Handcuffed to the Bear: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (Shifter Agents Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "Why are you still here?" Mental backpedal. "Wait, I don't mean to be rude. I'm just confused."

  "Understandable. I figured I'd drive you home. Thought you might prefer that to taking a taxi. We don't have any reason to think you're still in danger," he added. "Your place has been checked out and there's no sign anyone's been around to bother you, and the Fallons are all in custody. Still, an SCB escort home from the hospital couldn't hurt."

  She wished he hadn't brought up that thought. Would she always have to keep looking over her shoulder, fearing the worst?

  One day at a time, she told herself.

  She filled out the discharge and insurance paperwork, crossing her fingers against the hope that her insurance would endure past the loss of her job. Then she crutched out of the clinic to Avery's car. It turned out to be a little gas-electric hybrid.

  "Jack makes fun of me for this thing," Avery remarked, putting his cane in the back. He held out his hand for her crutches and helped her stow them. "Which is hilarious coming from a man who drives something that's basically a land boat, with gas mileage to match."

  "This seems very environmentally sensible," she said.

  "Thank you! Finally, someone with a social conscience."

  As the small car pulled smoothly, and almost noiselessly, away from the curb, Casey looked up at the eggshell-blue sky and couldn't hold onto her gloom. It was one of those strikingly beautiful sunny days that Seattle summers were locally famous for (our most closely guarded secret, Wendy used to say; don't let them know or they'll all want to live here).

  And suddenly she wanted to do something to celebrate, even if it was only a little thing. Alcohol was off the table, contraindicated for the assorted painkillers and antibiotics that Dr. Lafitte, by way of the clinic's tiny pharmacy, had loaded her up with. But this was, after all, Seattle ...

  "Could we stop at a coffee drive-thru, please?"

  She ordered the biggest, most indulgent and sugar-laden frappuccino on the menu. Avery asked for a plain latte. As the barista withdrew to make their drinks, Casey gasped in dismay.

  "What's wrong?" Avery asked. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, fine, except I don't have any cash on me. Or credit cards. Because fucking Fallon got rid of it all."

  "It's okay," Avery said. "I'll treat you."

  She hadn't meant to ask, but—"I don't understand why you're doing this."

  "Doing what?" He looked as confused as she felt.

  "Helping me. Going out of your way like this. I get that it's your job, I guess, but buying me coffee isn't your job."

  She felt immediately foolish. But Avery just smiled, seeming unconcerned.

  "Because I want to," he said, and passed her frap over to her.

  There wasn't much she could say to that.

  They drove away from the coffee place with the windows rolled down, the warm summer breeze coming in. "I should have said thank you," Casey said. "That's probably more appropriate than quizzing you about your motivations."

  "You're welcome. Although, actually, I do have a slight ulterior motive. A very tiny one."

  Casey glanced at him sideways. He'd slipped on a pair of sunglasses as soon as they'd left the clinic, which meant she couldn't see his eyes. The wind whipped his dark hair back from his forehead. "What's that?" she asked.

  "You made a big impression on Jack," Avery said. "So I wanted to get to know you a little bit."

  She tried to figure out if he was joking with her or not. "I don't seem to have made much of an impression at all. He hasn't tried to get in touch with me, or come to see me, or anything. I think it's safe to say Jack has decided there's nothing else we need to say to each other."

  "Yeah," Avery said, "you're only saying that because you didn't hear him at the hospital, grilling me and Cho for regular status updates on you. 'How is she doing?' 'Have you seen her yet?' 'How did she look?' 'Oh, no reason.' I told him we should just make a Twitter hashtag for Casey updates, so he didn't have to keep asking all the time."

  "Really?" Casey asked. From the heat in her cheeks, she was very much afraid she was blushing. "I mean, he really asked about me. Not—the other thing."

  "Incessantly, for him. Not that he'll cop to it." Avery tapped his thumbs idly on the steering wheel as he drove. "The thing about Jack is, he's a really personable guy. He gets along well with most people, and he can really turn on the charm when he feels like it. He's got friends everywhere—or I should say acquaintances. Mementos of his, uh ..."

