“Mrs. Mosswood, I know how difficult this is for you,” Blazetail said soothingly. “The faster she’s taken into custody, the faster this whole thing can be put behind you.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Mosswood said with distaste.
The Mosswoods stood up, and moved stiffly towards the garage.
“We’ll accompany you,” Warden Redthorne said.
“That won’t be necessary.” She shot him a look as if he’d just tracked wolf doo doo into the house.
“But we will anyway.”
She looked at Blazetail again.
“I’m sure they don’t need any assistance,” Blazetail protested.
“I run my investigations as I see fit. I’m sure that your Pride Patrol does the same,” Warden Redthorne said coldly.
Blazetail hesitated, and then nodded at the Mosswoods. “Just let them do what they need to do, Mrs. Mosswood, and then they can be on their way.”
Dash and Warden Redthorne followed the Mosswoods out to their garage. It was pristine, and there were four cars parked there. A Ferrari, two Beamers, and a Porsche.
There were no boxes anywhere. The Mosswoods stood there, glancing around uneasily, their faces flushed with humiliation. It was clear that they’d lied, and they had no pictures of Isadora to share.
“I could have sworn we had some old boxes of Isadora’s things,” Mrs. Mosswood muttered.
“Really? It’s hard to picture any old boxes in this house.” Redthorne shot her a reproving look. Dash barely managed to suppress a smile. Redthorne could be a real hardass, but sometimes he was actually quite all right. Like now.
“We’d like to look at her bedroom,” Dash said.
“Oh, we converted that to a guest room as soon as she moved out.”
“Where do you send her money?” Dash asked. “What bank does it go to? We know she gets an allowance from you.”
The Mosswood’s glanced at each other.
“We cut her off months ago,” Mr. Mosswood said.
Now that was news. “Why?” Dash asked.
“We told her that now that her sister was getting married, she needed to clean up her act. We gave her the choice of dressing and behaving in a more appropriate fashion, and associating with a more appropriate crowd, or never receiving another cent from us. She said she hoped Diana had a lovely wedding, and hung up on me. We haven’t spoken to her since. That was six months ago.”
Mrs. Mosswood let out a self-righteous sniff.
Dash and Loren glanced at each other.
That is odd, Dash thought. Isadora didn’t have a job that he knew of. He’d always thought of her as a poor little rich girl. She just…what did she do, exactly? She went to the local bars and nightclubs. She travelled fairly often, he didn’t know where. She’d just suddenly disappear from town for a week or two, and then she’d be there again. He didn’t know what she did with the rest of her time, but he knew she didn’t have a job…so where was the money coming from?
“She’s been nothing but a disappointment to us since she was a little girl,” Mrs. Mosswood said indignantly as they walked back through the living room.
“Yes, and you made sure you let her know that, every minute of every day, didn’t you?” Dash couldn’t hold himself back any more. “No wonder she never wanted to set paw in this house.”
He turned and stalked out of the house, with Loren at his heels.
“What the hell was that?” Loren demanded.
“Can you imagine growing up with those assholes as your parents?” Dash demanded heatedly. “Sir,” he added.
“Thankfully, no, my parents weren’t born with sticks up their asses or a silver spoon in their mouth.” Loren’s stern face actually cracked into a brief smile. Then his usual stone-faced demeanor returned. “Since when were you Isadora Mosswood’s champion? She goes out of her way to aggravate you specifically.”
She did, didn’t she? Dash sighed heavily.
“She very likely sold out her own kind for money,” Loren pointed out. “Especially if her parents cut her off.”
Unfortunately, things were looking worse and worse for Isadora.
“We should look through her bank statements,” Dash said, a feeling of gloom settling over him. “Maybe we could trace any unusual deposits.”
When they got back to Warden Redthorne’s office and had their IT guru access her bank account, however, they didn’t see any withdrawals or deposits from the last six months.
They called her landlady, who told them that she’d always paid on time, and in cash.
