The Bear's Secret Surrogate

by Amy Star

  C HAPTER 14

  They met up with Branson in the foyer, and he wasted no time before he explained, “She was definitely here, but she didn’t limit herself to Casey’s suite this time. I followed her smell throughout basically the entire house.” That would explain why it took him so long to come back out, at least. “Nothing was violently overturned,” he continued, “but she was definitely looking through a few things. You’ll need to check to make sure she didn’t steal anything.”

  “Why don’t we check her nest first?” Casey suggested, wringing her hands together. “I mean, she was pretty clearly putting it together so she could spend the full moon on the property. She might still be there.”

  “Probably not,” Lydia replied, glancing down at her watch. “But she might have left something behind. The cops are onto her, and her plans last night fell through. She might be getting desperate.”

  “Is desperate good or bad?” Casey asked slowly, eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Yes,” Atticus returned wryly. When Casey swatted his shoulder with one hand, he elaborated. “Good because she’ll be more prone to make mistakes, bad because desperation can drive people to do crazy or stupid things.”

  Casey opened her mouth to reply, paused, and slowly closed her mouth, head cocked to one side as something occurred to her. “So, what if we lure her out, then? I mean, I don’t want to kill her or anything, but what about a trap?”

  “What sort of trap?” Atticus asked cautiously.

  “We set the cameras back up,” Casey began, “and let them catch her in the act of trying to kill one of you.”

  Atticus’s eyebrows rose, and he tipped his head slowly to one side. “You’re going to need to elaborate on that one a little bit.”

  Casey ran a hand through her ponytail and then resumed wringing her hands. “So, we know she uses a gun. She plans on attacking from a distance. We all know where the cameras are. She doesn’t; she never found them or I doubt she would have just left them alone. And if it’s pitch black out, then between the dark and the trees, if you catch her attention as an animal but then turn back into a human farther away, it will be too dark for her to tell at first.”

  Lydia’s expression brightened slightly with realization. “Lure her into trying to shoot you near the cameras, where it will look like she’s trying to murder the property owner, rather than hunting a bear.”

  Casey nodded rapidly.

  “Haven’t we been over that hunters tend not to try to kill when it’s possible for their quarry to turn back into a human?” Branson wondered blandly.

  “We already agreed that she’s probably desperate,” Atticus pointed out, catching on. “The cops are onto her, she knows it, and the next full moon is a full month away. She might risk it if she thinks it’s the only chance she’ll get.”

  Branson wrinkled his nose. “Having already had a close call, I’m bowing out,” he decided. “If you lunatics want to dance around in front of her gun barrel, be my guest. I’ll stand by to offer first aid when it fails horribly.”

  Casey swatted the back of one hand against his ribs. Heedless of that, he turned and wandered farther into the house, leaving them to their planning.

  *

  Though they all admitted it wasn’t an ideal plan, it was all they had just then, and Atticus volunteered to play bait. Branson had already pulled himself out of the pot, and they weren’t going to force the matter. Lydia wasn’t an option; even with limited visibility, Georgia would notice when Lydia went from flying to running and come up short.

  Once Atticus was outside, Casey was supposed to give it ten minutes and then call the police to report that there was a trespasser on the property and she was pretty sure that trespasser was trying to kill her husband. A report that would, in all likelihood, have the police heading to their house posthaste.

  No one was going to turn on any of the outdoor lights that evening, just to make sure the yard was as dark as possible. Casey wracked her brain for other ways she could actually help, other than setting the cameras back up, but she was fairly sure all she could really do was wait.

  *

  Waiting for night to fall was more nerve-wracking than it had ever been before. It should have been a simple thing, just keeping herself entertained until then, but that was easier said than done when she knew what was coming and that there was really nothing she could do other than make the phone call. Knowing that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

  She sat at the piano and prodded randomly at keys, but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she couldn’t focus long enough to string the notes together into anything coherent. Not that she actually knew any coherent songs, so she supposed it was a moot point.

  She had already set up the cameras with Lydia’s help, and Lydia and Atticus had gone out to make sure he knew where the cameras were. There was even a pair of pajama pants stashed away near the cameras, so if they were lucky, they wouldn’t need to explain to the police why Atticus had gone to investigate a trespasser without any clothes on. They were as prepared as they could be, Casey supposed, but a lot of the idea was still left up to chance.

  Maybe it was immature, but she would have been more comfortable if the idea had been someone else’s, rather than hers. But it had been her idea, which meant if it failed, that blame landed squarely on her shoulders.

  She dragged the flat of her hand from one end of the piano’s keys to the other, and the cacophony lead to Atticus poking his head into the room to stare at her in quiet bewilderment. She waved him off, offering just a halfhearted, lopsided shrug as an explanation before she pushed the bench away from the piano and stood up.

