Shades of Hate (Jacky Leon Book 5)

by K. N. Banet

  “It works,” I declared. “Something feels a little off, but I bet an X-ray will show it’s just the place where it healed.”

  “Be gentle with it, anyway,” Heath said in a whispered command as he reached for my extended, healed hand. He took it gingerly and inspected it. “Everything feels right to me. Let me get the doctor for another X-ray. The bones will still be broken, but they should be well on their way to healing the right way. You’ve got some scabbing, but he should be able to brace it.”

  “Then we can get out of here,” I said.

  20

  Chapter Twenty

  “This is where I drop you off,” Heath said as he parked at the back of my bar. “I’ll find your car and have it towed, hopefully before a cop finds it.”

  “Thank you. I’ll need to replace it.” I ran my newly healed hand over my face. “You’ll see. It’s bad.”

  “Want me to take it straight to the junkyard or bring it here?”

  “Junkyard. I won’t be able to get an insurance claim on it, I bet. I don’t think there’s coverage for assassination attempts.”

  “No, they don’t have anything specific for that. I’ve asked.” His sympathetic smile was almost enough to make me laugh, but the smile faded, and we were both left looking at the reality of the situation. Someone had tried to kill me. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Once I yell at these two, I should be,” I promised. I was talking over a silent Carey, who was between us, trying to be unseen. I looked down at her and bumped her gently with my shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m not the one who nearly died today,” she mumbled. “You need to be more careful.”

  I didn’t like hearing that from someone about to turn fourteen, but it was the same thing I was hearing from every adult I knew. From five thousand to fourteen, the advice was the same.

  “I’m trying. Look, if you want to talk about your dad and me, we’ll tell you everything once we have a chance—”

  “Whatever,” she said, shaking her head, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t care.”

  Looking up at Heath, we both knew she had lied, but neither of us was in the right headspace to call her out. I didn’t have the time, and he was at a loss how. We’d have to talk much later about this situation.

  There were too many people to handle—the BSA, my family, Heath, Carey, Dirk, and Zuri. I couldn’t handle them all at once, and sadly, Carey was the odd one out this time. I couldn’t handle any of them if I was dead.

  “You should care,” I finally said. “Now, I need to get inside. You two get home safe. Text me when you do, please.”

  “Will do,” Heath swore.

  I got out of the truck and waited for them to leave before heading inside, where I found Miller and Collins sitting at the bar, looking wildly out of place.

  “With me,” I ordered them from the back. They got up, leaving my human bartender confused. It wasn’t Dirk, so he didn’t know what was going on, and I intended for it to stay that way. I led the agents upstairs into my office.

  “Miss Leon, please allow us—”

  “Someone in your office leaked my identity and my supernatural status,” I began, cutting off whatever Special Agent Collins wanted to say. “Let me be clear. This won’t be tolerated, and I won’t be offering any sort of information to either of you beyond this point. You’ll fix this. You’ll catch the leak, and you’ll verify it’s no longer a concern before you get to ask me for anything. Is that clear?” I waited, glaring at them from behind my desk. They were both stunned by my accusations.

  “How did you come to that conclusion?” Miller demanded, the younger one the first to get angry, of course. “We would never put someone’s life at risk by leaking their identity without a plan in place. We certainly wouldn’t give it to murderers.”

  “Someone in your office exposed my identity to radicals or extremists who tried to kill me. They opened fire on me in my car, ran me off the road, then tried to mow me down with a rain of gunfire. I’m lucky to be alive. They made the amazing comment they didn’t want my kind around. They wanted me dead. Luckily, they didn’t want to chase me down when I made a run for the woods. That might have saved my life and theirs because if they had chased me down, I would have Changed and killed them. Who knows if I would have been hit by another of the fucking silver bullets they were using!” I snarled, slamming my hands on my desk. “You have a leak. There’s no fucking way they learned about me otherwise. Fix this.”

  “We don’t have a leak,” Collins snapped back. “We’ve been in talks with our superiors for the last week, trying to get you what you wanted. We verified your position here in the United States with Alphas all over the country to make sure we could bargain with you instead of someone else. Damn it, in a couple of days, we were going to call you and finalize what we could. You’re going to throw all of that—”

  “Yes,” I hissed. “Someone is trying to kill me or get me killed, and there’s not a good explanation for it right now except you two or someone you work with. Until that threat is over, I can’t bargain with either of you. Sorry, but I won’t be in the weakened position of trying to stay alive when making important decisions for my kind. These things have a priority list and not dying tends to be at the top.”

  Most of the time.

  “We’ll fix this,” Collins said as he walked back and grabbed the doorknob. “We’ll fix this. We’ll figure out who is actually trying to kill you. Maybe then, you’ll believe us. The BSA didn’t do this.”

  “Sure it didn’t,” I growled, letting sarcasm drip like acid. “But when you find the leak in your organization, make sure you let them know one thing.”

  “What would that be?” Miller crossed his arms, his offended glare making me scoff.

  “That you aren’t dealing with werewolves. You’re dealing with their bigger, meaner cousin. If you think I’m big, I know a couple of werecats who hit nine hundred pounds, and they’re furious about this.”

