Fire Bear Shifters: The Complete Series

by Sloane Meyers

  “I’m sorry ma’am. We’re closed now. But if you want flowers for Christmas delivery you can still order tomorrow. We’ll be opening at nine a.m. sharp.”

  Clara shook her head. She was a mess now, drenched in a mixture of flour and rainwater, her hair and her clothing soaked and spotted with the sticky aftermath of a day of baking. The man probably thought she was on the edge of crazy, but she didn’t care. She had to find out where her lifemate was and help him.

  “I’m not trying to order flowers. I’m trying to figure out where someone is. He’s been sending me flowers every day this month, but now he’s in danger and I need to find him. Please, can you help me?”

  The man’s frown disappeared and he started to chuckle. “Oh, you’re Clara,” he said. “The guy said you might come trying to figure out who he was, but I’m under strict orders not to tell you. My lips are sealed.” The man made a dramatic motion like he was zipping up his lips and throwing away the key.

  “You don’t understand,” Clara said. “He’s in danger. I need to know who he is so I can find him and help him.”

  The man raised an eyebrow at Clara. “So you don’t know who he is, or where he is, but you know he’s in danger? That seems a little unlikely.”

  “I know, but you just have to trust me. He’s in danger, I can feel it. Don’t you think it’s weird that he never placed an order for flowers today?”

  The man hesitated for just a moment, but then rolled his eyes. “Maybe he figured out that you’re actually crazy, and decided to abandon the whole project of trying to win you over. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to finish cleaning up in here so I can go home and get a few hours of sleep before I have to be back at five in the morning tomorrow.”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me who the guy is,” Clara said, crossing her arms stubbornly.

  “Then you’re going to be here a long time, because I’m not telling you, and I’m leaving as soon as I finish closing down the store.”

  Clara sighed. This wasn’t going well. The employee was going to ignore her and go home, and then what would she do? She had no other leads, no other ideas on how to find her lifemate. The sense of danger and foreboding she felt was only growing stronger, and she started to panic. She had to find out at least a name. As the employee started closing the door, she jammed her toe of her shoe into the tiny open spot and mustered up as confident of a tone as she could manage.

  “I’m telling you, he’s in danger. Either you can tell me who he is, or I’ll call the police and tell them he’s in danger. Then you can talk to them directly, although I’m not sure that’s how you want to spend your night.”

  The man hesitated, and Clara held her breath, wondering if he would call her bluff. She didn’t think the police would listen to a crazy looking woman soaked in rainwater and flour, saying a guy was in danger but she didn’t know who he was or where he was. But she didn’t have to convince the police. She only had to convince the man standing in front of her. And, after several moments of consideration, he seemed convinced.

  “Fine,” he said, letting out a huge sigh. “I’ll give you his name. But only because I don’t have time for these shenanigans. I should have known that a month long secret admiring project was going to end with a little bit of crazy.”

  The man opened the door and let Clara into the store. She followed him to the front counter, where he fished around for a pen, then wrote a name on one of the little cards that usually accompanied bouquets.

  “Here,” he said, handing Clara the card. “That’s him. Now, please, get out of here and let me finish my work.”

  Clara looked down at the paper in her hand and did a double take. Right there in neat black script, the man had written “Carter Shaw.”

  * * *

  Carter moaned in pain as he tried to wriggle out from the huge beam that had trapped him by the legs on the front porch of the cabin. The beam didn’t even budge. Carter was starting to panic. No one knew where he was, except for his nosy neighbor Miss Edna. She had caught him leaving early this morning while out walking her dog, and had asked him a thousand questions about what job he was taking on now. He had answered as politely as he could, because he knew his elderly neighbor was just looking for a chance to have a conversation with someone other than her yappy little toy poodle. But he had kept his explanations as simple and quick as possible. He had been especially vague when she asked how late he was staying out at the cabin, merely saying he had a lot to do and might even spend the night out there.

