Tiger Bound (7 page)

After he calmed down a bit, he sat and retrieved the letter from Deja to continue reading.
“Son, I first want to tell you I love you, more than I have a right to—just as I loved your mother. They expected me to do my job and nothing else, but how can I be a human being without love? How can I live so many years with another person and not come to care? It’s impossible, and I wonder how they expect compliance, knowing that’s the case. I take that back. I don’t wonder. I know. They expect compliance because they enforce it, and that is why I am writing this letter. So you know what you’re dealing with and so you won’t be ignorant when they come.”

“When who comes?” Deja croaked. While he read, she had taken hold of his arm, and the further along the mystery entwined, the deeper her nails sank into his flesh. Heath pulled her hand away and set it in his lap. She clung to his side while he puzzled over what this all meant.

“I think he means Spiderweb. The next paragraph explains it. ‘
There is a powerful organization that is in the business of creating superhumans. I say superhumans, but what I mean is they are manufacturing shape-shifters, men and women who can morph into animals. The chosen favorite is the tiger—a rare white tiger. I worked for this organization as a geneticist, and on the day I helped your mother escape from the facility over thirty-five years ago, she was pregnant with another man’s baby. I did so on the order of my superiors.
’”

“Geneticist,” Deja shrieked.

Heath paused for a moment and moved to the fireplace mantel to study the pictures he had placed there. He would get back to the letter when he collected his thoughts because he needed to know everything. The man he knew as his dad turned out to be a liar, and if he understood the words correctly, Tate Hunter was not his real father.

Tate smiled from the picture with an arm slung about Heath’s mother. Heath had her blond hair and blue eyes. He looked nothing like Tate, but then that wasn’t impossible to happen. Plenty of kids took on the characteristics of one parent and not the other. Maybe this was some elaborate joke his dad planned and he intended to spring it on Heath then tell him it was all make believe after he got Heath worked up.

“But Dad wasn’t the joking kind,” he murmured.

“Huh?”

He ran a hand over his aching eyes. His head still hurt, and he almost spun around to go to the table and scoop up the pills, medicine formulated to do what? “Nothing. I guess I should call him Tate since he wasn’t my father.”

“Oh, Heath, baby.” Deja came over to him and encircled his waist from behind with her arms. Her soft breasts pressed into his back, and if he weren’t so thrown with the news, he could enjoy the sensation. She kissed the valley between his shoulder blades, and he derived some comfort from that, but not much. “He’s still your dad because he raised you and loved you. He said that at the beginning of the letter, and I believe him. No man could care for you the way he did if it was only a job. I don’t understand everything he talked about, but there must be a reason it happened. I mean, does he give more information?”

Heath skimmed the rest of the letter, which amounted to little more than a paragraph. Even the last sentence hadn’t been completed, as if someone interrupted him while he wrote. Heath recalled where he found the box and realized why it looked so worn. Tate had it no doubt for thirty-five years, as long as he’d been alive.

“This must be hard to comprehend, but I have to be blunt to be sure I get it all down. First, Spiderweb is powerful and dangerous. They will kill to keep their secrets and kill to keep their people in line. I have told them that you are human with no traces of the tiger in you. I’ve sent them blood samples every month along with my reports.”

“He took your blood?” Deja interrupted.

“No.” Heath’s mouth went dry. His vision blurred, but it wasn’t because he wept or because he would faint. He didn’t want to see the words that sealed his fate, that told him the hope he felt when he first held Deja in his arms and kissed her sweet lips was about to be taken away from him by a dead man that he never knew. He steeled himself and blinked a few times. The words swam before his eyes, and he took a few more moments to calm his mind using the techniques Tate had taught him.
I can never think of him as my dad again.
He read the last few words in a monotone. “‘
You are not human, Heath. I lied to Spiderweb. I took your blood to be sure, and I perfected a formula I had been developing for many years at the corporation to suppress what you are. You are a shape-shifter, and without the pills, you will change. The facility you were conceived in has been destroyed, but there is another at Logan City. There are…
’”

Deja moved around from behind him. “There are what?”

“That’s all. He must have been interrupted, probably by me, and he had to put it away for another time. That time never came.”

