That's why she'd made a plan.
It wasn't much of a plan.
Walter called for her a little after eight. There was a car waiting out front. For any kind of publicity, Walter used a beat up Ford pickup truck. It was like the ultimate in downplaying for PR. Look at us! We're good Americans buying American and using it till it disintegrates. The fact that he had several hundred million in the bank should have put paid to that but it worked. Everyone who interviewed him talked about how down to Earth he was. Everyone who interviewed Dani talked about how wonderful it must be to have such a simple man for a father.
Right. Never mind the limos and the Lincoln Town Cars Walter took when he went to his meetings. It was like watching someone depart in style for a KKK rally. Only they didn't wear sheets and the symbol for these meetings was an red international NO sign, the circle and slash. In the center of the circle was a bear.
"What's taking you so long?" Walter never jittered or fidgeted. He just got nastier.
"Coming, Daddy. Is Mom awake? I'll go tell her – "
"Just get in the car, young lady."
The drive to the Wild West Show was silent. Her father worked through all the things that could go wrong with his plan. More than one plan had failed, once for Walter and more than once for some of his associates. But the masks the men wore and the tranquilizer darts they used to subdue their targets meant no one remembered who had attacked them.
Walter Sjoberg was in no way responsible for all of the shifter disappearances. That had been going on for well over a year as known shifters vanished and their families searched for them and the shifter community grew more and more afraid.
But while he might not be responsible for all of them, Dani's father had a record of generally bagging two out of every three shifter captures he attempted. Those numbers weren't going unnoticed. He was moving up in the shadow organization.
Dani had been along for the last year. As bait. Tall, beautiful, with a great figure, long thick hair and big dark eyes, she attracted more than a little attention when she strode out across an arena or rode by on horseback.
The first time her father used her it was in Utah, outside one of Ray Chaudett's rodeos. That was with an unmarried shifter from outside the Tyrell clan. Big and beautiful and buff, he'd been kind of dumb as a box of hair, but just because a guy was a shifter didn't mean he was smart, or even had animal wiles.
She came onto him in a bar, lured him out back with a promise on her lips and the panel truck outside the back door. The fact that he'd actually pawed at her should have made her feel a little better, but hell, what guy wouldn't if you offered yourself up on a platter?
The second time her father made her help out was the only one of Walter's that got away. Apparently some married guys could be faithful and when a beautiful woman gave them a come hither look they returned a thanks, but no thanks, darlin', look. Walter's goons had tried to take the bronc rider by force and most of them had sustained worse injuries than the shifter. They were arrested and hauled away for medical attention before jail and they must not have talked, because nothing ever came back on Walter.
After that he switched to new tactics. Shifters were lured with promises of promotional contracts. When the executive they were supposed to meet at some out-of-the-way place after hours, didn't show, the irritated cowboy left and ran across a beautiful young woman – Dani, sometimes – being menaced by a handful of guys in a traditional dark alley or something similar.
Rising to the occasion and rushing to the rescue, the outnumbered shifters changed into animal form, in the Tyrell clan cases, into roaring, angry bears – only to be instantly hit with tranqs. Down went the bear, and everyone got paid and slapped high fives and someone drove the bear away.
Dani went off to therapy where she couldn't talk about what was really bothering her and her therapist couldn't figure out why she didn't move out since clearly there was some family dynamic that was pretty damned bad. Her mother, meanwhile, went instantly to mojito or wine therapy, imbibing comfort until she passed out.
And Dani's father went off for a day or two to do whatever it was he did with his captives.
Today was Collection Day and some poor bear was supposed to fall.
Not this time. Not again.
Dani was halfway to the door before the reason she didn't just up and leave came flying from some other part of the house and wrapped her arms tight around Dani's waist.
"Where are you going? Are you going to the Wild West Show? Can I come? Can I come? Can I come? Why can't I come?"
The handy thing about Lisa was she didn't wait for Dani to respond, just answered her own question and went on to the next one, which inevitably turned into a whine and then they were finished. Remarkably easy to deal with such a seven-year-old.
Dani had been born one year after her mother had become a 19-year-old bride with a 40-year-old husband. Seventeen years later Lisa was born to Dani's 36-year-old mother and her 57-year-old father.
Which meant Dani's mother gave up. When Dani was 17 the plan had been to hang on until she was 18 and get out. Dani and her mother Christy. They'd take off. Dani would be of legal age and her father couldn't drag her back, and as for his money – well, maybe they'd take some of it.
