Fox Hunt

by J. Leigh Bailey

I was tempted to call my mom and bitch. I’d told her—I’d freaking told her—that I needed a bigger, more prestigious school than Cody College to reach my dream. But no, she had to worry that my control wasn’t what it should have been to go to a bigger, better school. I wasn’t being fair to CC, and I knew it. It was a well-respected university, with many award-winning programs and respected educators. But it wasn’t Yale. And sure, my control had been a little iffy, but I’d have been fine. Aiden managed, and while everyone treated Aiden like he was the epitome of perfect shifterhood, he wasn’t, in fact, perfect. And no one could live up to the example he set.

  My inner grousing came to an abrupt halt when I closed the door behind me to find the perky receptionist seated way too damn close to Buddy. The guy should have been behind the desk answering the phone or filing something. There was absolutely no reason for him to be sitting on the edge of the desk, body angled unmistakably toward Buddy.

  What the actual fuck?

  “Ready to go?” I demanded.

  Buddy looked up, whether startled by my return or by my angry tone I didn’t know. Maybe he was pissed that I’d interrupted his little tête-á-tête with the way-too-pretty receptionist. Well, too bad. He was supposed to be making sure bad guys didn’t get to me, not making eyes at clerical help.

  “Oh, hey. How’d it go?” Buddy stood, straightening a packet of papers he’d been flipping through.

  “Fine.” My eyes darted down to the packet. “What’s that?”

  He blushed. Buddy Brady freaking blushed. I wanted to growl. The papers were probably receptionist dude’s contact information and a copy of his most recent bloodwork proving he was STD-free. “Oh, just some stuff Jake printed out for me.”

  Awesome. Receptionist dude had a name, and he and Buddy were on a first-name basis already. “Whatever. You ready?”

  He squinted at me, cocking his head.

  Yeah, I guess I could understand his confusion. I was not normally an abrupt person, and if I’d been in fox form, my ruff would have absolutely been up. Like most strong emotions, irritation, especially combined with aggression, had a scent. I hoped he’d chalk it up to a disappointing interview. Which, honestly, is what I should have been annoyed by, not by some pretty boy chatting up Buddy.

  I had the strongest urge to stake a claim on him, to do something to show Jake that Buddy was mine. I had to remind myself that Buddy wasn’t actually my boyfriend and whether or not he made some kind of love connection in Wisconsin was really none of my business.

  “Yeah, let’s head out.” Buddy waved his papers at the kid. “Thanks for the info.”

  “You’re welcome. Good luck, Theo.”

  Theo? I followed close behind Buddy as we exited the office. “Theo?” I asked when we’d arrived at the stairway entrance.

  He held up a staying hand and opened the steel door carefully. He peered into the space, sniffing a few times. I was once again in the presence of serious bodyguard Buddy. Half a minute later, he nodded and stepped onto the landing.

  “You think my parents named me Buddy?”

  I hadn’t thought about it, to be honest. I supposed it was unlikely the name Buddy appeared on his birth certificate. “So your name’s Theo?”

  “Short for Theodore.”

  “Does anyone ever call you that?”

  “Theodore, no. My brothers sometimes call me Theo. No one else.”

  “But you introduced yourself to Jake as Theo?”

  We passed the door for the fourth floor. His steps slowed a little.

  “I’ve always been Buddy, since I was a baby. Dad called me his little buddy, and it stuck.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s not that. But I never really wanted to go by it. People picked up on it when I was little and just went with it.”

  We stopped at the first-floor door, but before he could open it up to do his threat check, I held him back with a hand on his arm. He looked down at me with something like embarrassment coloring his cheeks. Best guess, he hadn’t meant to spew all that out.

  “Do you want me to call you Theo?”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It sounds like it does matter. If you want to be called Theo, then you should be called Theo.”

  “Either is fine. Whatever’s easier.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s not an answer. Not an honest one.”

  “I’m used to Buddy. But away from town, away from where everyone knows me, I thought I’d try it out. Take the name for a test-drive. See if it fits better than Buddy.”

