Marc (Bowen Boys, #4)(27)
Dylan laughed as he tried to defend himself. “I knew that they’d try to find out who helped them, and I didn’t know how much of Marc and I we’d left behind. Would you have felt better if they could have figured out that a different panther had helped them escape?”
Marc started to tell his brother not to piss Jonny off, that she had a short fuse, but decided he was on his own. He watched them out of the corner of his eye while Jack pulled up something from a thumb drive.
“You don’t think that someone is going to tell them who did it?” Jonny demanded. Dylan shook his head. “And why the f*ck is that?”
“Because their neighbors helped me move everything out.” Jonny’s mouth closed and she looked at him before turning back to Dylan as he continued. “I had gone over to their house as soon as Marc left. I, as you know, was going back to get my wife, but decided to help your parents out. I liked them.”
“I do too. But that doesn’t negate the fact that you might have gotten caught there. How do you think my mom and dad would have felt if you’d gotten hurt moving their stuff out if Roy caught you there?”
“I told the two goons to not say anything about the move until we were finished. Besides, they were very helpful in carrying the larger pieces. And when the neighbors saw what was going on, they helped too. When I couldn’t get a couple of the larger pieces on the truck, Mr. Sanders let me store it in his garage. And Mrs. Granger was nice enough to take all the food to the local pantry. She even cleaned the place up for us. After everyone was gone, I went back in and….” He grinned at him. “I made sure that nothing but another panther would be able to enter the place and try to scent us out. They’ll be useless as a hunter as soon as they get a whiff of the calling card I left behind.”
“I don’t understand,” Jonny said, and looked at him as he shook his head. “You aren’t going to tell me?”
“I don’t think you want to know. Suffice it to say that a panther’s urine is very toxic to other animals. That’s why it’s so hard to track us even in the wild.”
“You pissed in the house?” She stood up and looked down at Dylan. “You pissed in my parents’ house?” He nodded.
Jonny sat down. She looked pole axed, but Marc didn’t blame her. She knew so little about what she was and what she could do that he wanted to take her aside and tell her everything. His mom had given her a book about panther legend, but she’d barely scratched the surface since this had been going on.
“I found something.” Marc looked up at Jack, completely forgetting that she had said she had something to tell him. “I’m not going to tell you where I got this information, and I won’t share it with just anyone, but you two, I trust you.”
Marc thanked her and looked at the charts on her computer. “What is it I’m looking at? And why do I care?”
“You should care because it’s a list of every panther ever born. And will be born.” He looked at her sharply. “You can’t ask. But I can tell you what Dylan and I have found out about our Jonny here.”
“Me? But your dad, he told me who my biological parents are. He said my father is dead and about my mother, he had no idea. And no, before you ask, I haven’t asked Mom and Dad how they managed to end up with me.”
“They ended up with you because someone left you on their doorstep, quite literally.” While Jack pointed to the entry, Jonny came to sit on his lap. “According to this entry, you were left by someone by the name of ‘Bob.’ There are no other references to him other than that. But you should know that both your parents are alive. Your mom is in a zoo and is shackled so she can’t shift, and your father….”
“My father what?” Jack sat down and glanced at Dylan, who nodded at her to continue. Marc pulled Jonny closer to him, knowing that she was going to be upset by whatever Jack told her.
“Your father is her keeper. He works at the zoo and specializes in panthers. Your mother is one of his animals. The rest of the information says that he keeps her like that so that she can’t harm anyone again. She was sentenced to where she is by the council after the trial. The band on her ankle is magical, but no one but your father can see it. She’s bound there until she dies. And when she does, your father has asked to die with her. It’s the pact they made with the council.”
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Jonny sat up and looked at Jack and Dylan. “I don’t know how you got this information, and I don’t really care, but I want to know the rest.”
Dylan cleared his throat. “Your mother was pregnant with you when she decided that she would rob a bank. The bank had been hit the week before and your mother decided that it would be a good time to hit it again. She was heard to say that no one would think that it would be hit so soon and they’d be more relaxed. She was wrong. As soon as they entered, it went from bad to worse in seconds. They killed three people, including the bank manager and a child. They never left the building with any money.”
“You said ‘they.’ Who was with her? I’m assuming it wasn’t my father.” Dylan shook his head. “Then who, damn it. Stop f*cking beating around the bush and tell me.”
“It was Anita Kidd’s older brother, Samuel Kidd. According to witnesses, he knew that the game was over. He was reported begging her to stop, and when she didn’t, he started letting the hostages go without her knowing. When she eventually found out, she shot him in the head and killed him.”