“I’ll help.”
He made his way to the basement, where two men were searching the walls. After they turned their backs, Shep stripped down, this time taking off his clothing. He didn’t have any more with him. The smell took his breath away, and he wondered how he could tell them what he was finding.
“Mr. Marshall, my name is Peter. I’m a human, but I’m all right with communicating with you. I spoke to your wife earlier, and she was all right with it too.” Nodding, he took the man’s hand into his mouth and bit down. It wasn’t that much, but he could now communicate with him. “What is it you smell?”
Lye. A great deal of it too. Peter asked him where he smelled it coming from. Instead of trying to tell him, Shep led him over to the furthest wall and pawed at it. Not on the floor, but behind the wall here. Could that be possible?
“I don’t know why not. It’s no crazier than anything else that we’re discovering in this house.” After calling down several men, the wall was taken down. Not only was there a room behind the wall, but there was a pallet full of lye wrapped up and ready to go. It was the bodies that they were most concerned with. “There are seven in here that we can count. He has them stacked up on top of each other like logs for sale.”
He moved out of the way and watched the men work. None of them commented on the fact that a large spotted jaguar was in the room with them, nor did they seem frightened of him. When the last body was pulled out, he was asked to go in and sniff around again.
There was another room behind the one they’d just torn out. It wasn’t lye this time, nor bodies, but something more. It was filled with blueprints for every building and home in the area. They also found a way out of that area into the yard above. They had planned this to the tee.
“Do you smell who might have been down here with Benson?” He told him that Davidson had been down here a great deal. But no one else. Harris was asked to come and see if she could smell anything else, and she said that she couldn’t. Now they were headed to the house back in Ohio, not too far from where she and Shep lived. Tanager was next on their list of people whose home they needed to search.
~*~
“Why would they need the plans to all the houses in the area, do you think?” Harris didn’t answer Shep. She had a feeling that she was right in her assumptions, and didn’t want to say in case she was wrong about it. Do you know or do you not know? I have a feeling you know.
She looked at him. The fact that he’d said that through their link made her realize just how much he knew her. Nodding at him, he nodded back and said no more. They were headed back to Ohio to the other home, and she was sure that things were about to go to shit.
After a short flight by private jet, they reached Columbus and picked up their car. Within minutes they had reached their destination.
The house was nondescript. Trees in the front yard shaded the driveway, just like every other house on the block. There was a wooden fence in the back yard to keep the neighbors from snooping around. No toys in the yard. There weren’t any flowers either. Just a house on a street like any other.
The first thing that hit her when she walked in was the scent. Harris knew that she’d not have been able to smell that if she hadn’t been a cat. It was, being a cat, affording her all kinds of perks that she didn’t have before. Watching Shep when he entered, his face paled and he looked at her. Yes, she thought, he knows too.
The house was devoid of furniture other than in the living room. There was a fridge, but it was empty. A larger room held a single cot, but nothing more. There were no dressers, no computers. Nor were they going to find a safe or anything else that would attach this house to the person that had had contact with Maron and Benson.
Confused, the rest of the men with them searched every part of the house and garage attached to it until they had exhausted themselves. It was a dead end, they said. Not even the bathroom had been used, it looked like. No towels, shower curtain, or toilet paper. Like the person living here, it was a front. And Harris knew all about fronts.
They set two people to watch the place. The rest left. Harris and Shep were thanked for their help, and were told they’d call them when they had more information. After they left, pulling around the corner to wait, her and Shep moved back to the house and climbed into the basement door that Shep had managed to unlock from the inside.
The door was just where she’d thought it would be. It wasn’t as well hidden as the ones at the other home, but she knew what to look for now. Stepping into the darkness, she stood there with Shep as she tried to think what she needed to do now.
“I’ll walk this, you go and confront him. If anyone tries to escape through this way, I’ll be in the tunnel waiting for them.” She asked if he’d be his cat. “I will if it makes you feel any better.”
“It would. Just because I know that you’re much stronger as a cat, and you can heal faster if you shift. I don’t know what to do about your clothing. But I would feel better if you were your jaguar.” He said that he’d be all right until she came to get him. “I love you, Shep. You know who this is, don’t you? Will it bother you if you have to take him down? I mean, because of who he is?”
“No.” The word was said with so much finality that she believed him. “You go now, and I’ll start walking. It won’t take me too long, I don’t think. My cat could use a good run anyway. When we’re done here, we’ll both go on a run and see what sort of trouble we can get into.”
Kissing him goodbye, Harris slipped out of the basement again and walked to the car. She was going to have to talk to someone about having the men here retrained or fired. Her and Shep had just spent an hour in the house, and no one had been the wiser. Fuckers.
Getting to where she was going might be a tad tricky. She wondered if she should warn people about this, but Harris could only think of one person that needed to know. Reaching out to Sheppard, she told him what her and Shep had discovered and said that she was sorry.
Don’t be. Bound to be happening sometime. You want me to ride with you? Honestly, honey, I’m in Columbus now with Oakley. We was doing some shopping for the party to mark the end of summer. Harris told him that she’d like that, please. You tell us where you are and we’ll meet you there. Oakley, he’s going to want to come too, you know. Just because we know him.