  He’d had absolutely zero intentions of staying overnight in this dilapidated, leaking cabin, but now it looked like he might not have a choice. Carter chuckled bitterly at the irony. Miss Edna might notice he was missing after a day or two, if he was lucky. But he wasn’t sure what kind of shape he’d be in at that point. Already, he could feel himself shivering uncontrollably. The temperature was dropping, and the sky looked like it was ready to let loose another torrent of rain. Luckily, the porch of the cabin was still partially covered, so Carter wouldn’t get completely soaked. He was still going to get some rain on him though, with the way these winds were blowing everything around like crazy.

  He tried again to move the huge beam off of his legs, but all of his efforts were in vain. It would probably take the efforts of at least two strong men to move this thing, maybe three. Carter lay on his back trying to figure out his options. He didn’t seem to have many. His cell phone was in his toolbox, several yards away. There’s no way Carter could reach it right now. Wriggling out of this predicament seemed to be an impossibility. The only thing Carter could do was wait. He hoped and prayed that Miss Edna was feeling overly nosy tomorrow and noticed that he hadn’t returned. Maybe she would alert the police. He could survive a day like this, couldn’t he? It wasn’t comfortable, but he could survive.

  He assessed his injuries. He had a large gash on his forehead that had bled somewhat worrisomely for the better part of fifteen minutes. He had tried his best to apply pressure with his hand and the sleeve of his hoodie. Finally, the bleeding had slowed and then subsided. He had several other scratches and bruises, but nothing that seemed too serious. The biggest miracle, perhaps, was that his legs didn’t seem to be broken. They were pinned under the huge beam and were going numb from poor circulation by this point. But Carter didn’t feel the kind of pain he would have felt if one of his bones had cracked. His largest concern right now was going into shock or suffering from hypothermia. The temperatures were not obscenely low, but the rain was keeping things damp, and the chill in the air was already making his body shiver uncontrollably. He also worried a little bit about an animal finding him. He knew there were bears and mountain lions in this forest. He soothed his fears by telling himself that most of the animals out here were probably hunkered down quietly, taking refuge from the rain.

  But all of his other concerns paled in comparison to the thought of what would become of him if no one realized he was missing. He already felt dehydrated, and the occasional splashes of rain hitting him didn’t give him an opportunity to quench his thirst. Even if the weather and the animals cooperated, he wouldn’t be able to survive a week lying here without water. Eventually Miss Edna would realize he hadn’t been around. Eventually, the guy who had hired him for this job would grow concerned that Carter wasn’t answering phone calls. But it would take a while for that to happen, especially since most people were too preoccupied with holiday celebrations right now to bother noticing that a quiet, reserved construction worker had gone missing. Carter felt a pang of anguish hit him in the gut as he realized that if he didn’t make it out of here, he would never get the chance to tell Clara how deep his feelings for her ran.

  Carter squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for a miracle.

  Chapter Twelve

  Clara felt herself frozen to the spot as she stared down at Carter’s name, dumbfounded.

  “Are you sure?” she asked the flower shop employee.

  “I’m sure,” he said, exas
perated. “Why would I make that up? What’s the matter? Not the guy you were hoping for?”

  Clara shook her head. “No, it’s just not the person I was expecting at all. Do you know his address?”

  “I don’t, sorry. Only his billing zip code, which is the zip code for Red Valley. And besides, I’m not sure I should be giving away addresses. It’s kind of private information. I gave you the name. You have to take it from there.”

  Clara nodded, and went back to her car. She could tell she had long since worn out her welcome with the flower shop guy. The rain continued to pound down around her as she stared at the paper in her hand with Carter’s name on it. What next? Maybe she should call Zach and see if he had any ideas where Carter might be. He and Zach seemed to be buddies.