Heath held himself stiff, a wash of emotion rolling over his being until he wasn’t sure he could continue to stand beneath the impact of it. Deja made a comforting noise and raised her hands to his face, but he caught them and lowered them to her sides. “Please…don’t.”

Her eyes widened, and the hurt he saw in their depths cut a hole in his heart. “Heath.”

“Don’t you see, Deja?” He willed her to understand his confusion and the devastation resulting from the news. “I’m not human. I’m an animal.”

“That’s bullshit!” she railed. “Heath, these are the ramblings of an old man. Your dad was like eighty-five when he died. He probably imagined all this espionage nonsense and took it all paranormal and crap. It’s not true. You’re no more an animal than I am.”

“You’re right. Of course you’re right.” He moved to the couch and dropped onto it. Deja grinned and followed him. She sat near his feet with her arm resting on his legs. He watched her eat her potato salad and nibble her chicken. Her argument made sense, and under normal circumstances, he would call himself an idiot for entertaining Tate’s story. There was only one problem with that, something he never shared with Deja. Tate taught him to remain calm, to channel his anger out of his body with mental exercises because when he didn’t, the medicine’s effectiveness diminished, and he exhibited symptoms that were distinctly
not
human.

Chapter Six

Heath rubbed his forehead without thinking, and Deja scooped up his pills to hand to him. He muttered his thanks. Even if his experience didn’t convince him Tate’s letter was true, there was still the missing information regarding the medicine. He had never had a cold, never had a fever, or any of the childhood diseases most kids got. His single issue was the headaches and the dreams. Yet, somehow, Tate managed to prescribe—no, develop—a medicine for him without a doctor’s involvement. The practice had gone on for thirty-five years, and he hadn’t questioned it. All he cared about at the time was quelling the symptoms. Now that he considered it, he realized his issues came with a certain amount of fear, as if not taking it would lead to worse problems he didn’t care to face.

He recalled one such incident when he turned fifteen and he got into a fight at school. He had been so angry with the guy who thought he could bully him because he hadn’t yet put on the muscle he had now. His mood had plummeted to the toilet that morning because he’d forgotten his medicine, and Tate embarrassed him in front of Deja about it. He’d pretended to swallow the pills and then spit them out on the walk to school. Deja chided him, but he wanted to prove he wasn’t so weak as to need the meds. What a mistake. By that afternoon, his headache was explosive, and his mood, worse. Mental exercises were the furthest thing from his mind.

“You think you’re so special because you’re on the basket ball team?” the kid had taunted. He shoved Heath and swung without warning, his fist connecting with Heath’s jaw. Heath dropped to the ground and spit out blood. “Aw, are you going to cry, little baby? Come on. Get up. Let’s see what you got.”

“Leave him alone,” Deja had shouted, trying to block his advance on Heath, but Heath pushed her aside. No way in hell would he allow her to stand up for him. Besides, she might get hurt, and he couldn’t live with that.

He landed on his ass a few more times, and then something came over him. A switch flipped in his head. He smelled the kid’s sweat under the hot Oklahoma sun, even the beef and ketchup on his breath, which he’d had for lunch. A whiff of Deja’s orange blossom honey lotion she liked to wear teased his nose, and he shook his head, thinking it odd he would focus in on those scents at a time like this. They were not all, though. He heard the bully’s heartbeat and Deja’s too. His own filled his ears, along with a hundred other sounds all around him.

Heath rose up on his sneakered feet, crouching with his hands in the dirt. He clenched his fingers, and something sharp sliced his palm. That’s when he saw the claws, thick and curved, deadly if he did what instinct seemed to tell him to do at that moment—rake them across that kid’s throat. Two seconds from acting on impulse, he sighed in relief when a teacher broke up the fight. In the end, he landed an unfair suspension, and his bully was expelled because that incident was the last of too many. Heath confessed to Tate later what had happened to him, and Tate’s expression showed his worry, but he brushed the experience off as Heath’s imagination. The change that had come over him that day was the most severe, but it wasn’t the last. Heath learned to control his anger, and he welcomed Deja’s constant humor as a soothing balm over the years. Now, it looked like he couldn’t run and hide from the truth. He had to face it and know once and for all what sort of beast lurked inside.

“Hey, dreamy.”

