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

by Kathi S. Barton

  “I’m fine. I promise you. But Howard was willing to kill Lily. Just for a bigger vote, Shep.” He told her that he was glad that they were all safe. “Howard thought that Toby was dead. He was talking with the Feds before I had your brother broadcast things to everyone. I felt that since they put him there in office, they needed to see what sort of person he really was.”

  “Have I told you how incredibly smart you are? You are. Brilliant.” He kissed her again, just happy that he could hold her hand while the nurse fussed about Harris not lying still. She blamed it on him. “I had to hold her. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Marshall. I can understand that. There I was watching the monitors, and it popped up on my feed. I was so surprised it took me several minutes to realize that it was live, and that that mad man was trying to hurt this woman here. And he wanted to kill his own lovely wife. Why, I tell you, had I been in that room with him, I’d have just smacked the shit right out of him. Pardon my cursing, but he just made me so mad. Then he was screaming that he was president and all.”

  After she left, the three of them started laughing. She was full of spit, Grandda said, and they both agreed. Shep asked Harris when she was going to get to go home. Soon, he hoped.

  “They said that I’d be better off staying here for a couple of days. Just until the press let some of this go. I don’t think they will. They’re a tenacious group.” He pouted and she laughed. “They’re giving me a private room with the guards at the door until I’m ready to leave. Also, and you’ll love this, I’m to have my husband in here with me. They’ll bring you in a bed later today.”

  “Well that will be a waste. I’m not sleeping without you.” Grandda stood up and said that he was going home. “Don’t go yet, Grandda. You helped me out, and I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You and Harris, you enjoy your stay here. I’ll let the staff know that you’re going to be here for a while. They probably seen it on television too.” Grandda said that he was tired anyway.

  “I thank you so much for helping her out. You need anything, you just tell us. All right?”

  “A great grandbaby would be wonderful. I know how things work, and she’s not in heat or whatever humans call it, but you give me that and I’ll be the happiest man on this here earth.” Harris told him that they wanted that too. “Well then, I couldn’t be happier. Until I’m holding a baby.”

  Grandda was still laughing as he made his way out of the room. Shep got into the small bed with Harris and held her. To him, there was nothing better than having her in his arms. When she seemed to have fallen asleep, he knew that she’d not been sleeping well. Shep thought of all the days he was going to have with this woman.

  There were times when he caught himself thinking that this couldn’t be true, that she wasn’t his wife and that they didn’t live in a huge house. He had money, but it didn’t compare to what she had. But Harris told him that it didn’t matter whose money it was, so long as they were happy at the end of the day. He liked that about her.

  Shep must have dozed off, because someone knocking at the door startled him awake. He’d not realized that Harris was still armed, so when she pulled out her gun and aimed it at the door, he just waited to see what the fuck was going on.

  “Major General Marshall, the FBI would like to speak to you.” She asked the voice what they wanted. “They said they wanted to debrief you on what happened today.”

  “They are well aware that I was there, aren’t they?” He said that they were and the handle on the door turned. “Someone comes in that door without me saying it’s all right, I’m going to blow their fucking head off. Who is it, and do they have identification?”

  The laughter on the other side of the door had her smiling. Either she knew who it was or she was happy to be able to blow their heads off. When the door opened and a very large man was standing there, he looked at the two of them and laughed harder.

  “Well, well, well. If it’s not Cora Banks all banged up. Or do you go by your given name now. Harrison Elizabeth Parker?” She told him that she was married, and what her name was now. “Good for you. This man, does he know what a fucking pain in the arse you are? I’d be happy to tell him if he doesn’t.”

  “Shep, I’d like for you to meet Jamison Luster. He’s the head of the FBI agency. When he decides to show up for work, that is.” Jamison said that she wounded him. “I doubt that’s true. As far as I know, you’ve never had a heart.”

  Shep got out of the bed, embarrassed to be caught there for some reason.

  Jamison and Harris hugged and Shep got his hand nearly ripped off by the other man. Jamison sat down in the chair that Shep had been in earlier. Shep was sure that he heard the chair groan when Jamison adjusted his weight around. He was a very large man.

  “I’ve come by to see if I can convince you to come work for— Don’t shake your head no when you have no idea what it is I want from you. You’d be good at it, too.” Harris told him no, she wasn’t working like that anymore. “You still don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m done getting shot at, stabbed, and nearly poisoned. I’m tired of working. I want to stay at home and become a lady of leisure.” Jamison laughed. “You don’t think I can do it? I want to have children. Children to whom I don’t want to have to explain why I come home with bullet holes all over my body. Don’t you think I’ve given enough to my country?”

  “You’ve given more in this one day than a great many people do in a lifetime. Including me.” Harris thanked him. “I want you to consider what I’m asking you, Harris. It won’t put you out in the way of gunfire. You won’t have to worry about money, and I promise you that you’ll never have to leave the comforts of your home if you let me do a little tweaking to what you’ve no doubt already put into your house.”