  Maybe she just needed to wear herself out. She wandered from room to room, peeking into corners and drawers and cupboards as she went from the ground floor to the top floor and back down once again, wandering in laps throughout the house. She felt like a caged panther as she paced, like she was just waiting for someone to open the gate and let her out.

  By the time sundown arrived and stars were beginning to appear overhead, Casey ceased pacing to instead stare out one of the windows, as if she would actually be able to see anything through the dim light and the branches.

  When Branson wandered back out of wherever it was he had gone to sulk to inform them that their guest had arrived on the property, Atticus stepped outside and transformed, leaving his clothes on a pile for Casey to gather up as he moseyed his way into the woods.

  Casey looked down at her phone to check the time and set an alarm to go off in ten minutes, and she resumed staring out the window. She knew Lydia was out there somewhere, and she knew the crow would have a much higher chance of seeing if anything was going wrong, but she felt compelled to stand guard anyway.

  Ten minutes seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, and Casey turned the alarm off and dialed 911. She didn’t even need to fake it to get her voice to tremble as she explained that the woman who had been stalking them for some time was on the property, her husband had gone out to check things out and hadn’t come back inside yet, and she was pretty sure her husband was in danger.

  It wasn’t wrong, after all. She just neglected to mention that the danger was partially manufactured.

  With the assurance that the police were on their way, Casey turned her attention back to the window and listened for the sound of a gunshot. As she wondered what she might find after that sound, she tried to keep the worst of the contemplations at bay with rather limited success.

  *

  Atticus had always been fond of his property. It was beautiful. It was dense enough and large enough that it generally offered something like privacy, other than the occasional intrusion by paparazzi. So, it was rather disconcerting to wander through his own woods and feel like he wasn’t welcome, as if something was going to come barreling out of the darkness at him at any moment. At the same time, that feeling seemed absurd; he knew he was larger than anything that might come at him.

  Even so, he kept his pace sedate. He had to s
eem casual. He couldn’t look like he had a purpose or like he was on a mission or the hunter might know he was up to something. He had to seem like he was just going for a nighttime stroll.

  When he came upon her nest, he slowed, venturing towards it carefully. He wasn’t sure if she was in it or if she was somewhere else in the woods, though he got his answer as he lumbered closer to the nest and he heard a shotgun being racked. He ground to a halt for a split second, ears swiveling in the direction the sound came from, and as Georgia pulled the trigger, he surged forward at a sprint, narrowly avoiding being hit.

  He turned to face her again, and his mouth gaped open as he roared, teeth bared, but his posturing lasted for only a moment before he turned and started loping again, moving at a pace that seemed convincingly enough like he was trying to get away from her while still letting her keep pace with him reasonably well. He couldn’t lead her anywhere if she lost track of him, after all.

  Every so often, his ears swiveled in her direction, making sure he could still hear the muffled sounds of her boots through the pine needles. Just as expected, she never wavered as she followed him.

  He heard her shotgun rack once again, and he ground to a halt and cut sharply to one side, just in time to hear the gun’s pellets impact the trunk of a tree. He heard a crushing sound as her boots slid through the needles as she changed course, but after that, she was practically glued to him once again.

  He was going to need to lead her towards the cameras soon. Even as a bear, running took energy. He could only do it for so long without slowing down, even if he wasn’t running at his top speed. If he tried to just lead her in circles forever, she was going to catch up to him, and he wasn’t looking forward to what would happen after that.

  He could hear her fumbling with something behind him and the sound of shotgun casings being dropped as she lost her grip on them while she ran. She didn’t stop to pick them back up, and evidently, she did manage to load the gun, as Atticus heard it rack once more.

  Once again, he lunged off to a side, and he heard the sound of pellets striking the trees again, followed by a muffled, frustrated, “Fuck.”

  Apparently, he was getting on her nerves. He found himself childishly satisfied by that knowledge, and it gave him the energy to keep running for a little bit longer. If she wanted to catch him, she was going to need to work harder than that.

  The cameras were close by, and while it was a comforting thought, there was still one detail keeping Atticus from running straight for them. Georgia was too close behind him. Even in the dark, she was likely to notice the shift if he didn’t put more distance between them before he transformed.

  He heard a quiet, “Come the fuck on,” and it was like music to his ears as he circled halfway around a tree and doubled back around, staying near the camera trap but not quite going through it.

  He could hear sirens in the distance, though, so he knew he only had so much time. He just had to wait until she tried to shoot him again, he figured. It would most likely offer the best chance for him to lose her. Not entirely, of course, but enough to transform without being completely exposed.

  It took some time, and he thought maybe she was actually bothering to be careful with her ammunition. But it wasn’t something he needed to worry about.

