by Alyssa Day
"We'll be in touch, Miss Callahan," O'Sullivan said, turning to leave.
"No. You won't," Jack told him. Then, still in human form, he leapt into the air, shifting mid-leap and landing on the roof of O'Sullivan's SUV in tiger form.
And then he roared.
Two of O'Sullivan's thugs screamed and dove for the ground. The other one turned and started running.
There's not much scarier than a full-grown Bengal tiger in full fury.
O'Sullivan, though, was made of tougher fiber. He took an involuntary step back, but then he stood his ground.
"You don't want to head down this path with me, Shepherd," he said.
Jack deliberately took one huge paw, extended his claws, and ripped the metal off the roof of the car like it was butter.
That's when the sheriff's car peeled around the corner, with Deputy Kelly at the wheel.
Deputy Andrew Kelly was a slender, rather short man who was my age or so but looked like he was just entering puberty. He had red hair, freckles, and a shy smile, and he could be a real badass when he needed to be. He slammed the car into park, jumped out of the car, and aimed his gun.
At O'Sullivan.
"I know for sure that if Jack is this enraged, you have done something very, very wrong, Mister," Andy said.
Jack's tongue flopped out the side of his mouth in a big tiger smile, and then he jumped off the SUV and stalked over to my side, where he shifted back to human.
"Hey, Deputy," Jack said. "Nice to see you. Mr. O'Sullivan here was just threatening Tess."
The two thugs on the ground hurriedly pushed themselves up, brushed themselves off, and climbed in the SUV. The third one was long gone, maybe in the next county by now.
"I don't want to press any charges," I said. "I just want them to leave and never come back."
O'Sullivan's dead gaze brushed me and then turned to Andy, who holstered his gun.
"There are no grounds for charges, Officer. We were just having a friendly conversation."
"Right. I heard about your friendly conversation in town," Andy said. "You need to leave, now. If I hear about you bothering Tess again, I'll throw you in jail."
"Your mayor may have something to say about that," O'Sullivan said silkily.
Andy laughed. "You are in the wrong place, sir, if you think that corrupt city officials hold any sway over duly appointed officers of the law. Dead End is far different from wherever you come from—"
"It's different than from where anybody comes from," Jack put in.
"—and we don't put up with people threatening our citizens. Now, get back in your car and get out of my town."
If looks could actually kill, all three of us would be dead right there in my parking lot, from the scowl O'Sullivan was blazing at us.
I shrugged. I'd seen worse.
"As you say, Deputy." He climbed in his car, and the SUVs pulled out in a sedate line. O'Sullivan stared at me all the way out of the parking lot.
"What does he want with you, Tess?" Deputy Kelly gave me a concerned look, which made me smile. He was so sweet.
"I honestly don't know. I think he's fascinated with my … ability."
"Oh. I heard about Beau's. I'm sorry that happened to you."
"Me, too, Andy. Thanks. If you don't need me, I'm going to get back to work. I need a nice, ordinary afternoon."
"Sure. I'll talk to Jack about anything I need to know."
I tossed him a smile and headed for my shop, the soundtrack to The Aristocats suddenly running through my brain.
By the time Jack finished filling Andy in and walked in the door, ten or so minutes later, I'd figured it out.
"The Aristocats was my favorite movie when I was a toddler. I watched it over and over and over and had all the songs memorized."
Jack blinked. "Okay. Is there a reason I need to know this?"
"It was a Disney movie. About a pampered French cat named Duchess and her kittens. The evil butler … well, never mind him. Duchess fell in love with an alley cat."
He grinned. "Is this a metaphor for you and me? Alley cat, huh? I've been called worse, Duchess."
I grabbed his arms. "The alley cat. He was named Thomas O'Malley."
Jack's puzzled expression told me he still didn't get it.
"Jack. I watched that movie over and over from the time I was a baby, practically. One of my only memories of my parents is them watching it with me, and my dad singing the song."
"What song?" But I could see the dawning realization in his eyes.
"There were other names, too, but the important ones in the song were this: I'm Thomas O'Malley, O'Malley, the alley cat."
