Bearista

by Zoe Chant

  Sandy only ate half his burger, so Gaby had it wrapped up while Derek paid the bill. He carried Sandy out to the car, ketchup-stained T-shirt and all, with one of the little boy's chubby arms thrown trustingly around his neck.

  He had never imagined that this could be his life.

  "Do you see anywhere around here that sells clothes?" Gaby asked. "At some point we're gonna run out of Keegan's spare shirts. And Sandy got his shoes wet in the creek this morning."

  The best they could find was a small sporting goods store. Gaby balked at the prices, but Derek insisted on paying, and they let Sandy pick out a few things he liked.

  "This looks about your size, doesn't it?" Derek asked Gaby, holding up a women's T-shirt in pink camo.

  "Pink's not really my color." She wrinkled her nose at him when he held it up against her chest. "Derek, letting you buy clothes for Sandy is one thing, but buying stuff for me—"

  "—is something I'm more than happy to do. Let me treat you." He tossed the pink shirt into their basket. "Pink camo it is."

  "Oh, for—" Gaby reached to snatch it out, then hesitated. "Well, my mom might like that. Derek, are you sure you don't mind?"

  "Pick out a few things for each of you. Gaby, please believe me. I don't mind at all. I've got a savings account that's just sitting there, not doing anything except stacking up interest." He kissed her, slow and lingering, enjoying the taste of her sweet lips. "You've been taking care of everyone for years. Let someone take care of you for awhile."

  They walked out with bags full of their purchases, Sandy chattering happily and clinging to his mother's hand. Derek had also picked up a kid-sized fishing pole, because he wanted to find out if there were fish in the creek, and he'd seen some fishing tackle back at the cabin.

  Gaby giggled.

  "What?" Derek asked her.

  She nodded back toward the store. "I think the clerk thought we were a family. I mean, he thought you were Sandy's dad."

  "Oh," Derek said, startled. He looked back at the store. "Do you mind? I mean, I could have set him straight—"

  "Only if you mind," she said, somewhat shyly.

  "Hell—uh, heck no. Not at all. I ..."

  He wasn't really sure what he was feeling, honestly. It was a warm feeling that welled up from deep inside him, satisfying to both Derek and his bear.

  Maybe this was what belonging felt like.

  "Mr. Derek?" Sandy asked.

  "Yeah, kid?"

  "Are you dating my mom?"

  Derek looked at Gaby. She ducked his gaze, her brown skin darkening as she flushed.

  "I'd ask your mom, kid."

  "Mom?" Sandy said, tipping his head back. "Are you dating Mr. Derek?"

  "Yeah, hon," she said, her flush deepening. "I think I am."

  Derek held out his hand. Gaby slipped her fingers into it.

  They walked back to the car like that, hand in hand in hand.

  Sandy was tired out, almost starting to nod off, as Gaby buckled him in. Derek looked forward to getting back to the cabin, settling in, locking all the doors, and having a quiet evening in relative safety. Still, there was that nagging sense that something wasn't right.

  "Have you called your mom?"

  Gaby nodded. "Right before we ate lunch. Everything was fine; she was just reading her book. Do you want me to try again?"

  "No, I'm just being overly cautious, I think."

  He twisted the key in the ignition. The car roared to life, along with a sudden, startling rattle from under the hood. Gaby jumped.

  "Well, that doesn't sound good," she said as Derek hastily reached for the ignition key.

  "No, it sure doesn't." He paused before he turned it off. The rattle had been short-lived, and now the engine had settled down to its usual smooth purr. Derek couldn't think what would make a noise like that, when the engine had been running just fine yesterday and this morning. Something jolted loose on the rough road, maybe? A rock thrown up into the engine somewhere?

  He shut it off, got out, and looked under the hood, while Gaby craned out the passenger-side door. Nothing was visibly wrong. Derek tested some connections with his fingertips, leaned over to look over the cylinders and fan belt. The nice thing about an old car like this was that everything was out there where you could see it; unlike a modern car's engine, it wasn't a densely packed mass of hoses and electronics. If something had broken loose, he ought to be able to see it.