Because it was the money that had kept them trapped. Initially Christy had been in love with Walter. Then she'd been afraid of Walter. Then she'd been his prisoner. And all along there'd been Dani, the child Christy loved and cared for when she was little, and the unbreakable mother-daughter bond as Dani got older.
Dani got older, and her father became more malignant. His power grew, his wealth grew and his unshakable conviction that the world was his to manipulate grew. By the time Dani was 17 her father had enough police and judges in his pocket to make leaving a dangerous proposition. If nothing else, she needed to be 18 and appear to be leaving without her mother's influence or her father's money.
But when Dani was 18, Lisa was one.
Loving Lisa almost made being prisoner of her father's estate worth it.
Only she had to get Lisa out. Because Lisa was next in line and there probably wasn't much more than five years before her father would start putting Lisa into the scenarios that trapped the shifters. Dani would be 29. He'd want a younger, more vulnerable looking victim.
Dani dropped down into a crouch and hugged her little sister until Lisa wriggled. "Can't breathe!"
"So? You love me more than air!" She reached out and started tickling the little girl, who squealed and ducked aside.
Impossible to believe Lisa was seven. It was a reminder that time moved fast. Five or six more years to get away from a madman and his hater agenda. It should have seemed like all the time in the world.
From outside, her father shouted, his voice dropping into rage. She saw Lisa flinch at the sound and knew even if her sister didn't have any idea about the shifter agenda or what her father was doing, she was already being affected. Dani and her mother didn't have any more years.
They had do something now.
Once they were in the town car Walter settled beside her going through his texts. Dani put her earbuds in but left her music off. The earbuds were window dressing, buying herself time to try and think of a way free. She was determined that today's abduction was going to fail. That she'd have the proof she needed to take to the authorities. This time she was going to the FBI. She was so close to having proof the shifters were being taken out of state.
Get the proof and free the shifter. If she had to, she'd leave whoever Walter targeted behind. Just long enough to bring down her father and that part of the organization.
If she got the proof and freed this shifter, bonus.
If she failed? If she failed, Teresa had promised to take Lisa and run. It wasn't a great solution, but at least Lisa would be out.
If she failed, though, her mother would be in danger. Dani hadn't told her about the plan. Christy was too unstable anymore and usually too drunk.
Christy
would be in danger. And so would Dani.
She glanced at her father as he went through his texts, those missives sent to and from his hired thugs and the other anti shifter league men. If she could get his damned phone away from him, she could go with that to the cops. Provided the cops were clean. Bad cops would just say she'd done it herself, all those texts, because who the hell would be so arrogant as to put all his plans in text?
Her father. That's who.
Dani looked out the window and watched the Arizona landscape slide by as the town car drew her closer to whatever the day held in store.
* * *
Chapter Two
Holden Tyrell let himself out of the arena facility, slamming the double steel fire doors behind him. Early Monday morning, summer in Arizona. The sun was already high, the heat was already desert hot. Sometimes he had daydreams about running away from the rodeos and the Wild West shows and going somewhere like Hawaii. Hanging out all day in the jungle shade and dipping into the ocean whenever he got overheated, that sounded like heaven.
Then he'd saddle up a horse, ride out across a sandy, cactus-studded desert or a high desert with sage leading to cottonwoods along water and pines in the mountains and he'd give up the idea.
Rodeo was in his blood. So was the desert. So was the shifter gene.
So was a headache. It pounded in his veins, every heartbeat driving a spear of pain from his shoulders through his skull. So didn't need that right now. This was the last show in the area before the Chaudett Wild West Shows and the Chaudett Rodeos moved back East for a while.
His brothers and cousins were looking forward to a break in the constant vigilance. Even Jacob could relax, and he'd been on edge ever since teaming up with Gemma the journalist, the two of them scoping out what they could find about the disappearances and Gemma releasing the information to the media. Holden hadn't been quite ready for that move. No one had asked.
He'd thought they might, because Holden had been looking into the disappearances of shifters throughout the rodeos and just out of the shifter population for longer than anyone else. More than a year since he'd asked Eddie to hold down the fort while he checked into things. Nothing had come of his ramblings and searchings.
Gemma's articles, though, had turned attention onto the crimes being committed against shifters. Exposing the disappearance of a faction of society that made people nervous might not get them tons of support. But exposing hate crimes – that got everyone's attention.