  Clara dialed Zach, but the call went to voicemail. She left a generic sounding message, asking Zach to call her back when he got a chance. Then she pulled up an internet browser on her phone. She searched for Carter’s name, trying to figure out whether there was any information out there that might give her more hints on where he might be. She found a website for his construction business, the uncreatively named Carter’s Construction Company. She called the number for the business but it went to voicemail. From the sound of the voicemail greeting, it sounded to Clara like she had just dialed Carter’s cell phone. She opted not to leave a message, and instead turned her attention to the business address listed on the company’s website. Clara would drive there and see if she could uncover any more clues about where Carter might be. Her worry was growing, and she contemplated calling the police. But, even though she had a name to give them now, she didn’t have anything else to back up her suspicion that Carter had run into danger. Whining that she didn’t receive her daily bouquet of flowers would probably not go over well with the cops.

  The rain had petered out to light sprinkles by the time Clara arrived at the address for Carter’s Construction Company. She pulled up in front of a house, and realized that he must use his home address as his business address. All of the lights were out in the home, and Clara had a feeling that no one was home. This was probably going to be another dead end, but she decided to go knock, just to be sure. As she suspected, after several minutes of knocking and ringing the doorbell, she had received no response. With a defeated sigh, she turned around to head back to her car. Maybe it was time to give up and contact the police. After all, it was better to risk looking like a crazy person that it was to risk Carter being in danger, right?

  Clara was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of insistent barking and growling. She looked up and chuckled at the sight of a toy poodle, straining against the end of its leash and fiercely trying to warn off Clara. An old woman under an umbrella was trying to settle the dog, but the dog was completely ignoring her.

  “That’s quite the guard dog you’ve got there,” Clara called out to the woman.

  The woman laughed with a rich, chortling sound that Clara found strangely soothing. “He thinks he’s five times the size he actually is,” she said, trying to drag the dog along as it continued to growl at Clara.

  Clara laughed again, and then realized that the woman might know something about where Carter had gone. It was a long shot, since nobody talked to their neighbors anymore these days, but Clara had nothing to lose by asking. “Hey, do you know the guy that lives here? Carter Shaw?”

  “Carter? Yes, yes. I know him. Fine young man. Very kind, and quite good-looking, eh?” the woman said with a wink at Clara.

  Clara blushed in spite of herself. “I was just wondering if you might know where he’s at today. I was, uh, supposed to hear from him tonight but I didn’t. I just wanted to check up on him and make sure he’s okay.” Clara told herself that what she said was sort of the truth. She was expecting a bouquet from him, although she hadn’t known until thirty minutes ago that the flowers were coming from him.

  The old woman frowned. “Well, Carter’s not a big talker, you know. But I did happen to run into him this morning, and he said he’s going to work on a cabin out in the woods. Funny enough, I know the cabin he’s talking about. It used to belong to a friend of my daddy’s, and I spent some summer weekends there way back when I was a little girl. Those were the good old days,” the woman said wistfully.

  “So you know where the cabin is?” Clara said, trying to be patient and resisting the urge to tell the woman to focus.

  “Oh, yes. I still know the address and the road out there by heart. I’m glad Bill’s having Carter fix up the place. It’s a shame it was allowed to sit in shambles for so long.”

  Clara felt her heart racing. She knew, just as surely as she knew her own name, that she would find Carter at that cabin, and that he was in some sort of trouble. She got the address from the woman, along with longwinded directions, which she tried to follow along with the best she could, just in case her GPS had trouble with a cabin in the woods. When she finally managed to tear herself away from her conversation with the woman, she hopped into her car and looked up the address on her phone. She winced when she saw that the estimated time of arrival was an hour away. It was already nine-fifteen, so it would be after ten when she got there. She tried calling Carter’s number one more time, but, as she suspected, the call went to voicemail once again.

  Clara revved up her reluctant engine and started the long drive. Hopefully, she wasn’t too late to save him from whatever danger he might be in right now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Carter continued to shiver uncontrollably as the rain picked up again. He had almost completely lost feeling in his legs by now, and waves of nausea kept rolling over him. He couldn’t tell if the sick feeling was from hunger, dehydration, or just plain old fear that this might actually be how things ended for him.