Jack swore beneath his breath. "Thomas O'Malley—"
"Is my father."
After that, I spent the afternoon doing absolutely ordinary things, which of course felt odd under the circumstances. I didn't have my father's phone number, and my big realization wasn't something I wanted to tell Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike over the phone. Instead, I was left to ponder why he'd taken an alias from something that meant so much to me and used it to, apparently, do very bad things.
Or at least I assumed they were bad. He was mixed up with the mob somehow, that much was clear. I kept coming back to how he'd said he sure didn't need any money. Had he stolen money from O'Sullivan? I didn't know much about mobsters, but that seemed like a really stupid move to me.
I needed to talk to Mike and Ruby. I needed to put all this out of my mind and get to work. The bells over my door chimed, and a group of women walked in, chatting and laughing, and I put on my business face and got to work.
Jack kept the connecting door between us open and periodically popped his head in, but he was on nonstop phone calls all afternoon, reaching out to his contacts to see what he could learn about O'Sullivan. No matter what else he might be, the man was human, so Jack's supernatural contacts didn’t seem to know much about him. At around three in the afternoon, though, Jack looked in and gave me a thumbs up, while still on the phone, so I figured he'd learned something and he 'd tell me about it on the way to dinner.
I'd sold a couple hundred dollars' worth of items to the women, who'd taken selfies with the WE DO NOT DEAL IN VAMPIRE TEETH, EVER sign, giggling in that way that only people who've never met a real, live (dead?) vampire can giggle. A few minutes after they'd left, my door opened again, and this time a familiar figure stood there grinning at me.
"Otis!" I walked over to shake his hand. It was nice to see him again. "It's been a while. What have you been up to?"
Otis was an indeterminate age, worn, lean, and wiry, and a proud redneck through and through, as his shirt proclaimed. I'd known him for years.
Otis glanced up at Fluffy, our shop mascot. He'd pawned it with first Jeremiah and then me, over and over and over, until I finally just offered him money to buy it. He'd been friends with Fluffy when she was alive, and then kept her after she died. It had been a strange and beautiful relationship, but now he evidently had made another friend.
I bent down to say hello to the beautiful greyhound at his side. "Well, how are you, beautiful girl?"
The dog studied me with calm brown eyes and then nudged my hand with her nose. I obliged with pets and ear scratches.
"Who's this, Otis?"
"This is Beauty. Well, her real name is …" He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his baggy khaki pants. "Anderson's Champion Sleeping Beauty of Provence," he finished, his chest puffed out. "She's a real champion racing greyhound."
I frowned and stood. "I'm sorry, but I'm not a fan of racing dogs, as you know. In fact, not a fan is a vast understatement. I worked on the campaign to get it banned."
"I know, Tess. She's one of the retired dogs that the greyhound rescue adopted out after the tracks closed." He smiled down at Beauty. " I adopted her."
From the way Otis had cared for Fluffy, in her life and beyond, I knew Beauty was going to have a very good life.
"She's very lucky to have you, then," I said, and Otis rewarded
me with a huge, slightly gap-toothed smile.
"Oh!" I walked back to the jewelry counter. "I have a present for Beauty."
I unlocked the counter and took out a sterling silver charm in the shape of a dog bone. "Here. This is just big enough to put her name on one side, and your name and phone number on the other side, just in case. You can put it on that lovely pink collar you gave her."
Otis's mouth fell open, and his cheeks turned rosy. "You—that's real nice of you, Tess. I don't—are you sure I can't pay you for it?"
"Nope. It’s a gift. To celebrate your beautiful new friend. Beauty is a good name for her. Bring her by to visit any time."
He gave me a bashful smile, but then looked down in surprise at the dog when she stiffened and started to growl. "What is it, girl?"
"Sorry." Jack walked in from his side of the building. "She probably senses me. Let me just say hello."
He calmly walked up to Otis and the dog, both of whom were trembling, and he crouched down in front of Beauty and looked in her eyes. Within seconds, she calmed down, sat, and held up one paw for him to shake, which he did, before standing and shaking Otis's hand, too.