  Both men paled.

  “We’ll fix this,” Collins promised again, his voice losing some of its power.

  “Do that,” I snapped, then watched them storm out of the office.

  Once they were gone, I lost the power that had been keeping me going. I didn’t do well with the alone thing. Sinking into my chair, I hit a name on my contacts, starting a video call with anyone in the family willing to pick up. Since the two humans never got the chance to sit down, I didn’t concern myself with the possibility of listening devices.

  Niko joined the call, so I canceled the others before they picked up. I was just looking for someone to talk to, not a full family meeting.

  “Hasan told everyone what happened,” he said, looking at me with a worried expression. “Is there something you need? Do you not want the family?”

  “I just want someone to talk to,” I admitted. “About anything.”

  “Ah.” He had sympathy for me. “How’s the hand?”

  I lifted it and moved my fingers, showing off the brace and wincing in the process. “Not good as new, but it works. Thank goodness I’m not an artist. It’ll heal just as expected.”

  “It’ll change your penmanship,” he said as though he was offering some known advice. It was odd he decided to talk about the broken bones and not the BSA agents or the humans that attacked me. “I’ve broken each of my hands in the last eight hundred years. It’s probably the most annoying area of the body to break.”

  “Does that include your back?” I asked, tilting my head to the side as I tried to understand his priorities.

  “Uh…no,” he stated, chuckling. “No, that one was worse, but I had the hospital. Hands are more annoying to me than arms and legs. I need my hands, and they heal wrong so easily.” He lifted his left hand to show me something I’d never noticed. The knuckles seemed out of place. As he showed me, Hasan got on the call but remained silent. “Broke this one about twenty years after I was Changed. So long ago, it wasn’t well know
n how to set bones right. There’s no fixing it now, and it took me a decade of practicing my penmanship to get back to where I was.”

  “Ouch.” I didn’t like the look of that. “I should tell you about the BSA agents and what happened. I should also give someone a report about the attack on me.”

  Niko chuckled sadly. “Take a moment and breathe, sister. Gossip about the sad family dramas for a moment, or just tell me how you feel and ignore the bigger problem. I was trying to give you a break since you said you just wanted to talk. You seem tired, and your office is disgusting.”

  Fuck, I still haven’t cleaned it up.

  “He’s right,” Hasan added. “Take a moment to just breathe, Jacqueline.”

  “I actually called right after I threw the agents out, and it is important. I told them there wasn’t going to be any negotiating until I figured out who leaked my identity. But…taking a break is nice,” I agreed. “I was nearly killed today,” I whispered, letting it sink in and grew vulnerable. “Again. In my own fucking territory.” I covered my face and leaned over. “What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I have a normal life again?”

  “Because you want to do what’s right for everyone, and we live in a world that doesn’t openly reward that behavior. In fact, many punish it,” Hasan said gently. “Are you okay?”

  I blinked back tears as the pressure left my shoulders for a moment, hearing those words.

  “No,” I answered honestly but couldn’t tell them all the reasons why. “How can I be okay?” I looked up at the monitor.

  “If I had the answer, I’d give it to you. You know you can talk to any of us privately if you need to let go of any frustrations. You also know I would be there in a second if it was the right decision, something you fought.” He shifted in his seat and leaned back, getting more comfortable. He was right. “As for the problems you are facing, this family is facing…you made the right decision with the agents.”

  “That’s good. I could always call them back. They’re obviously staying in the area to keep close to me. I wish I knew where—”

  “I’ll have Davor look into it. Their names?” Hasan grabbed a notepad and pen.

  “Special Agent Collins and Miller. No first names. I never asked.”

  “We’ll find them,” Niko promised.

  “I’m going to jump off, then,” I decided. “That’s all I have, so…”

  “Stay for a moment, please,” Hasan said quietly. “Good night, Niko.”

  “Clean that office,” Niko said, giving me a sympathetic look.

  Hasan didn’t speak again until Niko disconnected. I looked at him, knowing I was a mess. My clothes were torn and dirty, and I probably had dark bags under my eyes from lack of sleep. He obviously wanted to say something.

  “I don’t want to lose another daughter,” the old male whispered. “Please tell us when you need us. We’re supporting you in every way we can, but we’re not there to keep you alive.”

  “If I have anything to say about it, you won’t. I’m not in the mood to die, but I am in the mood to take a long nap.” I sighed, knowing my sad attempt at humor failed. “You’re upset with me, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time, studying me. Hasan was good at choosing his words carefully.

  “I was,” he admitted. “When I learned what happened, as you explained it, I was upset. Right now…I’m beyond that. Upset is a natural response but also reactionary and not productive. I would have been upset with any of your siblings if they had done anything you have done, and it led here. But I sat back and thought about it. We live in different times. Once, supernaturals lived openly because humans couldn’t stand up to us. Then they were able to fight back, and we retreated. Maybe it is time for us to find peace through all species, human and supernatural. I let myself and my children be led to war against the werewolves on multiple occasions, even though I’ve fought for a truce most of my life. Humans are the next largest threat to our kind, and this could be a good first step, even if it came without me controlling it.”