Yes, that’ll be fine. So long as he knows that I’m in charge of this. No heroics please. I have enough going on right now. Sheppard laughed and said that they’d be good. Thank you for coming with me. You guys will be a nice distraction on the trip.
The drive was sort of boring. Harris didn’t talk to the other two much, but knowing that they were there was very helpful to her. Who to talk to, that was the question. Who did she tell so that things would not hit the fan when she confronted him?
Harris still didn’t have a clue when they arrived at the house the next morning. She was exhausted, but exhilarated too. It would be done today, and after that, she’d have to figure out what to do with the information that she had.
She knew this house like she did her own. No one there tried to stop her, nor did they ask her what she was doing there so early in the morning. Harris spoke to a couple of people on her way in, and took the stairs up two at a time to the apartment there. As soon as she opened the door, everything about this fell into place.
“Hello, Harris. Did we have an appointment? I’m sort of running behind today a little. Oh, did you find Benson yet? I’m sure that he’s going to run, don’t you think?” She told Howard that he was dead. “Dead? No, I don’t think so. Did you kill the VP, Harris?”
“No, you did, Howard, when you got them to try and move you out of the office. It would have created a huge surge in your popularity, wouldn’t it? To have been nearly killed off by your own VP? What happened to you?” Howard sat down and said nothing. “You might be interested to know that Maron is in jail too. They’re searching his house as we speak. What do you think they’ll find there?”
“Nothing. At l
east with my name on it. They only knew me as Tanager. How the fuck did you figure it out? Not that you’re going to live long enough to be able to tell anyone. I’ve had all the cameras in here turned off.” She didn’t comment. Along with her ability to turn them off, Harris could turn them on at will too. Hopefully Oakley was doing what she’d asked of him in the computer rooms. Harris reached out to Allison and told her to get Lily out of the building and someplace safe. “They were going to kill Lily for me. Did you know that? I’ll have to do it now. Not that it bothers me overly much. She’s been a drag for a very long time. The sympathy vote will put me over the top too, don’t you think?”
Oakley said it was a go, and Harris could have wept with joy.
“What I think is that you’re a sick fuck. How did you figure me into all this? I’m sure that you had good reason to lead me along like a sad pup.” Howard told her she had been doing fine until now. “Well, I’m sorry to have burst your plans, fuck head. You’re going to prison right along with Maron. Unless I have to kill you first.”
“You won’t. I know you too well in that. You’re not very smart, not nearly as smart as you think you are.” She didn’t say anything as Allison was telling her that Lily and her were in the safe room. That she couldn’t find Toby. “Cat got your tongue, Harris?”
“You have no idea. Where is Toby? It must have cramped your style to have him hanging around you all the time.” He told her that after they got back, he’d simply killed him. “I see. That must have been difficult for you. Toby isn’t a push over.”
“You’re right about that. I did try and kill him by beating him to death, but that proved to be more hurtful to me than to him, I think. Then while he was recuperating in the hospital, it was nothing for me to slip in there and give him poison. It worked wonders.” Toby wasn’t dead then. Unless Howard gave him way more than he was used to taking of every poison on the market, he would have been able to stand it. “You look happy. What is it? Are you happy that young Toby is dead? After I take care of you, breaking and entering in the White House should turn a lot of heads. Then added to the attempted murder of myself, I’ll find my wife and kill her off too. You will be thought of as the one that killed her. Just so you know.”
“You have a plan for everything, don’t you, Howard? Not that it’s going to matter, I guess. Not when everything that you’re saying to me is being broadcast to the world. You might say that I’m a great deal smarter than you have given me credit for.” He said that he didn’t believe her. “You don’t? Well, how sad for you. Go ahead, turn on the television and see for yourself. I’ve not seen it myself yet, but you go ahead, and we’ll watch it together.”
“You lie.” She said that she rarely did unless it suited her, but this was the truth. “You have nothing, and now you’re trying to trick me into doing something that has me turning my back on you. Well, it won’t happen, Harris. As far as I’m concerned, you’re as good as dead now.” He pulled out the gun and pointed it at her.
“You really think that is going to give you what you want, Howard? No one is going to believe you after this. You won’t be getting the sympathy vote as you wanted. Nor will anyone give a shit that you’ve plotted to have your lovely wife killed. Which you won’t be able to, by the way. She’s in the safe room with Allison.” He laughed, and she just smiled at him. “You think I’m funny?”
“I do. You’re grasping at straws, Harris. I have this all in the bag. And thanks to you, Benson is dead. Maron, who never met me, is going to prison. They were stupid anyway, if they thought that this was going to work out for them. The people are going to be so happy that I made it through all this without a single scratch that they’ll beg me to be president for life. And you know what? I think I’d like setting myself up as dictator.”
“Dictator, huh? Well, good luck with that. Perhaps you can practice on your inmates. If you live that long.” Howard stood up and put the gun to her chest. “Won’t work, you know. There are enough cameras on you right now that you’re going to be caught before you can pull the trigger.”