  He had heard his phone ringing in the toolbox a few times. He had no idea who was calling him, but he crossed his fingers that whoever it was would realize soon that he hadn’t returned the call. It was a thin sliver of hope to hold onto, but he had to cling to whatever he could right now.

  The cabin creaked and moaned as the wind grew stronger. Carter hoped that the beams above him were stable enough that they wouldn’t fall, too. If one of those massive things hit his head, then he was a goner for sure. Carter closed his eyes and began to count, trying to block out the morbid thoughts running through his brain. As he passed the number one thousand with his counting, he thought he felt light hitting his eyes. When he opened his eyes, he saw that it wasn’t his imagination. Two headlights were traveling down the narrow driveway to the cabin, piercing the darkness of the cloudy, rainy night. Carter’s heart leapt as he realized there was no other place the car could be heading than the small parking area right in front of the cabin.

  “Hey! Over here,” he yelled, waving his hand in the air wildly. His weak voice didn’t carry far through the wind and rain, and it was unlikely the driver of the car could hear him from the inside of the vehicle, anyway. But that didn’t stop Carter from yelling. He had no idea who this was or how they had found him here, but he was saved.

  * * *

  Clara squinted as she navigated the tiny driveway to the cabin, thankful that she paid attention to the directions the old woman had given her. The driveway had been hard to find in the dark and rain, and she would have had trouble seeing it had she not been warned to watch for it right after the large rock wall that jutted halfway into the road. She couldn’t help but feeling a little bit nuts as she bounced over the rocky ground toward the cabin. What kind of a wild goose chase was this? But before she could get too far into questioning her decision to drive alone into the middle of nowhere on a dark rainy night, she saw it: Carter’s truck. Her headlights picked it up as she approached the cabin, and she knew for sure then that she had found him.

  Her heart sank as she realized that no lights shone from the cabin. The whole clearing around the cabin was dark except for the spots where Clara’s headlights shone. If Carter wasn’t in the cabin, that meant he was out in the woods s
omewhere. And that would make him impossible to find, unless Clara shifted. Clara bit her lip in determination as she drove over the last stretch of bumpy ground. She didn’t want to have to shift and reveal herself as different to Carter. But if that was what she had to do to save him, then so be it. As a bear, she would be able to track him down by scent and find him quickly in the woods. She just hoped that she wasn’t too late to save him from whatever trouble he had gotten himself into.

  Clara parked next to Carter’s truck, and hopped out into the rain. The wind howled so loudly that Clara could barely hear herself think, and she was instantly soaked as she stepped out of the protection of her vehicle. Clara didn’t care, though. She had more important things to worry about right now than her clothes getting soaked again.

  Clara tried the door on the truck, and found it unlocked. She climbed in the truck, but didn’t see anything that would indicate anything amiss. A travel mug of coffee sat in the cup holder, and a green canvas messenger bag was thrown across the passenger seat. Nothing looked unusual. Clara did find a flashlight lantern on the passenger side floor, and tested it to see if it worked. Thankfully, it did. A strong beam of light shot forward from the lantern when Clara turned the switch to the “on” position, and she hopped out of the truck to go inspect the cabin.

  When she shone the light beam on the front porch of the cabin, that’s when she saw him. Carter was on his back, waving his arms wildly in the air, which created strange shadows when the flashlight was aimed in his direction.

  “Carter!” Clara screamed out, running the short distance to the porch. She soon saw the problem. He had been pinned under a gigantic beam of wood. The beam was much larger than anything Clara would have expected to see in a log cabin. This cabin was huge, though. More like a mansion log cabin than the small, one-room type of dwelling Clara usually associated with cabins. Clara swept her light over Carter, assessing the situation. Carter was covered in leaves and other debris that the wind had blown over him. He was shivering and wet, and had a gash across his forehead that looked like it was oozing blood slowly.