Bear Anchor (BBW Shifter Romance) (FisherBears Book 2)

by Becca Fanning

  She heard the anger flare in Jacob's voice. "Does that mean we're not even going to look?"

  "Of course we're looking!"

  "Then we take advantage of every chance we've got. Come on, Holden."

  A sharp sound of a slap made her jump but neither man reacted and she guessed he'd just knocked dust off his hat against his knee. "What good do you think your little friend can even do? She's just some chick infatuated with the bright lights and the bull riders."

  Cara stood up. "I can hear you," she said.

  Both men went silent.

  Cara walked across the arena between them. "Look, I want to help."

  Holden looked her up and down. "Why?"

  And Cara in turn looked at Jacob. But it wasn't that simple. "Did you not hear Jacob tell you I'm sheriff's volunteer posse? That's what posses do. We look for people. I'm good at it. And what Jacob's saying is right. This is my desert. My town. My territory if you want to put it that way. I know how to search here. I have ideas where to search. And I've been following the stories ever since they started to break."

  Jacob looked convinced. Of course, Jacob had already looked convinced.

  Holden didn't. Tall, dark, the eldest of the clan and ruggedly handsome, he stood with his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans over an enormous belt buckle. He watched her without blinking.

  His stare said, Convince me. Or get out.

  If he even let her leave. While they were men she didn't think any of the Tyrells would hurt her.

  But if she pissed him off enough that he turned?

  Two sets of golden eyes trained on her. Two amazing looking shapeshifting bears, watching her.

  She realized the best way to make them believe her with the minimum amount of time spent on it.

  "I have a huge crush on Jacob," she said. "I have for the past five years."

  Jacob's face lit in an enormous smile. Holden made a choked sound halfway between a laugh and capitulation. But the interrogation was over.

  "Get her a horse," he said over his shoulder as he started away, heading deeper into the arena.

  Cara took a shaky breath. She'd convinced him. She'd also just thrown in her lot with the clan of rodeo boys half the audiences wanted to kill.

  Maybe not her best move.

  And then too – eventually she'd have to meet Jacob's eyes again.

  Cringing, she looked up at him.

  His smile couldn't be any more smug. "Crush, huh?"

  She snorted. "Let's find me a horse."

  They didn't. Not right away. Finding her a horse was the easy part. Finding out where to take the horse and how to search for Colby was more difficult.

  "He was in Vegas," she said, following Jacob into the stables. People swirled around them now as morning grew later. Jacob obsessively checked on the horses, those that belonged to the Tyrell clan and those that were simply there and had been in danger.

  "They were both here for a previous Wild West show. About a week ago." He had his hands on the lead to a beautiful Palomino.

  "A week ago! Doesn't anybody – hasn't someone – oh, my god!"

  He gave her a smirk over his shoulder that sent her heart pumping. His lips were full and sensual. Even twisted in derision his face was one she wanted to study for years to come.

  Except all at once her attraction to him seemed like nothing more than a crush. How could it be anything else? She'd met him once when she was 17 and knew nothing about anything. She'd followed him and his career for the last five years and that proved what, exactly?

  He interrupted her thoughts.

  "A month ago Gemma started releasing the articles about the disappearances and Colby started coming and going like Holden. All of them were looking into the disappearances, going places where people had been when last seen. And, yeah, he was gone a lot but he'd only just hooked up with Gemma. Man needed a little space."

  He still looked like a smart ass, that twisty smile and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  "So you're not worried?"

  When she asked, he became serious right away. He slowed so she walked beside him rather than following. "I wasn't until this morning. Eddie thinks I'm overreacting. He thinks the attack here was isolated." He pointed her down a hallway.

  "This isn't the stables."

  "No. Parking lot. Gemma and Colby were sharing a place. I want to take a look at it."

  She paused, standing in front of the half ton pickup he'd led her to. She squinted. If she wasn't mistaken, this was the same beaten and exhausted Ford he'd been driving five years ago. Something about that – the way it seemed down to earth and real – pleased her.

  Maybe the man she'd come to know through media releases and videos wasn't so far from the real man she was with now.

