“He didn’t know how you would take it. He hadn’t seen you in over ten years, and you didn’t already know, so he figured that your mom just didn’t want to tell you.”
“Maybe because he was gone and she thought that I would never be able to see him, or that I would blame myself for him getting turned in and relocated. It could be any number of things. But I have a question. If I’m half WereTiger, then why can’t I shift?”
“You can.”
“No, I can’t. Don’t you think I would have done it at some point?”
“How long have you been on the Omega blockers?”
“Since I was really young, maybe ten years old.”
“Do you remember meeting with the doctor?”
“No. I talked to someone over the phone, and they called my prescription in.”
“And how do you get them now?”
“I just transfer my prescription when I move, and once a year, it gets renewed.”
“What about your joints? Have you ever actually forgotten to take the pill and had anything happen?”
“No, but it stays in your system a while before it’s gone, and I usually remember the dose long before then. What are you trying to say?”
“You don’t have a joint problem. Omega blockers have a lot of uses, but one off-label use that isn’t widely known is to prevent shifters from shifting. It’s one of the key ingredients in the resort cocktail, aside from the male birth control and another ingredient that they didn’t really explain. You’ve been taking pills since before puberty to prevent you from shifting accidentally and finding out.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “My mom wouldn’t lie to me.”
“You don’t think she would if she thought that she was protecting you?”
“I can keep a secret. She would have told me.”
“Some secrets are too dangerous to share.”
Tara was shaking. Her hands were trembling despite being shoved between clamped knees. This couldn’t be happening. Everything that she had ever known about herself and her life was a lie. And she’d been in the same building as the father she’d thought had died before she was born and hadn’t known. How could she have hugged him and not known?
“I have to talk to my mom,” she said abruptly, standing up and grabbing her cellphone before rushing into her room and closing the door.
Luis didn’t try to follow her, and for that, she was grateful. Her entire world had been changed in the last hour, and she didn’t know how to feel or what to think about everything. She hit the speed dial contact for her mother’s cell, and she answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Baby. How’s my girl?” she answered as she always did.
Tara took a deep breath and sat down, trying to control the emotions that threatened to spill over her cheeks.
“Mom?”
“Tara, what’s wrong?” Her mom always knew when she was upset, even fourteen hundred miles away.
“Mom. I need to talk to you about my father. Not my dad, but my actual father.”
There was silence on the other end, and Tara felt a weight she hadn’t known was there lift from her shoulders. She heard her mom choke on a sob and knew that the years of hiding had weighed heavily on her, too. Her heart broke for her mom, a sweet woman that Tara always knew would risk herself to take care of her family. Little did Tara know she’d been doing just that for over twenty years.
“Who told you?” she asked.
“It’s a long story, Mom.”
She leaned back until she was laying in the bed, comforted by the familiar mattress and the scent of her favorite laundry detergent on her sheets. She laid it all out, from the moment Luis called Andrew and got the ball rolling with their investigation to that night, when Luis admitted what Martin had told him.
“There’s nothing wrong with my joints, is there?”
“No, Sweetie. There never has been. We just wanted to protect you, and adolescent shifters really struggle not to shift when they’re angry. We didn’t want you to accidentally put yourself in danger.”
Her mom was crying again, and Tara spoke quietly to her, reassuring her that she wasn’t angry.
“All these years, I thought he was dead,” her mother said, still crying softly. “I always dreamed that he was somewhere, waiting for me to find him, but I couldn’t even begin to think of where to look. The islands they were taken to were scattered across the world, and Martin was taken before the mass relocation. Damn, I always hated that word, ‘relocation’. Such a benign word for such an ugly act. He was taken because he attacked a human. Even though he did it to save the life of a child, they still took him. And I couldn’t go to him. We were at the hospital with you, and they let him use his one phone call to say goodbye. When we got home, he had left a message on the machine, telling Mike and I to take care of you. Mike was such a good man, knowing what he did and still loving us both so fiercely. I couldn’t have asked for a better man than him. Except Martin. I would have given my life to be with Martin.”
“But not mine?”
“Of course not. Neither of us wanted that. We didn’t even have to talk about it. We knew that we had to do anything to protect you from the world we’re living in right now. So we did what we did, and I’m not sorry. I’m sorry for any pain it caused you, but we did what we had to, and I hope that you understand that.”
“I do, Mom. I really do.”
“Tell me, where is he now?”
“He’s in a hospital in Peru, then on his way back to the island. We did an informal vote, but he was unanimously chosen as their leader.”
“Did he know who you were? I mean, did he recognize you?”
“He did, but he didn’t tell me.”
“Is he happy?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know who he was until just an hour ago. I haven’t really had time to process it. When I last spoke to him, he seemed like he was ready to get to the hospital so he could get back to the island, but you really can’t tell what a man is thinking when he doesn’t tell you.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” her mom said, and they both laughed.
