Ranger Knox (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 1)

by Meg Ripley

  “They can also throw you in jail for obstruction of justice, or something lesser,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Why haven’t they yet?”

  “Because they’re so confident they have him cornered,” Ella said, and her cheeks were high with color as she spoke. “They’ve been sending us taunting emails from untraceable IPs, telling me I’m going to lose my “cash cow” to a sacrifice, things like that. At first it was just words, then they started sending us pictures and videos of…” Ella stopped and gasped, pressing her fingers to her mouth so hard that the skin around her lips turned white as a sheet.

  “Really dark stuff,” Chase supplied for her, and he patted Ella’s shoulder comfortingly. “They took pictures of our families and loved ones and burned them, or arranged them so their bodies looked…torn up.” He swallowed his disgust and looked at Ella again. The look on his face was so tender that Elizabeth almost mistook it for romantic love, but she knew the agent was happily married for the last two years. Arrogant and spoiled though he seemed at first, Chase wasn’t a leech; in fact, being around him was completely different from what she’d anticipated, even given the circumstances. She felt relaxed and alert, and most of all, comfortable; it unnerved her, but not nearly as much as it should have. What is this cowboy doing to me?

  “Okay,” Elizabeth said finally. “Say I believe you. Do you have proof—any evidence at all—of the mayor and his men targeting you?”

  The silence gave her all the answers she needed to know. Great. If I don’t figure this out, a lot of people can and probably will die. How the hell am I going to get out of this?

  “We have some ideas, though,” Chase said, seeing the despair on her face. “And some surveillance footage being sent from a remote location.”

  “I thought no one wanted to come forward to help out?”

  “Well,” Ella said, “No one who could help us…legally. This footage isn’t exactly theirs.”

  Elizabeth. “You found a hacker? Great! That’s a step, honestly.” A small one, but a step. Hackers were often called as witnesses, and she could always find a way around telling the whole story about the source of the footage. Truthfully, she would have latched on to anything just about now, but this was a real, viable possibility. She stood up, excited to have a plan of action for this awful situation.

  Chase sighed and stood “This is life or death for me, so I’ll try anything.”

  Elizabeth shuddered at his phrasing, but she knew in her heart he was telling the truth. She couldn’t agree to represent him without evidence, but she could feel the truth of his words deep in the marrow of her bones. What had Douglass said to her? This case is going to bring our little country town lots of attention.

  You’re damn right it is, she thought viciously. Just not for the reason you think.

  ****

  Elizabeth wanted to take her own car to the Chase’s home, but Ella didn’t want to be split up from anyone (“Horror movie rules,” she’d half-joked), so she ended up driving them both. Ella complimented her mint green Honda profusely as they got in, and Elizabeth guessed that this was the way she tended to show her nerves. There are worse ways to be in a panic, she thought. Like spineless, or rash.

  She eased her car onto the main street, noting the emptiness of the streets once more during her drive from work. Wait, there’s one car, she thought as she glanced in her rearview mirror. Must be coming home from work.

  Two turns later, however, Elizabeth was starting to have second thoughts. The black sedan behind them had tinted windows, and the driver was wearing huge shades, so he looked just like any other non-descript white man under the age of 65. She couldn’t even make out his hair color, or if he kept it short or long. Panic started to crowd in on her, and she struggled to keep her breathing steady as the sedan followed her down three more blocks and made the same turn as they did. Chase was idly giving her directions as they went along, completely oblivious to the possibilities of the death he cheated tailing them in the shiny sedan.

  Calm down. They might not be following you; they could just be driving home.

  You know they’re not! a voice in her head screamed. Gun it!

  Instead, she waited for the next yellow light, slowed, then turned left at the last possible second.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Chase yelped as the car shot forward and his barrel chest strained against the seat belt. Elizabeth took a sharp right and then careened around a corner in a final left-hand turn before performing a quick U-turn and parking between two SUVs in front of a donut shop. “Why are we stopping?”

  “Ssh!”

  “Why?” Ella asked, her voice high with panic. “Why do we have to shush?”

  Elizabeth kept her eyes on the street behind them in the rear view mirror. “Chase, watch the street in front of us and tell me if you see a car. Shut up,” she snapped as he started to speak. “Just do it.”

  Chase fell silent, but did as he was told. A bead of sweat rolled down Elizabeth’s neck as she watched her mirror, waiting for the black sedan to slip around the corner and coming crawling down the street in search of them. Why did I think I could handle this? Why did I try to be the bigger, badder person?

  A full minute passed. “Elizabeth, what’s going on?”

  She sighed and leaned back in her seat, letting the anxiety drain away before she answered him. “I’m sorry, I thought we were being followed, and I wanted to be sure.” She flashed Chase an apologetic smile, and the anger on his face swiftly transitioned to flirtatious humor before settling on a tired cheer.

  “You know,” Chase said teasingly, “On another day, I might accuse you of just trying to take me on a ride to wear me out and seal the deal.”

  Elizabeth gawked at him, then laughed so hard genuine tears came to her eyes.

  “What’s so funny?” Chase asked, frowning in what appeared to be real confusion over her hysterical laughing.

  “How can you flirt at a time like this?”