And recently Gemma had uncovered a link between abandoned rural properties and disappearances from rodeos and shows that happened less than five miles away. Not just the Chaudett events but all rodeos and Wild West shows across the country.
Someone was targeting shifters. Someone else wanted to make certain they got their hands on any shifters or shifter allies in rodeo.
One of his own horses came over to the fence around one of the outdoor stalls, whickering quietly and asking him for sugar or carrots or just to have him scratch up and down the velvet of her long nose.
"Hey, girl." He clicked his tongue at her, leaned his forearms on the railing and held out a cut up apple. She took it delicately off his palm, chewed thoughtfully and head butted him, knocking him back several steps.
It was easy to forget how strong animals were when he wasn't one.
"Very funny."
Nothing was going according to plan. Once Colby had been snatched outside a Las Vegas rodeo venue and taken to one of the abandoned ranches in the desert, they'd been keeping an eye out for anyone offering promotional contracts or any other inducement to meet after the event ended and before heading out of town.
Nobody had contacted Holden, and he'd been counting on it. The whole clan had separated, leaving Holden prime snatch-and-grab material. Jacob was purposefully AWOL from this performance, to make it look like Holden had zero backup. Eddie and Colby were riding in a rodeo in Northern California, and Owen's wife Marybeth had just had their first child – he was definitely AWOL if one didn't count the 99 texts an hour all bearing pictures of the cub. He'd have his hands full – the child was a child except when hungry or frustrated or wet or – well, bear.
With the rest of the clan – his backup – somewhere else, the field was wide open for anyone who wanted to snatch a tall, rangy, copper-haired guy with liquid golden eyes. He, Holden Tyrell, was the lone bear on the scene at this show as far as anyone watching knew. Jacob knew about the plan and was backup at a distance. Eddie knew about the plan and thought it damned stupid but he was in California. Not much he could do about it.
The plan was simple: For Holden to get himself caught, then Jacob would come after him. They'd find out who the hell was behind the disappearances, at least the ones operating outside events.
No offers though. No one wanted to meet with him outside the performance. No one even pretended to.
He felt like a wallflower.
A year had passed since he'd started looking into the disappearances. Back then he was researching obviously, finding out everything he could about anyone who was said to have vanished. He'd found a couple and made some interesting enemies among men who were ducking out on child support and one set of dealers selling speed. He'd uncovered one cowboy out on a drunk who didn't even know anyone considered him missing.
He'd only found one missing bear, though, and the man was so rattled and drugged he couldn't tell anyone anything. Something had happened during his kidnapping and he woke up in Bishop, California, with a headache that sounded like the one Holden had now.
Seriously, if the headache didn't stop it wasn't going to matter if he never got kidnapped. His head would just explode and the haters would have one less bear to hate.
"Boss?"
Holden turned. Fight or flight was already bringing up ursine chemicals in his blood. He forced himself to take a breath. If he turned before they had a chance to grab him –
Wasn't them anyway. Just one of the stable workers. Big guy with a still healing scar on one side of his face. Holden had asked him – Terry? Terrance? Jeff? Sucked at names – and the guy said bar fight.
Paranoia said bear claw.
Probably not. Holden was just – paranoid.
"What's up? Terry, is it?"
"Dave."
Holden nodded. Yeah, great at remembering names.
"There a problem, boss?"
Holden frowned. All facilities had their own rules. Where riders could be. Where audience could be. Where fans could congregate if they wanted to get autographs or try their luck at going home with somebody.
But show was over and Holden was the owner of a bunch of the animals here. "Maybe I should ask you that." His fingers curled, threatening to become claws.
Dave spread his hands. "Just offerin' help if you need it."
Didn't sound that way. Or look it. The guy was big, muscly in an intimidating way. "Nope, I'm fine. I think there are some trucks over at the loadout could probably use a hand." He didn't look away from the horse, waiting to see what Dave would do.
Not much, as it turned out. He clicked at the horse, who actively ignored him, prancing away, then ambled back across the arena. "Give a shout if you need me."
Sure. Point me to the kidnappers, would you?
Fact was, nobody was planning on attacking him. Time to start his own loadout, then, and on to the closest watering hole. If nothing happened there, face it, probably nothing was going to happen in his vicinity until he got back from the right hand coast.
"Hey, Honey. Time to pack you and the others up and hightail it." He dusted his hands together and turned. He'd bring the truck round, load the girls, call his brothers and cousins and get ready to get out.
Bear Anchor (BBW Shifter Romance) (FisherBears Book 2) Page 23