by K. N. Banet
“Why are we telling her this?” Miller demanded.
“Because she’s an interesting case,” Collins replied, not looking at his partner. I stared down the older partner. To him, I was the most interesting thing in the world. He was genuinely enjoying unraveling this mystery to prove to me I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was, or that he was smarter than a new supernatural who had hidden for so long. “Aren’t you? When we got your name, we noticed some interesting…coincidences around you. We were able to trace back to your human identity because we knew what you looked like after learning your name. You don’t talk to your human family any longer, hiding from them probably since you became what you are. While you were in Russia, they were on vacation.”
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “I heard they had a lovely time.”
“Your twin changed jobs at the same time.”
“Not everything has to be connected,” I said, warning in my tone. “I keep away from them because they were never a very good family. I keep away from them because I like living my own life. Now, I need to know what you want. Are you going to blackmail me? Are you here to get me to expose others? Let’s fucking hear it.” I couldn’t hold back the snappy, snarling rage at the end. The fear ate at me. I didn’t have training for this situation. This was never something Hasan and I had talked about. I was responsible for exposing werecats to the humans.
This was all my fault. Me and all my good intentions over the last two and half years led to this. Special Agent Collins had been kind enough to give me the entire detailed play-by-play of how they found out about me. Now, I had to pick up the pieces and figure it the fuck out.
My family is going to blame this on Heath. I know they are. They’re going to tell me I was too close to the werewolves.
And they’re fucking right.
“We truly just want to talk to you,” Collins said, leaning forward again. I inhaled deeply, knowing my eyes went gold as I did. There was no anger on their scents, but for a quick second, there was fear. “We’re trying to open a door for both our kinds. You don’t have to live in the dark.”
“I don’t break any laws. If you just want to talk, then I think we’re done here,” I said stiffly. “I have nothing to say.”
“Fine.” Special Agent Collins got up first, gesturing for his partner to follow him. He didn’t seem angry, as if he was expecting this turn. “We’ll come back in a couple of days. Don’t go anywhere, please. Maybe when you’ve had some time to think, you can start to see how this might be a good thing. Miss Leon, you’re a supernatural who lives in secret. Imagine how your life could change if that wasn’t the case.”
I walked around my desk, keeping my hands curled under my arms, keeping them from being the threat. I opened my office door and waited. Eventually, the BSA agents relented and left.
“Two days,” Special Agent Collins said softly as he passed me. I watched them walk down the hallway and saw Oliver coming up the stairs, his face a shade paler than I was used to. He glanced at the agents, then down the hall to me. The agents looked him over as well as he tried to press himself up against a wall to let them pass. Neither of us moved until the agents’ steps on the stairs ended.
Oliver spared no time after that, walking down the hall to me.
“Jacky—”
“Shut it down,” I ordered as he got to me.
“What?” he stumbled to a stop.
“They know. Shut it all down,” I repeated. “I need to call my family.”
I closed the office door in his face and locked it, my hands still shaking.
I need to call my family, but what the fuck am I supposed to say?
8
Chapter Eight
I didn’t make it a step, freezing in place as the panic gripped my heart and threatened to stop it. Oliver knocked and jiggled the door handle.
“Jacky, what’s going on? What do you mean by ‘they know?’” Oliver kept trying, but I made no effort to unlock the door.
I took three steps back, bumping into the chairs.
I could still smell them—the agents. I could still smell them in my office.
“Jacky?” Dirk called, a loud series of thumps on the door. “Jacky, we need to know what’s going on.”
I stumbled, trying to get around the chairs and my desk. I looked up at the monitor and saw where it was paused, staring at my house in night vision. I couldn’t forget what I saw play out.
They didn’t just have pictures of a werecat. They had me Changing. They had both me and confirmation of a new supernatural species. This wasn’t the case of some cryptid, where people on the internet debunked the images as some sort of prank.
This was real.
I fell into my chair, barely hearing Oliver and Dirk, both in full panic mode now, trying to get inside.
I reached out to the mouse and went back to the beginning of the video, watching it all play out. I rewatched my Change over and over again, letting it sink in.
My phone started going off, but I ignored it as I pulled my knees up and began to rock, trying to contain my pure terror.
I had exposed the werecats. There was no going back from this. There was no hiding from this. Even if I disappeared for a few decades, they would know me the moment I came out of hiding. They would look for others.
Years and years of secrecy. Years of Hasan saying he wanted to carefully plan the outing of the werecats if it needed to happen.
And I had ruined all of it.
“Jacky, please,” Dirk said, more desperate than frantic. His deep voice broke through. “We’re here to help you. We need to know how.”
Need.
I needed to keep protecting them. Dirk and Oliver were human and too close to my family to get out of this unscathed if I didn’t do this right. I didn’t want them to become targets of the BSA to get information.
