Cougar's Mate (19 page)

She looked up at Chase then, and he couldn't tell what she was feeling. "I… I was leaving him. I knew something was wrong. I thought he was seeing other women. But after Hennessey and Ted fought, I realized they were dealing in something illegal. Hennessey thought Ted had cheated them out of money. I don’t know who ‘they’ were but I suspect it’s his other brother, Roger, and their uncle. They do everything together. Hunt, fish, play poker. They’re just really close. Or had been.

“I was leaving early the next morning. Or at least I had intended to. He’d come home only a day after he had left instead of a week later like he’d planned. I didn’t even realize he and Hennessey were in the house until I heard their raised voices. Both were angry. Ted said he’d had expenses. I thought from the sound of his voice that he was lying. If I thought so, his brother, who knew him even better than I did, would have known for certain.

“Hennessey told him that this was the last time he'd cheat him out of his money. I heard the struggle, saw Ted sitting on the floor, bleeding with a knife wound to the chest as I ran for the front door. I had already packed a few things, intending to move out of the house the next morning, and the bags were already in the car. Hennessey saw me and came after me with the bloodied knife. I escaped outside and saw a couple walking their yellow Labrador retriever, their three-year-old son on a tricycle behind them. They all smiled and greeted me. Hennessey stayed in the house. He had blood all over him and the knife in his hand, while I was clean. I was afraid he'd kill the young family if I said anything. He would have covered up everything before he called his office. I knew I couldn’t call the police. That I was better off running and disappearing for good. So I got in the car and ran."

"What about his car? It had to have been there. The witnesses would have seen it."

"It wasn't in plain view. I think he intended to kill Ted all along. He was trying to learn the truth and once he was certain of it, he killed him. He said he had cheated him yet again, and he intended to put an end to it. I don't know what illegal dealings the two men were involved in. Drugs, I thought, from the sound of it. All I cared about was getting out of there before Hennessey killed me and made up some home invasion story. Or that I had killed him. Hennessey might have planned to just kill me and make it look like someone had murdered both of us at the same time. But I screwed that up when I witnessed the murder and then fled the house. I have no other family. Being a cougar shifter, I didn't have a lot of options." Shannon let out her breath and frowned. "When I realized they probably were locating me through my cell phone, I ditched it, and then later dumped the car and all my belongings, ID, everything, which would make it seem as though I had met with foul play, and then ran as a cougar for weeks after that."

"How long had you been with Ted?" Chase just couldn't get off the subject.

She looked at him, a little incredulous, he thought. And then she smiled marginally. "A month. I hadn’t ever had what you would call a stable home environment once my parents died in a bad car accident coming home from a New Year’s Eve party."

"I’m sorry, Shannon.” He kissed the top of her head. “How did you meet him?"

She curled up against Chase. "I was running as a cougar in the Palo Duro Canyon and he saw me and chased after me."

"Sounds like you have a penchant for that. Not that I'm anything like him," Chase said quickly.

She smiled up at him. "No, you shot me full of tranquilizer first."

"Yeah, and you had to knock me nearly unconscious to make up for it. Sounds like we have a great thing going." He held her close. She was over the boyfriend. He was glad, afraid she was suffering from a kind of shock. He supposed she might still be to an extent after having witnessed some of what had gone on before her boyfriend was murdered, and then being blamed for it, and being hunted down.

For a long time, they just cuddled together.

He needed to call Dan and let him know what was going on, but for now, he just wanted this.

After a good long while, she finally said, "You need to call Dan about this, don't you?"

"I do. I need to tell him that you're innocent, and that his brother is a real danger to you. I need to know what Dan wants to do in this situation, but if it doesn't mesh with what I want to do, we'll go with the plan I come up with."

"And what plan is that?"

"Keeping you safe. Clearing your name. I don't have any qualms about fighting him. But we need to ensure Hennessey doesn't have a chance to kill you first."

"You'll be at risk, too. He could make up a story that you were my lover…"

Chase smiled at that.

