by T. S. Joyce
She folded herself carefully into the creaking leather chair in front of the desk and settled her stack of notebooks into her lap. Reynolds was wearing a black, three-piece suit, and more power to the man for dressing well, but this wasn’t a corporate business meeting.
He gestured to her with an open palm. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Aren’t we waiting for Darren?”
He blinked slowly. “Darren isn’t working for me anymore. He couldn’t follow directions.”
The way he talked down about Darren, as if he were a petulant child who couldn’t mind rules, grated against Danielle’s nerves. She hadn’t liked the guy either, but when she’d initially met with him, he’d seemed professional enough and passionate about the environment here.
Reynolds lifted his eyebrows and clasped his hands on the desk between them, the picture of impatience.
Clearing her throat, she pulled a stack of printed notes from the front flap of her biggest journal. “I’ve printed off the most important findings for you as a quick reference for what I’ll be talking about.” She slid the paper-clipped papers across the desk.
Reynolds lifted his hands so she could push the papers under them, but he didn’t look down at her notes. He only stared blankly ahead at her.
Uneasiness spread through her, making it hard to focus on the notebook she held clutched in her shaking hands.
“The infestation is much worse than previously thought,” she began. “The beetles have demolished, or are in the process of demolishing, more than a quarter of the trees here already. Worse than the loss of the trees, though, is the loss of balance in the ecosystem. Native animals and insects that make their homes in and around these infected trees are already being affected. In small quantities, the pine beetles can be beneficial, serving to wipe out old and sick trees to allow for sunlight to reach the pinecones on the forest floor. But it has been so dry and hot in recent years and the forest is mostly made up of mature trees with fewer saplings that the beetle population has exploded. They use the bark to lay their eggs under, and they also introduce a blue fungus to the tree that slowly stops water and nutrient flow, eventually starving the tree. With the ongoing drought, the trees are already stressed and susceptible to the beetles. The land owner who hired crews to clear territory in sections is onto something. At this rate, the living ponderosa and lodgepole pines won’t be salvageable and will sicken like the others at an alarming rate.”
“Fascinating.” The way Mr. Reynolds said it made it seem like he wasn’t interested at all. “Now, share with me some information I could actually use. Tell me everything you know about Denison Beck and his brother, Brighton.”
Shock slashed through her chest and sucked the air out of the room, congealing the oxygen in her lungs. “I was hired to study the beetle problem in this area. That is what I’m trained in, and that’s the only reason I took this job. If you have questions about anything else, I can’t help you.”
Mr. Reynolds opened a drawer beside him and pulled out a stack of glossy eight by ten pictures, then slid them in front of her.
The horror and gore of the picture in front of her made her gasp and cover her mouth with her hands. A woman in a lab coat lay on a sterile-looking tile floor, her stomach ripped to shreds and her throat torn out.
“You don’t have to play coy with me, Ms. Clayton. I’m fully aware of what Denison is. I realize you likely feel an unnecessary loyalty to him, which is why I chose you to spy on the Ashe Crew.”
She couldn’t take her eyes away from the woman in the picture.
“You see, Denison is a murderer. So is Brighton.” He brushed his palm across the stack, fanning out the gruesome images.
All featured a man or woman in a lab coat, their middles covered in crimson and unrecognizable as human anatomy.
“This victim of their savage rage,” he whispered, pulling the last one from the stack, “was my wife.”
The blond woman stared back at the camera with a blood-smattered face and glossy, vacant eyes. Even in death, she looked horrified.
But Danielle had heard the other side of this story, and a slow fury built in her veins. “Were you there?” she asked in a strangled voice.
“Yes. I witnessed their brutality firsthand.”
“No, I mean,” she gritted out, looking up, “were you cutting them and bleeding them and torturing them with these other doctors?” She spat out the last word like a curse.
A slow, cold smile drifted across his face. “I see you’ve grown sympathy for the plight of these animals, but I assure you, they are no more than servants to their instinct to kill. These doctors had families and homes. They had names and were real people.”
