by Lauren Esker
Avery touched the envelope with the hand not holding the photo.
"You couldn't save any of these people, even if you wanted to. But you can save Jack."
Please, please let there still be time to save Jack.
For a long time, Debi stared at her lap without reacting. Then she reached out and took the photo from him. She gazed at it as if she was looking through it, then blinked at last and looked up.
"This is your guy?"
"He was undercover, looking into the disappearances of the shifters your family abducted," Cho said. "We lost contact with him."
Debi looked down at the picture again. "Yes," she said, very softly.
"Yes what?" Avery demanded, half rising from his seat. "Yes, you’ve seen him? Yes, they killed him? Yes what?"
"We ... found about him accidentally. He wasn't the target."
Cho's head moved subtly, a quick glance down: checking the recording app on her phone.
"Did you kill him?" Avery hardly recognized his own voice.
"To be sure we're clear," Cho said, with a quelling glance at Avery, "you recognize this photo as Agent Jack Ross, correct?"
"I didn't know his name," Debi said.
"Where is he now?"
She darted a quick look at Avery. "He's still alive. I mean, he was, the last time I saw him. We ... we weren't after him. He just got in the way."
Jack was still alive. At least, he hadn't been killed outright. That was something. "Who were you after?" Avery asked tightly.
Debi chewed her bottom lip. Small drops of blood sprang up along the glossy line of it. "Fallon's administrative assistant."
Avery cast his mind back, trying to remember the dossiers on Fallon's staff. "Casey McClaren?"
Debi gave a very small nod. "She's ... everything you said. Didn't have close friends, even at the company. No family. No one to miss her."
An involuntary growl bubbled up in Avery's throat; he stifled it. "Everyone has someone to miss them."
"I know!" Debi burst out. "I do. It was—it was never meant to go this far, do you understand? It started with hunting animals. I mean, everyone does that. Everyone who shifts into a predator. You do that, right?" She looked desperately at Avery, who nodded. Then her stare of appeal turned on Cho. "And you? I don't know what kind of shifter you are—"
"Gecko," Cho said. "I hunt bugs. Not people."
"But it wasn't supposed to be people!" It was almost a wail. "The problem was, wild game just wasn't challenging enough. We even tried bears, for a while, but when you get a whole pride of lions together, a bear goes down pretty easy. Animals just aren't smart enough to be fun to hunt. It comes down to a matter of brute strength, claw versus claw. Roger didn't like that. He thought we could make it more interesting."
"By hunting people instead of animals," Cho said. Avery stayed quiet.
Debi's chest heaved with short, shallow breaths. "Yes," she said finally. "Yes."
"You didn't agree with it."
"No, but—you don't understand how hard it is to argue with Roger. With the whole pride. You're a pack animal, Agent Hollen—you must know!"
Cho looked disgusted, but Avery did, in fact, understand. Peer pressure to go along with the rest of the group, to bow under and be carried along with the tide of it, was a powerful urge for those who shifted into social animals like wolves or horses, orcas or lions. There were times when he still had to fight it in meetings; his instinctive response to arguments was to capitulate for the sake of group harmony.
And besides, they were her family. She loved them. Even if none of them deserved it.
"Did you ever go along?" Avery asked.
"Only once." Her breath hitched in something that wasn't quite a sob. "It was ... I didn't ... didn't go any more after that. I don't think they knew how much it bothered me. Honestly, I don't think I knew how much it bothered me. I just tried not to think about it too much. Every family has a few points of disagreement, don't they? I did my job, and let them go enjoy their hobby."
"Their hobby of killing people," Cho said, her voice so frigid it would've sent an actual gecko into hibernation. "Just so we're clear on that."
"I know," Debi whispered. She raised her free hand to press against her face.
Avery nudged a box of Kleenex in her direction, though she still wasn't quite crying. It was more a sort of emotional overload.
"Where are Roger and the rest now, Debi?" Avery asked.
Debi shook her head.
"You can save a life, Debi. Maybe two. But you have to tell us."