And I needed to protect my family. I couldn’t let the BSA drag me into the public eye and out my siblings or my father. Hasan was on the Tribunal. If they got too close to him and discovered that, I would be single-handedly responsible for outing the shadow government of the supernaturals. My life would be forfeit, and so would many others.
I needed a plan.
I stood and took a deep breath, then walked steadily back to the door and unlocked it, opening it slowly to reveal the scared faces of my two humans.
“I’m sorry. I needed a moment to collect myself,” I said, looking between them. “Come in, and I’ll explain.”
“Should we close the bar down?” Oliver asked as he walked into the office first and sat down where Miller had sat.
“No. No, leave it open for the night. Actually, we’re not closing down at all. We’re going to continue like nothing happened.”
“What happened?” Dirk asked, his desperation gone. He walked in behind Oliver and took the door from me. He was solid, my nephew. I had to remember Niko trained him from a young age. He was ready for these moments.
I went back to sit at my desk as he closed the door and locked it. I didn’t answer his question, just pointed at the monitor, rewound a minute in the footage, and hit play. I didn’t watch the scene play out on screen again, opting to watch their reactions.
“I know how to find those cameras,” Dirk whispered. “And before anything else is said, let me check the room for bugs.”
“They never left those chairs,” I said softly. “And…” I pointed to the USB. “They gave me that.”
He nodded and began his search around the chairs. I pulled out the USB without bothering to copy the files. I knew the tricks employed here. If there was any sort of malware on the USB, it would hopefully stay contained. I would need Davor to look through my system remotely and through the USB to clear it. Only then would I feel safe copying the files onto my PC to send my family.
“Clear, but let’s take that out of the room,” he said, pointing at the USB.
“Go ahead.”
He grabbed it and left the office in a blur, coming back only a
moment later.
“We’re secure to talk now. So, they caught you on camera changing.”
“I didn’t see any trail cameras. I don’t know how they did it,” I admitted. “I followed those two people through my woods, and they were definitely the ones who set up the surveillance, but I didn’t see it.”
“Walk me on the trail they took, and I might find it. We can do it tomorrow at dawn. Don’t go home tonight. Do everything here in this office, then crash at our house or something.” Dirk was more solid than me, and I took some comfort in that.
“I take it Niko was prepared for these kinds of situations?” I asked softly.
“Not this one specifically. We were bugged and spied on by a lot of people, mostly werewolves and other werecats, the occasional vampire. Most people in Europe choose to deal with Niko over Davor, thinking he might be less prickly, which he is, and would equate that to him being an easy target, especially since he had me. Niko taught me all of this to protect myself and him. If you need a room cleared of surveillance, I can handle it for you.”
“Thank you,” I said softly. “Now to the important parts of this conversation. As you saw, they know I’m a werecat, but they don’t know what a werecat is. I’m the first they’ve caught on camera. They want me to…make a deal with them, I think. I give them information about our kind, and they let me live openly as a supernatural, like the werewolves. Well, maybe not exactly like the werewolves, but similar enough.”
“That puts other werecats at risk,” Oliver pointed out. “Doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Dirk confirmed.
“They’re already at risk,” I whispered, looking down at my hands. “They’ve picked me apart. They know my tricks, the tricks Hasan taught me and uses to protect us from human eyes. They went through my finances and know my human name. They know Gwen changed careers. They know my family went on vacation last year. At least that story is holding up.” I growled as I looked up at my two employees, my humans who knew and helped me in the task of being supernatural. They, at the end of the day, were my cover. “By knowing all of those things, they can watch for others using them. They can try to find gaps in the protection of other werecats. This is…I don’t know how I’m going to tell my family. I only have forty-eight hours until the BSA comes back and expects me to make a decision. I don’t know what’s going to happen if I don’t play their game. I don’t know what they have up their sleeve.” I stopped and spun my chair around, looking out the window behind my desk. “But I know how they figured me out, and that’s…that’s what is going to get me killed in the end.”
“Boss?” I could hear Dirk’s frown.
“They heard about me in passing during the coup in Dallas. They knew I helped Heath save a werewolf in Washington. They…finally got my name in Russia, and I had already run into them at that point. My connection to the werewolves exposed me and my entire kind.” I leaned over and put my head in my hands. “I’m going to need to take the consequences for that.”
“They don’t even know you and Heath are…” Dirk cursed.
“Are they going to make us leave?” Oliver asked in a small voice. “I like it here. I like working with you.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t know if they’ll let Heath and his family stay. I don’t…If they have footage of that, they have footage of Heath coming and going from my place. They probably don’t even know they’re sitting on a bomb.”
“Oh, fuck.” Dirk’s chair clattered as he stood. I heard him pacing.
“The footage doesn’t seem clear enough to show what happens in my house. My windows are purposefully tinted for that, but it doesn’t look good…walk into my house with a werewolf on a Saturday and him sneaking out early in the morning, hours later.”
