“Jesus, Sam. What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
“You’re sleeping with my husband!”
She barked a loud laugh. “WHAT?!”
“That’s right, I saw the two of you. I saw you naked with him and I hate you for it even though I know I shouldn’t. It’s him I should hate. He’s the cheater. But you’re so pretty, and you’re not a complete mess like me, and I bet you even know how to ranch.” I was ugly crying by that point and squeezing words out through tears and snot. “Let me go. Please. I’m not going to drive. I’m just going to get into my truck and wallow in my humiliation.”
She cupped my face in her hands and kissed me then. I was so shocked that I just stood there. It was a short kiss, nothing wild, but it shut me up. Frida laughed then.
“I haven’t slept with Clint or any other man. Never have—never will. The only bed partners I enjoy have vaginas. I’m gay, Sam. Not only does Clint have way too much testosterone to sexually excite me, but he’s also my brother.”
Chapter 21
Shay
I put my hands on my hips and tilted my head. There were still two of her, but I felt myself sobering fast. “Okay. What?”
She grinned. “Which part? That I’m gay?”
I shook my head. “No, I got that part. You said brother…”
“Clint’s my brother. Not biologically, but for all intents and purposes, our relationship is that of siblings. Yes, we’re close. We grew up together. Pappy raised us both. But even if the thought of a man in my bed didn’t leave me cold, I can assure you, the fact that Clint is family would gross me out.” She laughed and finally let me go, seeing that I wasn’t going to run.
I slumped against my truck with my arms crossed. Well, that was a revelation, but there was something that didn’t add up. I wracked my brain. I knew something didn’t add up. I just couldn’t think of what that something was.
I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the truck. How had I jumped to such a conclusion? Why?
That was when the other piece of the puzzle fell into place and I scowled accusingly. “I saw the two of you naked. I don’t care how gay you are or how much of a sibling you consider Clint to be, there’s no explaining that. Brothers and sisters don’t hang around together casually in their birthday suits. And don’t try to convince me that you two have some perverse family bonding activity going on. I may be naïve and a pushover, but even I know there’s no plausible excuse for that.”
She stilled. Hands on hips, she rolled her head back to look up at the stars and released a slow breath.
“Got you, sister. Ha! Caught in your own lies.”
I watched her smugly, wondering what bologna she was going to spout next. This ought to be good.
She shrugged and threw her hands in the air. “I can show you better than I can tell you.” She unbuttoned her jeans and grabbed the hem of her shirt.
“Whoa!” I stepped back and held my hands up. “Sorry, but no. I might have so much man trouble I wish I was a lesbian right now, but I’m not. And I’m married. Or… I was… I don’t know what I am right now, but I’m not interested in that with you.”
She laughed, a loud, clear sound in the night. Instead of undressing, she took my hand and pulled me away from the truck and around to the passenger’s side.
“I’m not hitting on you. You’re married to my brother for Christ’s sake. Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m going to answer your question, though. And for that I need to show you something. First, I’ll drive you home.”
I did want to go home, and I wasn’t in any shape to drive. “Fine.”
She tapped my butt playfully. “After that, we’ll get into the really perverse stuff.”
I shoved her away, laughing despite the stress and confusion I still felt. “I don’t think we know each other well enough for perverse.”
“Oh, whatever. We’re family. Plus, I just love messing with Clint.” She noticed I’d started crying again and stopped. “What’d I say?”
“We broke up. We’ll probably get a divorce.”
Rolling her eyes, she helped me into the passenger seat of my truck. “Horseshit. Clint’s not divorcing you. Besides, some things are meant to be. Pappy always said that there are things on this earth that are set on a collision course from the very beginning. Sometimes, when they finally collide, it’s an explosion—a disaster of epic proportions. Other times, the stars align and the result is equally as explosive—fireworks and magic. I think, for you and Clint, the stars aligned and created magic.”
“Now that’s the real horseshit.”
She buckled me in and went around to the other side, chuckling to herself as she slid behind the wheel. “I really hope you give my brother all of this sass and attitude. He deserves it. Please, don’t ever stop.”
She smiled at me. “I can’t wait to see your face when you see what I’m going to show you.”
“Is it your butt? Because if it is, I’m really not—”
“Jesus, Sam, it’s not my butt.”
“I’ve already seen it once, and if we’re going to be friends, I don’t need you to rub in how perfect your figure is. It’s just going to make me hate you.”
“You think my figure is perfect?”
“I hate you.”
I nodded off while she drove us to the ranch, but I woke up when the door to my truck slammed. A second later, my door opened and she helped me out. I was groggy, but I tried my best to shake it off.
“You’d better wake up. You have secrets to hear.”
I moved up the steps and let Gilligan out before sinking onto the top step. “Okay, go. Spill it.”
“Promise me you won’t freak out.”
I made a face. “I can’t promise that. I don’t always do well maintaining calm. Chances are, I might freak out.”
“That’s fair. Okay. Just promise me if you do, you’ll stay and hear me out. Don’t run.”
I shrugged. “Promise.”