Her breath caught again, and she whispered, so softly he could barely hear her, "There's an island."
Avery's glance flicked sideways, to meet the electric snap of excitement in Cho's eyes. "What island, Debi? Where?"
"Up the coast a little way. Our family owns it, but it's not in our name."
That plausible-deniability thing again. The Fallons were good at covering their asses. "Holding company?" Cho asked.
Debi nodded. "The name on the paperwork is RMD Investments. For our initials—Roger and Rory, Mara, Debi and Derek."
Cho sprang to her feet and was out the door like a shot.
Avery had to fight down his own surge of eagerness. "What's on the island?"
"Nothing," Debi said, shaking her head. "Nothing at all. Maybe a few falling-down hunting and fishing cabins from before we bought the place, but mostly we just keep it wild to hunt on. And not," she added sharply, "not what you're thinking. Not only what you're thinking, anyway. We keep it stocked with deer and moose and other game animals. Whenever one of us needs a getaway, we'll take the yacht up there and spend a weekend."
As an urban shifter, Avery understood the appeal of a getaway island where a shifter could embrace all the hidden aspects of their nature. It sounded like a dream come true, in fact. "Are Roger and the others up there now?"
Debi gave a silent nod.
Cho stuck her head in. "Well, now we have the name, it took ten seconds to find it in the property records we've been looking at. Stiers is getting clearance from the Canadians right now to send our S&R chopper up the coast. If you want to be on it, better get your ass in gear."
"Coming. Someone get a relief shift in here, okay?"
Cho nodded and vanished. Avery levered himself out of the sucking grip of the couch, staggered a moment before his bad leg would take his weight.
Debi had a crumpled tissue wadded up in her hand; she plucked at it, picking off little pieces and rolling them into balls. "What's going to happen to me now?"
"I don't know. That depends on my boss."
The door opened and Vic Mendoza sauntered in. "Hey, looks like I get to sit out the S&R and keep grilling our guest here. Lucky me. From what I hear, it's monsoon season out there."
Debi looked anxiously at Avery.
"Just cooperate with him," Avery said. Against his better judgment, he patted her on her shoulder, feeling the muscles beneath the business suit. He still wasn't sure if he believed that she'd only gone on one hunt with the rest of them, but it didn't matter now. "The more you can tell us about your siblings' methods and their past hunts, the more chance we can get Casey and Jack out of there alive."
"Y'all have fun storming the castle," Vic drawled.
Avery limped quickly out the door, almost running into Eva in the hall.
"Gear up and meet us at the helipad," she was saying into her radio. "If we're gonna make it anywhere, we gotta go now. It's pouring buckets out there, and blowing a regular hurricane up the coast—" She looked up and saw Avery. "Oh no, you aren't coming."
"Oh yes, I am. What do I need to get?"
"We're up against a whole pride of lion shifters, Hollen."
"Yeah, and you're leaving one of your heavy hitters behind to guard the lion shifter here. You need all the bodies you can get. And you know I can handle myself just fine in the field."
Eva planted her fist on her hip. "All right," she said. "But I'm point on this one. You come with me, yo
u're part of my team. If that means I decide you stay in the chopper for backup, that's what you do."
"Agreed."
"As for what you need, we've got the usual arsenal on board, but you better grab a rain slicker." Eva smiled, and for a moment Avery glimpsed the killer whale lurking beneath the human skin she wore. "We're gonna get wet."
Chapter Twelve
Once Casey had warmed up enough that she was no longer helplessly shaking, she sat up on her lynx haunches.
She wished she could tell how badly Jack was hurt. She smelled blood all over him, but couldn't see anything through his heavy, shaggy fur.
Restlessly, she paced to the mouth of the cave. Rain was still coming down outside, though not as hard as it had been. She could see a long way down the mountainside. Runnels of water coursed between the stones, tiny streams born as quickly as they would die when the rain stopped.
