Sheppard: Marshall’s Shadow – Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance (Marshall's Shadow Book 1)

by Kathi S. Barton

  “Je suis vraiment désolé. Je dois avoir le mauvais numéro. C’est celui qu’ils m’ont donné. Je suis désolé.” Shep could speak French, but she was speaking too quickly. He asked her to slow down in the same tongue. “English? Do you speak English?”

  “Yes. Better than I do French. I know that you said you were sorry, but after that, I got a little lost.” She told him what she had said. “You might well have the wrong number, but let us start again. Who are you? And who is it you’re looking for?”

  “His name is Sheppard Marshall. She said he was an elderly man. Do you know him? I heard your name is the same last, but not the first.” He asked her what she wanted with him. “Ah, yes. She, Harris, is harmed, and is being chased to kill, she thinks. Now she is fevered badly, and might need more than I can give to her.”

  Grandda came into the hall where he was and asked what was going on. Handing the phone to him, not really sure he wanted to get between Grandda and another woman, he stood there waiting while he talked to the other woman.

  Grandda could speak French better than he could, so the conversation was completed in that language. It took him several minutes to figure out what was going on, but apparently Grandda had agreed to go and get this other woman and keep her safe. Before he could go back to his room to get ready to do, Shep stopped him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” His tone, Shep knew, was too rude for the elderly man as soon as his grandda cocked a brow at him. “What I mean is, this woman is going to be killed, and you along with her if you go there and get her.”

  “She’s my friend. And the only reason that I’m not sitting by your grandma’s grave right now, dead as she is.” Shep didn’t know what to say about that, so didn’t open his mouth. “I’m going to go and get her whether you like it or not. Now, you go back to bed. I’m a grown man, and I can certainly take care of a little woman.”

  “I’m going with you.” Again the brow, but Shep chose to ignore it this time. “It’s the middle of the night. You are a ninety-year-old man, and I’m going to go with you. One of us should be able to see beyond the next strip on the road.”

  “You keep it up and I’m going to go and do just what Harrison told me to do. I don’t have to listen to you harping on me like my son does when I want to go and visit my lovely wife’s grave.” Now he was nose to nose with his grandda. Shep had never seen him so angry before. “I told you, she’s my friend, and I am going to go and take care of her. If I have to, I’ll buy me my own house and make sure that I don’t come around anymore.”

  Grandda started away and Shep stopped him. “Grandda. I’m sorry for talking to you that way and for treating you horribly. If you don’t mind, please, I’d like to go with you just to make sure that she doesn’t need someone to help her with something more. I don’t know what it might be, but I want to make sure that you’re all right too.”

  “All right. But you keep your comments to yourself and your mouth shut from now on. Unless you have something helpful to say, keep your tongue from wagging where it isn’t needed.” He said that he would. “Good. I’m leaving here as soon as I get dressed. No need for packing. She’s only in the next county over. Won’t take but an hour to get there and get back.”

  Shep grumbled, but he didn’t do it in the hall. Going to his bedroom, he pulled on his dirty jeans and a clean T-shirt. Today he had planned to do laundry. Now he was going to be driving all over the state with his grandda. He supposed there were worse ways to spend the day, and went to the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal.

  Just as he was about to pour milk over his cereal, Grandda joined him in the big room and said they’d get breakfast on the way, Shep bit his tongue while he put everything back. This was going to be a hell of a trip; he just knew it.

  The trip wasn’t that long, and he did get what he wanted for breakfast. Shep loved those breakfast sandwiches, and had six of them before they got to the little burb where the woman was supposed to be. He wasn’t sure what to expect from this job, but he wouldn’t leave his grandda in the hands of someone that he didn’t know.

  Of course, his grandda had been taking care of himself for some time now. He’d not been around to take care of anyone, so he supposed he was making up for lost time. Grandda interrupted his thoughts when he told him to turn into a large downtrodden apartment complex.

