Page 14 of Beau (Sheppard’s Shadow #5)

“That’s a good one. Are you going to stick with that story?

” She decided that she wasn’t going to try to get money from this one at all.

He was just too mean to her. Telling him that she needed to go, he laughed harshly and told her to talk to him.

“There is no telling what you can say to me to make me believe that you’re my mother from ten years ago.

I would ask why it took so long for you to get in touch with us.

We’ve already figured out where you might have gotten our phone numbers.

Unless that’s the only thing you remembered. ”

“You’re not very nice. I think I raised you better than that.” Again, the harsh laughter that had her pulling the phone from her ear. “I’m going to hang up now and hope that you get better manners in the future. You shouldn’t be talking to your mother this way.”

“When I believe that you’re my mother, I’ll apologize.

Until then, this is all you’re going to get from the lot of us.

None of us believes you’re who you say you are.

Not even dad.” She asked when he spoke to their dad, fearful now that he might have given her away somehow.

“He’s here staying with my sister, that’s Rogen in the event you’re going to ask me what her name is.

We’ve all been catching up and having a wonderful time.

You’re barely mentioned as a matter of fact. ”

“You’re very cruel, aren’t you?” He said again that when he believed she was his mom, then he’d apologize to her. “I believe you should be apologizing right now. I’ve never been spoken to that way in my life. And I am your mother.”

“You’ll have to prove it then. Right now, all I can tell you is that you’d better have all your information correct because we’re not going to take this well if you’re not her.

Which I don’t believe at all, so you know.

” She said that she’d gotten that from him.

“Good. I don’t want any misunderstanding when you come around and think that it’s going to be all fun and games for you.

Rogen is especially pissed off, and Sandy too. ”

“I’ve heard that Rogen recently married. And that Sandy’s husband is on trial for murder. Seems like my little family could use a good person in their lives right now.” He said it wouldn’t be her. “We’ll see about that now, won’t we?”

“Yes, I suppose that we will.” His laughter was getting on her nerves, but she was keeping her cool.

If she lost her temper now, all her hard work would be for nothing.

She needed to get where the money was, and they had a great deal of it.

“I’m hanging up now. Don’t call me again, whoever you are. ”

“And what will you say if I turn out to be your mother, like I’ve been telling you I am? What will you say to me then? An apology will not be enough from you.” He asked her if she was talking about money. “Yes.”

The phone went dead, and she was grateful for it.

She’d lost her cool in that last question from him, and she needed to make him think that she wasn’t there for just the money.

She was, no doubt about that, but she needed to make them believe that she was their mother first and foremost so that she could get as much from them as she could.

She had to think about the conversation that she’d had with Calhoun.

He was smarter than she’d given him credit for.

She didn’t know what he did for a living yet, but she had someone looking into that for her.

It paid to have as much information as she could when infiltrating a family like she was doing this time.

The rewards would be much better if she could get everything that she could about them.

The next time she spoke to Calhoun, it would be in person, then he’d have to deny that she wasn’t his mother to her face.

Not that he was going to be able to. She was, after all, the real deal when it came to being his mom.

~*~

Rogen didn’t like this. There was something very off about this woman that she couldn’t put her finger on.

Calhoun said that she was having trouble getting to them since they moved—he claimed that he thought she was begging for money until he pissed her off.

That was something else he told her. Mother would have said something along the lines of his respect for her and that she was going to tell his dad.

She seemed to be surprised that they’d even called their dad into this thing.

Then she said that he was going to have to give her money for the way that he’d treated her.

Their mom wouldn’t have demanded money; she would have told him that he was going to be beaten.

She had never thought of them as too old to be beaten by their dad, and it mattered little that they were married, either.

She would take care that they were punished for doing something against her.

There were just too many things that she said to Calhoun that didn’t add up.

Most of her problem had been that she didn’t want to believe that she was their mother.

And she wasn’t. Dad had been present when the embalming had been done because she was a shifter.

He would answer any questions that needed to be answered by being there.

There is no way that she could have survived that kind of work on her body, no matter what she was calling herself. The draining of her blood and then using the trocar on her would have killed even the strongest of shifters, much less a human being. What the embalmer thought he was embalming.

Dad had brought a lot of paperwork with him when he came to visit them.

He had paperwork from the funeral home that stated that they’d received the body from the hospital on the night she’d been killed.

Also, he’d been given a list of things that she’d had on her when she’d been in the accident that had killed her.

Then there was the fact that he’d been present at the embalming.

That had taken a great deal of expense to have that happen, but Dad, even then, had been so grief-stricken that he wanted to make sure that she was dead when they buried her.

The embalmer had even allowed Dad to take pictures of the marks that Mom had had on her body.

The sigil that she had on her right shoulder was something that she’d gotten when she’d married their dad.

A mark of the mates that they’d become, both of them were marked on their right shoulders.

There was a police report, too, that had accompanied the body from the hospital that she’d been taken to.

“Do you suppose that she has the sigil on her right shoulder?” Everyone turned to look at her, and she was slightly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I just thought of that and wondered.

If she is human—for whatever reason, I think that this is a human person trying to do this to us—would she have understood what the mark would mean and try to duplicate it? ”

“That’s a good point. I never thought of that. But why are you so sure it’s a human?” She told them what she’d been thinking. “Again, I never thought about that. Her being able to lie to us is something that should have been the first thing that we thought of. We can’t lie to one another.”

No one said anything for long moments, and she was concerned they thought that she was wrong. They just had too much evidence to say that she was dead rather than being around them and causing trouble.

“I’m going to ask her about it if she calls me again.

Or any of us should. That way, we can know for sure that she’s lying.

I have to admit, and only to you guys, that I hope this is Mom.

I know it can’t be, but I feel like I have plenty to say to her now that she’s back in our lives.

I have questions too.” Rogen looked around the room, and it seemed that everyone was agreeing with her about their mom.

“What do we do if she can’t answer the question about the sigil?

Do we just stop answering her? Or do we have her arrested as soon as she gets here?

I have no doubt that she’s on her way here as we speak.

She wants something from us, and I have a feeling that it’s money? ”

“I do as well. She was practically begging me for money to get the rest of the way to us when I was talking to her.” Rogen could see that Calhoun was still pissed off about the call that he’d gotten from her.

“Even if she had come right out and asked for the money, I would have turned her down. I don’t now nor will I believe that she’s our parent.

And that’s something that I will take to the grave.

As Rogen has said, she’s human and we all just know it. ”

“I think we should have a list of questions that we ask her whenever she calls one of us. First and foremost, she should be asked about the sigil. And where it is. It should be easy for her to tell us, I’d think.

Also, and this one is important too, why she waited.

I no more believe that no one notified us of her being in a coma for the last ten years.

Nor her waiting to get in touch with us.

Sure, she could say that she didn’t remember us because of the coma, but I just don’t believe her.

” She looked around the room at the nodding heads of her family.

“Would compulsion work on her?” Calhoun and Rogen both said that it should, but you couldn’t be sure if it worked unless you were face-to-face with her. “I’d like to have that arrangement made so that we can see for ourselves if she even looks like our mother.”