“Denison and Brighton are real people, too. They have value, and you tortured them. Your team deserved what they got. They shouldn’t have been experimenting on people. Blame yourself for what happened in that dungeon, you pompous prick. You kidnapped two innocent kids from their family. They were kids! And you cut them and bled them. You took strips of their flesh.” A sob clogged her throat, and she gritted her teeth and swallowed it down. “You took Brighton’s voice, and for what? What purpose did it serve to torture them?”
“We took Brighton’s voice box to study how he was able to talk like a man and growl like an animal at the same time. It was a scientific enigma until we studied him. Our research has merit. We are able to study evolution as it’s happening thanks to my research, you ungrateful cunt. You have no idea how valuable my work is.”
“It’s not evolution that is happening here! They aren’t some super race. They aren’t human’s morphing into animals. Their genetic make-up hasn’t changed since the dawn of man, so you’re wrong. You’re studies are worthless. They have nothing to do with you or me or where our species is headed. They are separate. Just a small group on the endangered list, trying to survive douche wagons like you who think you are superior enough to hurt people in the name of science. Fuck science, and fuck you.”
She stood and spun for the door, determined to not say another word to this man. Denison and Brighton might have killed those people, but it was in self-defense after unspeakable things had been done to them. Whatever revenge Reynolds was seeking for his wife’s death, Danielle wasn’t going to be any part of it.
The crack of metal on metal sounded, and she froze, her hand on the doorknob.
“Turn around,” Reynolds growled out.
She dropped the notebooks with a clatter on the wooden floorboards, then held up her hands in surrender as she turned and stared in horror down the short barrel of his handgun.
“Your little animal lover tirade doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, Ms. Clayton. My team is already hunting your friends. I just needed you out of the way as my bargaining chip. Didn’t want you getting caught in the firefight before I was able to use you.”
“I won’t help you hurt them,” she whispered, tears of determination stinging her eyes.
“Then you’ll die for them. For those animals.”
“No,” she said on a breath. “I’ll die for the people I love. You’re the animal.”
Reynold’s eyes went cold and vacant like the corpses in the pictures.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirteen
Son of a bacon sandwich, Danielle’s arm felt like she’d shoved it in a bonfire. That dickhead shot her right square in the shoulder, and now she was bumping and bouncing around in the back of Mr. Reynold’s SUV, pretending to be passed out.
Gritting her teeth, she wiped her bloody hand on her pants and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Dear goodness, let it be on silent. She poked the home screen, and it switched over soundlessly. With a little huff of relief, she tried to call Denison. Three times it went straight to his voicemail without ringing, and she spouted off a string of expletives in her mind for the shitty cell phone reception at the trailer park and up on the job site.
Think, think, think. Reynolds said he had a team who were after the Ashe Crew,
and she hadn’t a guess if they were outnumbered or not. She did think they had guns, though, which would give them an advantage. Reynolds obviously knew what he was dealing with, and she doubted his team would show up unprepared with little puff pistols.
If anything happened to Denison…or Brighton or Brooke and her unborn baby. Or Tagan or Skyler or…
No, she couldn’t think like that. She had to focus, ignore the pain fogging her mind and try to help them.
She didn’t have anyone else’s number in the Crew, not even Brooke’s or Skyler’s. She didn’t have a single werebear number but Denison’s.
And Matt’s.
Grimacing at the pain in her shoulder, she searched for the number that buttface had plugged into her phone that first night at Sammy’s Bar. The idiot had listed himself as Hot Matt.
Matt, she texted. I need help.
She held her breath, waiting. The cutoff for her cell phone reception was coming any time now as Reynolds drove toward Asheland Mobile Park.
The cell phone vibrated in her clutched hand, and she closed her eyes in relief before reading the screen.
Who is this?
Danielle. Need your crew’s help. Ashe Crew in trouble.
Are you fucking with me right now?