Who lived on a cash only basis and always had plenty of money even though they had no known income? Criminals, that’s who.
Dash’s heart sank. It was looking worse and worse for Isadora.
Chapter Five
“He’s lived around here for years. He travels sometimes, disappears for months,” the hyena shifter named Burke said, as he refilled Isadora’s coffee cup. “I mean, that’s not unusual for a Hobo. He travels around the country, from what I hear, going to other Hobo camps. Likes to be near to them, but not too near, like he doesn’t want to be alone but he can only handle so much contact with people.”
She felt much better after having gotten a decent night’s sleep. She’d slept in Lynx form, curled up on the limb of an oak tree. Sally had slept on a branch near her, and Thomas had slept on the ground underneath the tree.
Isadora had woken up when it was still dark, leaving the two kids sleeping. Thomas’s uncle was supposed to arrive that day, which was a weight off her mind. She didn’t like the idea of the kids roaming around with no adult caring for them. Most Hobos were decent enough people, but not all.
She’d left her van parked on a small dirt road several miles away, since there was no way to get to the hob camp by car. She had a feeling she’d need to ditch the van soon anyway; the safest thing to do was to keep switching vehicles as often as possible, to ensure that nobody picked up her trail. She’d brought a couple of bags to the Hobo camp, with clothing, some food, a few of her burner cell phones, and a wallet with cash and fake I. D’s.
Now she sat around a campfire with a dozen other Hobos of various species, drinking instant coffee from tin cups after a breakfast of raw squirrel. Despite all the worries weighing down on her, she felt good. Camping out like this made her feel raw and primal and closer to her inner lynx. Of course, after a few days of it she was more than ready to return to civilization; a girl could only go so long without her flat-iron and regular supplies of chocolate.
She reached in her bag, pulled out a box of granola bars, and began passing them around the circle. “Thanks,” Delia, a bear shifter female, said enthusiastically. “Hey, got a mirror I could borrow?”
Isadora passed her a mirror, and Delia grimaced at her grimy face. “I’m going to go take a dip in the stream,” she said. She got up and ambled off.
“Does he talk about where he came from?” Isadora asked. She drank half her coffee in one gulp.
“No, he doesn’t like to talk about himself. I mean, when he comes to hang out, he’s sociable enough, but if you ask anything about him he changes the subject,” Stephan said.
I’ll bet, Isabel thought. From what her boss’s intelligence sources had dug up, Pyotr had been through years of absolute hell.
The first rays of morning light could be seen on the distant horizon. The morning air was cool and the ground was silvered with frost.
“If you want to talk to him, we need to go now,” Burke said.
Isadora set down her coffee cup on a flat rock. She, Burke and Stephan quickly stripped their clothing off, shivering. They shifted, and immediately were warm again. Their breath made puffs of white vapor in the chill air, but their fur coats kept out the cold.
Sitting near the fire were their bags of clothing, which they’d already prepared, with hooded sweat suits and slip on shoes for when they reached Pyotr’s cave.
They grabbed the bags and set off at a fast trot. The caw of birds sliced through the
quiet morning air as they leaped over fallen branches and wove through underbrush.
About twenty minutes later, they came to a clearing. Stephan and Burke came to a halt at the edge of the clearing, so Isadora did too.
Suddenly a rifle shot cracked in the air. The bullet landed in a quaking aspen tree near Isadora’s head.
“Shift back to human form! Now!” an angry male voice yelled from a distance. Isadora could make out the Eastern European accent. It was Pyotr.
The three of them quickly shifted to human form and pulled on their outfits and shoes. In human form, Isadora hugged herself for warmth.
“Who is she?” the voice called out.
“She’s one of us! She’s a Hobo shifter!” Burke yelled out.
There was a pause, and then a man came trotting up to them, his rifle aimed in their direction. He wore a pair of camouflage pants and jacket and lace up military style boots. His brown hair was long, hanging over his face, and he had a scraggly beard. Half of his lean, hawk-like face was heavily scarred; Isadora could barely make it out behind the hair. His eyes were wild, darting from one person to the other.