  “You’re sure this is the right place? It looks abandoned.” Grandda just stared at the large building. Some of the windows were card boarded up. Others had large, what looked to him like blankets over the glass. An air conditioning unit, one of the window kinds, was hanging out of one of the rooms by the cord. He could see too that the parking lot hadn’t been taken care of in some time, as the grass in the cracks was as tall as the half of a car sitting in it. All the wheels were gone, and the hood of it was open wide.

  “I don’t know, son. I really don’t. But this is where she told me to go.” A woman came out of one of the yawning openings that had broken stairs in it. She nodded to them, waving them toward her. “I hate to say this, but I’m kind of leery of going there by myself now. Will you go with me?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t tell him as they were getting out of the car that Shep was following him through this entire adventure. As soon as the woman was close enough for them to speak to, she spoke to them both in broken English.

  “She is sick. Unwell.” Grandda asked her name. “Tamara Jones. I have been friends with Harris for many years. She saved my life. You are Sheppard Marshall. You lie by your wives grave and wish to join her. I didn’t understand that part, but that is what she said to tell you. She died some time ago. Harris, she told me, but it was garbled and I could not understand her well enough. She is sick.”

  He got that she was sick, but what had caused it? While they were jaguars, getting sick from something wasn’t possible for them. But if she had been poisoned, he wanted to know with what and how. Shep suggested calling the police.

  “If you do, she said that she would like for you to kill her first.” Tamara turned and made her way up the stairs in front of them. “I don’t know what she does, but she is very good at it. Has money to spare, she told me. Once when I was being chased by my husband, she said that she’d take care of him. I have had no troubles since.”

  “She killed him?” He felt embarrassed at how loud he’d asked the question. “Are you telling me that she killed him?”

  “Non. She only had him arrested, and he is in prison forever. You have a very ill mind, too. Harris does. Thinks no one is a good person—except for Sheppard Marshall. She said he is the best there is.” The room they entered from the hallway was so different than the building it was housed in that he wasn’t sure what turn they’d made to come here. “You like? I make all but the furniture. I love color.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  Grandda was right. It was beyond anything that Shep had ever seen before. Not only was it colorful, but it had been tastefully done. While the one individual color might have been too bright, it was tempered with something softer, a neutral color that would calm it somehow.

  The bedroom was all neutral colors. He’d bet so that she could sleep better. Tamara had an eye for what she was doing, and he was thinking that she needed a larger outlet than her home. Shep decided he’d talk to her as soon as this was settled.

  “She looks horrible. Do you know what’s wrong?” Shep looked at the woman on the bed when his grandda spoke. She did look awful, sweaty and pale. Her hair was soaked throughout, which made it look like it could be a dark brown to a red coloring. “You said she was shot. Can you show that to me?”

  Shep thought that he needed to pay more attention. Each time that he’d tune in, so to speak, he knew that he’d missed gaps of conversation. He didn’t know when Tamara had told him that this Harris had been shot, but she had been. The wound, he’d bet, was causing her to be ill too.

  “It’s infected. I’d say that when it was stitched up, something was already in there and that sealed it
in. Or there was something on the bullet. Do you have it?” Tamara took it from her nightstand and handed it to him. Shep looked it over before smelling it. “It’s this. There is a poison on it that has left itself in her body. It looks like it hit a wall. Did it go through her?”

  “It did. Harris told me to pull it from the wall. I had to search for some time to find it for her. You must be careful when you touch her, sir. She is armed. I cannot get the knife and gun from her.”

  Shep pulled back, as he’d started to touch the young woman, but it was too late. He was pulled to the floor with his arm behind his back. Shep hadn’t seen her move, nor had he sensed that she was even awake. As he laid there, trying his best not to beg to be let go, the scent of blood nearly had him shifting. It was then that he felt what he could only assume was a gun grinding its way into the back of his head.

  “Who the fuck are you?” He said his name. “You’re not Sheppard. I know him. Once more, fuck wad, who the fuck are you?”