  “So, instead of being upset, you found a way for this to be useful.” That sure did a lot to make me feel better—not.

  “It’s easy to be upset the moment something happens. It’s a failing I will probably display in the future, but it’s not the correct response. I thought I should stop being upset with you for being you,” he said softly. “This is you. You save people and fight for what you believe in. And like all my children, I need an adjustment period to come to terms with who you are.” His wry smile was one I had seen before.

  “You should ask Zuri and Jabari about their youth. Against my wishes and the wishes of their mother, they ruled a continent. Or you should ask Mischa about when she went rogue and how angry I was. Or when I learned Hisao was acting alone and training new assassins in the process, something I had expressly told him not to do because I didn’t want him training someone who could one day return to kill him. It ended up being his calling. You are just the most recent in a long line of children doing things I wished they wouldn’t.” He rubbed his jaw. “These are what humans would call growing pains, and our family goes through this with every new family member. In the end, if you live through these things and you’re happy, I will survive, and so will your siblings. Besides, you’ve proven to have solid judgment.”

  “I feel terrible, you know. I never wanted to expose werecats. That wasn’t something I dreamed I would ever do.”

  “Would you go back and do anything differently?”

  “No,” I said quickly, the answer easy.

  I yawned, exhaustion catching up with me from the emotional and physical toll of the day.

  “And that, my dear daughter, is why I stopped being upset.” He took a sip of a drink. “Now, you should rest. You’ve had a long day.”

  I clicked the disconnect and sighed, leaning back in my chair. A nap sounded good. The bar was still open below me, people around and having a good time.

  I yawned, then I was out.

  21

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I woke up, gasping, looking around my dark office wildly for some sort of danger. A moment later, I realized there was nothing there, then groaned as I leaned over my desk again. I’d woken up with a headache, my head throbbing in pain.

  I should have drunk some water. Stupid.

  I checked the time and groaned. It was three in the morning. I was still tired, and the bar had been closed for three hours.

  What woke me up? The dehydration headache?

  I got up slowly and stretched, yawning again as I tried to make a plan of action. Stress and dehydration were problems one and two. The fact I was so tired was problem number three.

  Nothing I can do about the stress. Water, ibuprofen, then back to sleep, I guess.

  I headed downstairs, another yawn punctuating the situation. I was at the bottom of the staircase when warning bells went off in my head, and paranoia hit.

  What woke me up? I had woken up in a panic. Why?

  The bar was dark and quiet. I sniffed the air and frowned. Kick Shot was one of the worst places for my nose—too many scents of alcohol, food, cleaner, and the patrons who had been there during the evening before.

  I walked slowly into the kitchen, hoping to get the glass of water I wanted, then lock myself back in my office. I found a clean glass and turned on the tap. The running water was loud, making my head pound harder.

  Something creaked and made me turn slightly, angling myself to hear the noise better if it happened again. My hearing was so sensitive in the quiet night, I could hear the water in the pipes and the night breeze hitting the trees. One of the first things I had to learn as a werecat was how to tune out the background noise and find the important sounds. It wasn’t something I worried about anymore, naturally focusing on noises out of place. Normally, a building creak wasn’t something I worried about—if I did, I would never sleep again—but Kick Shot was a new building now. The creaks of an old home simply didn’t happen in m
y bar.

  Another creak, so soft it would have been drowned out by any other noise. A human wouldn’t hear it, and usually, I wouldn’t either.

  I looked at my glass, then turned off the water, turning slowly toward the open kitchen door to the rest of the bar. Softly putting the glass on the metal table in the center of the room, I moved toward the open door. I grabbed a knife as I walked, listening to the soft shing of metal as it was pulled from the knife block.

  When I entered the bar, I was able to see perfectly well. There was no one there. I turned on the lights, letting my eyes adjust to that light. Even though I could see in the dark, having the lights on made me feel safer.

  I’m just on edge.

  There was no one in the bar, no one outside the bar, no cars suspiciously parked out front. I was completely alone.

  Going back into the kitchen, I grabbed my water, turning the lights off as I headed back upstairs. I wasn’t tired anymore. I was wide awake, my heart pounding as I tried to shake the feeling I was in danger, but I wasn’t, not at that exact moment. I went into my office and locked the door, frustrated my feeling of security didn’t come back.

  This is werecat paranoia. This is what we are. I just need…

  I put the glass down before I threw it in anger. I would have felt safe in my own home, but I couldn’t anymore.

  I’ve dealt with attacks at home before. Why is this such a problem? Why does this one freak me out more than the attack last year by the rogues? Is it because rogues are a normal problem and humans aren’t? I don’t fucking know!

  My hands were shaking as I sat down.

  I need to get over this. I can’t live paranoid and afraid of who might be watching. They know what I am now, so it’s not like it can get much worse.

  I drank my water as soon as my hands stopped shaking enough to hold the glass. I drank every drop and knew I needed more, but the idea of walking out of my office again terrified me.