She stood in front of me and held out her hands. “Okay, so, the reason Clint and I were naked when you saw us together was—”
I snapped my fingers when a lightbulb went off in my head. “You’re nudists?”
“No. But we do spend time together naked. We have since we were little. We’re different from most people. To us, being naked is not necessarily anything sexual. It’s just natural. To all of us.”
“So you are nudists!”
She laughed. “It’s so much more than that. We’re different. Clint, me, hell, this whole town is different, Sam. All of us. We aren’t human. Well, we are, but not like you.”
“If you even try to convince me you’re aliens from Area 51 who crash-landed here in the fifties and have been living on Earth ever since, I’m really going to blow my top.”
“No, we’re not aliens.”
“We’re all from right here on Earth, but unlike you, we weren’t born. We were created. In a test tube. In a lab. Cloned. We are the products of a failed military experiment.”
I rubbed my temples. “You can’t be serious. A military experiment? I’ve seen this sci-fi dozens of times. You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”
She groaned. “This is harder than I thought. I’ve never had to explain this to anyone before. Okay. So, we are obviously very similar to humans, since much of our DNA comes from humans, but some of it is from other mammalian species.”
“Riiight.”
“I’m just going to show you, okay? Don’t freak out.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Sure, fine, show me. But if this is just one big striptease, I just might freak out.” I yawned. “Or I might go to sleep.”
I sighed heavily and slapped a hand over my eyes as Frida began to remove her clothing. I was seconds away from standing and groping my way into the house when she started making strange sounds.
The cracks and pops sounded like chiropractic adjustments. It was the other sounds, like…something stretching, that were
really odd. They were all accompanied by Frida’s grunts and groans.
Whatever she was doing, it sounded painful, but I wasn’t going to look. Not until a haunted, animalistic scream arose from almost right next to me. I dropped my hand. My eyes flew open wide, and I froze at the sight before me.
Frida was missing, but her clothes were in a pile underneath the paws of an enormous bobcat. I stared for several seconds until my fight-or-flight response kicked in and I startled hard and jumped to my feet.
The animal stared at me, and I at it.
Why did it have Frida’s eyes?
I glanced over at Gilligan, waiting for him to react. Growl, bark, cower in fear, but for god’s sake, Gilligan, do something, you crazy dog. I waited to see what he was going to do. He just yawned and lowered his head back to his paws to resume his nap. Looking back at the bobcat, I blinked and rubbed my eyes. “What the heck?”
Another pained groan and a naked Frida was in front of me on all fours. She stood, stretched out her limbs, and rolled her neck. “Shit, it hurts to transform back-to-back like that.”
I just gaped. All the blood left my head, and I plopped back down hard on the step to keep from passing out.
“You said you wouldn’t freak out.”
“Yeah, well, I did not expect that!” I held my head between my knees until I regained a sense of equilibrium.
Frida was dressing when I finally looked up. I stood and stepped closer to her. “How did you do that?”
She grinned. “It’s a pretty cool party trick, huh?”
“Frida! You turned into a bobcat!” I touched her skin and shook my head. “I know what I saw…don’t I?” I ran fingers through my hair. “Wait. Did you say everyone in the town was like you? They all turn into bobcats?”
“No.” She grinned even wider. “Not just bobcats, there are all kinds of us. Scientists used DNA from a multitude of different species. I don’t know the full story, but from what I was told growing up, the military had planned to create the perfect soldier, fighters who were humanoid but had characteristics of other species—the speed of a cheetah, the strength of an ox, the ferocity of a honey badger. They spliced genes from hundreds of species with human DNA.”
“They did this and then…what?”
“Well, the results varied widely, but none of the experiments turned out like they planned. Eventually, the project was denied funding and abandoned.”
“It looked like it worked to me.” I rose to my feet again. “I mean, one second you were a woman, and the next you were a…a…bobcat. Oh lordy, why’d I stand up? I need to sit down.” I sank onto the step again.
“I’m not saying that we Variants aren’t awesome as hell.”
“Variants?”
“That’s what we call ourselves, Variants.”
“Variants,” I tested the word.
“The reason the military considered Variants a failure is that we weren’t the result they were going for. They wanted humanoids with enhanced abilities, but they got us. We basically look human, but most of us also have the ability to completely transform into a separate animal form. Not all of us, though. But the biggest disappointment…”
As I digested what Frida was saying, trying to make some sense out of it, she stared up at the sky. Then, she suddenly grinned widely. “But the biggest disappointment,” she giggled, “was that we are intelligent, rational beings who won’t fight or kill without provocation and a damn good reason. They wanted mindless, subservient killing machines who would follow orders and shed the blood of our enemies on command. Instead, they got us. We’re nobody’s pawns.”
This was so huge. So much to wrap my mind around. I had a gazillion questions, but I didn’t know where to start. “So, you’re saying you were created by the US government in the hopes that you would be some kind of advanced soldiers, but that didn’t happen?”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s not as sinister as it sounds. From what I’m told, our kind was treated well by the scientists that created us. I was too young to remember, but some of the older townsfolk have stories of being raised and cared for by their creators, taught to read and write—”
“Wait a second.” Something that had been eating at me since I’d arrived finally began to make some sense. “Is that why you all have names of famous characters or celebrities?”