  “I can be at the comfort of my home without you tweaking anything there. As far as money is concerned, I don’t have to worry about that either. Even if I never have another check come in, it’s more than enough for me to live off of with my family.” He asked again if she’d just let him explain. “It doesn’t matter. Say it or not, the answer is still no.”

  “I want you to take over my job.” She asked him what he’d said. Shep could smell it then. The man was dying. “I’m not long for this world. I have about six months, they said, but even coming here has done me in. I have cancer all over my body, and there is squat that they can do about it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jamison waved her off. “It’ll be a good job for you. You can train them to be like that group that you hired for yourself. That Toby, I spoke to him and his sister, and they had nothing but wonderful things to say about you. The only reason that that boy is still here is because you taught him something that I never would have to my men. Some of the things they’ve been taking to build up their bodies is toxic. But you saved his life.”

  “He saved me on enough occasions.” Jamison said he knew that too. “I’m sorry that you’re ill. I truly am. But I don’t want to work. Not ever again. I don’t like people.”

  Jamison stood up and tossed a packet on her table that was just out of Harris’s reach. She asked him what it was, and the big man laughed again. When Harris got up to have a look at it, Jamison took it from her and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I have always loved you like you were my own daughter, Harris. I’m glad in a way that you never told me about what was going on. You know as well as I that I would never have let you go in and do what you did without getting approval, as well as taking more men than you needed.” He laughed a little bit. “You did this on your own, on your own terms. There isn’t a better person in the world for taking my job than you. Nice to meet you, Sheppard. You’re a good man too.”

  When he left them, Harris took the envelope off the table again from where Jamison had put it the second time. When she opened it, Harris strung together a string of curse words that made him blush. Then she looked at him, and he c
ould see fire in her eyes. Even his cat seemed to have backed away from her.

  “Its my identification badge and a list of perks that I get as new head of the department of the Feds. The mother fucker didn’t come here to ask me to take the job. I already had it. I’m going to.... Does anyone do anything on the up and up anymore?”

  Shep couldn’t help it, he started laughing. Even when Harris threw her pillow and slippers at him, he laughed all the harder. Harris was in charge of the FBI, and he couldn’t have been happier.

  ~*~

  Harris wasn’t pissed any longer, but she still wasn’t happy with Jamison. The man had been slick, she’d give him that. But she still wasn’t going to take the job. No way.

  “I guess you’ve been thinking about the job.” Harris smiled at Grandda. “You should take it, honey. As he said, there isn’t a person around that could do a better job than you can.”

  “He said that my offices would be fixed here. It’s been started on with the barn that was back there. What if I had wanted horses?” Sheppard told her that they couldn’t have horses around them. “Because of us being cats.”

  “Yes. If we had a couple of foals around us from the day they were born, then maybe we could train them to be around us, but not an older horse. Cows and other domestic animals are like that too. Cats, though, the kitten variety, as you can imagine, they have no such troubles with us.” She didn’t ask him if he was serious. It had occurred to her that while he was the best man she’d known, he rarely got sarcasm, nor did he get that many jokes. “I was going to ask you something. It’s not that important, not really, but I do have a need for the answer. How soon did you know that it was Howard that was doing all that? I’ve spoken to Lily too. She’s been cleared of all things that went on.”

  “I know about Lily. She’s been moved out of the White House, at her request, and put in a location where people aren’t going to be able to find her. I’m glad, however, that she’s talking to you. I did worry about her.” He said that he was using the phone that she’d given him. “Good. As for Howard. I didn’t know until we were at Benson’s house. I wasn’t sure until we entered the house in Columbus. I could smell him there.”

  “I hadn’t any idea until I saw it on the news feed. Oakley is being hounded by the press about his help on this too. I’m glad that you fixed it up so that he was left alone for a little while. Now that you’re home, honey, hopefully things will calm down for a bit.” She told him not to count on it. “No, I really wasn’t.”

  “Shep has decided to go back to college and get his doctorate in mechanical engineering. He said that he learned a great deal out on that rigger, but he thinks he might have been better at his job, at least smarter than his boss, if he could have more of an understanding. He might even come up with a better way of drilling out there that doesn’t have so much waste in the water.” Sheppard said that he was proud of him. “Yes, I am as well. He’s a good man.”

  Harris had been home for a week now, and the phone was ringing off the hook. Two of the calls had been from news stations from around the world. She’d be happy when things were settled, though she didn’t hold out much hope of that happening soon.

  “By the way, I’ve talked to the boys, and they’re ready to have a meeting with their dad. I don’t know what will come of it—he’s not the sharpest tool in the case—but he might be reasoned with.” She told him that she was supposed to be there so that she would convince him that things were the way they were for him. “Yes, well, that’s going to go over as well as him thinking that he’s going to win the lotto or something. The man might be my son, but he’s dumber than a bag of rocks. For all I know, the rocks could be smarter than him.”

  “You still love him, don’t you, Grandda? I mean, he is stupid, but you love him. Right?” Sheppard told her that he would always love him, but he didn’t have to like him. Nor respect him. “I don’t think any of them respect him anymore. He’s coming over Sunday to have dinner with us all. I doubt very much if he’ll show without his hands being out for more, but I told them I’d behave.”

