she was bored. Nay. This was more exciting than an episode of
Supernatural
. She yawned because her eyes refused to cooperate, and despite her dire circumstances, she was exhausted.

“It’s been a dreadfully long day, hasn’t it, Katie?”

Sing it, sistah. “I’m so tired. Forgive me. It isn’t the company. I’m sure you’re nothing shy of stimulating.”

“Oh, I know.”

Katie’s adrenaline began to flow again. “I’m sorry?”

“I said I know it isn’t my company that’s boring you.”

Self-assured was probably an asset when you were a mindless killer. “As long as we understand each other.”

“Do you know why you’re so tired, Katie?” she taunted.

Her reply was one of caution. “Um, nope.”

Nissa smiled again, her brown eyes twinkling. “It’s the handcuffs. Do you feel the spikes on the back of them?”

Katie gave her wrist a small turn. Oh, yeah. “I do.”

“As we speak, a sedative is seeping into your veins. It also immobilizes your shift, rendering you powerless. At least for now. I haven’t quite figured out the antidote for a longer, more lasting effect. I was only able to obtain samples, which is, of course, why he’s in such bad shape. If he hadn’t caught me, I’d have saved his death until I was able to give him a more spectacular show. Like when I used the antidote on Shaw. That’s why Daniel was so important. Because he knew the exact formula.” She sighed and grinned. “However, my men are busy as little bees in the lab right now, dissecting the components.”

Katie’s legs turned to butter, and she was almost grateful for the matronly Nissa’s help when she led her to the metal table. Her attempt to move her mouth met with no success. Definitely bad.

“You won’t be able to talk, Katie. Soon, you’ll be in a coma-like state. This ensures you won’t interfere when we take the child, and kill you.”

Hmmm.

What was a four-letter word for up the creek?

Oh, she knew.

Dead.

 

 

DANIEL
waited, pausing as he allowed Shaw to assimilate the information. When he looked at Daniel again, he asked, “So Nissa wasn’t my mother? Who was?”

His eyes grew wistful and teary. “Leticia. Your mother was Leticia.”

That sparked recognition. His father had called her Lettie. “Lettie. That’s what Dad called her. So who’s Nissa?”

“Nissa is your stepmother. She was married to your father when . . . well, when something unfortunate happened.” He cleared his throat, the loose flesh under his chin bobbing with a quiver.

Shaw ran his hands over his tired eyes, his body still sore from his extreme shift. “Okay. Let’s back this up, sir. How did you know my father?”

Daniel’s eyes filled with pride. “Your father was a genius. He attended the university I held tenure at. I was so impressed with his credits, I asked him to intern for me. I knew he could help.”

“With?”

Now Daniel’s weathered eyes grew sad. “With Leticia.”

“My mother.” Clearly, there’d been a whole lot of help where Alistair and his mother were concerned.

“Indeed, and my beloved daughter.”

“What was wrong with her? Why did she need help?”

“To this day, I still don’t know exactly what went wrong. Leticia was experiencing half shifts, much the way you were when you came to me. It was horrific, and painful, and after a time, left her exhausted to the point of incapacitation. Your father’s genetic research was brilliant, even at such a young age. I spent a great deal of time investigating him until I brought him into what we called Project Paws.”

Shaw’s heart warmed remembering his father and his research, then grew cold when his father’s infidelity settled there. “So if he was married to Nissa, he was unfaithful to her with my mother.”

Daniel’s eyes grew sorrowful, but there was a defensive fire in them. He lifted a gnarled finger and waved it in Shaw’s direction. “Do not think ill of your father, Shaw. I won’t have it. Even I, as upsetting as the whole matter was, couldn’t fault him for loving my Leticia. She was bright as a summer’s day, and as beautiful as any starlet. They spent great amounts of time together while we tried to understand why Leticia was affected by this anomaly when I, her father, wasn’t. She was born werecougar, not manufactured and certainly not an accident. I still have no answer. I can only come to the conclusion that she had some rare defect. Your father was a geneticist—which was why I choose him to help me. One thing led to another with the two of them . . .” His voice lowered in that strange embarrassed way Shaw remembered from his cougar state.

“So you’re a shifter, too?”

“One of the few elders left, yes.”

“And I’m the product of an affair.”

Esmeralda held up a glass of ice water with a straw and encouraged him to sip before speaking. “A torrid one, I’m afraid. Despite Leticia’s shifting issues, your father and she fell deeply in love. He was going to leave Nissa when he found out about you. Your father was a good man, son. He took you as far away as he could from that horrible woman. He took a job well below his standards and genius, changed his name from Lithgow to Eaton—all to prevent that viper from finding you. He raised you well. But before that, on the night you were born, everything went horribly wrong.”

