Chapter 20 #2
Johnny came up swinging, a meaty fist striking out. Alan blocked it easily, slapping it away hard enough to slam Johnny back into the mattress. Which is when the man finally opened his eyes.
“Good morning,” Alan said, his voice low with threat.
Johnny blinked his eyes about a dozen times, his mouth opening and closing twice before he formed words. “I gave you what you wanted! I emailed you!”
“Yeah, we know. Now we want to know where you got that information and who else knew.”
Johnny’s eyes darted around the room, pausing for just a tick on Tonya’s face. He was probably looking for a weapon, but Alan didn’t give him a chance. He jerked the man’s face back to his, though how he could stand to be that close to Johnny’s breath, she hadn’t a clue.
“Who’d you tell, Johnny?”
“Think I’m stupid? I didn’t tell no one!”
“Then where’d you get the information? How’d you know she was there?”
“What does it matter? If you got her—”
“Who?” Alan’s claws were extending, drawing little pools of blood where they pressed hardest into Johnny’s jaw. Tonya kept a close eye on that. Pinpricks, she could ignore. No way was she letting Alan kill the mangy cat.
Meanwhile, Johnny’s eyes were getting wild. “You got no right,” he whined. “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
“How did you know?” Alan pressed.
Johnny didn’t want to say. His mouth was turned into a mulish line and Alan’s scent was getting thick. Damn it, she couldn’t let escalate any further. If Alan and Johnny went off the rails, no way could she contain the situation.
“Don’t piss him off,” she pleaded with Johnny.
It might have been the earnest panic in her voice or Alan’s scent up close and personal. Either way, Johnny spilled, though every word held angry venom. “I got it from Holly, you fucker! She knew.”
Tonya stepped forward. “How did your wife know?”
Johnny tried to spit at her, but he quickly stopped the motion when Alan tightened his claws. “They were tight, okay? Holly was best friends with Elisabeth’s daughter.”
Okay, one connection explained. Tonya was about to ask more, but she heard the back door open and close.
Holding up a hand to Alan, she backed out of the bedroom to stand at the top of the stairs.
She heard a woman tell someone to take the kids outside and then footsteps.
It wasn’t until she heard the pump of a shotgun racking that she pulled out her weapon.
Just what she needed. A trigger-happy wife added into the mix. Jesus, could this get any worse? Hoping to head off disaster, she called loudly down the stairs.
“Damn it, Holly, we’re not here to hurt you. Don’t be stupid.” Please, don’t be stupid.
Alan abruptly appeared at her back. He was tense and his gaze split evenly between the bedroom and the stairs.
“You got no right to come in my house,” called a woman—presumably Holly—from below.
“I’m Officer Kappes. We just wanted to talk to Johnny,” Tonya returned. “I’m coming downstairs. Don’t shoot.”
She started to move but Alan was there before her.
He wasn’t letting her walk down the stairs first. Stupid and macho, but there wasn’t time to argue.
A quick look showed that he appeared mostly human.
Good. But the situation was too volatile for her to let appearances mean anything, especially since Alan’s scent was still strong. So she nabbed his elbow.
“Keep it together, okay?”
He gave her a sharp nod and kept descending. By all accounts, Holly wasn’t a shifter, so she couldn’t judge Alan by his smell. Then he held his hands out to the side, and Tonya saw the sharp points of his claws. Damn. Not fully human.
She moved forward, keeping a half step behind him and her gun out as she aimed over his shoulder. If Holly knew to look at his hands, she might freak. But there was no time to stop Alan as Holly came into view.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded. Tonya couldn’t see her, but she’d obviously gotten an angle on Alan.
“This is Mr. Carman, my partner,” Tonya answered. Even in this tense a situation, a tiny thrill went down her spine at those words. Alan as her partner. It felt right.
“What the hell do you want?”
Alan put his hands down and curled them into fists. It helped to hide the claws, but the aggressive stance was unmistakable. “Elisabeth Oltheten. Where is she?”
Bam!
The shotgun. Shit! Tonya had barely made the last step when the noise deafened her.
She whipped around, gun at the ready, but all she saw was Alan gripping the barrel of the weapon and holding it high.
