by P J Gordon
Mikey told them their cover story. “The investigators are working on that, and no one is sure yet, but the theory is that it was an obsessed fan. Richard and Josh have had run-ins with unbalanced fans before. They can be dangerous.”
“She would have been better off if she’d never met that man,” Curt muttered. He looked very old and frail at that moment. His comment prompted David to speak for the first time since Mikey had given them the news.
“I think Manda would disagree. She loves him and he loves her. I’ve never seen her happier. She wouldn’t…” David’s voice failed him at that point and he stood and walked to the window, turning his back on the others. Mikey could see his reflection clearly in the dark glass though. His face was contorted with grief and tears streamed down his cheeks. His struggle to regain control was painful to watch. After a minute or two he managed an unsteady voice.
“Where are Richard and Josh? How are they?”
“I’m not sure,” Mikey answered honestly. “Richard…well, I’m worried about Richard. I don’t know how he’s going to get through this. Wherever he is, Josh is with him. Hopefully Josh can keep him from doing anything stupid.”
“What about Emily and Andy and the kids?” David asked in a steadier but still strained voice.
“I just came from there with one of the investigators. Andy’s holding them together as well as he can, but of course it was a shock.”
Mikey tried not to think about the faces of Manda’s family when he told them, just as he was trying to forget the look of David’s face reflected in the glass. While he was at it he’d like to forget the sound of Richard’s anguished cry and the look of torment on his face. Most of all though, he would give anything to erase from his mind the vision of Manda lying torn and bleeding on the floor.
Mikey stayed for a little while longer and answered whatever questions he could. His mind kept straying worriedly to Richard and Josh though, and he soon left Manda’s coworkers to console each other and asked Mark to take him home. Instead of going to his own apartment, he rode the elevator past his floor and went all the way up to the loft, hoping against hope that the brothers would be there. All three floors were dark and empty.
Mikey placed the men’s wallets, keys, and the other miscellaneous contents of their pockets on the dining table. Mark would dispose of their ruined clothing. He held the box containing the diamond engagement ring in his hand and pondered it. He flipped open the lid to look at it one last time. When Richard had shown it to him earlier, the stone had sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight streaming through the windows, and Richard had been nervous and excited and hopeful. Now that darkness had fallen, the diamond no longer sparkled. It was just a cold, hard, lifeless stone.
Mikey snapped the box closed with finality. He climbed the stairs to Richard’s room and placed the small box in the top drawer of his dresser. Then he trudged back down the stairs in the darkness and sat down to wait for Richard and Josh to come home.
Chapter 39
When Manda woke she was disoriented and anxious. She scanned the unfamiliar room in confusion, trying to pinpoint the cause of her anxiety. She was lying in a large, four-poster bed under a thick quilt. The wood plank walls of the room glowed warmly in the light that flooded through a set of French doors. Outside she could see a dense forest of aspens and evergreens. Nothing about her surroundings was familiar. Where was she?
Manda’s unease increased and she wished for Richard’s comforting presence. Richard! Manda sat up abruptly and had to close her eyes against sudden vertigo. Thinking of Richard brought back the horrible memories of the attack at the baseball game and the terrible things she’d said to him. She looked down at herself hesitantly, afraid of what she would see. She was wearing a soft flannel robe that was tied around her waist. She unknotted the belt and pulled it open slowly, holding her breath. She exhaled in relief when she saw the unmarked skin of her stomach and chest. She flexed her right arm with no ill effect and when the sleeve of the robe fell back from her forearm she noticed that the scars she’d received from the mountain lion were gone as well. She reached up and felt the left side of her face where the girl’s claws had scored to the bone, but the skin was smooth.
The man in the ambulance, the one named Kastl, had changed her into a shapeshifter! That was the only explanation. He’d done what she hadn’t allowed Richard to do. Richard! Would he ever be able to forgive her for the terrible things she’d said? Was he here somewhere? Manda remembered the anguished cry that had echoed through her dreams and her anxiety increased.
“Richard?” she called uncertainly, looking toward the door across the room.
“Richard’s not here.” She was startled by a voice from the opposite side of the room. She clutched the robe tightly around herself when she saw Kastl standing in the open French door. “Are you feeling better? You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“Where is he?” Manda demanded, ignoring the man’s question.
“Still in Denver I suppose,” Kastl answered as he seated himself in the rocking chair that occupied one corner of the room.
“Where are we then? Why isn’t he here?” Her mind raced with possible explanations, each more distressing than the last.
“We’re in a cabin in the mountains west of Fort Collins, and Richard’s not here because he thinks you’re dead,” Kastl replied bluntly.
Manda gaped at him, dumbstruck. The unexpectedness of his response left her speechless.
“I told him you died,” Kastl added evenly. That helped Manda find her voice.
“What? Why? What did you do? I have to call him and tell him I’m okay!” Manda stood up, tying the robe snugly. She was slightly unsteady on her feet. “Where’s the phone?”
“Sit back down, Manda,” Kastl ordered. “You’re not calling Richard.”
