Rogue (Shifters #2)(60)

“The pregnant kind.” Vic’s mouth twitched, trying to deny a full-blown smile.
I watched my father’s reaction carefully, and was not disappointed. He wasn’t surprised in the least. “You knew!” I accused, jumping off the couch in spite of the pain in my ribs. “You knew the first time you smelled her scent. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I told you to treat her as if she were made of glass.” When his answer clearly didn’t mollify me, he went on. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want any of you to let her condition blind you to the threat she represents. So she’s pregnant. She still murdered three tomcats, and now she’s shot Jace. Speaking of which, where’s the damn gun?”
In that moment, I realized how much I truly respected my father. He wasn’t willing to let her off the proverbial hook just because she was pregnant.
“I locked it in your bottom drawer,” Marc said.
My father nodded his approval and told us all to get something to eat.
Just after 8:00 p.m. Dr. Carver finally arrived to take charge of the patients. All four of us. He declared my ribs unbroken and said I was fit to work, in spite of multiple cuts and bruises. He pronounced my mother’s stitches “beautiful,” and said that Vic would be fine, and that his recovery would be accelerated considerably if he would Shift as soon as he felt up to it.
With the minor wounds out of the way, Dr. Carver moved on to the living room, where he did what he could for Jace. He sterilized the wound, removed the bullet, and bandaged the hole in his shoulder. Jace’s orders were much the same as Vic’s: Shift as soon as possible.
Manx worried Dr. Carver the most, because she hadn’t regained consciousness. He removed her handcuffs and gave her a full exam, after which he told my mother that the tabby was approximately four months pregnant, and that the baby’s heartbeat was still strong. As was the mother’s.
The tabby’s wrist was fractured from its meeting with Marc’s two-by-four, so the doc put her in a cast. Beyond that, he said, all we could do was make her comfortable and wait for her to wake up. Both of which my mother took an active interest in.
And she wasn’t the only one. The guys were completely fascinated by Manx. They all knew she was officially a bad guy, but if anything, that made her even more intriguing.
Parker and Vic stopped in her doorway at random intervals, just to stare at her. Jace would probably have done the same if he could walk. But what they didn’t seem to realize—what I was more than eager to tell them—was that based on her slaughter of three toms in almost as many days, it would seem that the jungle tabby didn’t have much use for men. Though one had obviously found use for her. 
My father and Marc questioned Dan Painter at length about Manx—in the barn, since Ryan occupied the cage—but didn’t come up with much of anything new. He’d had no idea she was pregnant and didn’t know her real name. He had no clue where she was from. He only knew that she’d been going from town to town in response to a series of very short cell phone calls from a man with a heavy accent. She did not kill at every stop, never touched a human, and only disposed of those toms who “messed” with her. Manx, it seems, did not like to be touched, a lesson Painter apparently learned early, and well. Which was a point in his favor, for me.
After several hours and no new information, my father let Painter go, with the promise that if he could keep his nose clean in the free territory for a year, he could then officially apply for admission into the Pride—an offer I’d never heard him extend before. With that promise, Painter took off for Mississippi with his tail tucked between his legs and his phone number and address in my father’s files.
By Tuesday night, twenty-four hours after our arrival at the ranch, Dr. Carver had made a second round of visits to Jace and Manx, and had gone back to his hotel, for which the Pride was paying. My father had made a detailed report to the Territorial Council, and had called Michael and Ethan to give them an update. Ethan didn’t take the news of Jace’s injury well at all, and was eager to come home, but my dad ordered him to stay for Jamey Gardner’s memorial, to properly represent our family.
By dinnertime, Jace had stabilized enough to be moved to the guesthouse, into his own bed. Parker set up an extra DVD player in the room Vic and Jace shared, and rented him nearly two dozen action movies to help aid his recovery.
After dinner, I sat in the far corner of the guest room, curled up in an overstuffed armchair with the latest Stephen King hardcover. But I couldn’t concentrate on the story. Not with Luiz still free and Andrew’s blood on my conscience. And the tabby’s motives still unknown.