There was no sign of the lions ... yet. She was afraid to turn her back on the mouth of the cave. She couldn't shake the fear that as soon as she did, they'd spring on her from behind. Even sniffing the air and smelling no sign of them was not enough to calm her nervousness. Heavy rain could kill scents, beat them right out of the air. And after the rain passed, the wet ground would hold their smell for days; they couldn't go anywhere without being found.
Her face burned. She pawed at it again, even knowing it wouldn't help. The yellowjackets had stung her on her ear and cheek and, most unpleasantly, the inside of her mouth.
At least now I know I'm not allergic.
She put her head out in the rain for a minute, closing her eyes. The cold water helped soothe the sharp pain in her face. When the comfort started to be overwhelmed by the unpleasantness of the cold, she pulled her head back in and shook the water off.
It was wonderful to be able to turn into a lynx again. She'd never spent much time in her lynx form, but it had still felt like having half her soul locked away. Now she could keep warm; she could run; she could find food.
If it weren't for the homicidal maniacs hunting me, I could live very well out here ...
She turned to look at Jack. In the gloom under the cave's overhang, he was nothing but a shaggy mound of fur like a pile of old carpets, lifting and settling slowly as he breathed.
It was probably best to let him sleep. He'd heal better that way.
She began to prowl around the cave, exploring. The handcuff on her wrist was a bother, dragging along on the ground. After biting at it uselessly, she shifted back to her human form and refastened the second cuff above the first one on her wrist. It still jingled a bit, but at least now it wasn't constantly snagging on things.
She eased back into her lynx skin, and the shivering discomfort of her wet, naked human body was replaced by the comfort of a furry predator who was in her element here. The enticing scents of small rodents tickled her senses. There were a lot of them, small living creatures who had lived their entire lives here, even leaving their bones behind when they died.
She flushed a tiny vole and ate it in two snaps of her teeth before she really had time to think about it. She was probably going to feel weird about that when she shifted back, but as a lynx she had no problems with it. The world is full of food; what of it?
She began to hunt more carefully, but the rodents were wise to the predator in their midst now, and had retreated to their burrows. Eventually she managed to successfully stalk a ground squirrel, and this she took to Jack, laying it beside his nose where he would find it when he woke up.
Besides rodent colonies, the other thing the cave had a lot of was moss. Casey dug a bunch of it up with her claws and then shifted to human form, carrying it armload by armload to drop beside Jack. When he woke up, it would give him something to lie on.
Ugh. My mouth tastes like vole.
But the work kept her warm, even in her bare human skin. She knew she should probably lie down and rest, but the way everything ached, she was afraid if she did, she wouldn't be able to get up again.
When we get out of here, I'm going to sleep for a week. No, a month.
When ...
She stopped and tipped her head to the side. At some point it had stopped being "if" and started being "when". She was starting to believe Jack's assurances that they might get out of this.
Don't get ahead of yourself, Casey.
But her confidence was higher than it had been since she'd woke up last night with Jack handcuffed to her wrist. Maybe, she thought, it was just the contrast between the desperation of the past few hours and the comparative safety of their current location. Not that they were anything like safe, not yet, but it was the first time they hadn't been outside and running. Now they could stop, take stock, and rest a bit. And she was able to shift again, and had something in her stomach for a change. Even if it was a vole; ugh ...
She shifted to make sure the vole stayed down. Jack seemed to be sleeping comfortably, so she went to explore further.
Their cave was part of a much larger cave complex, a series of connected caves running the length of the rocky overhang they were sheltering beneath. Sometimes she had to scramble over places where the ceiling had slumped, or duck out into the rain and then back into the dry. Her level of anxiety and alertness ramped up the farther she got from Jack, and when she couldn't take it anymore, she turned and trotted back the other way, sniffing the air as she went.
Something was starting to bother her. It had to do with the rodent bones. Sure, it made sense there would be some bones from small dead creatures up here. They couldn't live very long, and some of them would probably die in the cave.