  "Less than savory past?" Casey asked. "He told me about that."

  Avery's eyebrows rose above the smoked lenses of his shades. "Wow, you two did get to know each other. He doesn't even mention to with most people."

  Casey tried not to feel pleased about it. She failed.

  "But he isn't good at taking it to the next level," he went on. "It's not even fear of commitment, exactly. It's more like an instinctive pulling back. He has lots of superficial friends, but very few close ones. And he does the same thing with relationships. It's not that he doesn't want to be close to someone, or even commit to them for a lifetime. Actually, I think he wants it very much. He's just absolutely terrible at it. This is your building, right?"

  The car stopped. Casey looked up from contemplating her nearly empty frappuccino cup, and nodded wordlessly.

  Avery unlocked the doors, but made no move to get out. Instead he sighed and looked over at her. "Look, I know you've got a ton of stuff to deal with, and I didn't mean to give you more. I just felt like you might've got to know the social side of Jack, because that's what he shows most people right off the bat, and then you might be thinking he's not getting in touch because he doesn't like you. Usually, with him, it's kind of the opposite. The more he likes you, the harder he pulls away. Does that make sense?"

  "Yes." She was surprised at just how much sense it actually did make. Because there's something familiar about all of that, isn't there, Casey McClaren?

  "Is it okay if I get your number? I'm sure it's in our paperwork somewhere, but I'd like to text you mine, in case you need to get in touch in a hurry."

  "Should I need to?"

  "Well, hopefully not," Avery said. "Like I said at the hospital, we don't believe you're in any danger at all now. But call us immediately if you have any reason to think you are."

  Very comforting.

  She told him the number. Typing into his phone, he said, "I think Cho warned you, also, that we'll be needing your testimony against the Fallons, probably more than once as they process through the criminal justice system. Is that okay with you?"

  "Yes," she said. There were too many things to think about. Jack. The Fallons. The future.

  Avery paused with his thumbs poised over the screen. "I can text you Jack's number too, if you want it. If you think I'm being a pain in the ass, you can just say no."

  "I ... think I'd like his number very much."

  A tiny smile curled the corner of his mouth. "Will do. I'll give you the address of his condo too, if you promise not to go all creepy stalker on his ass."

  "I promise."

  Her phone chimed. "There you go," Avery said. "I've either done my good deed for the day, or ensured that Jack will be meddling with my love life until the end of time. Possibly both."

  He helped her get her crutches out of the backseat. "Want me to walk you up?"

  "No, thanks. I'll be okay."

  Casey hesitated, and then, screwing up all her courage, she did something she'd almost never done with anyone but Wendy before: she gave him a hug. His look of astonished pleasure made it totally worth it.

  Then she crutched into her building quickly before he could say anything embarrassing.

  One thing she hadn't thought about was the stairs. There were two flights of them. A freight elevator in the back kept the building in technical compliance with ADA regulations, but she decided that she was going to need to tackle stairs sooner or later. The people at the clinic had showed her how to navigate stairs with crutches
.

  ... which turned out to be easier in theory than in practice. By the time she got to the top, she was sweaty and exhausted and, god damn it, hungry again. Well, that's what pizza delivery was for, and thankfully she always kept an emergency supply of cash in an envelope at the back of the closet, so the fact that she currently had no credit cards or ATM card wouldn't be that much of a problem.

  She unlocked her door and crutched inside. Everything was just as she'd left it: small, dark, dingy, and a little bit messy, with a faint lingering smell of cat pee from the previous tenant. Her apartment had always been more of a place to sleep than a place to live.

  And she was unprepared for the awkward sense of dislocation she felt as soon as she stepped through the door. Had it really been only three days since she walked out of this place? She'd been through so much, and yet everything here was—

  —not quite the same, actually. There was a large floral arrangement in the middle of her rickety kitchen table, an extravagant explosion of tiger lilies, daisies, and other cheerful, sunny flowers.