  He turned, looping through a trio of trees and picking up speed as he heard her fumbling with her shotgun once again. She had to slow down to do so, or else she would just drop the casings on the ground again. It offered a chance for him to pull farther ahead, putting enough space between them that he could transform without her seeing him do so.

  He surged forward, breaking into a sprint for a moment, until he transformed between one stride and the next, four feet leaving the ground and only two feet meeting it again.

  Just outside the area the cameras were monitoring, he slowed just enough to grab the pajama pants that had been stashed nearby. Awkwardly fumbling with them, he managed to hop into one leg and then the other without coming to a complete halt, and once they were on, he burst into a sprint again, straight into the camera trap.

  He heard her shotgun rack a short distance away, and he dropped to the ground, lying flat on the pine needles, one hand covering his head, as she pulled the trigger. The pellets sailed harmlessly over him.

  Cautiously, Atticus sat up and turned over, looking back the way he came just in time to see Georgia stumble into the camera trap. She ground to a halt when she saw him, blinking at him stupidly as if it had completely fled her mind that he might transform at some point.

  She waffled in place for a moment, and then Atticus lunged for her. Considering he outweighed her by more than a small margin, she landed on the ground on her back, all of the air leaving her lungs in a rush.

  Even as she wheezed beneath him, she tried to knee him in the ribs, but she couldn’t work up enough power for it to have much of an effect on him. He pinned her leg with one of his own and grabbed her arms, slamming them down to the ground. Her shotgun left her grip, tumbling away across the ground, coming to a stop well out of Georgia’s reach. Without it, there was essentially nothing she could do against him.

  Atticus shoved her over onto her belly. He pulled her arms behind her back and held her wrists together, and he sat on her, keeping her pinned regardless of how much she squirmed.

  Soon enough, when Atticus looked in the direction of the driveway, he could see the red and blue lights of police cars, and the sirens were loud and clear. Georgia struggled harder, shoulders jerking as she tried to wrench her arms free and legs kicking fitfully, but it was all to no avail. Atticus remained unmoved.

  Eventually, as footsteps became audible even muffled through the pine needles, Georgia stopped struggling. There was no point, and presumably she realized that. She went limp beneath him, though he didn’t relinquish his hold on her wrists.

  *

  Considering the house was a bit off the beaten path, it wasn’t unexpected when it took some time for the police to show up. Casey could hear the sirens first, and she waited until she could see the lights flashing as they came down the driveway before she hurled herself at the front door, threw herself outside, and ran to the driveway to meet them.

  She was summarily guided to a safe place and told to sit down and wait until the coast was clear, and the officers spread out into the woods to look around.

  They didn’t need to look for long before they found Atticus, sitting on Georgia’s back to pin her to the ground. Her shotgun was on the ground just out of reach, and as he pointed off into the distance, he said, “She set up some sort of tiny fort up there. You can’t really miss it.”

  One officer went in that direction while the other two dealt with Georgia, cuffing her hands behind her back and hauling her to her feet. They collected the shotgun, and with Atticus explaining roughly where everything had happened, they even managed to find some spent casings and a few of the pellets before they began to drag Georgia back towards the driveway, where the trio of police cars waited for her to be loaded into one.

  Without waiting for any sort of signal, Casey abandoned her seat by the garage to once again meet the group, tossing herself at Atticus and wrapping her arms around his middle as soon as she saw him. He wrapped his arms around her in return and nearly crushed her to his chest, but the embrace remained rather brief. They still had police officers and an attempted murderer to deal with, after all.

  As Casey thanked the officers profusely and graciously handed over the footage from the security cameras, she took a moment to finally get a look at Georgia as she was loaded into the back of a cop car. She hadn’t been able to before; the security cameras filmed in infrared, so everything in the footage was in shades of green. It was sort of disappointing to realize that she just looked like an average woman.

  Her clothing was clearly expensive, but there was nothing particularly noteworthy about her face. She was an average height. She was only slightly tan. Her brown hair was pulled back in a practical bun. Her eyes weren’
t even an interesting shade of brown. All the trouble she had caused them, and she didn’t even look like a monster. She looked like a PTA mom. She looked boring. It was a little anticlimactic.

  She was perfectly calm as she was loaded into a car and the door was closed, and she remained perfectly calm while she was in the car. It was as if she had already simply accepted the situation. Her plans had fallen through, and she was facing the consequences for them. Casey supposed she could admire the fortitude. She could, but she didn’t. Mostly, she was just sort of disappointed that Georgia didn’t seem broken up in the slightest.

  The knowledge that she would be going away for attempted murder soothed her irritation admirably.

  Everything seemed to happen in a flash after that, until eventually the police were on their way again. They would be in touch, of course. There would likely be a court case. But who knew? They did have footage of Georgia attempting to shoot Atticus with a shotgun on his own property. Casey found it hard to believe she would simply be able to talk her way out of something like that.