“No, that doesn’t look good at all,” Oliver agreed. “Would anyone hurt him for that? Or you? Or would they just make you break up?”
“Worst-case scenario, Hasan is forced to pick between me and his position over the werecats. If he picks them, and he should, I would be forfeit. Heath would have the same problem. Werewolves all over the world would be up in arms. They would expect him, as a traitor, to be put down. Then there are the would-be accusations of seduction, in which case, each side would try to place the blame on the other. A great way for that to play out would be if a werewolf claimed I was trying to spy for the werecats or vice versa, Heath spying for the werewolves. This can go wrong in all sorts of ways.”
“And you did it anyway,” Dirk pointed out. He was so frustrated, the smell of his aggravation thick in the air.
“Yeah, I did,” I agreed, nodding as I turned back to them. “Old rivalries and wars shouldn’t have the power to stop me from spending my time the way I want to. Old prejudices shouldn’t be my or Heath’s problem. So, I did it anyway.”
He paused in his pacing and looked at me, then nodded slowly. “You’re right.”
“We’re going to deal with this, one problem at a time,” I declared. “There’re cameras in my woods. Dirk, do you know what sort of tech they might have used?”
“I can find them. You take me where those humans went, and I’ll find and get rid of the cameras. The photos and video help. They give me the angles and positioning. I just need someone to lead me to where they are.” He was confident, and I trusted it.
“Thank you. Oliver, you’re going to be working Kick Shot alone. I’m going to keep Dirk with me for a while. Get someone to cover his shifts until further notice.”
“Okay,” Oliver said, nodding. “I’ll keep up appearances here. No one will know anything is wrong if I can help it.”
“Why?” Dirk asked.
“You know our family,” I reminded him. “And you’re obviously good at this. I want you near any of the meetings going forward to look out for bugs and shit like you have here. You have an eye for detail. I don’t. I know you don’t want to use all the things Niko taught you and understand you want to make your own path, but I need you right now.”
“All right,” he said, nodding once again. “I can do this. I’ve got your back.”
“Now, you need to call your family,” Oliver whispered.
I winced. “Yeah, I know.”
“They might have really good advice,” Oliver pressed, suddenly perking up. “They could know how to fix this.”
“That’s what she’s afraid of,” Dirk muttered.
“Oliver, get back down to Kick Shot and make sure everything is running smoothly,” I said softly. There was something I needed to clear up before I made this call. It was going to get brought up. “I need to talk to Dirk about something.”
“Okay…” He stood slowly, looked at Dirk, who shrugged, then walked out.
“What do you need, boss?”
“Niko wants to know when you’re going home,” I explained, meeting his stare. “He expected you back at the end of the year. You weren’t supposed to be here. He understands everything that happened, and that the year didn’t turn out as planned, but he wants a timeline.”
“We’re going to deal with this right now?” Dirk sat back down, looking away from me. “Really? There’s something else going on—”
“If he feels you’re in danger, he might tell me to put you on a plane without us discussing it first. So, do you want to go back—”
“If I wanted to go back, I already would have,” he said softly. “I want to stay here and help you. I want to work at Kick Shot. We just had this conversation downstairs. He has all sorts of expectations of me I don’t want. I want to make my own life, and I know you’re more willing to let me do that than he is. He tries, but…”
“I get it,” I said softly. “I never got the impression from Niko that he had a plan for you. He’s always seemed to have…the best of intentions when it comes to you. Now it makes total sense.” I chuckled darkly. “Parents.”
“Yup.”
“So, you want to stay for as long as you want to stay. No real timeline, huh?”
“No time
line,” he confirmed.
I nodded slowly, then went to my keyboard and mouse, then started the process of reaching out to all of my family members, letting them know there was an emergency in my territory.
It didn’t take long for a video call to start, only a couple minutes of dreadful silence. I answered, letting it engage the webcam at the top of the monitor, then pointed where it could see me and my entire office, including Dirk, where he was seated.
It was time for me to face the music.
9
Chapter Nine
Hasan was the first face I saw with that familiar concern. Guilt ate at me at that moment, watching him take in my appearance on the screen and register that Dirk was there as well. Jabari and Mischa were there next, then Hisao, Niko, and Davor. Davor being last surprised me. He had dark bags under his eyes as if he wasn’t sleeping properly, and I recognized the space around him. He was still in Hasan’s territory and at our patriarch’s estate. Zuri’s absence made sense. There was no real way to get ahold of her, though I had sent her the same emergency message as I did everyone else.
“What’s the emergency?” Hasan asked, obviously trying to keep any sort of emotion out of the words. He wanted to approach this calmly, but the undercurrents of worry and annoyance were clear, even though he didn’t want them to be.
“Davor, can you perform a sweep on my system for malware?” I asked, ignoring the question.
“Why is Dirk there?” Niko asked. “Dirk, is something wrong? Were you hurt?”