  Casey stared at it. Then she crutched carefully around it into the bedroom. The handgun was still where she'd left it, hidden in her sock drawer. She took it out and then realized she couldn't carry it with the crutches, so she stuck it into a pocket of her sweatpants. Then she checked the closet, the bathroom, and looked out the window, before crutching over to the table and poking at the flowers.

  There was a card with them. It read: Welcome home, Casey! I thought you might like something to brighten up the place. Call if you need anything. xoxo -Cho

  There was a number below it.

  Casey laughed aloud. Not some sort of homicidal-stalker Fallon thing. And, she thought, with the weight of the handgun heavy in her pocket, perhaps she had a little ways to go before she was all right, after all.

  She looked down again at the card in her hand. Welcome-home flowers, for a complete stranger.

  These people.

  Standing there in the middle of her kitchen—so familiar, and so different—she finally lost the fight against tears, and she wasn't even sure why.

  Chapter Twenty

  Time had little meaning for Jack. Recovery was like a kind of hibernation: he'd sleep, roll out of bed, stagger to the bathroom, eat whatever in the kitchen didn't need more prep than opening a package and/or sticking it in the microwave, then stagger back to bed.

  Consequently, he had no idea how long he'd been home (six hours? one day? three?) when the smell of something cooking—something that smelled much better than a can of microwaved soup—slowly penetrated his stupor.

  Also, there were voices. It sounded like his condo had been invaded by a very polite block party.

  He detached himself reluctantly from his bed, fumbled into a shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and groped around for his glasses. Then he lurched out into the living room.

  "Hey!" Cho called from the kitchen, waving a beer at him. "Steaks are on!"

  "Yeah, on my grill, apparently." The door to the patio was open, and most of the amazing smells were coming from there, where Avery and Mila appeared to be having an argument over the optimal time to flip a rare steak.

  "Sit," Dev Tripathi said, moving over to make room on the couch. "We were just trying to figure out whether it would be a good idea to wake you up."

  Eva, leaning against the wall with a beer of her own, grinned at him. "I offered to do it on the assumption that I can probably take you in a fight."

  "You probably can," Jack said, slumping on the couch. "Actually, I think Cho could take me right now."

  "I resemble that remark," Cho said cheerfully from the kitchen, rummaging in the drawers. "By the way, Mendoza would be here, but he had some soccer thing with his kids. The active social life of the single dad waits for no one."

  "The part I seem to have missed is why all the rest of you are here."

  "Because I have a key," Avery said, leaning in from the patio. "And we did bring food."

  "I guess you can stay, then. Since you brought a bribe."

  It wasn't like he didn't understand why they were all there. It was just strange to be fussed over. But in a good way.

  He couldn't help thinking about Casey, and wondering how she was getting along. She'd said she didn't have anyone she was close to. But surely there must be somebody—people to stop by, to bring her things she needed, just to let her know she wasn't alone.

  ***

  By the following day, he was feeling halfway human again. Dr. Lafitte paid him a house call—"How's my most troublesome patient?"—and told him he was doing good for someone who had come in looking like a Rottweiler's chew toy.

  "It's largely superficial, though. You lost a lot of blood, but overall, there's no damage to your organs or your bones. You'll have some new scars to go with your old ones, that's all."

  "Have you been to see Casey, too?" he asked as she packed up her things. "Ms. McClaren, I mean."

  "She was discharged from the clinic yesterday. Doing well, from what I understand."

  She left him with a prescription for painkillers he doubted he'd use, and instructions to keep doing what he was doing. "And drink more fluids."

  "Do I need more fluids?"

  "Most people do," she said with an impish grin. "If I didn't give you some medical advice and just told you to keep doing everything you're doing, you might not feel like you were getting your money's worth."

  "Point taken, ma'am." He smiled back. "More fluids it is."