Her mom was silent for a few minutes, and Tara let her work through her emotions at her own pace. That was something that Laila had taught her from a young age—never try to make people ready to talk. When they’re ready, you can’t shut them up. Tara smiled every time she used her mother’s advice to break a suspect in interrogation. It seemed that Laila’s tactic of staying silent when someone expected you to talk worked like a charm. Especially when there was a guilty conscience involved.
When her mom finally spoke, her words broke Tara’s heart.
“If he’s been happy all these years, I don’t want to ruin that for him. He sacrificed his happiness so that we could live a good life. The least I can do is leave him alone and not open up old wounds.”
Tara didn’t know what to say. Part of her wanted to say that her mom was wrong, that Martin would want to hear from her. But the truth was, Tara knew exactly where her mom was coming from. It was the same feeling that had caused Tara to push Luis away when she thought that he wouldn’t be happy leaving the island. It had taken her boat running out of gas in the Pacific for her to listen to him, and she didn’t doubt that Laila Strong would need an equally jarring event to get her to open her eyes.
But now was not the time, and if anything, her mom needed some time to process what amounted to more than twenty years of pain and more than ten years of just not knowing. Tara knew that was one of the worst things to endure.
“Mom, I have to get going. But I have so much to tell you. I’m moving to Virginia. I got a raise, and I’m transferring to DC.”
“Darling, that’s great!”
“Thank you. I’m really excited. We’re leaving Fort Worth tomorrow.”
“We?”
“Yes. Me and Luis. I want you to meet him. Christmas is in just a little over three months. Why don’t you plan on spending Christmas with us, and you can get to know Luis then?
”
“That sounds wonderful, honey. I’ll look at plane tickets tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about tickets. I’ll buy them. Remember, I just got a big fat raise and a bonus. It will be my gift to you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. I don’t want to argue about it. I’ll let you know when we get to Virginia. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Tara hung up the phone, her emotions raw and somehow soothed, all at once. She had a plan, and she knew what she was going to do.
She went back into the living room, sitting across from Luis, who was sitting where she’d left him.
“What did your mom say?”
“It’s true.”
“So, what now?”
Tara shook her head.
“She won’t go to the island to see him. She’s convinced that he’s found happiness without her, and if she contacts him now, she will just be opening old wounds.”
“Gosh, that sounds familiar,” Luis said, looking at Tara over the coffee he had helped himself to while she was on the phone.
She looked at the clock, surprised at just how long she had been on the phone. Long enough for him to make them a pot of coffee and then some.
“Hush,” she said. “At least we care about who you are as people and see you as so much more than just a shifter.”
The smile slid off his face and his expression went dark for a split second while he remembered all the times that he hadn’t been treated as worthy.
“You’re right,” he said. “At least you both love fiercely and without apology.”
“I have a plan,” she said. “But it’s going to be hard to put into place. I’m going to need your help.”
“Of course,” Luis said without hesitation.
“Good. So, here’s what we’re going to do.”
She leaned forward, clearly excited, and laid the entire plan out for him. His smile grew wider as she talked, and they both grew more and more excited by the minute. They were going to set things right that had been wrong for over twenty years. And they knew just how to do it.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
They got a jump on the morning early the next day, and Tara was not the least bit surprised that it took them just a few hours to pack and that her things barely took up half of her truck’s bed. Truth be told, she could have put everything in the back seat of the king cab of her three quarter ton pickup, but she preferred to have that bench seat open so that they could take turns driving and sleeping if they needed to. The only thing in the truck besides her backpack with her laptop and the equipment she had to return to Andrew was her violin and her music bag. Eager to get back into practice, she had dusted her case off and placed the violin carefully on the floor of the back seat in its heavy-duty hard case.
They were all packed and ready to go, but they couldn’t leave just yet. They were sitting on the tailgate of her truck, waiting for her landlady to come and collect the keys by ten in the morning.
“I didn’t realize how few possessions I had until this moment,” she said, looking at her pitiful stash and laughing. “I guess that’s why I rented a furnished apartment. It’s easier to pick up and move that way.”
“Fort Worth was never home,” he said.
“No. It wasn’t. It was just somewhere to stop until I found a place I wanted to lay down roots.”
“Virginia is beautiful. I think you’ll like it there.”
“Do you know what happened to your parent’s house?”
“It was actually on a farm, and unfortunately, it was seized when I was relocated. They were already gone at that time, so they never lived to see the relocation. I’m so glad. It would have killed them to see all their hard work just taken away like that.”
“They did that to everyone and sold the properties or kept them if the government could use them. It’s such a horrible thing. I can’t imagine how anyone could have thought that doing something like that was alright.”
“I try not to think about it.”
“Part of that decree is restitution. You can file to be reimbursed for the worth of the property when it sold or what it’s worth today, whichever is the larger amount.”