I’d taken to “reading” in what the guys were already calling “Manx’s room,” in part because I wanted to be there when she woke up. My curiosity built with every passing hour, until I was nearly desperate to find out who she was, and how she knew Luiz well enough to know he deserved to die. Because, frankly, she was right.
But our mutual death wish for Luiz didn’t make his enemy my friend. After all, she’d killed three innocent toms, which a couple of my fellow enforcers refused to remember. I stayed in the guest room to make sure that when she woke, there would be at least one person in the room willing and ready to stop Manx if she tried to leave.
At 8:13 p.m., while my mother watered a pot of begonias on the windowsill, Manx finally opened her eyes, after nearly thirty hours of unconsciousness. The very first thing she said, her voice creaky and her accent thick, was “Where is my gun?”
I laughed out loud, and nearly dropped my book.
My mother spun at the sound of the tabby’s voice, and set her watering can on a nearby bookcase. “It’s locked in my husband’s desk,” she said, crossing the room gracefully toward the bed. “We can’t let you walk around armed and loaded. That would be irresponsible.”
“Where am I?” Manx asked, pushing herself into a sitting position with her good hand. I leaned sideways to get a look at her around my mother’s shoulder. “Who are you?”
“I’m Karen Sanders, and you’re in my home. You have a broken wrist and you’ve been unconscious for a day and a half, but the doctor thinks you’re going to be fine. And so will your baby.”The tabby’s uninjured hand flew to her stomach, where no bump was yet visible.
My mother settled into a chair by the bed. “You’re about four months along, right?”
Manx nodded, dark curls bouncing around her shoulders.
“Whose is it?” I asked from across the room, and regretted the question instantly when they both tried to incinerate me with flames from their eyes.
Manx clutched her stomach tighter. “He is mine.”
My mother looked at me coldly. “What’s your name, dear?”
I blinked in surprise, my hands clenching my book. Dear? As badly as the nickname had always bugged me, I was dear.
“My name is Mercedes, but I have been Manx for…very long time.” The tabby stared at her hands, fiddling with the seam of her cast.
“Which do you prefer?” My mother took a bundle of yarn and two knitting needles from the nightstand.
Manx shrugged. “They are just names.”
We sat in silence for several minutes, until I could no longer stomach all the unanswered questions. “Why were you chasing Luiz?”
My mother twisted in her chair to glare at me, but I ignored her.
To my surprise, the tabby answered, her voice hard with hatred and determination. “He is a monster. I will kill him.” She hesitated, and met my eyes, hers accusing. “When I find him again.”
I huffed. “Join the club.”
“You know Luiz?”
“You might say that.” I couldn’t resist a smile. “I broke his nose.”
Manx laughed, and the sudden joyful sound caught me off guard. “So did I.”
A grin stole across my face. She could fight. Of course she could fight. She’d killed three toms with her bare hands. She probably only carried the gun because—according to my mother—Shifting after the first trimester could be dangerous for the baby.
I eyed Manx carefully, curious in spite of my anger and caution. Who was this pregnant woman, this girl—because she couldn’t be older than twenty—who’d fought Luiz, then chased him all over three states for the honor of putting a bullet through his head? “When did you break his nose?” I asked, more fascinated by Manx with every word she spoke.
“When he took my baby.”
“Your baby?” I glanced at her stomach, where her good hand still rested over the white down comforter, nails ragged, fingers callused.
She smiled softly and shook her head. “My first baby. I fight him for the child. I broke his nose, and claw his arms. But he took my son anyway.” She looked at my mother through haunted eyes. “I need the gun. I cannot kill him without it, and I will not be taken alive. Not again.” Her free hand caressed her flat stomach and her eyes hardened. “I will not lose this baby.” 
Taken alive?
A sudden deluge of understanding washed over me, and I fought to keep from drowning in it. We’d been so close to the truth.
Manx was one of the missing South American tabbies. She was among the first victims of an ambitious, brutal project intended to provide breed-able tabbies to some jungle cat—likely several jungle cats—in the Amazon. Sara, Abby, and I were part of the project. But beyond that, the dead college girls and strippers were also involved, in Luiz’s attempts to create tabbies, alongside the greater plan to take them.