“Why did you bring her out here without telling me? I don’t like surprises,” he yelled at them.
“She asked to talk to you. She said it’s important,” Burke said, holding his hands up placatingly.
Pyotr sniffed the air suspiciously, and glowered at her. “How did she even know I was here? She doesn’t look like a Hobo. Doesn’t smell like a Hobo. Too clean.”
“Hey, some of us like to bathe,” Isadora said, exasperated. “I need your help, Pyotr. I found you because I put out the word to Hobo groups online, letting them know that I was looking for shifters from Korslovia. There’s a good chance that we’re going to be able to capture the scientist known as Zador Horvath.”
Horvath had been the second in command at the illegal lab. He was the last known person alive to have escaped from the lab.
He went pale at that. “How? Is he close to here? Is that why you came?” He looked around fearfully, as if expecting Zador to pop out from behind the nearest pine tree.
“I can’t reveal any more information than that, for security purposes. However, I hear that you’ve told people that you were held in his laboratory. Is that true?” Apparently when Pyotr got drunk, he got more talkative. She should have brought some alcohol with her, because apparently he wasn’t feeling too talkative right now.
He was backing away slowly, the rifle trained on her.
“He’s a monster,” he said, his voice hoarse and fearful. “Do you see this? ” He gestured at his scarred face. “He laughed when he did that to me. All the time.” His eyes were huge with fright now.
“If he sent me, the area would be crawling with soldiers already, wouldn’t it?” Isadora pointed out.
“Maybe.” He stopped backing up. “Where is he? How did you find him?”
Isadora walked forward slowly, hands still up in the air. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me these things, I’m just a grunt,” she said. “Will you come with me to talk to my friends? I can arrange a meeting in an open area, if that makes you more comfortable. The information that you can give us could be vital to catching him.”
“I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry. You don’t know what it was like…” he lowered the rifle. He was starting to shake, and tears filled his eyes and ran down his scarred cheeks.
“You’re right, I don’t know. I’m really sorry,” she said soothingly. “Let me give you my cell phone number in case you change your mind.” She handed him a piece of paper with one of her numbers written on it. It was a burner cell phone that she’d purchased recently. She’d ditched her old cell phone so that the Wardens and Pride Patrol wouldn’t be able to track her.
He accepted the paper with trembling hands and tucked it in his pocket.
“What do you need me for?” he asked gruffly.
“There are very few pictures of him in existence, and they’re all blurry. There’s no fingerprints. We don’t have a lot to go on other than verbal accounts, and not many of his victims survived. You’re the only person in this country who has seen him. We’re going to need help identifying him.”
The color drained from his face. “You don’t know what you’re up against. He’ll kill you,” he whispered. “He’ll make you suffer in ways that you can’t imagine. He’ll make your loved ones suffer. Let it go.”
She felt ice running through her veins, but she stood firm. “My people can protect you,” Isadora protested.
He threw back his head and let out a long, hollow laugh. “Nobody can protect me against him! Nobody can protect you, either. Go back home, little girl.” And abruptly, he shifted, exploding out of his clothes, and before the rifle fell and hit the ground he’d grabbed it in his jaws. Then he turned and ran, jaws clamped firmly on the rifle, vanishing into the woods.
Isadora’s mood was gloomy as they slogged back to the Hobo camp. She’d have to wait for further instructions. She’d heard that Pyotr was squirrelly and paranoid, and it was a miracle that she’d managed to get this close to him. Others had tried and failed.
All that she could do was check in with her boss and await further instructions.
When Isadora got back, Thomas and Sally were awake, and there was a new Hobo by the fire, an older hyena shifter in his fifties. He was sitting next to Thomas and Sally and Delia, who were all eating bagels with cream cheese. He wore a denim jacket and jeans, faded but relatively clean. His long brown hair was shot through with gray.
