Khan (10 page)

Khan took her into his arms and glared.
Caitlynne smiled. “You think this is funny? You think that making her relive
this is some sort of joke?”

“No, but she has to know that we don’t
care what he did to her before. That we all love her for what she is.”
Caitlynne walked to Monica and lifted her chin. “It’s not your fault that he
killed them. You tried to tell them all.”

“But I didn’t tell them all of it. I
should have told them what he’d done to me and maybe he would have gotten help
and off the streets.”

“No, he wouldn’t have. His parents gave
him everything he wanted, including you. And for as much as I hate to tell you
this right now, he did worse to others like you. We found evidence at his
mother’s home that she and his father had been paying off families for a decade.
He’s murdered at least four more women. And it’s not your fault.” Caitlynne
handed her the check she’d given her. “This helped us. More than you can know.
This account is the one they used to pay off the families. The only one that
the government didn’t know about when he took the senate seat and the only one
we couldn’t monitor. It’s why they divorced, so that she could keep it as quiet
as they had.”

Monica took the check with trembling
hands. “He gave me this the morning after I was raped. He said if I kept quiet
and cashed it, there would be more. But I had to agree by cashing it.”

“Christ.” They all turned to look at
Reed. “Look what I just found.” There were numbers and plenty of them. More
than they had first thought, maybe as many as fifteen.

“I don’t understand. What are we looking
at?” Monica looked at her for an answer. “They’re just check amounts with
people’s names.”

Caitlynne waited, knowing that she would
understand. And when Monica did, she was glad that Khan was holding her. “No.
That’s not possible. Please tell me that he didn’t kill all those girls.”

“I’m sorry. So sorry, but we had to look
and you helped us. You made it so we could find them. All of them.” Caitlynne
looked at Khan. “She never cashed the check the elder Barr gave her and kept it
all this time. Without it, without those account numbers, he might have gone on
killing. Had she not been as strong or as resilient, he would have kept on
going.”

