Gladiator Cheetah, page 18
part #2 of Gladiator Shifters Series
Getting an extra invitation had been easy. Convincing the doorman that she was the 5'8" brunette with blue eyes described on the guest list was harder, but a short choppy wig, some contacts, and a pair of epic platform heels did most of the work for her. A look of bored irritation at having to go through the whole plebeian process of identification did the rest, and she'd slipped inside the venue feeling like a master spy.
One thing was certain: Scott wouldn't recognize her with a passing glance. She'd gained four inches with the heels. Her real hair, worn long, was red, and her eyes were green. With makeup giving her heavier eyebrows and thinner lips, Susan honestly barely recognized herself, although she was modestly willing to concede that redhead or brunette, she was smokin' hot. From the admiring glances she got, other people agreed, although she was on a mission tonight, not looking for a hookup.
Besides, dating Scott had started out as that kind of once-off affair, and look where that had gotten her. Susan had sworn off men for all eternity, after Scott. It just seemed smarter, at this point.
Usually she would enjoy this kind of soirée. Cork was a great town, and Susan was very, very good at rubbing elbows with the rich and richer. She was even better at getting them to part ways with what amounted to minuscule percentages of their overall wealth. There were dozens of faces she knew at this party, and even more that her assistant would be able to murmur a word or two about and give Susan all the ammunition she needed to charm and delight them out of their money.
Unfortunately, Susan didn't see the one guy she hoped to. Scott Asher either wasn't there, or was so well-hidden amongst the donor class that she might never get close enough to…
…squeeze his head until his eyes popped.
It wasn't really a plan. Not a viable one. What she really wanted was to take him down. To expose him as a fraud, a thief, and a back-stabbing son of a bitch…all without betraying the shifter world that worked so hard to survive unnoticed in the modern world. She couldn't do that by popping his eyes.
It sure would be satisfying, though.
Asher had gone off the radar after stealing the database. His phone had been turned off. He'd abandoned his apartment. The Selkie Group's website said he was on sabbatical. So he might not show up at this party tonight after all…but there were shifters here. Susan knew it. And if Scott and his bosses were trying to snatch shifters, then Susan would be there to—
Well. To stop them, in theory. In practice, just tracking them would be a huge win. She wanted to know where they were hiding out. She wanted to know who his human associates were, and what they knew. She wanted to know who his shapeshifter collaborators were, too, and she wouldn't stop until she had all the damning evidence she needed to take them all down in a human court of law.
Because nothing else would keep her son safe, and Susan Connolly would take the whole world apart, if that's what it took to protect her little boy.
Finally, finally, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of—not even a familiar face. A familiar way of moving, a jaunty step that she knew. Susan slipped through the smiling, sparkling crowd toward that familiar movement, watching it, watching him, until she was certain that after three months, she'd finally found Scott Asher.
He was chatting with people she didn't know: a tall, powerfully built blonde woman, and a more sullen-looking blond man whose tuxedo wasn't as expensive or well-cut as most of the others in the room. The man jerked his head toward an exit, and Scott went with them, glad-handing all the way. Susan followed, trying to stay close enough to not lose sight without also being noticed. Spying on people, it turned out, was harder than she thought.
She slipped out the door less than a minute after them, immediately wishing she had a coat to warm her against the early February night. But if she went back for hers, she'd lose Scott, so she walked behind them as confidently as she could. She even put a bit of extra swagger into her step so if Scott glanced back, her gait wouldn't give her away, the way his had inside the opera house.
The swagger lasted about ten steps, though, because there were sections of cobbled street that nobody in heels should be trying to navigate anyway, much less trying to swagger over. Either way, Asher didn't look back. One of his blonds—the man—peeled off at the pedestrian bridge, waving a casual good night, and Susan hurried a little more, not wanting to lose Asher and the blonde woman.
They were heading toward the university, not back toward city centre the way Susan might have expected. A pit of alarm opened in her stomach as she thought of a thousand different, terrible things shapeshifters could face in university or commercial laboratories. And Scott, with that database, could hunt down hundreds of shifters with almost no effort. He probably had been, for the months Susan had been unable to find him.
No more, she promised herself. Whatever Asher was up to, she, Susan Elizabeth Connolly, Executive Director of the Gladiator Foundation, single mom, and general bad-ass, was not going to let the man who'd used her get away with hurting anybody else, ever again.
Scott and the blonde turned left, up toward the hospital. Susan, aware that her shoes clopped loudly on the pavement, wished she not only had a coat, but also just a more practical ensemble for sneaking around in. No wonder spies in movies always seemed to be wearing a second outfit under the one they partied in, or had a bag stashed just outside the door to change clothes from. She would obviously make a terrible spy.
The wind caught a handful of words, throwing them back at her: Remus—mess in Imvelo—anticipating. Her stomach clenched with nerves. Remus Sverre was supposed to be dead after a confrontation with her boss a few months earlier. She knew about the mess in Imvelo—a shapeshifting wolf pack had tried to take over a South African wildlife reserve from the cheetah shifter who ran it—but she had no idea what Scott could be anticipating. She sped up a little, rubbing her hands over her bare arms as she shivered.
If she had any damn sense, she'd be home in Italy with Jason, letting a private investigator do the legwork she was currently undertaking in Cork. But she didn't know how to find a shifter P.I., and she possibly hadn't mentioned to her boss that she was determined to undo the damage she had caused to the shifter community by letting Scott Asher into her life herself. In other words, she couldn't ask Garius for advice on how to hire an investigator who already knew about shifters, and she wasn't going to risk a human P.I. finding out about them and making everything worse.