No! Researchers hunting us. Guns. Up on the job site. I’ve been shot. Please hurry!
If this is a joke, I’m going to kill you.
The bars on her cell phone dropped to zero, and the next text she tried to send came back failed.
The screen was covered in sticky red fingerprints, and she watched numbly as her now useless phone turned off. She’d done all she could do, and it hadn’t been enough. Matt wasn’t going to tell his alpha or show up to help. She’d watched the fierce competitiveness at the Lumberjack Wars. They were three separate crews, each watching out for their own.
She couldn’t move her arm anymore. Couldn’t feel anything below her elbow, really. The corners of her vision shattered inward, and she clung to idea that she had to stay awake to help Denison. She had to do…something. Her vision blurred, then doubled, and she clutched her shoulder through the pain to try and staunch the bleeding. The carpeted floorboard was rough against her skin, and she tried to concentrate on the door handle on the back door—the one she’d tried to open four times now. Everything grew dimmer until she couldn’t see anything at all.
Apparently, Reynolds was very good at trapping things.
****
“Rise and shine, Ms. Clayton. I have big plans for you.”
Danielle cracked open her eyes as something stinging rang across her cheek, but everything in front of her was out of focus, as if she’d taken a shot the size of a fifth of whiskey. Pain burned down her arm and throbbed through her temple as she tried desperately to figure out where she was.
Reynolds was taking off his jacket in front of the opened back door of the SUV she was lying in. Her mouth dry as cotton, she struggled to prop herself up on her good arm.
“Faster, love. We don’t have all day.” Reynolds grabbed her shredded shoulder, blasting agony down her arm as he yanked her from the vehicle.
Her ears rang, and belatedly, she realized that awful screeching sound was her own screaming.
“Danielle!” Denison yelled, pulling her from the loop of confused anguish she’d been stuck in.
The scene before her would haunt her for the rest of her life, however short that might be. The machinery of the Ashe Crew’s jobsite hadn’t even been turned off, and it rumbled, drowning out any wood song from the forest beyond. A bear lay motionless except for the ragged rise and fall of his stomach in front of the processor. Denison and the others had been lined up along the edge of the landing with men dressed in black uniforms holding guns against the backs of their heads as they knelt in the dirt. Skyler was nowhere to be seen, but Brooke was crouched on her knees at the end with a bleeding gash across her temple. Tagan wouldn’t look at Danielle, but something was wrong with his face. A constant stream of blood flowed from his chin. Kellen was beside him, eyes on his alpha as if awaiting an order Tagan didn’t seem able to give.
And Denison… Half of his face was covered in red, and his jeans were stained dark on one leg. When he laid eyes on Reynolds, who was shoving Danielle toward them from behind, he went white as a sheet, and his pupils dilated to pinpoints. From here, his eyes looked completely silver. When he turned to Brighton, who was kneeling beside him, his brother wore a similar expression of horror and recognition.
Danielle wanted to kill Reynolds. She wanted him to pay for what he’d done to her bears. She burned to avenge them. Her anger mixed with the pain in her shoulder as he jerked her to a halt.
She struggled against him, yanking her ruined arm from his grasp, but cold metal pressed against her temple, and the crack of a gun cocking was deafening so close to her ear.
She bit her lip hard to stifle the oncoming tears and dragged her gaze to Denison’s. He shook his head slightly in a silent order to stop fighting.
“So this is about revenge,” Denison said, blinking slowly and bringing his hate-filled gaze to land over her shoulder on Reynolds.
“Oh, it’s more than revenge. It’s the end of a long, satisfying hunt. I was happy to drag it on. To let you feel like you were safe up here in these mountains surrounded by people you thought could protect you from your fate, but I’m afraid my timetable has changed in recent months. I’m sick, you see. My disease is chronic and debilitating, and my doctor says I have only a few months to live. I need your bite, so killing you wouldn’t reward me. It would doom me. And I’d like to think I’m a much savvier hunter than that. I studied the tissue samples we took from you and from Brighton. The regenerative properties were astounding. You baffled my team, and that’s not an easy feat. We tried to sicken your tissue with every disease known to man, and nothing weakened it. So,” Reynolds ground out, shoving the gun harder against Danielle’s head as his fingers wrapped around her throat. “Who wants to do the honors?”