  I nodded. I guessed I understood the sentiment. I was doing something similar, wasn’t I? Using this trip as the first step toward figuring out who I was and, more importantly, defining my future my way, without family and community judgment and expectation.

  I’d still try to remember to call him Theo whenever possible.

  TWO hours later Buddy was a tense, growly mess. Traffic heading into Chicago was not for the faint of heart. It was drastically different from what we were used to in Cody. As another semi going seventy in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone passed us, Buddy rumbled deep in his chest. His hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough I expected to see something crack—either the wheel or his fingers; both were at risk.

  When yet another truck—this one for some kind of heating and cooling system repair company—zoomed past on the right, I thought Buddy was going to legit lose his shit. Especially when they honked and yelled something I assumed was uncomplimentary out their window as they went by. “Doesn’t anyone in this state see the speed limit?”

  I’d had some experience in city traffic. I’d spent plenty of time in Denver, and on my twenty-first birthday a few friends and I drove to Vegas. While neither destination was as bad as Chicago-area traffic seemed to be, it at least gave me some understanding of what to expect. “It’s better—safer—to keep up with traffic than follow the speed limit.”

  He didn’t take his eye of the road, but his lip curled in derision. “The speed limit is there for a reason—”

  “Going slower than the rest of traffic can cause as many accidents as speeding because it forces other cars to slam on their brakes or pass you. I’m sure I read something like that.”

  “Why do these people keep cutting me off?” His voice went deeper than normal, a sure sign his bear was closer to the surface. I tried not to let on that his rumbling bass twisted my stomach into knots.

  “You’re leaving too much space between you and the car ahead of you.”

  “It’s the recommended safe distance. The three-second rule—”

  “You’re right,” I said, “but anyone who’s not a walking driver’s ed manual sees that as an opening that might get them three seconds closer to their destination.”

  “If you follow too close—”

  “I get it, I do. But you can’t force everyone else to follow the rules too.”

  An Illinois State Police car slid into the three-second gap between us and the car in front of us. He didn’t even use his turn signal.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

  I felt a little bad for Buddy, but mostly it amused me to see him so worked up. At least he wasn’t lecturing me this time.

  Deep grooves bracketed his nearly colorless lips. My amusement died a quick death. Buddy was really struggling with this. I reached over and rubbed his shoulder. The muscle was rock-solid under my hand. “Hey, breathe. This tension can’t be good for you.”

  He did as I suggested, inhaling deeply. As he exhaled, the whiteness in his knuckles dissipated and some of the tension left him. He flexed his fingers.

  “Maybe you should pull over and let me drive.”

  He hesitated.

  “It’s going to get worse when we get into the city.” I’d hoped to get to the hotel before we had to deal with the worst of rush-hour traffic. It wasn’t even three yet and vehicles lined each lane of the interstate, practically bumper to bumper.

&
nbsp; Buddy slammed on the brakes when traffic suddenly, inexplicably, slowed to a crawl. That little bit of tension I’d managed to coax out of him returned.

  “You’ve driven in this kind of traffic before?”

  “Yes.” It didn’t even occur to me to gloat. Not even twenty-four hours after he’d confiscated my keys, he was willing to let me behind the wheel again. I couldn’t give him a hard time about it, though. Not when he was this worked up.

  “Fine. I’ll take the next exit—”

  A black car changed lanes, squeezing into the inadequate space ahead of us, before sliding into an equally small gap in the next lane over. Buddy flinched back, swinging the wheel to the right, bringing me close enough to the car next to us that I could have reached out and shook the driver’s hand. The driver, for his part, didn’t seem to notice, paying more attention to his phone than to the traffic around him. And Buddy thought I was reckless.

  “Are these people fucking crazy?” Buddy glared at the rearview mirror.

  I turned to look over my shoulder. A silver Acura with dark windows rode our ass so tightly I thought it was trying to give my Mini Cooper a prostate exam.