"Nice to see you, Shepherd," Otis said, squaring his shoulders and looking up at Jack. "How do you like my new dog?"
"She's gorgeous," Jack said. "If she ever wants to go running, give me a call and bring her out to my house."
Otis's face was a study in consternation. "Um, I don't think … she might …"
Jack grinned at him. "As me, not as a tiger, Otis. I can run pretty fast on two legs, too, and she might have fun going for a couple of miles with me."
Otis's muscles relaxed. "Oh. Okay. Well, maybe. But she's retired. I think she might like to lie on the couch, watch TV, and eat bacon all day."
I sighed wistfully. "Who wouldn't like that?"
Honestly, it sounded better than my plans for the evening. I loved my aunt and uncle, but I didn't really want to have a heart-to-heart about my father. Or about Thomas O'Malley.
We chatted with Otis for a few more minutes, and then he went off to the Pit Stop, grocery and bait shop, to buy the bacon for the TV marathon he had planned. Beauty glanced back at us and then followed Otis out of my shop, headed for a life in the lap of redneck luxury.
"Good for him," I said. "That dog is going to have a wonderful life."
Jack nodded. "Bacon and TV sounded pretty good to me, too."
"What did you find out?"
We got bottles of water, and then Jack filled me in. "Mostly, nothing. People had heard of him but didn't know much about him, or didn't think much of him. But then I finally got lucky with a contact in the NYC shifter community."
"Shifters?"
"Cat shifters. Lynx, panther, some others. Anyway, he said the rumor is that somebody stole a lot of money from O'Sullivan, who left town to go after it. And—maybe—something much worse."
I gulped water and tried not to think about what would be worse than stealing a lot of money from a mobster, but finally I had to ask. "How much worse?"
"My contact says the thief also got away with files on O'Sullivan's planned expansion. He plans to merge the Irish mob with a wolf shifter pack from upstate New York and take over all organized crime in the Northeast. Whoever got away with the information got everything—times, dates, plans, financials. Everything."
"Oh, no." I suddenly found it hard to breathe. "You think my father is the thief?"
He shrugged, but his expression was somber. "I don't know. What do you think?"
"I think we need to call Alejandro. It's time to get the FBI's Paranormal Operations division in on this."
"I agree, but I wasn't going to call him without asking you first. He's your dad."
"Yes, but he didn't tell us anything," I said, anger growing. "He left me to muddle into this situation with O'Sullivan ignorant of what might be going on. If he's really the one who stole this information, maybe Alejandro knows what we can do and how we can get the mob out of Dead End."
"And surely he'll know people in the non-paranormal side of things who have an idea of what to do about O'Sullivan, either way."
I nodded and pulled my phone out of my pocket. "I'll play him the recording I took of our conversation with O'Sullivan in the parking lot, too."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Tess, not that it matters on this, but it's illegal to secretly record someone in Florida."
"Not in Black Cypress County. You know we have our own charter. We don't have to play by state or federal rules. Maybe it's time Mr. O'Sullivan finds that out."
11
After closing the shop, we picked up Lou at my place, the steaks at Jack's place, and headed to the house where I grew up. Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike lived in a beautifully maintained old farmhouse about five miles from my house, and kept chickens, goats, and a very old horse on the property. They were the only family I'd really known, and they were the best family any girl who'd lost both parents could have asked for.
Or any girl at all.
I smiled when I saw Uncle Mike sitting out on the front porch swing, pretending not to be waiting for us.
"We spent a lot of time out on that swing when I was a kid. He'd talk me down from school problems, boy problems, and anything else that made me cry."
Jack glanced at me, smiling a little. "Am I a boy problem?"
I refused to answer on general principles.
Uncle Mike stood, just so he could look down at Jack, I suspected, and waved at me to hurry up. "Let's get those steaks going, I'm not getting any younger."
I kissed his cheek and handed over Lou, who adored him and promptly went boneless in his arms and started purring like a motorboat. "You're not getting any older, either."
