by Amy Star
She told herself firmly that she wouldn’t check her phone for the rest of the day—the temptation to check her emails, to make sure she wasn’t missing anything important from work, would be too great. She had taken the time off, and she was going to treat it as true time off; that meant not worrying about anything, and not finding reasons to do more work when she was supposed to be resting.
As she turned into the entrance of her apartment community, Nadine frowned; something about the area seemed off, somehow, though she couldn’t say specifically how. She shook off the impression and found the spot she preferred to park in. The complex didn’t offer assigned parking to its residents, and sometimes if she had to stay late, Nadine spent more then ten minutes wandering the area, trying to find a spot that was close enough to her building. She parked the car and grabbed her shopping bag and purse from the passenger seat.
Nadine heard a growl as she climbed out of her car. That sounds pretty big to be a dog, she thought, confused. If someone else has violated the damned pet policy and their stupid mastiff or whatever keeps me up the rest of the afternoon, I swear I am going to report their ass. Nadine grumbled, holding her purse more tightly as she started towards her building. Two months before, one of her neighbors had gotten an enormous dog—Nadine couldn’t remember the name of the breed, but when she’d seen the neighbors walking it, it had looked more like a bear than an actual dog. The beast had spent half the night, every night, barking up a storm, responding to whatever little sound it heard, or to something it had imagined. It had been absolute torture for Nadine, who had barely managed to sleep four or five hours a night while it was there. Someone had eventually complained—but only after two weeks of incessant barking had driven half the building insane. The neighbors had moved out rather than get rid of their new dog.
Another growl, followed by sounds of movement, and Nadine decided that whatever was going on in the complex, she didn’t want to be part of it. She hurried towards the entrance of her building and looked around quickly, her grip tightening on her purse. In her peripheral vision, Nadine saw a blur—someone running. Nadine froze for just a moment, trying to understand what it was she was seeing. She tried to convince herself to keep going, to get into the building and go upstairs to her apartment and put the whole situation behind her. It wasn’t her business, and it wasn’t her problem. But instead she stood a few yards away from the entrance of her building, watching as a man in jeans and a black shirt ran across the complex.
The man moved surprisingly fast. Nadine watched in confusion and fear as he leaped over a decorative hedge that she thought had to be at least four feet tall as easily as if it had been less than half that height, bounding onward—and towards her building. Her heart began to pound in her chest and for the moment at least, Nadine’s headache became the least of her worries.
Her confusion and fear deepened when she saw what was coming after the man: one of his pursuers was a tall, gangly-looking man with dark curling hair, dressed in faded, worn jeans and a white tee shirt already spattered with blood. Right behind that man, to her stunned astonishment, Nadine saw a bear; she rubbed at her eyes and shook her head, but when she looked again the vision was the same: a tall, lean, angry-looking bear with mottled brown and tawny fur, caroming after the first man in pursuit.
“I have lost my mind,” she said, her mouth going dry and her heart stuttering in her chest.
Finally, as her brain filtered through the sight she’d seen, Nadine’s body caught up, propelling her forward; she turned and began to run. But she had forgotten the fact that she’d worn heels to work that morning. After three fast steps, one of the heels caught on a sprinkler head and down she went, tumbling to the ground with a thud that knocked all of the air out of her lungs. She barely heard the growling roar behind her before she felt the thundering of footsteps approaching.
“Get up! Get up you bitch, you’re my insurance now.”
Rough hands grabbed at her waist and Nadine gulped down a breath, the oxygen exploding into her lungs painfully. She started to scream and one of the hands clamped over her mouth, stifling the noise. She felt a sharp prod at her throat and her whole body went cold. Without even needing to see it, she knew the man—the one she’d seen running—had a knife, and that the knife was pressed right up against the pulse point in her neck.
“Stay calm and I won’t have to hurt you,” the man growled in her ear.