Tonya frantically scanned him, but there wasn’t blood anywhere and no coppery scent either.
Good. Though now they had the scent of gunpowder further clogging the air.
Meanwhile, Holly struggled to retain control of the weapon, but Alan had a good grip and he wasn’t letting her aim anywhere but at the ceiling. Which, now that Tonya looked at it, had a shotgun hole in it.
“Settle down!” he growled. Oh hell, fur was sprouting on his forearm.
The woman jerked at his tone, letting go of her weapon as she jolted backward.
Unfortunately, she backed into a cheap coffee table that teetered under the sudden impact.
Alan caught her with his other hand, gripping her tightly to keep her from falling.
And then he was standing there with a shotgun in one hand and a terrified woman in the other.
“A little help please?” he growled as he looked at Tonya.
She holstered her pistol and stepped around to face the woman. “Holly? You’re Johnny’s wife?”
“I won’t tell you shit!” the woman bellowed.
Meanwhile, heavy footsteps clunked down the stairs. Tonya turned to face Johnny, but his eyes were all on his wife. “Don’t argue, you stupid bitch. You don’t know what he is!”
Alan couldn’t do anything but keep a hold on weapon and woman. It was almost funny the way he glared over his shoulder at Johnny and her, but Tonya liked that two of the four people in the room were effectively immobilized. And she had no trouble dealing with Johnny.
“Sit your ass down,” she snapped and was thrilled when Johnny obeyed, dropping heavily onto the nearest couch.
“You, too,” she said to Holly. The woman wasn’t going to obey, but Alan twisted her around by her arm then abruptly let go. She dropped with little grace onto the couch beside her husband. Then he was free to pop open the shotgun and set it aside.
She had let Alan take lead with Johnny, but a furious woman was her province. So she stepped up to Holly and looked hard at her. “How did you know where Elisabeth was?”
“I’m not telling you shit!”
Johnny shot his elbow back, right into his wife’s chest. “Shut up, you idiot.”
Tonya reacted on instinct. She grabbed Johnny’s arm, twisted it, and threw him to the ground.
Within a second, she had the bastard facedown with her knee on the back of his neck while she twisted his arm with increasing strength.
He howled in reaction, but she just kept going.
Well, somewhat. Eventually, she eased off.
And about a minute after that, he stopped bellowing.
“Nice move,” Alan said from over her shoulder. He was standing with his hand out in front of Holly, presumably to keep the woman from joining in.
“I have my moments,” Tonya responded. Then she turned to Johnny. “I promised your kid that you wouldn’t hurt her mother. Don’t make a liar out of me.” Then she glanced at Holly. “You okay?”
The woman didn’t answer, clearly too furious to speak. But whether she was mad at Tonya or Johnny was anybody’s guess.
“We just need to find Elisabeth,” Tonya said. “Before things get worse.”
“She ain’t done nothing.”
Tonya stared at the woman. “What makes you think that? Because she raised your best friend? Do you know what kind of shit Elisabeth’s been doing?”
“Yes! She’s saving the cougars.” She lifted her chin. “She’s making new ones and you fucking bears don’t like that.”
“We fucking bears don’t give a shit about you cats. Except when you decided to have a war with the wolves right in our backyard.”
“We ain’t warring with anyone!”
No, they weren’t anymore. But that’s because the populations of both species were so decimated there wasn’t anyone left to fight. “So you think Elisabeth is just making new cats. Just whammo, bammo, she pops out another one?”
“Idiot,” Holly snarled. “She’s too old for that.”
Which is when Alan spoke, his voice as quiet as Holly’s was loud. “She promised to change you, didn’t she? She said she’d figured out how to activate your cat DNA and you’d become a shifter.” He glanced at Johnny. “Maybe become equal in strength and speed to this asshole.”
Holly glared at Alan, her voice sullen. “It ain’t for me. I’m pure human, through and through.”
Oh hell. “It’s for her kids,” Tonya said. Jesus, what people would do to get an advantage for their children. However misguided the thought, Tonya understood the impulse. “It doesn’t work, you know.”
“’Course it does! I saw one. Her cousin from Arizona. He shifted perfect.”