“I applied. Actually, Andrew did it for me when he left the island. I’ve been checking my application every day, but it is still marked as received.”
“Everything takes forever when the government gets involved.”
“I know, but Andrew filed mine and Martin’s personally, and someone is supposed to collect the information from everyone in the hospital as they are able.”
“I filed for everyone in the village who had a claim before we left,” Tara added. “I didn’t want to wait until we got here and then lose everything in the shuffle of moving. But I didn’t file them until the second to last day, so yours should be processed in the first group.” She put her hand on his leg and squeezed reassuringly. “I know it’s not very comforting, but I do have a sizable savings to draw off of, and I make six figures now. We’re not going to be hurting for money, even living on the east coast.”
He smiled at her, leaning over to give her a tender kiss on the cheek.
“It is very comforting, actually. It will all work out in the end, and I’ll spend my entire life taking care of you. My family’s farm was near the Virginia border, and the back of the property had direct access to miles of woodland trails. I would rather have the property than the money, to be honest.”
“It’s been ten years.”
“I know. I’m sure we’ll find something. But I definitely want to wait until we have the money from the settlement. The property was worth over a million dollars back then.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Tara said, letting the weight of that sink in.
“Yes, it is. But it’s not the same as having the home I grew up in and that my parents died working themselves to the bone to pay for. They died before the relocation, and they never got to retire. I think having that place would be like a part of them still being alive.”
Tara patted his leg and took his hand, holding it tight.
“I understand,” she said, and she did. A car turned down at the end of the road, and Tara waved at her landlady.
Michele got out of the car, her hair bleach blonde, her fake nails a festive shade of orange to celebrate the month of October. Michele was her favorite landlady and the only thing that she was going to miss about this town.
“I’m sad to see you go,” Michele said, walking briskly in the crisp morning air. “But I’m glad you got a promotion. I’m sure you deserve it.”
She gave Luis an appreciative look then accepted the keys that Tara was handing to her. Tara tried to hand her a check, but Michele waved it away.
“I don’t need that,” she said.
“But my lease isn’t up until the end of the year.”
“And I have a waiting list as long as the day is of people waiting to get into one of my apartments. I’ll have the cleaners come in and give it a good cleaning tomorrow, and I’ll have it rented out by Tuesday. Keep your money. Consider it an early Christmas gift.”
Tara hugged Michele, thanking the woman and promising to stay in touch. Michele was gone almost as quickly as she’d arrived, though she managed to get in the last word as she put her car in gear.
“And when you have your first baby, I expect pictures in my email! A child can never have too many ‘aunties’.”
“I will,” Tara called out without thinking, but Michele was already gone, her yellow Corvette eating up the half a block in mere seconds.
“She’s…different.”
“She’s the best,” Tara said. “Best landlord I’ve ever had.”
“I can see why.”
“Alright,” Tara said, trying not to get choked up about leaving this chapter of her life behind. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Tara jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot, eager to start their adven
ture.
***
They talked easily throughout the trip, stopping at places that interested them and sightseeing along the way. Tara had wanted to do the trip in two days, but they enjoyed the leisure time so much that it was early afternoon on the fourth day when they finally stopped near the northern border of Virginia.
Tara had fallen asleep shortly after a late breakfast, exhausted from being in the car for so many days. She woke up, looking around in confusion.
“Why are we stopped?” she asked, feeling a little dazed from falling asleep for such a short nap.
“I had to see it,” he said, and she looked around at the barren land overgrown with weeds and the house that had seen better days near the large welcome sign that rose merrily over the driveway.
“Is this your family’s farm?” she asked, looking around at the secluded area and back behind the truck down the dirt road they’d followed to get there. “It looks abandoned. And so does the farm house across the street.”
“It does,” he said, his face lit with joy. “You know what this means?” he asked excitedly.
“That we can buy your family’s house back,” she said, already dialing Andrew’s cell number and waiting impatiently for him to answer. Luis got out of the car, and she followed him as he walked to the battered and beaten for sale sign that was disintegrating on the front lawn.
“Agent Figueroa,” he said gruffly. “I thought I sent you on vacation.”
“Where are you?”
“In DC, getting your office set up and the paperwork shuffled in the right direction so it’s ready when you get here. Where are you?”
“Virginia. Just over an hour away.”
She could barely contain her excitement as she told him about Luis’ family home and the condition the entire property was in.
“He’s still waiting for an update to his application.”
“Hold on a sec,” Andrew said, the noisy clicks of his keyboard coming over the line as looked it up. “It’s been approved.”
“It has? Should we cancel it so he can get the property?”
“Give me the address of the property,” Andrew said.
Tara repeated the address to Andrew after Luis rattled it off and waited impatiently for him to search the real estate listing. When Andrew gave a little whistle of approval, Tara could barely contain herself.
Her Undercover Panther : A Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance Page 17