“You asshole,” Nadine heard someone say. She carefully turned her head, cringing away from the knife, and saw the other man skid to a stop a few feet away; to her astonishment, as if on cue the bear stopped also, glowering at the man holding her pinned to his body. “Let her go—you aren’t going to get out of this by taking a hostage.”
“You got a car, babe? Point it out to me.”
But Nadine’s arms were frozen at her sides. Her heart pounded in her chest, her blood roaring in her ears as she stared at the man and the bear that were apparently working together to pursue the man who’d snatched her up.
“Let her go,” the dark-haired man said. “You kill her and that’s just another crime you’re going to have to answer for.”
“Please don’t kill me,” Nadine whispered, ashamed at herself for having been grabbed in the first place. All I wanted was to go home and climb in bed and get rid of my headache, she thought mournfully. Her headache was gone—at least for the moment—but Nadine thought she might have actually been better off in the office.
“I got no interest in killing you unless I have to,” the man holding her said. The knife point wavered against her throat. “You help me get out of here and I’ll let you go, no questions asked. You believe me, right?”
“No,” Nadine admitted, shaking her head carefully. “I—I don’t really think I can trust someone who’s holding a knife to my throat.”
The bear, a few yards away, let out a sound that was strangely like a laugh.
“Alex, let her go. You’re already marked, you’re already bleeding, and if you kill her you’re only going to make things worse for yourself.”
“You’re not grabbing me,” the man pointed out. “You don’t want another bystander taken out—so as long as she’s between me and you two, I feel pretty safe.”
The bear let out a low, menacing growl, and Nadine trembled. Why is there a bear involved in this? Who trained a bear to chase people on command?
“Another bystander?” Nadine glanced at the small slice of her assailant that she could see in the corner of her eye.
“It was an accident,” the man said quickly. “You don’t want to be an accident, do you sweetheart?”
Nadine looked at the man and the bear that had her assailant cornered. She couldn’t think of any way that anyone involved in the situation could solve the problem; at least, not without her death. If the two pursuers made a grab for the guy holding the knife to her throat, he would certainly kill her.
“Let’s get to your car, sweetie,” the man said.
Nadine looked at the two pursuers. To her shock, the bear seemed to be shaking its head. Okay that bear is a little too well trained. This is getting incredibly weird.
“I don’t really…feel comfortable moving…while you have a knife at my throat,” Nadine said quietly, keeping as still as she possibly could. “If I move wrong…you’re going to end up killing me.”
“Just let her go, Alex,” the dark-haired man said. “You’re not going to be able to get away from us anyway. The minute you try and get into the car, we’ll take you out.”
“You’re supposed to negotiate with people who take hostages, asshole,” the man—presumably named Alex—holding Nadine said. “Do you want me to kill her?”
“Can we not kill me, please?” Nadine looked at the two pursuers, desperation seeping through her brain. “I know you guys obviously have some kind of situation going on…”
“Let her go,” the dark-haired man said again, firmly. “Killing her or not killing her isn’t going to make any fucking differen
ce.”
“Obviously it makes a difference right now or you’d have been on me already,” Alex said.
Nadine’s fear began to shift around inside of her. All she had wanted was to go home and go to bed to sleep off her headache and now because of two people and a bear, she was potentially going to end up killed. She looked at the bear, which was acting surprisingly un-bearlike, standing on all fours and simply watching, growling occasionally. The bear’s gaze locked onto hers, unblinking, and Nadine’s anger began to blossom.
Acting on impulse, she lifted her foot and thought about the position of her attacker’s body against hers. She brought her heel down where she hoped the man’s instep would be, and felt the sickening jolt of pain as the blow landed, reminding her that she had twisted her ankle only moments before, tripping over the sprinkler head. The man yelped, and the pain in Nadine’s leg evaporated as she felt the sharp slice of the knife at her neck. She elbowed the man in the sternum and barely saw the two pursuers launch themselves forward as she took advantage of the break in her assailant’s concentration to pry herself free of his grip.