My uncle was a retired engineer who was good at everything, up to and including keeping the peace in a home with two stubborn females. He was tall and lean, had brilliantly white hair, and had lost one of the true joys of his life when I replaced my wrecked Toyota with a Mustang, so he couldn't criticize my foreign-made car anymore.
"How's the new car holding up? Changing the oil regularly?"
"I haven't even had it for five thousand miles yet, okay? I'm paying attention, don't worry."
Uncle Mike eyed Jack. "Shepherd."
"Sir."
"Is that enough meat for all of us?"
I grabbed his arm. "Please. He probably brought twenty pounds of meat. You know him."
"I know he eats me out of house and home," Uncle Mike grumbled.
Jack grinned. "I can always start telling you stories about antique dental equipment, like her ex did."
Uncle Mike shuddered. I threw up my hands and headed into the house and away from both of them. "At least Owen was a nice person," I yelled back at them.
"Is that you?" Ruby came hurrying out from the kitchen and threw her arms around me, like she hadn't seen me in years. "Oh, my baby. My poor baby."
Oh, boy.
I should have brought a bottle of wine for this.
She burst into tears and grabbed for a tissue from her apron pocket, and I patted her arm. "It's okay, Aunt Ruby. It really is. I didn't expect anything from him, not after all this time. You know that you and Uncle Mike are my family. He's just … a bad memory."
He wasn't, though. Not entirely. The memory of him singing the songs from my favorite movie was still too fresh in my mind for that to be true. But I put that aside for now.
"What can I do? I'm starving! And it smells great in here."
"It really does, ma'am," Jack said, following us down the hall. "As always. You are the best cook I've even met, and that's the absolute truth."
"You're not getting extra pie, so just cut it out," Uncle Mike grumbled under his breath. "She can see right through you and your flattery."
"It's true," Jack protested.
Aunt Ruby, who hadn't heard the interplay, since she'd hurried ahead to check something in the oven, turned to beam at Jack. "And I made an extra pie just for you, young man."
Jack
flashed his biggest smile at her. "You are amazing. Thank you so much."
When she turned back to the stove, he grinned at Uncle Mike. "You were saying?"
"Tiger. Skin. Rug," my uncle said, enunciating very clearly. "Right in the living room, next to my reading chair."
Jack threw back his head and laughed, and a shiver of anticipation tingled down my spine. This wonderful guy, who fit in so well with my family, liked me. Wanted to go out with me. Said I was special.
Somehow, that made all the rest of the crap going on in my life this week just a little bit easier to bear.
"All right, let's not stand around here blathering, let's get that meat on the grill." Uncle Mike led Jack out to the back porch, and Aunt Ruby grabbed my arm and pulled me to sit next to her at the kitchen table.
"Tell me all about it, honey. He was here, and all he wanted to do was see you, but he was worried you wouldn't want to see him. We talked him into waiting to meet you here tonight, for dinner, but then I guess he went to the shop?"
I nodded. "Yes, and then he showed up at my house. We … talked. I guess. A little. He didn't have much to say. He finally apologized, but I feel like I pushed him into it. Mostly, it made me sad."
She shook her head. "What kind of person stays away from his own daughter for all those years?"
I sighed. "This seems to be my year for finding long-lost relatives. First my grandmother and now Thomas—well. At least Leona wasn't in the mob."
"She was caught up in those banshee murders, though, and ..Oh, my word! Did you say the mob? Is Thomas a … a … criminal?" Her face turned so pale it almost matched her "my hairdresser calls this shade Southern blonde" hair.
I had not meant to let that slip. Dang.
I leaned in and hugged her again, content to breathe in her wonderful scent of vanilla and spice. "We're not sure, to be honest. But there are some bad men in town who seem to know him. Maybe. It's all very confusing. Why don't we get dinner on the table, eat, and then we can talk this all out with Uncle Mike and Jack, so I don't have to tell it twice?"
She agreed, but she wasn't happy about it. It seemed wrong to see such a worried expression on her face, so I nudged her to talk to me about Shelley, and how camp was going, and whether she was ready to go through elementary school all over again.