Frida shrugged. “I guess scientists have a bizarre sense of humor.”
“And the nudity…?”
“Clint and I shift into our animals and run together. That’s why we’re naked together sometimes. It’s not like we want to see each other, more like we don’t notice. It’s just part of the process. As you can see.”
I glanced down at her partially clad form, then looked away. It hadn’t even registered until that moment that Frida was still half-naked. “I can see.”
“And have you changed your mind about your sexual preference yet?”
I laughed finally, breaking whatever tension there was. “You’re crazy.”
“Yeah, well, I think you like crazy, seein’ as how you seem to attract it.” She finished dressing. “Let’s go inside. We have more to talk about. I’m sure you have a lot more questions, and I have some for you.”
I was in a daze, but I did have more questions. Tons. “So Clint’s a bobcat?”
Frida snorted out a laugh. “No. Clint is a half-ton moose.”
I stopped moving. “A moose?”
“Yep. A moose.”
“Whoa.”
“What happened to the scientists? I mean, after they taught you to live on your own?”
She shrugged. “Not sure, but they didn’t teach us to survive on our own. Project funding dried up. The military base where we lived closed. And…they left us. All of us—they just abandoned us. Almost four hundred people. Mostly kids, but some infants and some adults. Like I said, I only know what I was told as a kid or rumors I’ve heard. But with the base closure, the town was abandoned. And when we were released, our kind had no idea how the world outside captivity worked. And that was when Pappy found us. He taught us all how to survive. Your great-uncle saved us.”
“Yeah, about Pappy being my great-uncle…”
Chapter 22
Clint
I was so mad I could spit nails.
After spending a restless night alone at my place in town, I finally did what I should’ve done when Sam first came to town.
I googled Samantha Jackson from Washington, DC.
I marched over to the library, the only place in Rattlesnake with an internet connection. And after kicking Amelia Earhart off the computer, I watched as what appeared to be hundreds of links popped up. Adjusting myself in the uncomfortable chair, I settled in for what promised to be a long day of research.
Except it wasn’t.
After opening the second link, I found what I was looking for—a picture of a woman standing among stainless steel industrial appliances in a restaurant kitchen. Samantha Jackson was an attractive fifty-something woman who, according to the article in the online version of Haute Cuisine Magazine, owned several restaurants in and around the Baltimore and DC areas.
My Sam had mentioned she was from DC, but that wasn’t what screamed at me from the photo. It was her eyes. This Samantha Jackson most definitely had Pappy’s eyes.
My pulse raced, pumping a mixture of anger, sorrow, and dread through my veins as I next googled the name Shay O’Brien.
The results yielded several news articles and bulletins, most bearing the same picture of the woman I knew as Sam Jackson.
It was a mugshot.
A mugshot of my wife.
Shay O’Brien was wanted for fleeing after being arrested and charged with dozens of cases of securities fraud. She was a wanted criminal—a fugitive from justice. According to the news articles, she’d stolen millions of dollars from investors. Many had lost their life savings.
And the money was still missing.
I scanned interviews of several of her victims. An elder
ly, white-haired couple lost their savings, their home, their nest egg, and now spent their golden years clipping coupons and living in a converted loft apartment over their daughter and son-in-law’s garage. There was a thirty-something couple who also lost their home, their children’s college funds, and their own retirement savings. More stories of innocent, hardworking people filing for bankruptcy; their only crime: being too trusting. Good people whose lives took a drastic downturn all because of this despicable, white-collar crime. This despicable, white-collar criminal.
And the money was still missing—I read that line again.
Guilt. Anguish. Heartache. My stomach fell to my feet like a lead balloon. The walls began to close in. I had to get out of there. I took a hasty screenshot and printed the page. Then, on the bottom of the printout, I jotted down the number of one of the restaurants that the real Samantha Jackson owned, then closed all tabs.
Stumbling outside, I struggled to wrap my mind around what I’d just learned. As I drew in a breath, my lungs hurt—punctured, no doubt, by jagged edges of my broken heart. I barely remember making it from the library to my office. Marilyn was out, thankfully, as I sank into my chair and hung my head in my hands.
I was hurt, torn, shredded, and livid.
Protocol dictated that I drive to the ranch and arrest Shay O’Brien for the crimes she was charged with. She’d not only lied to me and conned me, but she’d also made a complete ass out of me in front of the entire town. I wanted to throttle the woman.
Oh, she’d conned me good. Even though I’d known she was lying about a few things, I’d had no idea of the enormity of her deception.
I hadn’t a clue that the woman I knew as sweet, kind, sexy, and a little ditzy was a hardened criminal who had no qualms about destroying people’s lives.
She made daisy chains for the cattle for Christ’s sake. Fucking daisy chains!
The woman threw funerals for cows and sobbed over their graves when she thought no one was watching. She named every animal on the ranch as though each was special to her, and lovingly brushed them because she thought they liked it. And they did. They really did seem to like it. She made homemade pasta and got sentimental over Pappy, a man she’d never met. Either she was the best flimflam artist in the history of snake oil salesmen, or…
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