Nadine tumbled to the ground, feeling hot, sticky blood sliding down her neck, onto her blouse. She heard growling, a defiant roar—one that didn’t sound like it could have come from the bear—and as she curled in on herself, reaching up to press her fingers against the searing, burning pain of the cut at her neck, Nadine heard the unmistakable sounds of struggle going on a few feet away but her ability to react had deserted her. She lay there listening to the fight in shock until she realized that the noises had come to a stop.
“Check on her,” someone said. Nadine heard a groan, the sounds of some kind of thick, viscous liquid churning, a growling noise, and a moment later she opened her eyes to see a naked man crouched over her, looking down.
“You did good, sweetheart,” the man said, smiling.
Nadine stared up at him in shock and wonder. There were no naked men here like five minutes ago. What is going on? The man before her eyes had a boyish face, eyes that somehow looked both gray and green in the afternoon light, and a broad, skinny chest, marked with a sparse patch of hair in the shape of an almost diamond in the center.
“We’re going to get you some help—but I need you to keep quiet right now, okay?”
“Here, knock her out,” someone said—it sounded like the dark-haired man from before.
Nadine saw a flash of a white piece of fabric, and then felt the wet, rough bunch of it against her nose and mouth. She opened her mouth and took a breath to try and tell the two men—whoever they were—to explain themselves. A cloying, throat-slickening sweetness filled her mouth and nose, and then everything went away in a flood of darkness.
CHAPTER THREE
“It would be safest to drop her off at the hospital, call that Ray guy and have him keep an eye on her,” Matthew said.
Dylan shook his head, dismissing the idea. “She saw Alex. She saw you. She watched a guy and a bear chasing another guy across her apartment complex, got held at knife point, and then might have seen the end of it. A shit-ton of illegal fuckery.” Dylan shook his head again. “We need to keep an eye on her.”
“I’m not the asshole who changed in front of her,” Matthew pointed out.
“She didn’t see me actually change,” Dylan countered. “She saw a bear and she saw a naked guy. Two separate things.” He shrugged. “She can’t know for certain that it’s related.” Dylan glanced into the back of the van as he made his way towards the hospital; they’d have to deal with Alex later, for sure—and it was a dicey proposition to be carting around a corpse when he needed to take a bystander to the hospital—but their hostage seemed to still be breathing, at least.
“How do you think this is going to play out?” Dylan briefly met Matthew’s gaze before turning his attention back onto the road. “I mean, even if we keep an eye on her, she’s got a hell of a story to tell. Do you think we’re going to be able to convince her to keep it to herself?”
“Why not? We’re the good goddamned Samaritans who kept her from being killed,” Dylan said.
“If we’d caught Alex earlier, he wouldn’t have tried to snatch her up in the first place,” Matthew told him. “It was a sloppy fucking job.”
“She’s the only one we know about who saw us,” Dylan said. “We keep her quiet about it, there’s no one to say anything else about what happened. Just the way the client wants it.”
They’d been working for two weeks. Dylan had begun to relax a bit. He knew that the job had gone pear-shaped—someone had tipped Alex off to the fact that they were after him. He’d been forced to change after the were-lion had given chase despite the injuries he’d already sustained. They’d hoped to chase Alex into one of the wooded areas surrounding the apartment complex he’d fled to, where Dylan’s bear form would be of greater advantage. But then Alex had taken a different route, and they’d had to deal with a bystander.
Why’d it have to be a pretty bystander? Dylan glanced at the woman slumped in the back of the van through his rearview mirror. He and Matthew had gone out once or twice—to celebrate their first successful job, to get a feel for the local scene—but thus far Dylan hadn’t managed to find anyone he wanted to fool around with. The woman slumped in the back of the van, unconscious, was undeniably beautiful: the diminutive brunette had a cute face—when it wasn’t planted against the cushion of the seat. He remembered the sight of her, trapped against Alex, knife to her throat; not the most opportune moment, but there had been fire in her big, dark eyes, a fury of color in her cheeks, especially right before she’d kicked into action to get herself free of her attacker. A jolt of heat shot through Dylan, remembering the lush view he’d had of her body: full, heavy breasts, straining at the buttons of her blood-stained blouse, the flare of her hips under a tight waist, and muscular legs, covered in a pair of perfectly fitted slacks.