  "You have a key to their place?" Cara didn't have any sisters or brothers. After her mom died it had just been her and her dad on a big ranch in a big ranch house and he respected her privacy. Which was to say he wanted to know nothing about the mysteries of a teenaged daughter, just that she was still a virgin when she left his house.

  She had been.

  Just barely.

  Cara couldn't imagine giving her key to somebody else. She'd learned to value privacy.

  "Kind of," Jacob hedged.

  The place Colby and Gemma were sharing was an RV parked out in the desert at the very edge of an RV park. Cactus and corrugated green plastic lining chain link fencing separated the park from the desert itself.

  "Why?" Cara wondered.

  Jacob laughed. "Colby likes to travel light. Besides, his horses are stabled two miles away."

  She nodded and waited for him to produce a key to the RV. He didn't. Instead, Jacob took a quick look around the empty park. Even as early in the day as it was – not yet quite ten, which shocked her given everything that had already happened – the desert was heating up. No one was outside if they didn't have to be.

  When he didn't see anyone, Jacob shifted. Just for an instant.

  Just long enough to force the handle to the RV.

  It swung open easily. He raised ironic, and perfectly human, eyebrows at her.

  "Interesting."

  The interior was neat but tiny. Which meant going through everything thoroughly, because Colby and Gemma had filed or boxed or hidden everything.

  Or taken it with them.

  "I can't find any notes," Cara said. "Gemma's a journalist. Why hasn't her work missed her?"

  Jacob was looking in a cabinet over the sink. "Who says they haven't? Anyway, she freelances. Long as her articles are in on time, no one cares when she works. Or where."

  "Are they?"

  "I don't know her that well. I'm not even sure who she writes for."

  Cara nodded, distracted. Hands on her hips, she surveyed the tiny dining area. "No laptop," she said thoughtfully. Behind her Jacob grunted. If she keeps all her notes on the laptop, I'm not going to find anything.

  She crossed the tiny kitchen and sat down on one of the bench seats at the table. And instantly stood up again, turned and knelt, feeling under the seat.

  "What?" Jacob asked.

  Cara emerged with a spiral notebook, loose leaf pages sticking out of it and a Bic pen stuffed into the metal spiral. "Notes," she said.

  "Not much of a hiding space." He sounded skeptical, like she hadn't found anything important.

  "Maybe it wasn't hidden," Cara said. "This place is obsessively neat. Maybe it was just put there."

  "Then why take the laptop?" He was poking into another cabinet.

  "Because the door to this place isn't that secure?" she hazarded.

  "Touché."

  She sat down again and flipped the notebook open. And froze. "Jacob."

  He heard the undercurrent in her voice. Crossing over to the table, he sat down on the opposite side. "What have you got?"

  She gestured. "Gemma's notes."

  He stood again. "Move over."

  She shifted on the seat to make room for him. Toget
her they paged through the spiral notebook. "There's more than one handwriting in here."

  "Colby's," Jacob said, pointing to one artful but illegible scrawl. "And Holden." Holden's were bold block letters. Their notes were sparse, and Holden's ended before Colby's contributions did. Gemma's went on much longer in a more feminine hand and with a more logical mind.

  "She's got lists of the disappeared?"

  Jacob nodded. When he moved, his curls brushed her cheek. He was so close, her entire body tingled. He smelled of sage and sweat and the sweet musk of bear. Cara's eyes closed briefly and she savored the moment.

  "I recognize a lot of the names," he said, running a finger down the page. He turned a few more pages and said, "She's also detailing where they vanished. And – " He paused and together they flipped through the pages, both backwards and forwards. "Yeah, the location last seen. The shows that were in town at the time. Or had just closed." He paused and looked. "What's nearby. She's got a radius of five, ten and 20 miles from the place last seen."

  "And from the arena or the site of the show," Cara added. Gemma had drawn crude maps. Locations were labeled with shorthand notes to herself. "Has anyone who went missing turned up again?"

  "Couple." He didn't take his eyes off the page. When her expectant silence got through to him he looked up at her. "Oh. No. Not like that."

  Cara narrowed her eyes. It was distracting being this close to him. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to run her tongue over his lips and bite at him and rip his shirt off and –

  "You're staring." He wasn't smiling but his voice was.