Alan stepped back, his eyes dark. “Big guy, thick knuckles? Doesn’t speak?”
Tonya recognized that description. It was one of the guys who’d been guarding Alan and Julie. The one who’d been shot but got away. Meanwhile, Holly nodded.
“That’s him.”
“Already a shifter. That’s why she had to bring him up from Arizona.”
“You’re lying,” Holly snapped, but her face said she wasn’t so sure.
Alan squatted down in front of Holly. His movement were jerky, but his voice was anything but. When he spoke, it was with a silky softness all the more frightening because of his smooth tone.
“Do you want to know what she’s doing? Do you want to see what she’s going to turn your kid into?”
Suddenly Johnny started writhing, panic in his voice. “No, Holly. No!” Tonya had to press down hard to keep him from escaping.
Meanwhile, Alan stretched out his hands in front of Holly. “I was one of her test subjects. I’m half bear. She was gonna make me into a full shifter.”
Alan made it sound like he’d wanted this. Made Holly think they had that in common when the truth was the exact opposite. But the suggestion worked. Holly’s eyes were fixed on Alan’s hands.
“This is what she did. And this is what she’s going to do to your kids.”
He went full out. The claws came first and then the fur. But seconds later, his face had changed and his back hunched and thickened. And then the BO hit. Lord, Alan was really laying it on.
Awful. But it didn’t really bother Tonya. In her time as a cop, she’d smelled tons worse. But she understood the effect on someone who hadn’t. Someone who’d expected to see and smell a normal animal.
The woman choked back a scream. She scrambled backward on the couch even though Alan hadn’t moved an inch. And Johnny started gagging. Oh hell, all that booze last night, it didn’t take much for the man to start retching. Bile and God knows what else came up, and Tonya jumped out of the way.
Well that didn’t help the smell in here. Ugh.
Meanwhile Alan stood up. His jaw wasn’t constructed well for human speech, but he got out words better than Tonya could when in her bear form.
“Is this what you want? For your kids?” he asked.
Holly shook her head, terror in her eyes.
“Where is Elisabeth?”
It took three tries before Holly managed to speak. And when she did, it was with a quavering voice. “I don’t know. She called me. When she got to the new place.”
Tonya spotted the cell phone and picked it up. “You’re the one who told her we were coming?”
Holly nodded.
“And did you help her get to Grand Rapids?”
She shook her head. “The guy did. I...uh...I let him borrow our car.”
Johnny shot a weak glare over his shoulder. “You said it was getting fixed.”
“It is getting fixed!” Holly snapped. “He’s doing it because you can’t stop a fucking oil leak.”
Okay. This was rapidly descending into domestic-dispute territory and no way did Tonya want to be in the middle of that.
So she scrolled through the phone history and pulled up a number.
It didn’t take long. It wasn’t like many people wanted to talk to these two.
Plus it was the only number that didn’t have a name attached.
“This it?” she asked, showing it to Holly.
The woman jerked her head in a shaky nod.
Tonya pulled out her phone and texted it to her police partner Steve. “We should have an address in a minute,” she said to Alan. Then she grabbed the shotgun. “This is a registered weapon, right? All legally obtained with the proper paperwork?”
Johnny didn’t answer except to glare.
“Yeah,” she said as she set the gun on her shoulder. “Thought not.” Then she turned to Alan. “We can go now.”
He nodded and started to move for the front door, pausing long enough to glare at Holly. “If you’re lying—” he began. Tonya interrupted.
“She’s not.” The terror on the woman’s face was pretty clear.
She’d told them everything she knew. Meanwhile, Alan made it to the front door, but Tonya kept him from opening it.
“You can shift back now,” she said in a low voice.
The kids were out there somewhere and maybe a neighbor. No sense in terrifying them, too.
He looked at her, his expression bleak. “I’m trying,” he said in a low tone. “It’s not going away.”
Still on the floor, Johnny let out a low moan of fear. With his shifter ears, he probably heard Alan’s comment clearly.
“Well,” Tonya said with a shrug, “you’ll figure it out in the car.” Then she hauled open the door. Might as well expose the kids to the idea that the world held many strange and unexpected things. And that some of the good guys had really bad BO.