"I'm serious. He could twist things around so it looked like Ted found out about us and got angry and…"

"Hennessey couldn't prove any of it. I've been living here for years, working for the sheriff's department on and off. No one's ever seen you before. No one would believe him. I doubt you've been running around all over the place rather than sticking close to home, either."

"True." She sighed.

"I'll call Dan." As soon as he reached the sheriff, he put it on speakerphone.

He wanted her to know just what he said to Dan and what his friend said in return. Chase put his arm around her shoulders, and it seemed so natural for them to be together like this. He'd changed a lot since he'd married his wife and settled down. He could never go back to the way he was before that.

"Hey, Dan, here's the real story." After talking for a good twenty minutes and telling him everything, Chase finally said, "So what do you think?"

"This is one hell of a mess." Dan asked Shannon several more questions.

She answered them based on her recollections.

"We need to discover what dirty dealings the brothers were involved in," Dan finally said. "If we can prove that Hennessey had the motivation to kill his brother, we'll be in good shape. Also, the young couple that witnessed Shannon leaving the house in a panic might help."

"Or not. They might believe she got out of her bloody things and left in a hurry," Chase warned.

"True, unless we can prove that Hennessey had the motive, the timing was right, and he was trying to blame his brother’s girlfriend. I’ll get right on this. I’ll let Rick and Yvonne know what’s up also. Will the two of you be all right up there?”

“Yeah. We have a lot of things to discuss.” He smiled down at Shannon. She had no reason not to tell him all about herself now. Not about this business, but just about her. And he had every intention of sharing anything with her that she wished to know. He never talked about some of his past so this would be a change for him, but if it helped Shannon to share, he would do it. “Talk later.”

“Out here,” Dan said.

She was eyeing Chase with a hint of trepidation.

“All right, it’s time for the two of us to talk,” he said.

She raised a brow.

“I’ll start. My favorite pizza topping is pepperoni. In the summer, I love coffee ice dream with hot fudge dripping down the side.”

She smiled just a little.

“I love to swim naked in the lake, either as a cougar or a human. Since I’m close to the lake, I can do it in the middle of the night when no one’s around.”

Her smile broadened.

“But it would be even better if I had someone to swim with,” he said, running his hand down her arm. No pressure, just in a gentle, loving way, telling her he really loved being with her, having her here with him like this, beyond the reason why she was here in the first place.

“Why didn’t you settle here before? The people are so friendly and they're our shifter kind. The wide-open spaces are perfect for our kind to run as cougars. It just seems idyllic,” Shannon said.

“My ancestors were from here. I wanted to go somewhere else where I could do something with my life. Meet new people. I was tired of being called the Buchannan boy. After I served in the military with Dan, Hal, Rick, and Stryker, as soon as we got out, we got interested in law enforcement.”

“Not Rick though. He became a financial advisor."

"He and his wife were FBI agents, but got tired of not being able to enjoy shifting and living with our kind."

Shannon frowned at him. "Wait, they weren’t just working at the bank? Don’t tell me they were secretly investigating me."

"All we care about is keeping you safe. We had to know what we were facing. And yeah, they were, because you weren’t forthcoming about any of this."

Fighting being annoyed, she took a deep breath and let it out. "Okay, so where did you meet your wife? In the new area where you’d started working?”

“Yeah. I was a deputy sheriff in Oklahoma. I might have been one of the good guys, seeing that everyone abided by the laws, but I still had a wild side. When I met Jane, she made me see how good married life with a child could be. Honestly, I was happy. When they were gone, I was adrift. Nothing seemed important any longer. When Dan called, knowing what I was going through and said I had to quit my job and move back to my roots, I fought the idea. At first, I felt like I was quitting the people who lived in my jurisdiction. But then I came here for a visit and it really felt like home. A place where I could heal. I thought I could lose myself in the cabin resort and didn’t figure I’d have many renters or troubles.”

“Was that the case?”

“Sometimes it was booked. I had a case of a teenage stepson abusing one of the walls of the cabins. He had rage issues. Nearly had a swimmer drown—case of getting drunk. And so forth.”