  He crouched down and peered underneath the front end of the car. A glint of metal on the gravel caught his eye immediately. Derek stretched a long arm under the car. Probably just a dropped earring or a loose bolt or something, hopefully not anything that would be difficult to replace in a small town like this—

  As soon as he got it out into the light, his stomach dropped about ten feet.

  "What?" Gaby asked, seeing his face.

  Derek turned it over in his fingers, a little piece of metal and plastic about half the size of a credit card.

  He'd looked for a tracking device earlier. He just hadn't looked hard enough.

  They were making the things so goddamn small these days. That asshole must have crawled under the car and stuck it all the way up inside the engine, where he'd have had to tear apart the whole engine to find it.

  And he probably never would have found it, if not for two trips over that rough road knocking it loose.

  "Gaby, you got bars on your phone? Call the cabin."

  The urgency in his voice silenced any objections she might have made. She punched in the number and held the phone to her ear while Derek opened the hood and took a quick look over the engine for anything else visible, any sign of more bugs or sabotage. He didn't see anything—but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

  There could be a tiny hole in the brake line, wearing out slowly, waiting to snap.

  There could be another tracker, hidden even better.

  "It's just ringing," Gaby reported. "No answer."

  "Get Sandy," Derek said. "I'm going to need you to—"

  And there he stopped, because there was nowhere safe to leave them.

  Ghost knew where they were. He knew all their movements. He knew they'd been in town all afternoon.

  Every instinct screamed at him not to take his mate into danger -- especially with her cub, who he had started to think of as his cub as well. But there was simply nothing else to do. What was he going to do, push her out at the side of the road? Take the time to drive around town and find a motel, when it was always possible that he hadn't found the only bug on the car, and Ghost might follow her there anyway?

  No choice.

  And, with Luisa in deadly danger, no time.

  There was no way Ghost wasn't in these mountains already. He'd had the better part of a day and night to track them down. Derek hadn't smelled him around the cabin—but he wouldn't have. Ghost was a pro, and he knew he was up against a bear shifter. He knew Derek's sense of smell would be as keen as his own. He'd have done exactly what Derek would have done in his place: stayed upwind, watched through binoculars, waited for his chance ...

  Such as the rest of them going off and leaving an old woman alone.

  No point in kicking himself for it now, though. All they could do was deal with the situation as it stood.

  "Derek?" Gaby asked. She was gripping her phone in both hands, staring at him. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "This is a tracker," he told her, holding it up. He dropped it and ground it under his boot heel, feeling the electronics crunch and pop on the gravel.

  The blood drained out of her face, leaving her gray. "Mom," she whispered.

  "I have to find somewhere safe to leave you and Sandy. Somewhere public, maybe—"

  "No!" Gaby shook her head vigorously. "The only place I feel safe is with you. Wherever you leave us, he can find us."

  She was horribly right.

  "Okay, we're going back to the cabin. You'll stay in the car with Sandy, I'll get Luisa and your stuff, and then we'll get out of h
ere. Okay?"

  Gaby nodded wordlessly.

  "Mom, what's going on?" Sandy asked anxiously from the backseat.

  "Nothing's wrong, honey," Gaby said, taking her seat. Only Derek could see that she was trembling, holding herself in control by sheer force of will. She looked close to tears.

  Give her something to do.

  "Here." He tossed his phone to her. "I just unlocked it. Look up Keegan and call him while I drive. Tell him everything."

  That kept her busy while Derek roared out of town, driving so fast on the rural road that the car was airborne half the time.

  He slowed when he turned onto the driveway leading up to the cabin. Ghost, like Derek, had a mercenary background. That meant he knew how to set traps. And if Derek was going to set a trap, this was where he'd do it.

  "I've lost reception," Gaby said, her voice faint. "Keegan says he's sending help, but—but it's going to take awhile to get out here."

  "Mom?" Sandy asked in a small voice.

  "It's okay, honey."

  "It'll be fine, bucko," Derek told him, crawling forward over the ruts in the driveway. "Just listen to your mom and do whatever she tells you. Okay?"