“Meaning?” Shaw’s voice came out sharper than he intended.

Daniel took a deep breath, placing his hand over his heart. “We secluded Leticia, watched her with eagle eyes while she carried you. Both your father and I. I’d never heard of a pregnancy in our community—not since Leticia was born. Werecougars were becoming sparse even back then. We were dying out because we couldn’t reproduce. Yet when your mother became pregnant, she sparked new hope for the community. At one time, there was a strict law, forbidding all relations of the romantic nature with humans. But over time, and due to our decrease in population, there were those who weren’t above committing despicable acts upon unsuspecting female humans in an effort to keep our breed alive. And there were those, like myself, who refused to participate and went into deep hiding.” Grief lined his wrinkled face, making Shaw reach out to cup his shoulder in a sudden rush of sympathy.

“Those innocent women suffered debasing, painful deaths, yet no one was ever successful in their attempts to reproduce until Leticia. She was one of the first to not only mate with a human, but survive the mate and give birth.”

And then he understood. “And if these elders could have gotten their hands on her, she would have become a vessel for reproduction in order to repopulate.”

“I couldn’t allow them to use her as their guinea pig—which is exactly what would have happened had they gotten their hands on her! They would have let any rutting male, human or otherwise have their way with my beautiful girl!”

Esmeralda gave him a chiding look, tucking the covers under his armpits. “Easy, Danny. Please. I’ll have to insist you pace yourself or Shaw and his friend will have to leave.”

Daniel shoved her hands away, placing them back in her lap and paused, almost as though he was reminding himself she was on his side. He patted her hand affectionately. “We hid Leticia. The long and the short of it is your father spent many, many nights away from home in concern for her. Nissa became suspicious. Ah . . . You know how it is when you finally put two and two together, don’t you, son?”

“I wish I could just get two and two to put anything together.”

“He has every right to be angry, Danny,” Esmeralda warned when Daniel scowled.

“Nissa found out about their affair. She followed your father and me the night she gave birth to you.” His face paled, his eyes darkening.

“So she killed my mother, Leticia.” He didn’t need to hear the words. He knew the answer.

“Nissa did, yes. Nissa was childless, and she liked it that way. She had professional plans of her own and they didn’t involve children. Nissa was ruthless and greedy. Being married to your father, by then, one of the best in his field as a geneticist, was to her advantage. Oddly, it never occurred to her that your father was going to leave her for Leticia. Nissa was too pompous for that. But she didn’t know about you. She only knew about the affair. At first . . .”

“And when she found out?”

Daniel shuddered, his IV line wobbling, the memory clearly disturbing. “She tried to talk your father into selling you . . .”

“And when that didn’t work?”

“She killed Lettie, but not before she did something so odious, even I, knowing she was a ruthless monster, didn’t think her capable of.”

“Which was?”

“She took Leticia’s lifeless hand and scratched herself.”

“I know how that goes,” Shaw commented, his tone dry and distant.

“Son?”

“I said I know how that goes. I didn’t do it on purpose, of course, but I apparently scratched Katie when she found me on the steps of her clinic.”

Daniel’s face grew ashen, his hands trembled. “She’s turned?”

“Oh, like nobody’s business. Big ol’ paws, teeth, the whole shebang.” Darnell cackled, then grew somber. “Sorry. Din’t mean to interrupt.” He clamped his hands back over his chest and stilled his lips.

“Has she had trouble with the shift—like you did?”

He smiled at the mention of Katie, pride filling his chest. “She’s better at it than I am.”

Daniel’s chest deflated. “Then there’s still time.”

“For?”

“To regulate her shift.”

“Then you know how to fix this?”

“Yes! As long as we can get to Nissa and recoup the antidote, which Esmeralda tells me is gone from my office. She must not decipher the components, or she’ll create something far worse! Tell me, son, were you wearing a collar when you met Katie?”

Shaw explained the circumstances surrounding how he’d gotten to Katie’s clinic and nodded. “I was, with the name Spanky on it.”

“I have a fondness for
The Little Rascals
.”

Esmeralda chuckled in affectionate indulgence. “You’re veering off topic, Danny.”

“Of course. The collar you wore was what kept you from shifting so that in the meantime, I could find just the right amount of the antidote to give you to prevent the kinds of shifts you’d begun to experience.” He shot Esmeralda another coy flirtatious glance that left her preening. “Esmeralda and her potions helped.”

“So it’s true what they say about you, Esmeralda, that you’re a witch?”