“Try and stop me!” she challenged, temper flaring. She scanned the room, looking for a phone. She didn’t see one, but there had to be one somewhere in the house. If not, she’d been carrying her cell phone in her pocket. If she could find her things...
“Sit down!” he ordered again, scowling.
“Why shouldn’t I call him?” Manda demanded, taking a step forward and squaring her shoulders defiantly. “What’s going on here?”
“If you’ll sit back down and listen, I’ll tell you!” he snapped impatiently.
“Who are you? Why am I here? What’s going on?” Manda continued angrily. She’d never seen this man before today...yesterday she supposed, judging by the light flooding the room...but she didn’t think she liked him. She remembered him arguing with Richard and telling the paramedic to ‘knock her out’ and, despite Josh’s assurance that he was a friend, she didn’t trust him. The fear and suspicion she’d felt in the ambulance were back and she wasn’t about to let him ride roughshod over her.
“Why Richard hasn’t strangled you I don’t know,” he muttered under his breath, and then addressed Manda in a clipped voice. “If you will please sit down and listen I will explain everything.”
Manda narrowed her eyes and glared, but sat back down on the bed and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m listening.”
Kastl shook his head wryly and settled back into the rocking chair. He had short black hair and dark eyes. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but Manda knew that was no indication of his true age. He was a shapeshifter, like Richard and Josh.
“My name is Alexander Kastl. I work for the Secret Service, on loan...,” he began, but Manda interrupted him before he could finish.
“But you’re a shapeshifter!”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” he countered sarcastically. “Yes, I am, which makes me very valuable to our government. It’s also what makes them so interested in Richard and Josh, and the rest of the family for that matter. The government is aware of our existence and goes to great lengths to keep our secret. You can appreciate how valuable our skills are to them. It’s best for everyone if our existence doesn’t become com
mon knowledge. So, in light of that, right now my services are on loan to the FBI.” He held a leather wallet out toward her with a badge and ID card. She took it and studied it closely before handing it back. She still didn’t fully trust the man. His identification could be forged. Mikey and Josh seemed to trust him though. Mikey had taken orders from him. Even Richard, who had challenged him, had eventually done what he said. Surely he wouldn’t have left her in Kastl’s care if the man wasn’t trustworthy.
“So, the government knows about Richard and Josh?” Manda asked uncertainly.
“Of course. Mikey’s an agent, too. He’s there to help them maintain secrecy. And before you ask, yes, they know all about it. They just aren’t free to go around sharing that information—not even with you. Mikey’s the one who called me when he saw that Richard was getting too close to you.”
“Too close to me?” Manda bristled. “What does that mean? You make it sound like he did something wrong.”
“No, not at all. As long as everyone involved is discreet, the government stays out of our personal lives. They value our abilities and cooperation too much to alienate us. Richard is a special case though. It’s not that anyone has a problem with you. It’s that your life is endangered by being with Richard.”
“Richard would never hurt me,” Manda declared in confused defiance.
Kastl sighed. “How do I explain this? Okay, tell me what happened in the bathroom. We’ll start with that.”
Manda frowned, but then quickly recounted the events in the bathroom. Kastl nodded as she spoke, as if suspecting as much, but when she described the girl he was suddenly alert.
“Describe her again,” he ordered sharply.
“She was tall and stocky. She had light brown hair, sort of dishwater blonde I guess. A long face...”
“Would you say she was attractive?” Kastl interrupted.
“No, not at all. Sort of plain and kind of homely actually.”
Kastl swore softly. “That complicates things. I’ll have to get a message to Mikey.”
“Get a message to Mikey about what? What’s going on? Who was that?”
“I don’t know who that was. That’s the problem. I do know that she was almost certainly helping someone else, another shapeshifter who has been stalking Richard for years. That’s why it’s dangerous for you to be involved with Richard. She threatened to kill any woman close to him. That’s why I’ve been following you for months now, trying to protect you.”
“Following me for months? And Richard knows about this?” Manda asked numbly. That would explain his overprotectiveness and why he’d practically stalked her before she learned of it and demanded that he stop. She’d broken up with him over it. Her face clouded with shame. He’d been trying to protect her from a very real danger and she’d misjudged him and forced him to stop.
“Yes, of course. I assure you, Manda, he never intended to put you in danger. I don’t think he ever intended to fall in love with you, or for you to fall in love with him. But when he realized what had happened all he could do was try to protect you. So that’s why I’m here—to protect you and to catch the two who tried to kill you. You can see why we can’t have homicidal shapeshifters running around.”
“So, if Richard knows all of this, why are you making him think I’m dead?” Manda reasoned, sickened by the distress she knew this must be causing him. Josh too, she supposed...and her family.
“Because if your attacker and her partner know you’re alive, they’re going to keep trying to kill you. They almost succeeded this time. Next time we might not be able to save you.”
“But you changed me. Now I should be able to protect myself. Besides, that doesn’t tell me why Richard shouldn’t know,” Manda argued, trying to suppress the horror she felt when she considered how close she had come to dying.
