The sun hung over the eastern horizon, bathing the cornfields on either side of the road in soft amber light. I managed to make it halfway to the interstate before my car started to make a truly horrendous noise. I couldn’t coax the car over fifty, and steam began to rise from beneath the hood.
“Shit!” I shouted, pounding the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit!”
I pulled off onto the narrow shoulder and put the car in park. I twisted the keys savagely out of the ignition and had to pound the driver’s side door to get it to open. The stupid thing stuck every other time I got in. I popped the hood and my heart sank when noxious smoke began to billow out from it.
I finally remembered my conversation with Millie in the parking lot right after closing. She’d said the engine could blow if I didn’t get it repaired. I screamed. There was no one around to hear me but the Johnson’s cows, and they weren’t paying me any mind. There was a lump of unshed tears in my throat, and it was suddenly hard to swallow.
Not only was I not going to Columbus, I was stranded, almost twenty miles from home. The tow truck would cost more than I wanted to pay, on top of the cost of a new car. I kicked the headlight with my good leg, only succeeding in sending a spike of agony through my foot.
“Damn it!” I shouted. I tilted my head back to the sky and screamed in frustration again. Why did this always happen? Why did I get more than my fair share when shit hit the fan?
I barely took note of the glint off a new car coming down the road. Maybe they’d stop to help but the only thing they could really do was call the tow truck or give me a ride back. I sunk to the ground next to the hood and pulled my knees up to my chest. Traitorous tears began to fall, and I buried my face in my hands, biting my lip to contain a sob. I needed to get a grip. I needed to call Millie and see if I could still salvage the situation somehow.
I could hear the car nearing and groaned aloud when it noticeably slowed. I didn’t need someone to witness my breakdown. I couldn’t summon the energy to push to my feet. I was so tired. I had barely slept, I was hungry, and my car was a smoking ruin. What was the point of getting up?
The car pulled in behind mine and the engine sounded like a purring cat before it cut off. I wiped furiously at my eyes, but the tears kept coming. The owner stepped out, and I caught a glimpse of one heavy work boot before he began walking around my car.
“Need a hand?” A familiar voice asked. I looked up sharply, aware the mascara leftover from my shift the day before was running. A handsome, chiseled face was peering down at me.
“Chance?” I asked. Was he really here, or was this a signal that my complete mental break was at hand? At least that would mean my brain was trying to be kind to me in the eleventh hour.
“Lucy,” he said, and a warm smile brightened his whole face. Why did he always seem so thrilled to see me?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to stem the flow of tears. “I saw you at the station. I thought you were heading out of town.”
“I am,” he said, gesturing at the road. “But I thought I ought to give you a hand. Your car doesn’t look drivable.”
“It’s not.” My voice quavered a little, and I hated it. I was just sitting here crying like a little girl in front of the most handsome man to ever grace the town of Fairchild. He gave my car a quick once-over, wincing at the sight of my smoking engine.
“Where were you headed?” he asked finally. “I can drive you there and back if you like.”
“No, that’s okay,” I blurted, finally getting my knees under me. I stood, brushing the gravel off my backside as I did so. “I don’t want to be any trouble. I’ll call Millie.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” he replied smoothly, bracing one elbow on the driver’s side door. He was so huge I felt like I owned a clown car. “I’ve got a few weeks before I need to report back to work. A few days won’t hurt anything. Where are you headed?”
I stole a glance at his car. It was bright red, and its glossy paint job shone in the early morning sunlight. It looked very roadworthy. I shook my head, trying to collect my thoughts. I couldn’t believe I was actually considering it.
“Is that a no?” he asked, leaning a little closer to me.
“Give me a minute. I’m thinking,” I muttered.
If I went back to Fairchild, I’d have to kiss major ass to get my job back. It was a toss-up whether Uncle Mack would let me back into the house. I’d still have no car, and buying a new one would set me back several thousand dollars. Then again, if I went with Mr. Lonesome, I’d still be facing all that when I returned.
But you’d get a handsome traveling companion. My mind supplied. And air conditioning.
Well, the latter would certainly be helpful. I was already sweating beneath all the flannel, and I could tell by the humidity that there’d be storms in the next few days.
“Fine,” I said, running a hand through my mussed hair. Great, I had running mascara and bedhead. What a catch I must be. “But no funny stuff. If I get the axe-murderer vibe from you at any point in this journey, I reserve the right to cold-clock you.”
He grinned, flashing dazzlingly white teeth at me. “I’d expect nothing less. Where are you headed?”
I had to pull hard to get the door open again. When I finally managed it, I leaned over the front seat and snatched my suitcase from the back. It was brown leather and absolutely covered in travel stickers. It was the only one of mom’s bags that Aunt Carol had allowed me to keep. She’d said I could have the rest of mom’s stuff when I moved out, but I wasn’t quite sure I believed her.
“Columbia. My brother, Luke, attends college at Ohio State.”
I looked up in time to see a flicker of emotion cross his face. It was gone before I could put a name to it, but something was there. Suspicion crept unwanted into my thoughts. Did he know Luke? Did Chance somehow know what had prompted his sudden flight?