Danielle shook her head at Denison. “Don’t. Don’t give him a bear. He doesn’t deserve one.”
Reynold’s grip tightened, cutting off her air completely, and she scrabbled against his hands with her fingertips.
“How about I count to three. I’d really like Denison or Brighton to do it, for old time’s sake. You’ll all die for what Denison did to my wife, but if you are good little animals and give me what I want, I’ll let this one go.”
“He won’t!” she gasped out. She was going to pass out again soon, but she’d be damned if the last thing Denison did was give this man what he wanted. Not for her. Reynolds had taken way too much from him already.
“One,” Reynolds said.
Denison looked at his brother, and Brighton’s shoulders sagged in defeat. His eyes had gone dead as he looked off into the woods behind them.
“Two.”
Denison struggled to his feet, favoring his bloodied leg.
“Don’t,” she pleaded, struggling to drag air molecules to her suffocating lungs.
“Let her go first,” Denison said in a tired tone that said he’d already made up his mind. “At least act like you won’t chase her down the minute you kill us.”
Reynolds chuckled, and she cringed away from the sound so close to her ear. He shoved her forward, releasing his strangle hold on her neck and said, “Deal.”
Denison caught her before she fell. “Run,” he murmured against her ear as he settled her on her feet.
Her face crumpled as tears streamed down her cheeks. She knew what she could and couldn’t do, and she couldn’t walk away from her people. Not knowing what was about to happen to them. “I can’t leave you like this.”
“Badger,” he gritted out. His voice dipped to a barely audible whisper. “I need you out of the way.”
In the distance, an animal roared, and then another, the noise lifting the fine hairs on Danielle’s arms. The woods filled with bellowing grizzly battle cries.
The corner of Deniso
n’s lip turned up. “You clever girl,” he whispered.
“What the fuck was that?” Reynolds asked a pair of men with semi-automatic weapons trained on the forest behind them. “I told you to subdue all of them.”
A giant falcon screeched from above them as she rode the air currents over the landing. Skyler.
Denison lunged at Reynolds as he brought the gun up toward the bird and wrenched his wrist until the clean snap of his bone could be heard.
“Now!” Tagan roared, his face morphing into something horrifying as the alpha spun and jerked the weapon out of his assailant’s hands. Chaos and gunfire erupted. One by one, bears ripped out of her friends in blonds and browns, blacks and reds.
But not Denison and not Brighton. They fought human.
Denison hooked his fingers around Reynold’s throat and slammed him down onto the ground with a sickening thud.
“Run!” he yelled, casting her a blazing look that dumped adrenaline into her system and got her legs moving.
Disoriented, she ran low, afraid of the zinging bullets as she made her escape. Ahead, a line of giant grizzlies was charging the clearing. A scream clogged her throat as they thundered past her without a single glance. Their gazes were murderous and intent as they joined the battle behind her.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” she murmured, as she skidded to a halt near the Bronco and watched her friends fight for their lives.
The gunfire had ceased, and men’s screaming echoed down the mountainside. Fur and Teflon blurred until she couldn’t make out anything in the pandemonium. She searched for Denny, and her heart faltered as she saw him dragging Reynolds out of the fray. Her mate was holding an ax and wore a deadly expression as he slammed the man who’d tortured him and his brother against a tree.
Brighton followed behind, and Denny didn’t even look at him as he turned and tossed his twin the ax. Brighton caught it with one hand, and in a motion as smooth as river water, he pulled it back, rotated his hips, and slammed the blade toward Reynold’s neck.
With a yelp, Danielle covered her ears and turned away before she could see the rest. That evil man had earned his death, but she didn’t have to watch it.