Khan (22 page)

“The man, do you think anyone will
believe that he was mauled by a wild animal and the animal got away?”

Walker looked at his brother.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Neither would I, but Caitlynne will
make them believe it. And she said that having to shoo those other idiots out
will help. She told them that the animal was spotted on this floor. I think her
plan is to tell them that they found Barr like that and leave it at that.”

Khan nodded. “Is she going to be pissy
with me for long? I didn’t exactly do what she told me to do. She said that I
could kill him, but not make it too messy. The CIA was picking up the bill.”

Walker laughed a little, needing it as
much as his brother did. “I think she’ll get over it soon enough. I’m going to
tell her that it’s a cat thing.” He listened to her heart again. It was still
slow and not any worse than before. He wrapped some of the wounds, and stitched
two of them up until Khan asked him to stop. It was hard for him to let him
touch her without hurting him.

“It won’t matter anyway. When she shifts,
they’ll be gone.” Walker looked at his brother. “Would you have killed me? In
there when I was helping her, would you have killed me?”

Khan looked at him, and Walker could see
the answer in his eyes. He would have. He would have killed him and they both
knew it. When Khan looked back at Monica, he spoke softly.

“I hate myself for that. You warned me
that you were going to help her and that I needed to back off. But that man had
hurt her and I…the kill was still on my mind and in my heart. His blood was
still coursing through me. I saw you standing over her and…” Khan looked from
Walker to her and back to him. “I would ask that you forgive me, but I can’t
forgive myself. I would have killed you without thought to anything other than
having you dead.”

Walker didn’t say anything. He and Khan
would have to talk again about this, but not now. First of all, he wouldn’t
listen to him. No matter what he said or how much he told his brother that he
had already forgiven him, he wouldn’t listen. Maybe never would. Secondly, he
knew that in order for him to heal from this, it was going to take the love of
the woman lying between them. If she lived, and Walker had to believe that she
would, then Khan would be a better man than he’d ever been.

He heard the commotion down the hall. Neither
of them moved when there were shouts and orders being given for the rooms to be
evacuated. Caitlynne told him to stay put through their connection, that no one
would enter that room but her. He heard the door open and close a few minutes later
and Caitlynne walked in. He shook his head at her.

“They have cleared the floor and no sign
of an animal. They’ve declared Barr dead at the scene and are currently looking
for a female that may or may not have been murdered in the room by him.” She looked
at Khan. “You doing okay?”

“Yes. She’s still with me.”

Caitlynne nodded.

“I can’t leave her just yet if you need
me to go downtown.”

She looked at Walker and then back at
Khan. “You think I turned you in? Not fucking likely. She’s going to kick your
ass bad enough when she finds out you made another big decision without
consulting her first. She is mighty picky about that.”

Khan laughed and then nodded. “I can’t
wait to hear it. I plan on reminding her of this daily so I can hear her yell
at me for it. I deserve it. I think that I will welcome it.”

Caitlynne snorted. “I wouldn’t tell her
that, if I were you. She might just find other ways of kicking your ass to the
curb if you did. Khan, she’s going to be fine. She’s entirely too stubborn and
pigheaded to die. Especially at that bastard’s hand. We both know that.”

Walker checked her heart again. It had
improved and he told them both. When he took her blood pressure, he noted that
it was up as well. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked at his brother. “Mom
and Dad want to come up. They have been in constant contact with me since Dylan
went down to them. Mom said she wants to come up and bring you something to eat
and some things for Monica. She said that she’ll need some clothes when she
wakes.”

Khan brushed the hair from her forehead
and nodded. “She’ll want a shower too. I know that I want one as well. I need
to get the stench of that man off me.”