The part of her that read romance novels and watched CW television shows knew perfectly well that keeping secrets like this investigation was a sure-fire way to bring more heartache and difficulty down upon herself than was necessary, but that would definitely not happen in this case. Parts of another sentence carried back on the wind, better than I expected—doubt that— and then the woman's voice, startlingly clear in the night as she said, "Don't get cocky."
Asher laughed, sounding plenty cocky, and Susan heard him say, "Car's up there," clearly.
Dismay smashed through her. She had rented a car, but it was back at the opera house's parking garage. She would never make it back to the garage, get the car, and be able to catch up to them. She'd come so close, and was going to lose him unless she did something drastic.
"Scott! Scott Asher, you son of a bitch!" Her voice carried, bouncing off building walls to hit Scott hard enough that he flinched before spinning to face her.
Even at the distance, she could see the total confusion on his face, and remembered she was wearing a wig that thoroughly disguised her. She pulled it off, which would have been a great dramatic revel in a movie, with her long red hair suddenly flowing free. Unfortunately, this wasn't a movie, and there was no cut in the action to let her take all the hair pins out so her hair could flow freely. It stayed where it was, pinned flat against her head, and Scott didn't look any less confused.
The woman, though, said, "Told you we were being followed," just before a huge, heavy weight slammed silently into Susan's back.
She hit the pavement hard, breath knocked out of her before she could scream. Hot breath huffed over her nape before she was swatted to the side, rolling painfully into the street. Her elbows and knees turned to bleeding scrapes, stinging as she tried to get to her feet. Something swatted her again and she flew across the street, crashing into the wall on the other side.
People in movies had that happen all the time, and they just got right up from it. Susan couldn't even open her eyes. She just lay there, stunned, trying to inhale, not even really able to wonder what had hit her. Everything hurt too much to worry about those kinds of details.
Except whatever had hit her would probably do it again. Teeth set, she forced herself to sit up, vision blurry as she panted for air.
There was a lion in the street.
She knew she was going to get hit again, but she closed her eyes anyway, then opened them again more widely, trying to verify what she'd seen.
It was definitely a lion.
The blond man. The one who'd peeled off back at the bridge. He'd shifted, and come after her, probably on the blonde woman's orders.
Susan, out loud, her voice ragged, said, "This is Ireland. The biggest predators they have are foxes. I mean, what's the police report going to say about what killed me?"
If a lion could look nonplussed, the one in front of her did. Susan pushed to her feet, admiring how literally every part of her body hurt. "Honestly," she croaked, "you're better off letting me go. A lion mauling in down town Cork is going to be international news. Nobody wants that."
The lion shifted, that weird fluid change that looked, for a moment, like two creatures were occupying the same space. Then he was the blond man, his teeth bared in the same threatening growl the lion had sported. "I'll just break your neck, then."
Susan said, "No, wait, let's talk about this like reasonable people. I could—"
A massive hawk, its vicious talons outstretched, plummeted from the sky without warning. Its entire weight smashed into the lion shifter's shoulders, dropping him. He was obviously unconscious before he hit the ground.
Susan's scream came like an afterthought. The hawk shifted, turning from a gigantic bird of prey into a tall, painfully gorgeous man with sharp features and bright eyes half-hidden by hair worn longish and loose. He wore a brown leather jacket, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, hiking boots, and had no apparent concern about having shapeshifted in front of her.
But then, he wouldn't.
He'd grown up. He'd grown up so much since she'd last seen him. He was broader now, the line of his jaw fully matured, the confidence in his stance easy and comfortable. He had always been breathtaking, but there in the soft city night light, he looked like a chiseled god, a dream of what could be.
Blake Lockwood, her ex-boyfriend, her son's father, the man she'd ghosted when she learned he was a shapeshifter, glanced down the street at where Asher and the blonde had disappeared, looked at the limp man at his feet, and finally lifted his gaze to her with the devastating smile she remembered so, so well. "Hey, Susan. Sorry about the mess."
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So it turns out writing a book during a pandemic is a little weird, but I hope you've enjoyed Gladiator Cheetah, and that whatever your circumstances while reading it, that you are safe and well and have been taken away from the troubles of the world for a little while by this story.
I'd like to thank the beta-readers who kept this book from being RIDDLED with errors: Susan Baur, Sharon Corbet, Rachel Gollub, Tanja Gardner, Larisa LaBrant, Mary Anne Walker, Linda Cox, Eleanor Konik, and B W Reisman. Your efforts have kept me from total humiliation, and I appreciate it so very, very much.
My undying thanks are also due to Stephanie Burgis, who amaaaaaaazingly helped me with the layout for the print edition of Gladiator Cheetah, so if it looks nice, it's 'cause of her. And, as always, thanks to my husband, my son, and my dad, all for making sure I lock myself in the my office to do some work. I love you guys.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Some say Murphy Lawless is the descendant of Irish gangsters, exiled to Australia, who has made good on the family name. It’s probably true*.
But then, others claim that Murphy was a spy for the Allies during the war. Stories are told of daring rescues of intrepid reporters from almost certain death, but Murphy has never admitted to anything. Still others say Lawless studied with a local tribe for years after crash-landing in the untamed wilds, having accepted a dare from a pilot of ill repute, and came away from the experience a kinder, wiser, gentler soul.
Even now, though, the most widely held belief is that Lawless left Australia as a mere slip of a thing, and made a fortune in the wilds of the Alaskan oil fields before realizing that romance was the ultimate adventure. Murphy now writes passionate, fun-filled stories of paranormal romance and destined love.
*Probably.
You can find Murphy at CatieMurphy.com, Patreon, and at her newsletter, which is by far the best way to have up-to-date information delivered straight to you!
Murphy Lawless, Gladiator Cheetah