“Too far out of the way for you?” I asked lightly, trying to get a read on his expression. He finally managed another smile, though this one was a second too late a fraction too tight to be genuine.
“Not at all. Want a hand with your luggage?”
Normally I would have bristled and told him I was fully capable of holding my own luggage. But he was doing me a favor, and despite what he said, he was going out of his way to help me. So I gave him an insincere smile of my own.
“Sure.”
Chapter Four
Chance
It had been a bad idea to pick her up for many reasons.
Her relationship to my quarry complicated things tremendously. I couldn’t imagine a woman as vivacious as Lucy standing by idly while I tracked her brother through the mountains with the intent to kill or capture. It was also unquestionably against regulations to bring an unarmed civilian into the line of fire, especially when said civilian had little to no knowledge about the situation.
Additionally, her scent was filling the car, and it was driving me mad. She smelled of petrichor, the rich smell of rain on dry earth. I scented ozone on her skin, and I could feel the answering current running between us, as if lightning might strike and send electricity singing through my veins. I wanted nothing more than to pull her across the space that separated us and into my lap.
But I was driving down the interstate at seventy-five miles an hour and she clearly didn’t trust me yet. She was leaning back in her seat, basking in the jets of cool air coming from the vents.
“Comfortable?” I asked, a hint of wry amusement in my tone.
“Very,” she said, giving me a quick smile. “Thank you so much for doing this. I can’t express how much I appreciate it.”
“I told you, it wasn’t any trouble.”
In fact, it did solve one problem. I was less likely to be distracted during the mission when I knew where she was and if she was safe. My bear had been displeased with even the notion of leaving her behind. Now he was more compliant than it had been in years, slumbering peacefully while we shot down the road
toward Jackson.
Though we could have made the whole trip in one day, I was already tired and Lucy didn’t look much better. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t still beautiful, but the dark circles beneath her eyes worried me. It wouldn’t do us any good to keep going if we were too tired to pick up any relevant clues.
She stretched, and I couldn’t help but notice how tight the blue flannel shirt fit. She looked damned good, under the circumstances. She caught me looking and hastily buttoned the shirt up to her collar.
“So, where were you heading originally?” she asked.
I tried not to flinch away from the question. This whole situation really was a clusterfuck. What was I supposed to tell her? That my destination was the same as hers? That wouldn’t sound creepy as fuck, now would it? I didn’t want to lie to her though, so I told a partial truth.
“I was heading to Virginia. I’m going hiking in the Appalachian mountains.”
She turned to stare at me, blue eyes huge in her face. “The Appalachian mountain trail? The whole thing? That takes months!”
I laughed. “No, not the whole thing. Just the Blue Ridge Mountain Range. I’m supposed to meet a few friends and spend the next couple of weeks roughing it. I’ll just let them know I’ll be a few days late.”
I saw her bite her lip out of the corner of my eye. It was distracting as hell. I wanted to snag that full pouting lip between my teeth and bite it. There had to be bear in her family line somewhere, or I’d not have felt the pull.
A sickening thought crept into my mind, and it doused the fire kindling in my blood. Of course, there was bear in her lineage now. Her brother, her twin brother Luke, as she’d told me as I’d loaded her bags into the trunk, was a bear. An unnatural one, yes, but a bear nonetheless. They’d shared a womb, and some even speculated the souls were joined, even as early as birth.
No, Luke’s madness hadn’t been passed to his sister, or I’d be here investigating two massacres instead of one. Still, the thought unsettled me.
“Sorry for delaying your trip,” she said, clearing her throat to get my attention. I realized too late that I’d been glowering at the road ahead.
“I told you it’s fine. I don’t mind, really. I was actually looking for reasons to stay in Fairchild. I wanted to get to know you a little better, Lucy.”
“You don’t know me,” she muttered, looking out the window to avoid my gaze.
“No,” I admitted. “But I’d like the chance to get to know you. Where do you want to eat?”
“Anywhere is fine. I just need to take my pills soon.”
“Your leg,” I said, barely keeping the rage from my voice. “What happened to it?”
“None of your business!” She snapped, actually turning in her seat to slap my bicep. It didn’t hurt. She’d need a steel blade to make an impression on my skin, and even then, she’d have to strike harder than that. I rubbed at the spot though. It was the first time she’d willingly touched me, and I could feel the skin tingle where she’d made contact.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I was just trying to make conversation. Why are you chasing your brother down anyway?”
She expelled an angry huff of air and crossed her arms over her chest. “He called my Aunt and Uncle last night and told them he was dropping out of school. We don’t know why or what he’s up to. I plan to kick his ass and get him back in school.”
“He contacted you?”
“Yes. A lot of good it did me, but he tried to call. He said he was sorry for…something. I’m really confused. He was going to graduate soon. Why did he just run off like that?”
“I don’t know,” I lied, slowing as we approached the off ramp that would take us into Jackson. We’d been on the road for nearly three hours, and Lucy had napped in the passenger’s seat off and on the whole way.
She sighed. “Sorry for snapping at you. It’s just really starting to dawn on me what a mess my life is.”