  “Honey?” He heard his grandda talking softly to the woman. “Harrison, honey, that’s my grandson. We’ve come here to save you.”

  “He’s a man, Mr. Marshall. You indicated that he was a little boy when we spoke.” He told her that he would always think of them as little boys. “I’m in trouble. You’re the only one I could think of to fix me.”

  “Fix you how?” The smell of blood was getting stronger, and Shep wanted to get up and see to the woman. “How did you expect my grandda to fix this for you?”

  “Kill me.”

  The gun fell to the floor where he was. Shep didn’t touch it for fear that she’d put something else in the back of his head—a knife or something to kill him. Instead, he sat up on his knees and looked down at her.

  “She wants me to kill her, Shep. I can no more do that than I could one of you boys.” He was glad to hear that and told him so. “What do I do now? I can’t just leave her here. Whoever is after her, they might well come here and kill both of these pretty women.”

  “Let me think a moment.” He calculated things in his head. That was what made him the man he was today—or had been. Shep could zip right through a scenario and see where things might have to be tweaked, changed completely, or even ditched. He looked at Tamara. “Is there anything here that you need? That you cannot live without?”

  “You mean, I’m going too?” Shep nodded. Tamara looked around. “Not that I can’t replace, no. My cash, of course. But nothing that I was planning on taking with me when the building went down.”

  “All right. Gather some clothing for you to wear. Pretend that this is your last day and you have to bug out quickly.” She started moving around the room, opening and closing the drawers of various dressers. Shep looked at his grandda. “We’re going to need something bigger than that little car that I have now. Can you—? Let me think again. No. I’ll go and get me something larger. An SUV, I think. Will you three be all right while I’m gone? I’ll get more medical supplies while I’m at it. Also, tell one of the boys to have Rodney on site when we get there. He’s not practicing anymore, but he can help us out with this. Don’t make any more calls.”

  He didn’t have any idea what was going on, but he somehow knew that if there was anyone looking for her, they’d be trying all the tricks he’d seen on the television late at night. Shep didn’t watch anything but crime television shows. Hopefully he wasn’t making that many mistakes.

  The dealerships around the area were huge and plentiful. He was careful of what sort of questions he asked the salespeople, but in his head he was figuring if there would be enough room for a woman to be laid out and worked on. Besides the driver and passenger, two more people too. Shep decided that instead of a smaller SUV, he would get a larger one, and also the four-wheel drive. Just in case, he told himself, they were chased.

  After the price was set, he asked them if he could trade in his car. That was the way his mom had always done it—get a set price then dicker with them. He’d only just purchased the car, and was glad that he’d been able to pay cash for it. Things were suddenly looking up.

  Driving the larger vehicle, he had to be extra careful. Not only was it longer and wider, but it was also higher off the ground. Driving to the drug store, he tried to think what he might need from there.

  More than a first aid kit, he thought. Something more like a survival kit. He was looking at those when a man came up behind him, probably to see if he needed help. Alarms went off in his head when he noticed that the man wasn’t wearing a name tag, nor did he have on the red shirt that the other employees had on.

  “Boy, that’s a huge kit for just starting out, don’t you think? Do you like them big?” He didn’t answer the man, but Shep felt his cat move along his skin. Then someone touched his mind. “I like them big too. And firm. They have to be firm.”

  I don’t know how the fuck I can do this, but do me a favor—look the man straight in the eyes for me. He asked who this was. Harrison Parker. I know your grandda. You’re Sheppard too. That’s why, I’m assuming, I can reach out to you.

  He turned and looked the man in the eye. The woman, Harrison, laughed before she spoke, then told Shep to tell the kid that he had this, and to go away.

  He likes big men. Harrison laughed again. I don’t mean like big men that have an ego to match their head, which I think you have. Nor do I mean that you lift weights, though I guess you might, if Kelly there is on your ass. That’s what he wants, big boy, your—

  I understand what you mean, damn it. He had to hide a smile from Kelly before sternly telling him to go away. When he did, Shep picked up the kit that he thought would be the best to help him see to the girl. How can you speak to me like this? When I left you were barely conscious.