Kastl shook his head. “First of all, Richard has to believe you’re dead if he’s going to be convincing. This woman has been obsessed with him for too long to be fooled. She knows him too well. We have to catch them if you’re ever going to be safe and Richard is ever going to have his life back. Until we do, you have to be dead to everyone but me and a few other agents. Second, being a shapeshifter isn’t much protection against a bullet to the head. Thirdly, you aren’t a shapeshifter, Manda. I didn’t change you. I’m not allowed to do that.”
Manda blinked in surprise and her hand pressed against her stomach reflexively. “But I’d be dead if you hadn’t changed me.”
“No. We injected you with a chemically altered form of my blood that only has a temporary effect. You were able to transform that one time, that’s all. We’ve only done it twice before, once on another agent and once on a former president, so you’re in good company, but I assure you, neither one of them is a shapeshifter now, and neither are you. Not many people know about this—not even Mikey—so they’ll never suspect that you’re still alive since they all know I’m not allowed to transform people.”
“So, I’m not... I can’t...” Manda trailed off, surprised by the deep disappointment she felt, as if she’d lost something she’d never actually had.
“No, you’re still just a regular, normal person,” he said with unexpected gentleness.
Manda collapsed back onto the pillows, overwhelmed and frustrated. “Still, I can’t just let everyone think I’m dead. That’s horrible! Richard, my family, my friends...how could I do that to them? It’s unthinkable. Now that I know about the danger I can be more careful. Until you can catch them we can just have someone on guard all the time. I can be the bait.”
“No,” Kastl disagreed. “We’ve been trying to track her down for decades with no luck. And we can’t risk your life again. My little trick only works once, so next time I wouldn’t be able to save you. And they’d be much more clever next time—on the lookout for a trap. No, the best way to catch these two is to make them think they’ve succeeded—that you’re dead. We think it will make them overconfident and we’ll finally be able to catch them. Remember, this isn’t just about you, Manda. This is about giving Richard back his freedom and his security. He’s had to live with this nightmare for too long. Do this for Richard. In the long run, it’s what’s best for both of you.”
Manda recognized that Kastl was using her love for Richard to manipulate her, but she also knew that this didn’t necessarily make his words untrue. The thought of putting Richard and her family through such heartache was unbearable though. She didn’t know what to do or how far to trust this man.
“How long would I have to hide? How long will they have to think I’m dead?” she asked dubiously.
“Until we catch the ones who tried to kill you. And afterwards, you can go back to Richard and he won’t have to spend every day and night worrying about you, wondering when the attack is going to come. And you won’t have me following your every footstep either.” His mouth twisted in a tight smile and he looked away.
“And how long will that take?” Manda pressed, staring at Kastl intently. “What if you never do catch them? You said you’ve been trying for decades. What happens then? I won’t just disappear forever. That wouldn’t help me or Richard.”
Kastl’s jaw tightened and he met Manda’s eyes with an unblinking stare. “Give me two years then. If we haven’t caught them within two years I’ll give you back your life regardless.”
“Two years! That’s crazy! I can’t do that!” Manda closed her eyes, fighting back tears. She would not let this man see her cry.
She heard the creak of the rocking chair and opened her eyes again. Kastl walked to the bedroom door and opened it before pausing and turning back toward her.
“There are some clothes for you in the dresser. You can have a shower if you’d like. The bathroom is right there.” He gestured to a door beside the bed. “If there’s anything you need, let me know. We’ll discuss this more later. All I’m asking right now is for you to think about it. I’m sure you’ll have more questions, but I’ll let you get cleaned up.” He walked out and c
losed the door behind himself.
As soon as he was gone, Manda buried her face in the pillow and cried.
Chapter 40
After briefly indulging her fit of tears, Manda went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. The reflection that greeted her in the mirror was appalling. Her body was unmarked, it was true, but the evidence of the attack was still there. Her hair was matted and stiff with dried blood, and dried blood streaked her neck. No wonder Kastl had suggested the shower. She went back into the bedroom and rummaged through the dresser, examining the clothes that Kastl had supplied. They were all her size, in colors and styles she might have chosen for herself. Well, that made sense if he’d been following her for months. The thought irritated her. She collected a set of clothing and went back to the bathroom to clean up.
Kastl had referred to this as a cabin, but the bedroom and bathroom were luxurious and roomy. An enormous claw-footed tub sat beneath a large window that looked out on the dense wall of trees, while a glass-enclosed shower was tucked into one corner. Manda thought about the time that Richard had washed the blood out of her hair, when she’d first found out that he was a shapeshifter, and tears stung her eyes again. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on showering. She had more questions for Kastl and couldn’t stand here whimpering all day.
What should she do? She couldn’t agree to this. She wished Richard were there. She wondered what he was doing right then. He must be worried about her. He always worried about her terribly. Then, with a jolt, she realized that he wouldn’t worry anymore. He thought she was dead, and you didn’t worry about the dead—you grieved for them. The thought of how she would feel if she thought he were dead was a knife in Manda’s heart. Nothing could justify causing him that kind of pain. Images from the bad dreams she’d had after learning about Richard’s brother William flashed through her mind and she shuddered. She couldn’t do this.