“I’m just saying that even if we don’t do anything to shut her up, it’s not likely anyone’s going to believe her anyway,” Matthew said, cutting into Dylan’s thoughts. “I mean, Florida Man is a thing that exists.”
Dylan snorted. “What’s this one going to be? ‘Florida Man Tames Bear, Saves Woman From Fleeing Fugitive’?”
“Sure, why not?” Dylan laughed, shaking his head.
“No—we get the good doctor to look her over, and we hang around until she comes to.”
“Both of us?” Matthew looked at Dylan sharply. “In case it escaped your notice, jackass, we have a dead body in the back, along with our wounded bystander.”
Dylan considered. “I’ll watch her while we wait for the doc, you take the van and get the body to where it needs to be and come back.”
Dylan glanced over at Matthew in the passenger seat to make sure that his companion wasn’t about to argue; he could smell the stress in his clan-mate’s pheromones, painting the air with doubt.
“Fine,” Matthew said, nodding finally. “You make sure she doesn’t talk to anyone, I’ll get rid of the body. What story are you going to give them?”
“About her being unconscious?” Dylan smirked. “I’m just the Good Samaritan that found her—I don’t know what happened before then.”
“You really think they’re going to buy that? When two people show up with an unconscious woman with a neck wound and a sprained ankle and one of them leaves?”
“I’ll tell the Doc the real story,” Dylan said, shrugging off the issue. “But at intake all they’ll need to know is what’s wrong with her.”
“They’re going to run a tox screen,” Matthew pointed out. “And then they’ll find the chloroform.”
“So her unknown assailant did it,” Dylan said, dismissing the concern with a wave. “We say we saw some guy trying to jack her car, he tried to knock her out with the chloroform, we arrived on the scene and he made a run for it after giving her a good nick.”
“I’m telling you, man—they’re not going to buy it. She’s stable, so why didn’t we call the cops? Why is
one of us driving off in the van that could have evidence in it?”
Dylan sighed. He slowed down, switching into the right-hand lane on the highway as an excuse to slow down. The woman they’d picked up wouldn’t die any time soon—provided she didn’t wake up and try and snatch the bandage off of her neck. The cut she’d gotten from Alex wasn’t incredibly dangerous, but it would need stitches; her ankle would need to be seen to as well, and Dylan thought that she might need to be treated for shock.
“I don’t think it’s all that likely that they’d let us just drop her on their doorstep anyway,” Dylan pointed out. “I mean, they’re going to want to know how we found her before they let us leave.”
“You just want to stick by her because you’re horny,” Matthew said dismissively.
“You caught a whiff of her too—don’t think I didn’t notice,” Dylan said, smirking.
“She was bleeding!” Matthew scowled at him. “And I wasn’t the one who lapped it up, either.”
Dylan felt heat in his cheeks, remembering that impulse that washed over him; he’d lapped at the blood on the woman’s neck, cleaning the wound, before Matthew had slapped the bandage on her. It had been completely instinctual.
“You have to admit she smells like sex,” Dylan pointed out. “You smelled her too, I know you did.”
“Dude,” Matthew said, sighing and shaking his head. “You can’t get involved. She’s one-natured. She also witnessed us committing what was technically a crime.”
“We’re bounty hunters; we were apprehending a suspect.”
“Not for the cops,” Matthew countered. “For a private client. And now that dude is dead. He’s never going to get to the police—and he never was. We can’t get involved with her. The sooner we disappear from her life, the better.”
“So when she wakes up and tells the docs at the hospital that she saw a guy and a bear chasing someone—a dude who grabbed her and held a knife to her throat…” Dylan gave Matthew a significant look.