“Did you… lose yourself out here?”

“In a way, yes. I had tons of invites to join in the social goings ons. No one would give up on me. The invites kept coming for the four years I lived here.”

“You never went to any of them?”

“To my Special Forces buddy’s places, sure. No pressure. We grew up together. They understood how difficult it had been for me to lose Jane and the baby.”

“What… what happened? If it’s not too difficult to talk about.”

He had only talked to Dan about what had happened. Never anyone else. “Not much to tell. I was tracking down a domestic violence case that had turned into murder.”

“Did you catch the person?”

“Yeah, but at too great a price. I got an urgent call from the sheriff stating that we’d had a home invasion at our place. My wife of two years and daughter of three months had been murdered. The three men had broken into the locked rifle case and my wife walked in on them from the backyard. She headed for the door with the baby in her arms to escape, but they’d already seen her and they killed them. Just like that.”

“I’m so sorry, Chase. Did they catch them?”

“Yeah. Every cop in the state was looking for them. It didn’t take long. They used one of my guns in a convenience store hold-up, killed the owner, but the police there pinned them down. Two were killed outright, the other died in the hospital several hours later. But they ruined family’s lives for what? A few damn dollars?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Jane had a calming effect on me. She made me settle down.”

“Then I came along,” Shannon said.

Chase smiled at her.

“Then you started working for the sheriff’s department part-time.”

“Dan knows me and trusts me. So yeah. It worked out well whenever he needed some extra backup.”

“Then you had problems with a she-cat. I bet that was an experience you never expected.”

“It’s one I wouldn’t have missed for the world. So tell me about yourself.”

“I love bell peppers for a pizza topping. I love ice cream filled with chunks of toffee candy. As to swimming in a lake naked, I’ve had my wild side, too.”

“I think we’re going to have to play some watersports at night when everyone’s asleep in their tents.” He grew serious then, hating to ask the next question, but he had to know how Shannon had felt about Ted. She had to have been in shock to see him killed before her eyes. Was she in denial about his death? So busy running that she hadn’t had time to think about it?

"Did you love him?" Chase asked Shannon.

For the longest time, she didn't answer him. He worried he'd touched on a sensitive issue. That maybe she really hadn't had time to grieve and maybe that’s why she said no to sleeping with Chase any longer.

She said, "No," so softly he almost didn't hear her. "I was thrilled to find a male cougar shifter who was available and interested in me, sure. But I wouldn't call it a ‘candy hearts and roses’ kind of courtship. When my parents died, I was fourteen. My twin brother and I had no one to take us in. We were both living in separate foster homes. He was causing lots of trouble, petty theft, nothing major. I'd dropped out of school at sixteen and run away from my foster home, not wanting any more foster parents. It’s really tough when you’re a shifter, and they don’t understand how you need your privacy, or you want to go out at night when everyone’s asleep. Not to do anything bad, but because you are dying to let your cougar half go.

“So I was barely making it on my own, waitressing or doing any odd jobs I could to make ends meet. I finally got my GED and have my high school diploma, and my brother kept popping into my life. I never knew if it was to hide out from the law for a while or because he really wanted to see me. I… ended up dating a couple of his friends.” She looked up at Chase. “Not at the same time.”

He nodded, smiling a little.

She looked back at her lap. “One was killed robbing a convenience store. He wasn’t armed, but they thought he was. The idiot had a banana in his pocket. The other was killed in a high-speed car chase. He hadn’t even done anything wrong. But he was afraid that the cop would arrest him for someone else’s crime and pin it on him. None of them were more than petty criminals. I was twenty-two when my brother ran into some of the criminal element that were really bad news, and he ended up getting himself murdered.

“We were living in Florida at the time, so I left for Texas. I lived in a small out of the way place in the Panhandle and one night was running in the Palo Duro Canyon, frustrated that I was getting nowhere, not meeting anyone that had our shifter roots, and not dating anyone that was strictly human, though I had a lot of offers at the diner where I worked. When the male cougar took chase, I was afraid at first that he was a real cougar and not a shifter.