  Sheppard laughed. “You are a good girl, Harris. A good girl.” He looked over the package that she had been going through when he came into the room. “That looks like a lot of fancy stuff you got there. Is there anything that you really want?”

  “Not really. But I’m not taking the job.” He asked her why not. “I want to have a family. Sit in front of the television if I have a mind to, and enjoy that with my husband. What happens when I have children? Am I supposed to cart them to the White House for briefings?”

  “Who have they got in that spot, now that you mention it?” She told him what she knew. “Speaker of the House. Well, I’m assuming that he’s checked out with all this other stuff. As a country, I don’t think that we need any more crap going on.”

  “No, we do not.” She moved to the table and left the box there. It was a bunch of books on the new equipment that was being installed in the barn. “Now, I have a question for you. Shep and I have been talking, and we want to know what you’d like for our first child to call you. Because that will set the tone for what our other children call you.”

  “You mean I can’t be Grandda to them too?” She asked him how that would work. “I don’t know. I just thought with everyone calling me Grandda, it would be all right for the little ones to do the same.”

  “That settles that then. Grandda it is.” He smiled at her, and asked what was really wrong. “I want this job. I want it so badly that I can almost taste it. I can do it. I know I can, but I don’t want to go back on my word with Shep. I told him that I’d be here for him.”

  “Honey, I don’t know if you know this or not, but everyone around you knows you want it. You complain so much about not having it that it makes us know that.” She pouted at him. “You do that well, you know. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to be in charge, and we’re all as proud as can be about it. As for Shep. Harris, he’d only want you to be happy. That boy is so besotted with you that I think he’d do about anything for you to make you happy. He told me the other day that he wished you’d just take it. He knows you want it too.”

  “You think that’s right? That he wants me to take it too?” Grandda said he’d never seen her so indecisive before. “Because this is important to a great many people. Not that I don’t care what they want of me, but it’s Shep and you that I want to do the right thing for most of all.”

  “Harris, you do it for yourself before you do something for anyone else. How else you going to be happy all the time if you’re not doing what you want to do? You can’t. You take that job and you keep this here country safe. They need you more than we do. You know why?” She shook her head at him. “Because we know that whatever you decide to do, you’re going to be coming home to us every night that you can—we understand that. That is one of the reasons that you have to take it. So you can do right by us too.”

  “I’m going to do it.” She felt the weight of the decision roll right off her. “Thank you, Grandda. You’re the best sounding board that I’ve ever used.”

  It took her another hour to go over the barn. It didn’t look like it had when she’d been growing up here. Her father had had horses—only two of them, but he’d loved them dearly. Harris wondered what had happened to them. When Shep joined her a little while later, she didn’t go to him, but stood by where the stall had been—and was now being turned into a bathroom—and talked to him.

  “The last Christmas that we had together as a family, my dad went all out. He’d never done that before. I’m not saying that we didn’t have good Christmases. We always did, but we had a huge dinner and invited the local homeless shelter in to have a good meal with us.” Shep told her that was a wonderful idea. “Yes. I don’t know what made me think of it. Probably because I made a decision about the job. With your grandda.”

  “He told me. He said that he’d not had to talk you into taking it very hard. I think that he loves you more
than me.” She said that wasn’t possible. “I think it is. He loves you as much as I do, and that’s a great deal. Why are you out here? I thought the workers were done for the day.”

  “They are. I just wanted to come out and see what sort of progress they’re making.” She turned and looked at him. “What would I have done without you, Shep? I know that I’d be unhappy about what I was doing. More than likely dead, now that I think on it.”

  “Nah, you’re a survivor. You can do anything and everything that you set your mind to. Are you ready to shift and have some fun?” She told him that she had a guest coming. “Oh? Anyone I know? I think by you calling them a guest that they’re not someone that you know well. Am I right?”

  “His name is Jason. I don’t know if he has a last name or not, but he’s a vampire. I’ve also decided to do what you suggested, and see if he can tell me if I am a vampire or something else. If I am and it’s someone he knows, then he can tell me about them. Like if they’re alive or not.” He moved into the barn with her and held her in his arms. “He’s here, I think. I can see him in the darkness.”

  “Hello, Harrison. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen you.” She nodded and introduced Jason to Shep. “I knew your mother well. She was a good friend of mine, and would allow me to sleep in her basement if I needed a quick and safe place to sleep. I was very sorry to hear of her passing.”

  “My brother is living there now. If you asked him, I’m sure that he’d gladly let you rest there if you wish.” Jason said that he’d keep that in mind. “You’re going to tell us what sort of magic that Harris holds? I have to admit, I hope that it’s vampire. I know a little about your kind, but nothing about faeries.”

  “They are difficult to know, I’m afraid.” He bowed before them before taking her hand. “It will not hurt you at all, my dear, but we will be connected. Are you all right with that? Is your spouse too?”

  “I am all right with that. I know what it means for us to be connected. So if you’d not mind, I’d like a little of your blood as well. Just so we can be connected in the event that you need me.” Jason agreed, and Shep did as well. “What do you need from me other than blood?”