  “This seems bad, even for an area known for crappy traffic.” I narrowed my eyes, trying to catch sight of the driver through the tinted glass. Unfortunately, I didn’t get more than a vague outline of broad shoulders. “If that guy damages Andy in any way, I’m going to throw one hell of a fit.”

  “Andy?” Buddy asked.

  I didn’t look at him, more concerned by the threat to my bumper. Then the question sank in. “Oh, um, yeah. I named my car.”

  “You named your car Andy?” Tension radiated off his body, but Buddy’s voice was a little calmer than it had been. Must be hard to stay so intense when confronted with the ridiculous.

  “Andy, yeah. Short for Anderson Cooper. Anderson Cooper. Mini Cooper. Seemed appropriate.”

  His shoulders shook, and I chanced a glance away from my baby’s bumper to see Buddy’s face. He smiled, something I’d missed during the last half hour of Chicagoland traffic.

  Of course, the second I looked away from the danger behind me, it happened. With a crunch of metal on metal, the car behind us made contact. The momentum threw me forward, but before the seat belt could stop me from crashing into the dashboard, Buddy swung his arm out, forearm doing the seat belt’s job.

  I didn’t even have time to tease him for the soccer-mom protection. Someone had hit my baby, and I wanted their blood.

  “Idiot,” Buddy cursed under his breath. He craned his neck, checking the traffic patterns around us. “We need to pull over.”

  “Good. I need to kick some ass.” I reached down, ready to release my seat belt.

  “No,” Buddy said. “We’re pulling over to assess the damage and exchange insurance information. That’s what you do when there’s a fender bender.”

  “But… but…,” I sputtered. “They hit my baby!”

  “It was barely a tap. Get your insurance card out. Maybe look up the highway patrol phone number—”

  Red lights glowed as a beige Taurus in front of us braked suddenly. Buddy stomped on the brake pedal, but it was too little, too late. We rammed the car ahead of us, and the car who’d already hit us, slammed into my poor Mini again. To be fair, our speed had basically been a crawl, so it didn’t sound like anything irreparable had happened to my car, but still. “This is a fucking Mini Cooper, not a bumper car. What the hell is wrong with people?”

  Buddy flicked the indicator signal with enough force I worried he’d break the prong off the steering column. His breathing had become extra deep and unnaturally regular, a rhythm I was now familiar with. It was his relaxation yoga breathing. Part of me was glad he had to work on his calm; it helped justify my own extra emotional reaction.

  Both the other vehicles flashed their signals as well. When a space opened up in the far-right lane, our little train shifted right. Then continued to the shoulder.

  I dug into the glove box to retrieve my insurance card. I switched on the camera app on my phone. You can bet your ass I was going to take pictures of every ding, scratch, and dent. I’d deal with looking up who to report the collision to as soon as I knew the extent of the damage.

  When Buddy had pulled to the shoulder, he’d kept plenty of room between us and the car in front of us. But the guy behind us apparently wanted to continue riding our ass, even though we were on the side of the road. “Jackass.” I reached for my seat belt, even as I told myself to keep my cool. No matter how ticked off I was, getting upset would turn the situation into a confrontation, and that was the last thing we needed.

  I blinked. The Taurus began to reverse toward us, cutting the distance between it and the Mini.

  I checked behind us to see if there was room to maneuver if the beige car got too close. The driver of the Acura had opened the door and begun to step out. Little details cemented themselves in my brain. Black lace-up shoes. Black pants. Black running jacket. Black gloves. In summer? Black handgun. Black ball cap.

  Shit.

  Handgun?

  Buddy had opened his door and one leg was already planted on the gravel-covered asphalt.

  “Get in, get in, get in.” I pawed at his arm, practically crawling across his lap to drag his leg back into the car.

  “What?” He turned toward me.

  “Gun, gun, gun.” I pressed the Start button, more grateful than ever that I didn’t have to actually crank a key.