“My Uncle Bo. Look what he bought us!” Thomas said enthusiastically, around a mouthful of bagel.
“I got more. You want one?” Uncle Bo gestured at a big cardboard box. “I made some money doing construction up north. Nice to eat human food once in a while.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Isadora settled in next to them. She felt her tension loosen a little bit. Now that there was an adult in the picture, she wouldn’t have to worry about Thomas and Sally as much.
“Isn’t he a sweetheart?” Delia said enthusiastically.
Uncle Bo winked at her. Hmm, Isadora thought. This could work. A hyena and a bear? Weird combination, but she’d seen stranger. Maybe Delia could be a domesticating influence on him.
She grabbed a plastic knife from the bag, and began smearing cream cheese on a bagel.
“So, how long are you going to be in town?” she asked Bo.
Chapter Six
Dash glanced around to make sure that none of the Wardens, or the Shaman Cody, were within earshot. They were standing by their pickup trucks; after their long drive from Timber Valley, they’d pulled off on a dirt road and scattered into the woods to relieve themselves. Now they’d shifted back into human form, which meant their hearing, while still superior to humans, wasn’t as acute.
For the moment, they were just standing there jawing, and stretching out their legs. Cody was there so that as soon as they captured Isadora, he could compel her to talk.
He quickly punched in the number on his cell phone.
When Steele answered, he felt his gut tighten. He was breaking the law by calling him. He’d been raised to believe in following the law to the letter. There was no bending it, there was no skirting it, the law was the law. It was what kept shifters safe, and concealed from humans.
Still, Steele was his family, and he might be in danger, and the same went for the other shifters in Lonesome Pine. If he didn’t warn them, they could be kidnapped, or killed. What was Dash supposed to do when the right thing to do and the legal thing to do were two different things? He’d never been faced with this dilemma before.
He could ask the Chief Warden, or the Sheriff, for permission to contact Steele, if he wanted to stay on the right side of the law, but if they said no, where would that leave him?
“Dash?” Steele answered, sounding puzzled.
“Hello, Steele,” he said. “Long time no speak. Yeah, I know, that’s all on me.”
When Steele ha
d fallen in love with the human female and run off with her, Dash had been the one to report it to the Wardens. Dash had his reasons at the time – the human female had seen shifters, and her memory had not been properly erased. That posed a threat of exposure to all shifters – and Steele had taken her out of their territory before their Shaman could come and erase her memory.
Shifters had kept their existence secret and survived in modern society by following the law rigidly: any human who’d seen a shifter changing form had to be immediately taken into custody and held there until a Shaman could erase their memory for good. There were no exceptions.
So Dash had done his duty, but he hadn’t felt great about it. Still didn’t.
“You’re not supposed to be calling me, are you?” Steele asked.
“No, and I’m going to have to keep it short. I may have to hang up at any moment.” He glanced across the grove. Two SUVs were pulling in, and he thought he scented mountain lion shifter. That would be the local Pride Patrol, come to assist with Isadora’s capture. They knew the terrain and could hunt down a cat shifter much better than he or the Wardens could.
“Have you heard about Isadora?” Dash asked in a low voice.
“What about her, specifically?” Steele’s tone was cautious, and it told Dash that Steele had likely still been communicating with members of his family, even though the Council of Elders had forbidden it. His family had probably told him about Isadora being charged with treason and going on the run.
“Long story, and I don’t have much time. Basically, we had reason to monitor her phone conversations, and she is communicating with humans. We followed her and saw her meet with them, and give them blood samples that she’d stolen from the Timber Valley Medical Clinic. Then we overheard her talking with the humans and apparently planning the kidnapping of a wolf shifter.”
“Are you sure about that?” Steele sounded shocked. He clearly hadn’t gotten that part of the story. “That doesn’t sound like her at all, and I’d like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character.”
Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) Page 4