“She’s my mate. Of course she would be
strong.” Khan picked her up and sat with her on his lap. “Now that we’ve all
been shocked a little, why don’t you tell us what we really want to know? How
to kill this bastard.”

~~~

Tony tried to call his father again. He
wanted answers and he wanted them now. Monica hadn’t been around for a couple
of days now and he wanted to know where she had friends so he could go and talk
to them about her. Next call went to his mother.

“Hello?”

He was startled by the voice, but couldn’t
quite understand why. Who did he expect to answer the phone but his mother? But
the voice wasn’t quite right. When the woman on the other end said it again, he
smiled and answered her.

“Is my mother there? I’ve been trying to
talk to my dad, but he’s not answering either. I want to get him to look
something up for me.” The person was quiet. “Is she at one of her meetings
again? Can you have her call me?” He ended the call and put the phone down.
Tony tried to get his mind to let go of something, but he couldn’t get it to.
Pounding his fists to his forehead, he tried, but there was nothing. Finally,
he laid his head down on the bed and closed his eyes.

Nothing was going right. He’d been
trying to find his Monica for two days, and still she wasn’t around. He’d even
gone back to the hotel where he’d seen her, and he wasn’t able to get anyone to
tell him anything there either. No matter how hard he’d tried. Then at the Mild
Pepper, the restaurant he’d thought he’d seen her enter, there was…he tried to
think what had happened there and his head felt as if it were zinging.

Tony needed to find her. Monica was
going to make sure he didn’t have any more headaches. And she’d keep him from
having to stay in the hospital.

“No more hospitals. I don’t like
hospitals.” He rolled to his side and stuck his thumb in his mouth. “No more.”

The noises in his head were calming now.
He could think past the pain, but all the blood was still there. It was bright
and it was all over him. When he tried to think where he’d seen all the blood,
all he could remember was a fireplace. When things got quiet, he looked at the
bruises on his hand.

“There, there now, Tony, you’re going to
be just fine. Just fine indeed.” He laughed at his own voice. “You’re going to
be just fine.”

They always said that. All of them. The
girls had said it would be fine, they’d help him with his little problem. He
didn’t have a problem, it was them. All of it was them. He heard the voices
again and tried calming himself. That worked, and he lay there very quietly
while he thought calm thoughts. He liked thinking about calm things.

“Trees in the wind. I like trees in the
wind. They dance like a kite does. Kites are pretty until they get caught in
trees.” His head started to beat hard and he went back to calm things. “Kittens
are pretty and soft. And ice cream, I very much like ice cream on a hot day.”

He kept saying the calming things like
they’d told him in the place his mother had put him when he was a child. He’d
been there for ages it had seemed, and she’d never come to see him. His father
did. And brought him gifts. Tony decided to add gifts to his calm things. He
decided that mothers were off the list now and forever.

Tony sat up when his head no longer
zinged. He looked around the room, thinking he’d never seen it before and maybe
someone had moved him. He tried to remember getting here, and all he could
think was someone had moved him while he’d been asleep.

“I don’t like to be moved,” he yelled to
the room. “Do you hear me? I don’t like to be moved. I hate it, as a matter of
fact.”

Standing up, he saw his clothes lying on
the floor. When he went to pick them up, he noticed the blood. They were
covered in blood. Dropping to his knees, he held his head when it starting
pounding. Blood, fireplaces, and cheese. He saw a bell like the kind on a
counter, beer in a can. Tony tried to make sense of the things flashing before
his eyes, but it was going by much too fast, and he couldn’t keep it straight. Looking
at the bed again, he crawled to it and climbed into it. No amount of calm
thoughts were going to take this away, and he cried out for Monica.

“She’ll make them go away. No one will
be able to put me away again.” He sucked on his thumb again and talked to
himself around it. “The others didn’t help me like Monica will. You’ll see. She’ll
be the one that will keep me from hurting people. I don’t hurt many, but I have
to hurt some. Yes, just some.”

When he woke, it was dark. He hadn’t
realized that he had fallen asleep and thought of the nurses that used to come
in and make him tired. The ones that had…his head started zinging again. “No,
you don’t. We aren’t going off on that tangent again. No we are not. We have to
stay focused and our head on straight. How are we going to appear normal if…”

Tony remembered his father saying that
to him one day. They’d been in his father’s office and he had just…what had he
done? He’d been bad again. Bad with someone. Trying to sort it out, he
remembered what they had said to him. The nurses.

“Such a pretty boy, and so big too.” He’d
been in the bed when they’d said that too him. “A pretty boy who is going to
give me what I want.”

“They wanted something from me. Everyone
wants something from me.” He wasn’t sure what, but he knew that people had been
taking from him. “Taking and taking until I had to make them stop.”

Just how he made them stop was not
clear. “That’s why you have to stay focused, son.”

Tony giggled and pulled the blanket up
to his chin. His dad would be so proud of him if he could see him now. He was
calm and focused. Tony picked up his cell phone again and dialed his father’s
number. This time instead of ringing, it went to voicemail. He thought his
father an important man and ended the call. He would try later.

Closing his eyes again, he relaxed. He
was exhausted and sore. His arms hurt, and his hand did as well. When he tried
to think how he’d hurt himself, the same pictures flashed in his eyes. Blocking
them out as best he could, he worked his toes to uncurl, to relax.

He moved up his body as he’d been told
to do when he couldn’t sleep. First, his toes. Then, his calves. His knees were
next then up his thighs. When he would lose his place, he simply started over.
Toes, knees, then thighs, each time moving up his body slowly and making
himself be calm. When he was relaxed enough, he let his body go, and he drifted
away.

The phone ringing woke him. By the time
he realized that it was not the phone but an alarm, he was wide awake. He
stretch and then got up. There were clothes on the floor, but he ignored them
and went toward the shower. Tony felt great, fantastic even.

“This is going to be the day. I’m going
to find my love and we’re going to go to my mother’s house and plan a big
wedding for next month. January will be a new month and a new beginning.” He
turned on the television as he walked by it.

By the time he was finished in the
bathroom, he was starving. Stepping over to the phone to order room service, he
caught a glimpse of his father on the television. Reaching for the remote, he
wondered what he’d done now and was surprised when the view turned to his
mother’s house. Turning the volume up, he watched as the police and other
people moved around in the yard of his mother’s home.

“…sometime yesterday afternoon. The
police aren’t saying anything right now, but sources tell us that it was brutal
and they are both dead.”

“Do we know if it was a breakin or not,
Shanna? I understand that the Barrs were divorced. Can they tell us why Senator
Barr was at the home of his ex-wife?”

“It is my understanding that they had a
standing date, as it were, to meet every Wednesday. The senator would come over
around two in the afternoon and stay until nine or so, but was always gone by
ten. The neighbors around here are shocked by this. They said that both of the
Barrs were good, upstanding people.”

Tony turned it off. His parents were
dead? When? How? Why hadn’t anyone gotten in touch with him? And why did he
have to learn about it from the news stations instead of before now? He sat on
the bed and tried to remember the last time he’d talked to them. His father
often, but his mother? He didn’t know. He knew that she’d been… Tony needed to
contact Monica. The wedding would have to be postponed, of course, and if there
were any gifts yet, then they would have to be returned until later.

Tony wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted
to talk to Monica. Monica had to be… He looked at the remote in his hand and
the phone on the bedside table. He had to find her. This was her fault. Had she
just…he couldn’t remember what, but now he knew that it was completely her
fault.

Monica sat in the window seat and
watched the ground below her. She had no idea how long she’d been there, but
she supposed it was for a while. Khan had come up for a little while, and when
she’d asked to be alone, he’d left, but she knew he hadn’t wanted to. Then when
he’d come to bed, she’d pretended to be asleep until she came to be sitting
here. He hadn’t moved since.

“You can tell me if you want to.”

His voice didn’t startle her like she
thought it should have.

“What’s wrong? Are you still thinking
about Barr?”

“Some, but not all.” She continued
looking out the window. “Caitlynne said that he would be caught, and when he
was, she’d make sure he never got out.”

“She’s someone you can trust. Her word
is her bond.” Khan didn’t get up, but she heard him shift around on the bed. “What
else is bothering you?”

What wasn’t?
she wanted to
ask him. But she watched a deer walk through the snow nibbling on grass. She decided
that she would ask some of the questions she had about being his mate. “This
thing, this mate thing, you said that we’re a mated pair. What does that mean? I’ll
be cat too?” He moved again and she knew he was uncomfortable with the
question. Or the answer.

“No. Converting a human to cat is very
dangerous. When Walker converted Caitlynne, he said that his cat had done it. He
said that—”

“His cat? You mean you have no control
over your own body when you’re a panther?” She heard the panic, but didn’t
care. “You mean you can hurt me when you’re a cat?”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I have
full control over him even during sex, but sometimes he…he sort of convinces us
that things could be this way or that. Like with Caitlynne. Walker’s cat wanted
her changed, and he convinced Walker that it was a good idea.” She didn’t like
the sound of that and told him so. “It’s like when you know something is a bad
idea even when you’re doing it, but it sounds so good at the time, you let
yourself believe that things will work out. That’s the way that Walker
explained it.”

“Did you get those thoughts when we had
sex?” She wasn’t sure if she really wanted the answer, but now that the
question was out there, she thought she did.