But ... there were a lot of bones. Her paws kept whispering over them. Sometimes they broke underfoot with little dry crunches. And not all of them were rodent-tiny. Some were actually kind of large. Like this one ...
She shifted back and knelt to pick up the bones, one at a time. She didn't really know bones very well, but it had been some kind of medium-sized creature, she thought. And the skull was definitely not from a vole or a squirrel. She turned it over in her hands, looking at the large eye sockets, the blunt fangs—
When she realized what she was looking at, she dropped it, and screamed.
She was pressed against the wall, shaking, as far away from the bones as she could get, when a vast dark bulk loomed in the mouth of the cave. Casey screamed again, then subsided into gasping when the great dark looming thing melted into humanform Jack.
"Casey. Hey." He limped to her side, stumbling and half-falling at the end. "Hey, hey. What's wrong? What happened? Did the lions come back?"
Casey shook her head vigorously. She wiped her hair out of her eyes, swallowed, got a grip on herself. It was stupid. They were just bones. They couldn't hurt her—and, just as importantly, they were long past suffering now. "I found ..." She swallowed. Pointed. "I found those."
Jack went to look. He figured it out a lot faster than she had. "Oh," he said softly, cradling the skull in his hands. "This is ... was a bobcat, I think."
"Not a normal bobcat."
"No," Jack said quietly. He set the skull gently and reverently back on the ground.
"Wendy was an ocelot."
They both looked around. The caves weren't a complete charnel ground; the bones were scattered, a few here, a few there. An odd one caught Casey's eye, weirdly twisted like bleached deadwood. Then she realized she was looking at someone who'd died in the act of shifting. Shifters always stayed dead in the shape they'd worn when they died, but she had never imagined that before.
She shuddered and looked away. "Someone should collect them. Figure out who they are. Return them to their families."
"Someone will," Jack said. "But not us. Not now."
He was leaning against the wall of the cave now, sitting with his head tipped back against the stone. He looked pale and unwell.
"No," Casey agreed. "Not now."
After a little while, she slid her arm under his shoulders and helped him up.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack had awakened to find Casey gone. His first reaction was an instinctive panic that startled him even more than her absence. He pushed himself up, sniffing the air frantically. After a moment he caught her lynx scent, and heard small rustles not far away. She was exploring the cave. There was no hint of lion smell on the air, so he lay back down again, knowing he should get up and join her, but unable to make himself move.
He felt awful. It wasn't just the pain of the places where the lions had savaged him, but also the overall drain of his body struggling to repair it. He ached as if with arthritis; he felt both feverish and freezing at the same time. It was like being down with a nasty case of flu.
Well, you knew you'd pay later for pushing yourself so hard.
His nose bumped the limp body of a dead ground squirrel. Casey's scent was on it. He swallowed it in a quick bite. It wasn't much, but it gave his body a little to work with, at least.
He was desperately thirsty, but didn't want to move.
Casey's scream, it turned out, was the one thing that could galvanize him into action. He lurched out into the rain, stumbling on shaky legs, knowing only that he had to find her. Help her.
... which, as it turned out, was unnecessary. There was nothing to save her from, only the bones of the dead, and the tragic story they told.
Reluctantly he let her help him back to the other cave, which was, mercifully, free of the bones of the lions' victims, at least in their immediate vicinity. He paused to drink from a puddle of rainwater, cupping it in his hands, and then Casey eased him down onto a soft bed of moss. He was shivering with cold, but couldn't summon the energy to shift back into a bear.
Casey busied herself gathering more moss and piling it on him.
"This isn't necessary," Jack said, although his voice cracked in the middle, betraying him.
"It's not going to improve my survival chances if I let you die."
She needed something useful to do to keep her mind off what she'd just found. Jack lay back and let her do it. A memory came to him from nowhere: his mother, after his father's death, frantically cleaning the kitchen, over and over, then the bathrooms, the entire house, until everything gleamed and not a single toy or dishcloth was out of place. But still she scrubbed it. Scrubbed everything. He hadn't thought of that in years.