  Avery showed up shortly thereafter, with a bag of burgers and a six-pack of beer. "The beer is for me. People who got chewed to pieces by lions aren't allowed to have alcohol."

  "Is that actual medical advice, or some sort of punishment?"

  "Do I look like a doctor to you?" Avery flicked the cap off the beer bottle at him. "I came over to see if you're ready to give a full debrief yet, because Stiers is nagging me for it. I can't put her off forever."

  "I thought I did in the hospital."

  "No, you gave her the bare bones while half out of your head on painkillers. Not that it hasn't been useful, and so far, everything in your account checks out perfectly. Eva's team is up there now with Mav Descheenie from Forensics, retrieving evidence." He laughed suddenly. "According to Mila, they picked up both the at-large Fallons at their helicopter, or what was left of it, trying to get it started. Mav emailed me a picture. What did that poor helo ever do to you, man?"

  "I was in too much of a hurry to sabotage it nicely," Jack said. The memory of unfinished business nagged at him. "The remains of the other victims Casey and I found in the caves—are they picking up those?"

  "Eventually." Avery's cheerful mood cooled. "We're going to have a long road ahead of us, matching up remains to victims. God knows how many there are."

  "I know one name we didn't have before. Wendy Lebrun. Casey knew her. She wasn't on the list we had."

  "Damn." Avery rubbed at his temple with his thumb. "You think you know how evil people can be, but then it comes up and kicks you in the face again."

  "Is Debi Fallon being helpful?"

  "Alarmingly so. I don't know how much I trust her—well, okay, I know exactly how much, and it's no further than I can throw her. But so far, it seems like she's playing us straight. She seems to genuinely want to help, and she hasn't lawyered up, unlike the rest of them."

  "She might be more squeamish than the rest of them, but she sat by and let a whole lot of people die. Don't forget that."

  "I haven't. At the very least, even if she gets out of it without charges, she's not going to have the family money to fall back on." Avery grinned wolfishly. "Now that the serial killer story has hit the news—minus the shifter aspects, thanks to Easton and the rest of our PR department—Lion's Share stock has gone through the floor and the basement, and seems likely to just keep plummeting. Plus, everybody who does business with them is now falling all over themselves to backpedal from association with a name that's just become poison."

  "Whi
ch means Casey's going to be out of a job."

  "Well, that's what happens when you get hired by homicidal maniacs. I notice you aren't worried about the other several dozen employees who are now on the job market."

  "She saved my life," Jack said defensively. "It's reasonable to wonder what's going to happen to her. And she's just been through a hell of a thing." He'd seen people implode before, under that kind of stress. He hoped Casey was handling it okay.

  "You could call and see how she's doing."

  "She just went through the worst experience of her life. She probably doesn't want any reminders of it." Like, say, a giant bear-shaped reminder that didn't have the decency to stay out of her life.

  Avery rolled his eyes. "For God's sake, Jack. There's oblivious and there's just obtuse."

  "What?" Jack asked, genuinely baffled.

  His phone picked that moment to twitter cheerfully at him. Saved by the bell.

  Avery, who was closer, lurched out of his chair and picked it up. Glanced at the caller ID. Grinned. Tossed it over.

  Jack didn't recognize the number, but the look on Avery's face said it all.

  Casey.

  Avery mimed holding a phone to his ear, and raised his eyebrows.

  Jack glanced down at himself. He hadn't bothered getting dressed when Avery showed up, so he was wearing nothing but sweatpants and a T-shirt, as well as a number of bandages.

  "Jack!" Avery said, exasperated. "She can't see you. Answer the damn phone."

  By the time he did, though, it had already gone to voice mail.

  "Damn it."

  "This is just painful," Avery said. "You know what? I think I'm going out on the patio to commune with nature for a few minutes." And with that, he limped to the sliding glass doors leading outside.

  "Very subtle," Jack scoffed.

  "As a hammer between the eyes," Avery agreed. "Now, I'm going to give you what passes for privacy in a one-bedroom condo. Call her, Jack."