Heath shook himself and focused on Deja’s beautiful face. He almost allowed himself to touch her, but drew back in time. “What?”

“Penny for your thoughts.” She rested her chin on his knee, and his cock tightened. Those soft, sweet lips had wrapped around his cock the night they made love. He craved them there again.

Heath moved, careful not to hurt her, and stood. “My thoughts are priceless. What makes you think you can afford them?” He strolled to the window to look out, attempting casualness, but knowing his stance came off stiff. She knew him better than anyone, and she would soon recognize Tate’s letter occupied his thoughts. Try as he might, he could never hide from Deja.

“Oh it’s like that?” she called out from the couch.

He peered back at her and froze. She’d lowered the zipper on her dress, revealing the beginning swell of those luscious breasts. He whipped around to face the window and pressed his forehead on the glass.
Fuck, she plays dirty.

 “Heath, I know you’re not going to ignore me.”

Movement in the darkness caught his attention. A light flashed out near the fencing, but then it disappeared. He squinted. “I think someone’s out there.”

“Huh?” He heard her stand. “What is it, Heath? You’re probably paranoid after that crazy letter from your dad, all that talk about some spider company.”

“The Spiderweb organization,” he corrected. As hard as he searched the night, he saw no more movement. He walked over to the door and opened it to step out onto the porch. The night stood silent, all but a few moos from the cattle a short way off. Overhead, a million stars twinkled in the sky and straight ahead, fields and the dirt road. The closest neighbor lived a mile and a half off, and the town where Deja worked, a bit farther. He ran a hand over his neck and rubbed hard. The long day and his imagination, he concluded. Tiredness overwhelmed him. He went back inside. “I think I’m going to turn in early. Stay the night?”

As much as he told himself everything was fine, he wanted Deja close. She moved into his arms and rested her head on his chest. He kissed her hair. Her small stature made him protective of her. He knew he would kill to keep her safe.

“Yeah, I can see you’re beat. No nookie, I guess.” Her lips curved in a pout, and he kissed them. Damn, the woman knew how to get to him.

“Give me a couple hours sleep, and I will have you begging me to stop,” he promised.

She rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh, okay, Mr. Dreamy. To bed with you.”

They both turned in for the night. Heath yanked his shirt over his head and tossed it on a chair. He switched out his sweatpants for boxers and lay on his back watching Deja undress. She wore white bikini panties and a matching bra under her minidress. He took in her curves, including those amazing breasts and that round ass. His cock twitched, but he ignored it. She climbed on the bed and nestled into his side, and he stroked her hair, listening to her breathing until she slept. Resting himself took more time despite the weariness of his mind and body. He shut his eyes and tried a few breathing techniques. After what felt like hours, he dozed.

* * * *

Heath’s throat hurt, and he swallowed to try wetting it, but nothing helped. A coughing spell woke him, and he peered into the darkness of his room. Heavy black smoke filled the air, and the temperature had risen several degrees since they’d gone to bed. With the constant ache in his skull, it took him a moment to process the meaning of the flickering light beneath the closed bedroom door. The house was on fire.

“Deja, wake up! We have to get out of here.” He shook her, but she didn’t respond. Panic seized the muscles in Heath’s stomach. He tossed the covers aside and leaped to the floor. “Deja, come on, baby, open your eyes.”

He raced to the door and gingerly touched the doorknob. When the metal didn’t burn, he figured the fire hadn’t spread their way yet, but it would be safer to go out the window and assess the damage afterward. He unlocked the window and raised it then went back for Deja. She moaned when he lifted her into his arms. Again, he called out her name, but she didn’t respond. A coughing fit racked her small body and then nothing. If he didn’t get her to fresh air, she would die.

Heath sat her in a chair and then dragged the furniture to the window. He climbed through the opening and then leaned in to pull her out. Just when he got a grip beneath her arms, a twig snapped behind him. If the situation weren’t dire, he might have questioned his ability to hear and sense someone behind him over the roar of the burning fire. Unfortunately, neither prepared him for the blow to the back of the head. Pain exploded across his skull, and Deja slipped from his fingers. He went down hard to one knee. Thinking of Deja stuck in the house unconscious gave him strength even as blackness played with the edges of his vision.