Page 30 of A Cougar's Kiss
Chapter 11
Bright lights illuminated the air, a strong wind brushed through the trees and the roaring sound of a helicopter entered the scene. Keller didn’t bother to look up, he crossed the short space between him and Shya, grabbed her arm and pulled her along behind him as he raced the last few feet to the door that would lead to the crawlspace beneath the building.
He did not loosen his grip and did not turn back, just held tight to her hand until his cat’s eyes could see a glimmer of the chain peeking through thick foliage on the ground. Falling to his knees once he was upon it, Keller yanked that chain until dried leaves and dirt went flying into the air and the links of metal snapped beneath his strength. There was a slim handle which the chain had been wrapped around, he grabbed it and waited the few seconds it took for the recognition system embedded in the handle to read his heat and DNA signature and grant access with a loud click. He pulled the door open and immediately tossed Shya inside, following her seconds later and slamming the door closed behind him.
If they dared to enter the forested area on his private property, they would see the door as he had no way of pushing foliage on top of it to hide at this moment, but they would never get the door open. Houses and structures in Miami didn’t historically have basements because the water table was so high, they would have run into too much moisture at a shallow level. But Keller had this five by three reinforced steel crawlspace installed for emergency exits and he was in the process of using the same technology that had allowed them to build Oasis deep within the earth to create holding spaces beneath the house just in case a shifter that wasn’t quite ready to act civilized needed to be contained. Those spaces weren’t complete, but it’s where he’d directed Gold and the others to take those bodies.
They crawled on hands and knees, Keller grabbing Shya at the ankle to stop her so that he could ease past her and take the lead. As the space was only three feet wide, sliding his body past hers had been close and when they were almost perfectly aligned, her gaze caught his. For endless seconds they just stared at each other, him replaying all the things that had happened between them in the past few days, all the admissions he’d made to her and she’d made to him. It was a lot in a short span of time and now floating between them in this measured space, but Keller couldn’t deal with any of that right now. He kept moving until a dim light shone from another narrow opening. Easing through that space, he jumped down into the ten-foot ditch that had been dug and was now protected from water intrusion by steel and tempered glass walls that stretched forward about twenty feet. Reaching back up into what now looked like a giant hole in the wall, he grabbed Shya’s arms and helped her down.
“What is this?” she asked the moment her feet touched the ground.
“Every safe house will have spaces where we can contain shifters that get out of hand. There’s gonna be a lot of emotional baggage that will need to be addressed when reunifying the shifters with this world and we’re not really the type to lay on a couch and listen calmly as a therapist tells us how to cope with our problems. So, we decided it would be best to have a sort of holding facility until the cats could calm down a bit.” By the time he finished speaking Keller realized he was still touching her arms. He pulled his hands away and started walking toward the scent of blood and other voices.
“What now?” Jordin was saying. “We can’t just keep human bodies down here, that makes us just as guilty as the animal that did this.”
“She’s right, this space wasn’t built to house dead people,” Gold said stiffly the moment Keller stepped up beside them and nodded.
“We’ll get them out in one of the Tracers and drop them at a hospital or morgue. The humans will deal with it from there. But we have to wait until the police clear the area first,” he told them.
“They’ve been at the gate pressing on the entrance buzzer for the last ten to fifteen minutes. How long do you think it’ll take before they figure out who owns the place and start kicking down the doors?” Kyss asked.
“They can’t,” Shya spoke up and all eyes immediately turned to her. “I mean, wouldn’t that be illegal in some way, to barge onto someone’s property without permission or a warrant?”
Kyss was the one to shake her head this time. “This isn’t twenty years ago honey, when your dad’s law degree made sense. This is the time of the Ruling Cabinet and their specific set of rules when dealing with the Shadow Shifters.”
“Yeah, they’ll bust down walls shooting without ever thinking to ask a question or produce a silly piece of paper,” Zion quipped.
“No,” Shya continued. “If Uncle Rome worked out an agreement, he would definitely protect the civil rights of shifters and everyone else. He believed in the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land.”
“Oh, you mean that bogus justice system that discriminated just as much against humans of a certain race as it eventually did to the shifters. Girl, you’ve got a lot to learn,” Kyss continued.
“But I did learn all of this without anyone bothering to teach me and I’m telling you that a treaty could be a good start to all of us living together peacefully,” Shya insisted.
Keller felt the tension rising in the small space along with the scent of the dead bodies. There were four shifters who weren’t inclined to fall in step with Rome’s new agreement and there was Shya who was filled with naïve optimism. Then there was Keller who right at this moment had no clue how he was feeling about any of these new developments. What he knew for certain was that this current situation needed to be rectified in the quickest and smartest way possible.
“We’ll move the bodies in a few hours. Shya and I will head up to the house, get cleaned up and if need be, open the door to the cops. I’ve had my share of confrontations with humans who despised me—not for the color of my skin—but because of the DNA that they could not see or verify and she has her father’s law degree so the Q&A session should be interesting.”
“And what are we supposed to do while the two of you go playhouse?” Kyss snapped.
Keller had had just about enough of her. He moved the few steps until he was standing in front of her. She tilted her head back to keep eye contact, not one part of her giving in to fear or intimidation.
“You’re going to cool your heels right here until I give the word for you to move these bodies. And,” he said holding up a finger to stop her when she opened her mouth prepared to speak. “You’re going to keep any comments that don’t directly deal with this body or tomorrow’s mission to yourself because my patience has worn thin and unlike the Assembly Leader I don’t follow any rules written on a piece of paper, I’ll kick your ass out of here in a flash and break you if you even think to start trouble on your way out.”
He didn’t wait for any reaction to his words but walked through the area where they were standing and toward another door that would lead to the stairs. Once he was at that door, he could feel Shya behind him, she was silent but anxious. Her cat was antsy and wanted to break free again after having a taste of freedom. He had no idea how long it had been since she’d shifted but from the restless energy he’d observed in her cat, he’d bet it was too long.
The stairs opened to yet another door and soon they were on the elevator leading up to his private room again. This time, Keller stood to the side and let Shya enter first. He closed and secured the door behind them and watched as she walked slowly toward the bed.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she said quietly, and he thought she’d developed the power to read his mind.
Some shifters did have secondary powers to their natural shifter state, like the seer and healers at Headquarters. So, it was possible for her to be a mind reader, but he didn’t really think that was true. No, this insight into each other was shared between him and Shya, just one of the many things he was tired of fighting.
“A lot is happening,” he replied. “But we can’t deal with all of it right now. For the moment we’re going to strive for normalcy. So, let’s change out of these now sweaty clothes, grab a quick shower, and get downstairs. We’re going to go out and meet our visitors.”
He’d crossed the room and was now pulling off his shirt and heading to the bathroom. When he looked up it was to see Shya following his lead, lifting her shirt up over her head and dropping it on the bed.
“Because the best defense is a good offense,” she said slowly, keeping her eyes on him. “My Uncle X taught me that.”
Keller gave a slight smile. Xavier Santos Markland was one of the few members of the Assembly leadership that Keller had any respect for. The shifter and his hot-tempered wife, Caprise were legendary and known for their strength, unbridled passion and dangerously good looks. The last Keller attributed solely to Caprise who happened to be Nick’s sister and Shya’s aunt. With an inward groan he made a note to smack himself later for getting involved with the group of people he had sworn to hate the most.