  "Mmm. What do you mean, not like that?"

  "What? Oh. The people who have reappeared were all out because they were drunk. Or hungover. Or they'd hooked up. Or they forgot to show up and went somewhere else. That's all."

  She stared at him.

  "What?"

  "People just forget to show up?"

  "I like that this confuses you." He kissed her on the forehead.

  Cara instantly tilted her face up.

  He kissed her on the end of her nose.

  She pushed herself free of the seat, up closer to his mouth.

  He kissed her chin.

  She laughed and pulled his head to hers, and kissed him again and all her doubts – that watching interviews and media for the last five years wasn't knowing him – faded again.

  His mouth moved on hers. His hands trailed up into her hair. The clip released easily between his fingers. He dropped it onto the seat behind her, using his hand to fan out her hair. Pulling back, he looked at her, the strawberry blond curls dancing around her face. "That's how I remember you." His eyes were half lidded. One hand caressed the side of her face, touching gently just past the bruises that were starting up.

  She turned and kissed his palm as he slid his hand away. They looked at each other for what felt like a long time before going back to the notebook.

  The break had given her a chance to reboot. She saw the pattern this time. It wasn't hidden. Probably Gemma had seen it. She'd definitely been on the right track.

  "The attack here was early," she said.

  Jacob looked from the page to her face. "What?"

  She pointed. "The attacks come near the end of the shows. No, not attacks. Because this was new, right?"

  "There's been violence before," he said. "That it's around the same time as the disappearances isn't news."

  "No. But the disappearances happen at the end of the shows." She looked up and met his eyes. "When everyone is already headed out."

  "Because it's harder to keep track of people."

  They looked at each other. She went on. "Looks like most people were last seen within five miles of the stadium."

  "They're being lured," Jacob said matter of factly. "Something is drawing them out."

  "Like a contract? A chance to do advertisements?"

  He shook his head. "Or a threat. Danger to someone. We're guessing. Could be different for everyone." He stared at the notebook. "It's a big desert outside Vegas."

  But Cara shook her head and reclaimed the notebook. "Within five miles in this direction, there's just desert. No Henderson, no suburbs. Just heat and cactus and dirt. Has anyone tried tracing the GPS on their phones?"

  "No signals."

  "OK. We ride."

  He considered. "They've been gone about a week. What are the chances we'll catch up to them?"

  The chances weren't good. But they thought of more avenues to explore. A call to the editors of the magazines Gemma wrote for revealed she'd been in contact and on assignment until a week earlier, when she'd dropped out of sight. Likewise the RV they were in needed back rent paid for the last week.

  A week meant anything could have happened.

  They could be anywhere.

  Cara felt her impatience and nerves rise. The same way anxiety had driven her to the stables early that morning. If she hadn't been there, the fire might have been much worse.

  Right place, right time.

  She considered that. Right place, right time.

  "How many other fires? Or incidents? Right before everything was over?"

  Jacob blinked at her. And suddenly they were both pouring through news reports and social media.

  Fires. Unexplained explosions, small enough the horses weren't hurt, big enough to draw a response. And confusion. And chaos. In another arena the horses had been scared away by a rattlesnake in the stalls and unlocked stall doors. In one other location pigs had been released into the arena.

  Cara blinked. "Wasn't that you guys?" She felt a grin starting. The Tyrell boys had released pigs into a rodeo arena after they weren't allowed to compete.

  "In Texas," he said. "Not in Arizona."

  There'd been a disappearance after that. Not all the vanished shifters were from rodeos. Not all the rodeos were the site of disappearances.

  But more than enough were.

  She was on to something.

  * * *

  Jacob Tyrell looked damned good on a horse.

  That should have been a given. She'd seen him in rodeos. She'd read everything she could get her hands on about him for five years. Every bit of footage online and off, still photos, videos, whatever, all of it showed Jacob Tyrell on a horse or near a horse.

  Jacob Tyrell was a cowboy. She clearly should have known how great he'd look riding.

  But this was different. They were out under the Great Basin sky, riding through low rolling hills. Silhouetted against the bright sky, Jacob looked like a cowboy out of history, easy in the saddle. Comfortable in his own skin.