“You could come with me to Virginia. Delay going back for a few more weeks.” The words were out, and there was no way I could take them back. They hung in the air between us, and I wanted to curse myself and the bear that lived inside me. I couldn’t take her to Virginia. She’d be in danger. If not from Luke, then from my fellow lawmen who might attempt to steal her from me.
“I didn’t pack any hiking gear,” she said slowly. I noted she hadn’t immediately said no.
“I’ve got enough for two.”
Actually, I had enough for one, but my gear was mostly for show in case I was pulled over by a human police officer. She appeared to consider it.
“How about this? I’ll consider going on a weekend with you after we find my brother and talk some sense into him.”
That was going to be more difficult than she could imagine, but I was never going to get a better deal than that so I latched onto it.
“It’s a date.”
***
Several hours and awkward conversation topics later we were approaching Elizabethtown, our last stop before Louisville, Kentucky where I had planned to turn in for the night. The cheery blue skies of the morning and late afternoon were turning grey as we headed further north toward Ohio. Heavy rain clouds pressed down over us. My bear shifted uneasily and I could feel its desire to seek shelter. A storm was rolling in.
“I thought you were a country boy!” She crowed when I finally admitted that I lived in Southaven, Mississippi.
“For the last ten years. But before that I lived in Alaska with my parents and two sisters. I’m not sure if I qualify.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Alaska? Really, what was that like?”
“Cold,” I said with a laugh. “But very beautiful. We lived miles from any major city, but we preferred it that way. It was harder for the zoophobics and the zoophiles to find us up there.”
Her head whipped up from the burger she’d been attempting to unwrap.
“Zoophiles? Those groupies attracted to shifters?”
“And their counterparts on the other side of the fence, the zoophobics, yeah.”
Her mouth was hanging slightly open in an unflattering expression of shock. “That means that you’re…”
“A shifter, yes,” I concluded, hoping she hadn’t noticed the edge of bitterness that had entered my voice. Of course, it couldn’t be simple. She’d been raised in the south, where the most violence toward shifters was perpetrated. It was part of why I’d taken the job. Of course my mate would hate shifters.
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch,” she huffed, glimpsing the look on my face. “I just didn’t expect it at all. That’s something you should lead with, I think.”
“What did you want me to say? Hello, I’m Chance Kassower. I enjoy skiing, chess and turning into a bear when the fancy strikes me.”
She actually threw her head back and laughed. “Okay, when you put it like that way, it sounds a little ridiculous.”
“Exactly.” The tension in my body eased a little. “You really don’t hate me for being a shifter?”
“From what I understand, it isn’t something you can help, right? Any more than I could help being blonde, or brother can help being a douchebag. Sometimes we’re just born this way.”
I filed the douchebag comment away for later questioning. There was a story there, but now was not the time to press for it.
“You’re right. It’s not something I can help.”
She nodded wisely. “So, I don’t see the point in getting fussed about it. But if we’re going on a date later, you really should tell me the truth from now on.”
My stomach squirmed in discomfort and I turned the radio on before she could wring any promises from me. I wanted to be honest with her, but there were certain things I couldn’t share. Like the orders passed down regarding her brother.
I tried to focus on the bubblegum oldies channel I’d been listening to before I’d spotted her car on the side of the road. It wasn’t easy, though. Lucy sat in relative silence, taking bites of her burger as we co
ntinued on toward Louisville.
After an irritatingly long string of ads, the local commentator began to read the latest news announcements.
“New updates from the Columbus Police Department in regards to the violent murder that was perpetrated at the university on Wednesday…”
I nearly jammed the button down. No, no, no this isn’t how she was supposed to find out. Lucy batted my hand away from the dial before I could reach it.
“I want to listen to something else,” I said tightly.
“Tough,” she shot back. “This might have something to do with Luke. I’m listening to the rest of it.”
It had everything to do with Luke Elmsong and that was the problem. I wondered how she hadn’t heard the story already, but considering the deplorable state her car had been in, it was entirely possible she hadn’t been able to listen to the media coverage of the event.
“Police have identified Luke Elmsong, the deceased’s former roommate, as a person of interest in this case. Local police are coordinating with members of the Thing in an attempt to bring him in for questioning.”
“The thing?” she echoed. “What’s that?”
“It’s a Council of were-animals,” I said, finally. “It comes from old Norse tradition. They uphold the law and dispatch members of the community to mete it out.”
She turned ever so slowly to fix me with an accusatory stare. I had never seen such a remote expression on a human face before. I nearly flinched at the ice in her tone when she spoke.
“What do you know about this?” she demanded, jabbing a finger at the radio.
I didn’t answer, and the radio announcer continued, laying the damning truth out in wake of my silence.
Campus security identified Luke Elmsong fleeing the scene of the crime the morning after it occurred. Officials say they will be on the lookout for Elmsong, and will alert us if he is caught. On a related, but sadder note, the wake of Keith Page will be held on campus a week from Saturday…
“Chance Kassower, you answer me damn it!” She shouted. “What do you know about this?”
“Everything. I knew everything.”
Tracking the Bear (Blue Ridge Bears Book 1) Page 3