Marc (Bowen Boys, #4)(43)

“You’re going to go home now and call me when Anita contacts you. I mean, the moment she contacts you. Then you can call whomever else you’re supposed to.” Marc stood up and pulled Jonny’s chair out. “You contact me again other than for that and I’ll….”

Her hand morphed into a paw, and claws dug deep into his flesh as blood pooled in the cloth beneath his hand where she held him down. She lifted her hand, and it was suddenly a human hand again. When he looked around the room, everyone was staring at him, but with eyes that seemed to glow in the restaurant lighting. He was done.

“I won’t call you again. In fact, once I’m finished with Anthony, I’m f*cking out of here. This place has gotten to be scary.” Khan stood up, and right before his eyes, the man shifted.

Clothes tore from him and his skin furred. His mouth filled with an ungodly amount of sharp teeth. He realized at that moment he’d never had a cat this close to him. Not even Jonny had ever been this upfront in his face in all the time he’d made her work for him. Roy felt his bladder let go when the huge black panther licked his hand.

He sat there for a long time after they left, not moving to pick up his fork when his dinner arrived. He didn’t remember ordering it, nor did he have a clue what it might have been. All he knew was that he’d wet himself, a panther had licked him, and he was seeing things. He tried to think, one thing at a time, about what had happened here.

As far as pissing his pants was concerned, and everything else for that matter, it was pretty f*cking humiliating. Not the end of the world when he thought of what he could have done to himself…like crapping his pants for one, blowing his brains out for another. But he was still alive to fight…no, not fight. He was finished fighting.

The panther licking the wound that Jonny had given him was something else that freaked him out a little. He had watched as it healed in a matter of minutes instead of days. He had a hysterical thought that he should see how much he’d charge him to lick his back, but as soon as the thought entered his mind, he let it go. Having that many teeth where he couldn’t see them might be bad. Another short burble of laughter escaped, and he put his hand over his mouth to stop it.

The people in the room being cats was next on his list. He couldn’t quite put anything to that to make it right in his head no matter how hard he tried. Had he been drunk? Maybe. The pain pill, too, might have contributed to it, but he was pretty sure that hadn’t been right either. They had made him see them as their natural state. That one had merit. He had a feeling that Jonny wasn’t the only cat in the world, but having seen so many in one place was…it had been too much. Roy looked up as Harris came toward him and sat in the chair that Jonny had been in.

“Boss? I thought you’d have been out hours ago.” Harris put his hand over his nose and looked around. “Someone wet their pants.”

“That would be me.” Harris looked at him oddly, then leaned in and sniffed. “Why would I lie about something like that? Bring the car around and see if there is anything to cover the seat with.”

“You wet yourself?” Roy nodded. “What the f*ck did you do that for? Did someone make you?”

“Yes. It’s a new thing in terrorizing people in plush restaurants. They run in with a gun, hold it to your head, and order you to wet your pants or they’ll blow your brains out. Sometimes they ask you to shit yourself, but I was lucky in that I only had to piss.” Roy had a feeling that Harris was trying to figure out if he was kidding or not. “Go get the car.”

“And Jonny? What we gonna do about her?” Roy shivered and thought about her claw cutting into him, the other panther licking it. He shook his head at Harris.

“Nothing. She’s a dead end as far as anything goes. I’m out of the exotic animal business as of right now.” He stood up with help and moved slowly to the front of the restaurant, leaving three hundred dollars on the table for the check and tip. “And Harris, I don’t want you to ever mention her name to me again. Do you understand me? Not ever again.”

Roy rode home on his suit jacket. It took him forty minutes to get from the front restaurant door to his bathroom, where he took off every bit of his clothes and put them into the trash can. By the time he was getting out of the shower, he was sobbing again. All this was Jonny’s fault.

“But I’m not stupid,” he told his reflection. “I’m not going after her, nor am I going to go after anyone in her family. I know for a fact that I’ll live a great deal longer.”

By the time he was getting into bed, Roy had a plan. Find Anita, help her get dead, and leave the country. He didn’t even care if his house sat there for decades without anyone ever setting foot in it again. He was done. Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift on the double dose of pain medication he took. He saw cats big and small chasing him. But he smiled. Soon it would all be over.

~~~

Marc was carrying in the last of the bags when his phone rang. He put them down to answer. He leaned against the car to talk to his brother, knowing just what he wanted. He glanced up at the house and saw the bedroom light come on.

“How is she taking this? Any better than when we left Dawson?” Khan sounded as concerned as he was. “She took it pretty hard, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she did. I think thinking that your friend betrayed you and finding out for sure that she did would be a hard one for anyone to take. Christ, I wish I could make it all better for her.”