“You think so?” The door behind her burst open and four men came in, pointing guns in their direction. Howard smiled at her as he spoke to the men. “This woman here tried to kill me and my wife. I want her put into shackles right away.”
“Sir, put the gun down.” Howard told them again what she’d done to him. Or the lie that he’d been working on. “Sir, if you don’t put the gun down, I’m going to have to fire. Now, do as you are told and drop the gun.”
“Do you have any idea who I am? I’m the fucking president of the United States. I want you to arrest this woman right now.”
He was thrown to the ground and the gun went off. No one moved as they tried to figure out what had happened.
Chapter 13
After finishing at the house, Shep followed Harris to the White House, and ended up in an area right outside the White House as his cat. He knew that something was going on—there were news crews all over the place. Staying back in the trees that were close enough that he could see and not be seen, he was startled when his grandda brought him something to put on.
“Now, I don’t want you to freak out. All right?” He stopped in pulling his pants over his leg. “Shep, I can feel your tension right now. Didn’t I tell you not to freak out? Harris is hurt, but she’s going to be just fine.”
“What happened?” Grandda asked him if he’d heard that she was all right. “I heard you. Did you hear me ask you want happened?”
“That president, or that ex-president, he shot her. In the arm, but she’s just fine. Pissy about it—her words, not mine.” Grandda told him that she was at the hospital, and that she’d sent him to find him. “I’ve been all over this place looking for you. I should have called out, but I was fearful that you’d feel my tension too.”
“I want to see her.” He said that they would, but they had to rescue Oakley first. “What happened to him? And on that note, why are you here?”
“She wanted some company, and I was with your brother. We rode along and kept her company. When we got here, she asked Oakley what he knew about computers, and he said plenty. Did you know that?” Shep growled at his grandda. “I’m working up to it. Anyway, he fixed the computers so that it would broadcast what was going on in that room up there all over the networks. Did the trick too, I’m thinking. Howard is in a military prison, screaming about how my Harris framed him. When all along, everybody that had a television was watching it.”
They were walking to the car when he thought of Lily. “She’s all right, isn’t she? I know that Harris sent those people in to help with guarding them. Oh Christ, Grandda, that man, Toby, he was on the president all that time. Did he kill him?”
Grandda said that he’d tried. “Harris trained people on poisons too. Told them how to take a little each day or week until they could build up a tolerance to it. He ended up disappearing from the first hospital, and ended up in the hospital that Harris is in. She’s all right—I told you that, didn’t I?” Grandda was looking like he was going to cry, so Shep stopped walking and hugged him. “I surely don’t want anything to happen to her, Shep. She’s brought me back from playing dead. Threatened me like I was no more than a child, but it got me moving. I’d not be here without her doing that.”
“Grandda, I love you. But if you don’t let me go and see my wife, I’m going to hurt someone. Not you, because I love you, but someone is going to get hurt.” After another quick hug, they got into the car and made their way to the hospital. “How do I get to see her? And what do I need to do to help out Oakley? Is he all right?”
“Yes, he’s really fine. I think he’s overwhelmed with all the newspaper people wanting to know how he did that. I tell you, I thought he was going to have a kitten when they shoved the microphones in his face.” Shep asked if he needed them. “No, I was just joking with you. I guess I’m not good at jokes much.”
There were as many television crews there as there had been at the
White House. A man in a marine uniform came out to get them as soon as Grandda made a quick call. They were escorted in, with a group of all the branches of the service around them. People wanted to know how they were related to their hero. The two of them and the man who had come to get them got in one of the elevators, and they rode it all the way to the top floor.
“She’s a hero to me too.” Shep told Grandda that she was a hero to him too. Harris had saved him as much as she’d saved Grandda. “She’s going to be fit to be tied—you know that, don’t you? I bet she fusses at you the most.”
“I’m not going to give her any chance to do that. I’m going to take her into my arms and kiss her senseless.” Then he was going to beat her ass for getting hurt, but he didn’t think that telling Grandda that would get him any points. “I love that woman so much.”
“She did her country proud, Mr. Marshall. Your wife, I’ve never met her, but I’ve heard that if you want it done right, you should call on her. She’s my hero too.” The marine smiled as he continued. “You give her a kiss for me too, sir. She might be quiet long enough then so that you can get a word in edgewise.”
As soon as he was let into her room—the guard had to check him for weapons—he did just what he had said he was going to do. Shep pulled her from the bed and held her to him, kissing her hard enough that she had to know how glad he was to have her around. When he laid her back on the bed, he held her hand and sat down. Neither of them spoke as Grandda told them what was going on.
The television was on mute in her room, but he could see the pres—Howard talking to Harris. While he didn’t know what was being said, Shep could see the gun that he had on her. Kissing the back of her hand, Shep finally was able to talk to her.
“I love you.” She cried then, and told him how much she loved him. “Then why are you upset? Are you hurt more than they said you were? I’m going to roll some heads if they’re letting you suffer needlessly.”
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