Caitlynne left, saying that she would
see what she could do to get them up. Walker had a feeling they’d be coming up
in a uniform if she had to sneak them past security and her men. An hour later,
the door opened again and his mom and dad were there.

~~~

Khan left her to take a shower. Somehow,
he had extra towels and other things to clean up with and decided that
Caitlynne was going to get a better gift than the one he’d picked out for her
for Christmas. The bracelet with hers and Walker’s initials on the pendent didn’t
seem like enough to thank the woman who had saved his mate.

He had no doubt that Walker was a good
doctor, but all the doctoring in the world wouldn’t have gotten him in the room
to kill the bastard that had hurt his mate. Nor did he doubt that she was
pulling some major shit to get not only his family up there, but everything
they needed to make their stay easier.

The water ran red when he stepped under
the spray. He scrubbed his body with the wash rag, then tossed it out of the
stall and into the sink when he washed himself the second time. He was on his
forth wash cloth when he felt clean enough to wash his hair and his body again.
He wondered if he’d ever feel clean again.

He pulled on the clean pants that his
mother had bought for him. There was a shirt in the bag, as well as some
underwear and socks. She’d forgotten shoes, she’d told him, and would bring
them later. He didn’t care now; he was clean and feeling better than he had for
hours.

She was still unconscious now seven
hours later. Walker had told him that she might need all that time to convert,
and he was no longer checking her heartbeat every five minutes. When he
declared her well, Khan let him close a few of the wounds on her body that were
bleeding still and had to walk out of the room only twice so he wouldn’t hurt
him. When he came out of the bathroom, his mother was washing Monica’s face and
arms.

“She’ll feel better once she wakes if
she’s not all covered in blood, don’t you think?” He helped her by picking
Monica up gently so the sheets could be changed. He held her for a few minutes
longer before putting her on the fresh linens.

“I killed that man.” His mother looked
up at him when he spoke. “I did it and I’d do it all over again if I had the
chance.”

“Of course you would. You love her.” She
sat back in the chair after handing him a large sandwich, which he told her he
didn’t want. “Eat it. You’ll need your strength for when she wakes.”

He took a bite and it felt as if he
stomach woke from a long nap. He ate the sandwich so quickly that she handed
him another. He ate this one slower and drank three bottles of the water that
had been in the small refrigerator. His dad showed up to trade places with his
mom so she could go and get some things from the store.

“She’ll buy it out, no doubt. She loves
this woman. So do I.” Khan nodded at his dad as he continued. “When I was
younger, I killed a man once. He’d been hurting your mother.”

Khan looked up at him. “Someone was
messing with Mom? When was this? I don’t remember that.”

His dad nodded. “You were small and
Dylan was about a year old. This man had been coming around looking for work
and there hadn’t been any around the town. Your mom didn’t tell me that he
sometimes came during the day when I was gone, but when he touched her, I knew.”

His dad touched the sheet over Monica,
but not her skin. His dad would understand more than any other about touching
her right now. But he did go on with his story.

“He’d hit her with his fist in the arm. I
don’t remember why now or how he’d done it, but I’d felt her pain and her fear.
She’d had you take the boys out to the barn to hide when she saw him coming. By
the time I’d gotten there, he’d ripped open her blouse and had tried to rape
her. She couldn’t shift to hand him his ass because of the band he’d tied her
up with. She was furious and kicking out at him whenever he got near enough for
her to kick. When I came in, my cat took one look at the situation and took me.”

Khan waited, knowing that this would be
hard for his dad. His father hated for anyone to use their strength over
another and this would have been no different for him. But his mate was hurt
and the man responsible was still hurting her.

“I tore him off her. He’d managed to get
past her when I came in the house. I was a mite younger then and didn’t have
any problem taking him down. He was so shocked he shit himself. Didn’t stop me,
though. I tore his throat out and spit it in his face.” His dad looked at him. “Never
thought to just scare him away. Never even occurred to me to simply wound him
and have him run along. I wanted him dead, and that’s what I did. To this day,
I don’t regret my actions. And as surely as I’m sitting here, I tell you I
never will.”

“I could have stopped when I killed him,”
Khan admitted to his father now. “I could have stopped at tearing his throat
out and walked away. But I wanted more, needed more than that. He’d not just
hurt her, but he’d nearly killed her.”

His dad nodded and sat there for several
minutes before he spoke again. “She’ll forgive you if that’s what you’re
worried about. She’ll have no regrets at all that you killed him. She might be
a tad pissy when she finds out she’s a cat. Not at being the cat, mind you, but
because you did one of those major decision things she said you need to discuss
together. I know and you know that she was a mite under the weather when it
came to asking, but she ain’t going to be happy about you going ahead and doing
it.”

Khan told his dad that Caitlynne had
told him the same thing. And he told his dad basically the same answer he’d
given Caitlynne.

“Yeah, well, I can see her being a bit
mad over you thinking you had a choice in the matter. She’s a lot like your mom
on that score. She’s a fine woman. Gonna be a better cat too. I can’t wait to
see the kids she has. Fine bunch of boys she’ll have too.” His dad snorted when
he suggested that he’d be a part of them. “No, she’ll raise them to be like
her. Full of life and sunshine. Fine boys. This family had boys to carry on the
line, as it should be.”

Khan didn’t tell his dad that he wanted
a daughter like her. Just exactly like her. He held her hand and gave her his
warmth and love. Khan wanted her to wake. He wanted her to yell at him and to
love him. Anything but this sleep she was in.

The bleeding had stopped, Walker told
him, two hours later. He said that if Khan wanted to, they could move her to
the house where she would be home when she woke. Khan asked if she still needed
to shift before being moved and Walker shook his head.

“She’s healing like she has already.
Some of the smaller wounds are already gone, and there doesn’t seem to be any
scarring. I would say that she is going to make a full recovery no matter where
she is, and taking her to the house is the best thing for all of us.”

Khan agreed, and they found a way to get
her out of the hotel without involving her in the murder that had taken place
just down the hall from her. Caitlynne told the press that it was a woman who
had fallen in the shower and nothing at all to do with the cat being on the
loose. When they’d taken her down to the ambulance, Daniel was standing there
speaking with the press. Caitlynne said that he was going to say that he’d
found her when she hadn’t shown up for their date. She was not identified until
her husband could be notified of the accident.

When they were in the ambulance, Khan
looked at Walker. He laughed. The man was just full of information on his wife’s
supposed affair.

“It was Daniel’s idea. He said that he’d
been on a case once when someone had called in that he couldn’t get in touch
with his girlfriend, his married girlfriend, he’d gone there to meet. The guy
had said he was there to have an affair with a woman and she wouldn’t answer
his calls or his knocks at the door. It took the hotel staff a little too long
to get to her, and the woman died from her injuries. Daniel said he’d play the
part of the male so long as you knew that he’d never touch her.”

“You assured him that I wouldn’t, I
suppose.”

Walker nodded and laughed again.

“What does he want in return for his
help? Money?”

“Nope. He just wants to come over to the
property sometimes and have a good run. He said it had been so long since he’d
seen another shifter as comfortable about their second skin as we were that he
knew he could trust us not to make a rug out of him the first time he came
around. I assured him that we were allergic to bear, and the meat was usually
tough and stringy.”

Khan laughed. It felt good, and he
enjoyed a second laugh when he told him the trouble that Dylan was in right
now. Apparently, their brother had made a pass at the wrong woman and was right
now being yelled at by their mother.

“She was telling him that if he couldn’t
keep it in his pants, he might want to consider getting neutered. She said
while she didn’t think it would stop him, it might slow him down a little.”