  I don’t know. I can hear voices around me. Tamara and Mr. Marshall. Who, by the way, should have had one of you grown assed men helping him out instead of letting him waste his life away sitting by a cold grave all the time. And that son, I’m assuming your father, needs to be strangled with his own tongue. He asked her if she was normally this violent as he paid cash for the kit. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. By the way, I don’t fucking know how I’m doing this either, but not only are all the recording devices not working wherever you go, but I have a feeling if asked, no one will remember either your face or selling one of the kits you purchased. That’s a trick that I figured out when I was younger. Nothing will record my face. Not even a camera on a phone. It’s not like— Why do you care, right? Okay, I’m starting to feel worse, so do you think you can hurry your ass along? I need something now.

  All Shep could think about as he drove around the back of the apartment building where Tamara lived was that Harrison was certainly violent. As he was driving back, she told him what else she was able to do, like see what he was seeing when she concentrated on him. Getting out of his new vehicle, he saw two used needles on the ground, as well as several used condoms. No wonder they were tearing this place down. It was a haven of shit like that, he’d bet.

  Chapter 3

  Harris woke up in the biggest fucking bed she’d ever seen in her life. It had to be five feet across and at least nine feet long. The room, along with the bed, seemed to be clean and well taken care of, even if it was a little old.

  “It was my wife’s and mine when we were living here.” Harris looked at Mr. Sheppard when he spoke. “I did what you told me, and darned if you didn’t go and get yourself hurt anyway. What did you do, girl? Make some boss of yours angry?”

  “I think I did in some way.” He’d only been kidding, but she wasn’t. Someone had a burr up their ass, and she was their target. “Are you going to be all right with me being here? Because I’m assuming that I’m not in a hotel, nor in the rat hole that Tamara lived in.”

  “No. My grandson and I—you met him, Shep—are sharing digs right now. This is the house that he grew up in. I raised his father here too, but he doesn’t have so many good memories of the place. My Jill Ann, she was a pistol, she was. I think you a
nd her would have gotten along just fine.” He laughed, then sobered up quickly. “You need to answer me a few questions, Harrison. Then I can tell you what we’ve done to make you safe here.”

  “Unless you hired an army to surround this place that are to shoot when they see their eyes, then there isn’t any way that I’m all that safe. I work for—worked for some pretty high on the food chain people, Mr. Marshall.” He told her to call him Sheppard. “Doesn’t that get a tad confusing to you guys? All of you named the same name, I mean?”

  “My son, the worthless piece of shit, goes by James.” She paid attention to his body movements when he cursed. She’d never heard him do that before. “I go by Sheppard. My grandson—who is the fourth, by the way—goes by Shep. I don’t know many that call him Sheppard. Or you could just call me Grandda. I think I’d like that.”

  “Anyone ever fall for your sweet little old man tricks?” He laughed and said that he’d never had much of an occasion to use them. “Yes, well, it’s like you’re pulling out all stops right now. How about I think on that?”

  “You do that. All right, my first question. What branch of the service do you work for? If you can tell me.” She stared at him, and wondered what he thought he might have figured out. “I’m assuming that it’s for something, because of the way you think on your feet.”

  “That’s why I’m good on my feet. I don’t have a name. The branch I worked for only reported to two men.” He nodded as if he understood. “If your next question is what is it I do, then you’d better be prepared for the answer, Mr. Marshall. I’m not what you’d think of as a person you might have a fun date with.”

  “I don’t date. I’m assuming that you kill for these two men. And the two men don’t include the president, though I suppose that he might have an inkling as to who you might be. Perhaps not your name, but— I’m even betting that the people you work for, they don’t know the real name like I do, do they?” She shook her head. “Do I? Know your true name?”