  "Okay," Sandy whispered.

  "Why are you driving so slowly?" Gaby demanded, clutching the door handle as if she planned to jump out of the car and run ahead.

  "Making sure the road's okay."

  "Why wouldn't the road be okay? We just drove it a couple of hours ago. It's not going to magically not be okay now."

  "It would if someone did something to it."

  "Oh," she whispered, and fell silent.

  Like that. There, ahead of them: a trip wire across the driveway, right at car-bumper height.

  No telling what it was attached to—a deadfall, an explosive device, something to puncture the car's tires? He braked hard. The smart thing would be to back the car out to the road, leave Gaby and Sandy in the car, and go in on foot—but he was going to need the car to get Luisa out. She couldn't walk all the way down the driveway, not in her condition.

  "What are you doing?" Gaby gasped when he reached for the car door.

  "Dismantling a trap. I'm gonna leave the engine running and the doors locked. If anything happens, slide over to the driver's seat, back down the driveway to the road, drive into town, and call Keegan. And stay in the car with the doors locked until Keegan gets there."

  She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and nodded.

  Derek drew his gun and got out of the car. He popped the lock down and slammed the door behind him.

  The low rumble of the idling engine was the only sound in the very quiet woods.

  The one thing in their favor was that Ghost could only be in one place at a time. If he was working with an accomplice, they were screwed.

  But Derek still didn't think so. From his conversation with Keegan earlier, he thought it sounded like Ghost had burned his bridges with his employers in town. Ghost was out here for revenge. He probably hadn't brought any help.

  Probably.

  Derek walked up to the trip wire carefully, watching the driveway ahead of him. As soon as he got there, he saw that it was a very simple trap. Ghost had cut most of the way through a large tree beside the road. The wire was fastened securely to another tree across the driveway. When the car hit it, the wire would pull down the tree. Depending on how fast they were traveling, it would either crush the car's engine, or fall on the roof and crush the occupants.

  Simple. Evil. Deadly.

  He got out his pocket multitool, clipped the wire, and kicked it out of the way. The tree swayed a little, but didn't fall. Ghost would have been careful not to cut it so deeply that any errant breeze would push it down.

  It was still possible it'd fall and block the driveway before they got back down. He filed that away as a possible hazard for their escape.

  Looking back, he saw Gaby watching him through the windshield, eyes wide and anxious. He gave her a thumbs-up and then walked carefully up the driveway, looking around, tense and alert.

  He walked just as far as a bend that took him out of sight of the car. If he remembered right, the cabin was around the next bend, and he didn't want to alert Ghost that they'd come back. He found one more trap, a disturbed patch of earth right in one of the tire ruts. Derek brushed away the dirt and found several nails pointed up. He picked them out and threw them into the woods, then retraced his steps to the car.

  He tapped on the window and Gaby leaned over to unlock the driver's door for him.

  "Are you okay?" she asked anxiously as he got in.

  "I'm fine." He put the car in gear and crept forward, speeding up a little as he passed under the deadfall trap before stopping just past the other trap he'd disarmed. The cabin was right ahead, around the next curve. And unfortunately, because Keegan was a paranoid bastard who'd built the place like a fortress, Ghost would have a perfectly nice sniper nest in the cupola up top. Derek wouldn't be surprised if he was already stationed up there, watching the driveway.

  This was a terrible place to turn around, but with some careful back-and-forth, crunching into the brush on both sides of the driveway while branches scraped the sides of the car, he managed to do it.

  "Aren't we driving up to the cabin?" Gaby asked.

  "I need to check it out first. If anything happens—if you hear gunshots, or if I don't come back in, say, half a hour, drive back to town and call Keegan." Derek pointed to his phone, still in her hand. "Put his number in your phone."

  "Derek, you can't go fight him alone—"

  "That's what I'm good at. You have a more important job. You have to take care of your son."

  "I've got the number," Gaby said, handing his phone back. "Still no bars. Derek, I'd feel better if we stayed together."