  More gratifying than that, though, was that Buddy didn’t stop to question me after that. He swung his leg in, slammed the door, and had his foot on the accelerator in less than three seconds. The guy with the gun ducked and covered his face when the Mini’s back tires spit gravel as we sped off the shoulder and back into traffic. We cut off a semi, who blared his horn at us. Not that I cared about pissing off a trucker. I was way more worried about the man with the gun.

  “What the hell was that?” Buddy demanded. He wove in an out of traffic with the skill of a NASCAR driver, putting distance between us and the other cars. I had a second to wonder why he’d been so tense as we got closer to the city if he had driving skills like this. Then I noticed the tight way he pressed his lips together and the pulse pounding at his temple. Just because he was capable, didn’t mean he was comfortable. Everyone did all sorts of things that we weren’t comfortable with when our backs were against a wall.

  “Seriously, David. What was that? Urban road rage? A carjacking? He had a gun. Right in the open. Anyone could have been there. Was he going to shoot us? Or steal the car?”

  He was babbling. I didn’t like it. He was always so calm and in control; it was wrong to see him like this. And I also wanted more than anything to give him some answers. Problem was, I didn’t have those answers. “I don’t know. Could have been any of that.”

  A few minutes later he said, “Put the hotel into the GPS. I’ll need turn-by-turn directions to get the rest of the way.”

  “Do you want me to drive now?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s just get where we’re going.”

  Chapter Nine

  MY interview at Northwestern on Friday went very much like the one in Madison had. The professor reminded me of my mother. She had the same focus and intensity. When Liann Qi looked at me, I was tempted to tilt my head and bare my neck like I would for a more dominant fox. It was disconcerting. I’d dealt with my mom long enough I knew how to approach Professor Qi. I was respectful, to the point, and stayed on topic.

  When I exited her office, I felt confident that I hadn’t crashed and burned during the interview, but I probably hadn’t crushed it either. Her comments echoed those of Professor Riley: I did good work, I had a decent portfolio, but Northwestern had a very competitive program. If I wanted my application to gain any traction, it needed something extra, something special. My internship at the Cody Gazette didn’t have as much cachet as a bigger newsroom in a bigger city. Unlike Professor Riley, who hadn’t sounded like my accep
tance to the program was a long shot despite making it to the interview stage, Professor Qi definitely insinuated that I aimed too high with Northwestern.

  I found Buddy waiting outside the office, his body braced, his gaze alert.

  “Did something happen?” I asked when we had moved out of earshot of the eagle-eyed administrative assistant who clacked away at her keyboard.

  “No.”

  “You seem tense.”

  “I’m on duty. I’m supposed to be alert.”

  He’d been subdued since the fiasco on the expressway. The damage to my car had been reassuringly minimal—no more than a few scrapes a good body shop would be able to buff right out—but the damage to Buddy’s psyche had been more concerning. Last night he’d spent three hours looking up all the information he could on Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications; he reviewed images and plans online of the building, and consulted maps of the area surrounding Upper Wacker Drive. He probably wouldn’t have eaten dinner if my stomach hadn’t growled. His own had growled several times, and he’d ignored it.

  He hadn’t even done his morning yoga routine.

  He was in serious bodyguard mode, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  “How’d the interview go?” He led the way to the staircase exit. No elevators as long as there was a possible target on my back, unlikely as it was. Even though his voice was cool and his face expressionless, I got the feeling that he genuinely cared.

  I grunted.

  “Not good?”

  “Meh. It wasn’t bad. The vibe wasn’t there.”

  He gestured me behind him as he peered into the stairwell. I rolled my eyes and waited for his all clear. The tag of his Cody College T-shirt stuck out past the neckline. The text had long since faded and the screen-printed image on the front of the shirt was cracked and muted. I reached up to tuck the tag and the second my fingers brushed the fabric, Buddy stiffened and caught his breath. Goose bumps popped up along the skin of his neck. It felt like minutes passed before his back rose with his next inhalation. I jerked my hand back. I knew better than to touch him when all his senses were on full alert. I was liable to get my head knocked off.