  "So would I, but there's no choice." He patted the steering wheel. "I'm leaving the keys in the ignition. Soon as I get out, slide over to the driver's seat and make sure the door's locked. Don't unlock it except for me."

  She nodded, then startled him by throwing her arms around him and planting a passionate kiss on his mouth.

  "Ew, Mom, gross!" Sandy said from the backseat.

  Gaby caressed Derek's face as she let him go. "Please be careful," she whispered. "Save my mom, and come back to me."

  "I will. I promise." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "Take care of your son." He started to reach for the door handle, then looked over the backseat. "Hey, Sandy? Take care of your mom for me."

  "Okay," Sandy said solemnly.

  Derek got out and slammed the door. Gaby slid over to take his place in the driver's seat as soon as he was out.

  She was smart and strong and brave. She'd be okay, he told himself. She'd be okay.

  Gun in hand, he walked up the driveway toward the cabin.

  Chapter Twelve: Derek

  Right before he turned the bend that would bring him into direct view of the cabin, Derek cut away from the driveway into the woods.

  Getting close to the cabin was going to be hard.

  Damn it, Keegan, at times like this, it'd be so much more convenient if you were the kind of sloppy homeowner who lets the trees and brush grow right up around the place. Good job keeping it clear. Now there's no way to get close without being seen.

  But he could think of one way: the spring. It was in a little ravine with some brush growing alongside it. He would've preferred better cover, but he didn't dare wait for dark.

  He circled the cabin in the woods, trying to stay downwind. He wasn't sure if Ghost would be able to smell him from inside, but there was no sense taking chances.

  It was quiet enough out here that he could still hear the growl of the Mustang's engine, which meant Ghost could probably hear it too. He'd know they were near. But Derek didn't want to risk having Gaby shut it off. There wasn't a big chance it wouldn't start again—he kept the car in excellent repair—but when their lives depended on it, any risk was too much.

  He didn't want to get close enough
to be seen, but he took the gamble of peeking out of the woods, between two tree trunks, trying to get a look at the cabin and figure out what he was up against. It looked just like they'd left it. There was no vehicle parked out front. But if Ghost had come through the woods, there wouldn't be.

  For an instant, he thought he saw something move in the cupola.

  Damn. He was right. Ghost was up there with a sniper rifle. No matter which direction Derek approached from, he'd be seen.

  He needed a distraction to give him a chance to sneak up on the cabin. He wished he could get in touch with Gaby and have her do something—but, no, that would draw Ghost's attention in her direction, which was the last thing he wanted right now.

  Keegan was sending backup, but it would take hours to get here. Luisa might not be able to wait that long.

  Ghost's deadfall trap gave him an idea. Two could play at that game.

  He let the woods conceal his view of the cabin again, retreating until he was confident he couldn't be seen. After stripping quickly, he shifted. The strength and energy of his bear surged through him.

  He didn't have a chainsaw—but he didn't need a chainsaw.

  There were a lot of smallish trees around here. Derek picked a likely one, stood on his back legs, and pushed. The tree's roots were no match for the power of his muscular bear shoulders. It tore slowly out of the ground, started to topple, and hung up in the branches of the tree next to it.

  Derek shifted and stepped back to look at his handiwork. The leaning tree was just barely hanging on. It looked like a stiff breeze would send it crashing down.

  He didn't bother putting on his clothes. He was probably going to end up shifting again anyway. He picked up his Glock and gave the tree a final shove, making it teeter on its supporting branches.

  Then he hurried through the woods on bare, silent human feet. In a few moments he came to the spring, with the trail alongside it that he and Gaby had explored that morning. Derek turned toward the cabin. All the while he strained his ears. When the tree went, it should get Ghost's attention, but his instant of distraction wouldn't last long.

  Sunlight up ahead let him know he was getting close to the cabin. Derek stepped into the spring, cool water swirling over his bare feet, and crouched so the bank would hide him from view. He made his way cautiously along the bank to the point where the trail from the cabin came down to the water's edge. If he put his head up, he'd only be a few yards from the back of the cabin—and easily visible from up top.