  Chase grinned at her, and it turned both of her legs to jelly so fast that she was immediately thankful that she was sitting down. “How can I not?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Chase winked and leaned over to her, beckoning her closer with the crook of one finger. She leaned in and caught a whiff of his cologne, something spiced with a hint of cherry. “When you smile, I almost forget someone is trying to kill me.”

  Elizabeth giggled shrilly, and was immediately ashamed that the noise came out of her at all. What the hell is wrong with me? She caught sight of Ella in the mirror and saw her rolling her eyes.

  “Does he do this a lot?” Elizabeth asked, smiling in spite of herself.

  Ella chuckled. “Yeah, but never so earnestly. You can usually tell it’s fake.”

  That wasn’t fake? Elizabeth thought blankly. It set a handful of butterflies flapping around her abdomen, then she scolded herself: This is a client, and a cowboy. Neither of those are good for dating.

  He seems more like an actor than a cowboy, a small voice in her said shyly. Rodeo cowboys are mostly tricks and charm.

  He’s still a client, she told herself firmly. Now focus on the task at hand.

  She started the car again and was making a three point turn when she noticed a brown box in the middle of the road, and the black sedan speeding away. Her heart stopped beating, and her mind raced with the possibilities: was someone trying to get something to her? Was she meant to run it over and damage her car? Was it simply something to slow her down—or worse, keep them there while someone picked them off with their weapon of choice?

  Drive! Kick them out, peel off and never look back!

  But she couldn’t. There was only one thing to do.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath and put the car in park. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she unclipped her seat belt. Chase’s eyes grew wide with fear; he looked between the box and Elizabeth, and started to shake his head.

  “Wait…that black sedan probably left that box. Elizabeth,
don’t—“

  But she was already out of the car by the time he ended his sentence. She took a nervous look around in each direction and shuffled over to the box, making sure not to cross in front of her headlights and block her best source of illumination. I wish I still carried a gun, she thought. Then again, it would not have been as useful at finding out what was inside as her hands and eyes would prove to be. She took another deep, shaking breath, bent over, and picked up the box. When it didn’t explode, she carried it over to the hood of her car and plopped it on the body of her Honda before opening the flaps.

  It was a plain white case file with inch high red lettering on the front: FOR ELIZABETH. She took the file in her trembling hands, noting how incredibly light it was. She opened the file to find a single sheet of a paper covering a glossy black and white print photo taken from outside a window. The camera was trained on a spot a pair of open drapes, where a woman in a large red sweater was standing without pants, holding a bottle of Jack Daniels. After a moment, Elizabeth recognized the sweater and the thick legs as her own, and the photo was from two days before. They’d been watching her—and worse, they had been watching her since before she knew she was taking the case. What the hell? What is this? A warning? A threat?

  Her mind was churning through the possibilities so fast she was beginning to feel sick. Elizabeth sprinted back to the driver’s seat and got into the car, handing the file off to Chase without thinking. He looked at the file with faint confusion, which quickly morphed into fear.

  “They’re watching you, too,” he whispered.

  Elizabeth nodded. “I think we should go get that footage now.”

  ****

  They were waiting for more than an hour at Chase’s house before Elizabeth suggested something might be wrong.

  “They didn’t say a time,” Chase kept insisting. He was sitting close to her on his red couch, and their thighs kept brushing against each other. The worry written on his face was getting harder to ignore, and it was starting to weigh on Elizabeth, too. She was as embroiled in this as he was, now—they’d been watching her every move, so who was to say they weren’t simply waiting to make a move when they were all in the same place?

  “Because that would be stupid,” Ella said absentmindedly as she paced the floor of the kitchen, her wiry body buzzing with energy. Then she stopped in her tracks and turned to Elizabeth. “Wouldn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” Elizabeth said gruffly, imagining all the ways they could sneak up on them while they were sitting there in his home. “Old guys like to do it that way, especially, in my experience. Taking everyone out at once is so much easier.”

  Both Chase and Ella groaned and put their faces in their hands.

  They’re not dead yet, Elizabeth. She sighed. “But I’m sure these things take time. Let’s give it a few more minutes.”

  “I’m taking a nap,” Ella announced, stomping from the room and slamming a door somewhere further in the house.

  Elizabeth turned to Chase in disbelief. “She can sleep at a time like this?”

  He shrugged. “Different strokes for different folks.”

  They sat in silence for a while, and Elizabeth finally got up the nerve to ask something that had been on her mind for a while.

  “So…you think I’m a good lawyer?”

  Chase turned to her and grinned. “A great one. People notice you, and I don’t think you notice them noticing you yet.” His grinned softened into a more serious expression. “But I do. And the funny thing is, you never noticed me noticing you.”

  Elizabeth bristled. “What do you mean?”

  Chase hesitated, then turned his body toward her on the couch. “Well…we went to law school together.”

  His sentence was followed by ten seconds of silence; Elizabeth assumed he was joking. When he didn’t laugh, she gasped.

  “Your name was Charles,” she recalled. “We never spoke…I stopped seeing you around after a while, though. What happened?”

  His laugh was a long, hearty one, and by the time he was done, his eyes had teared up a bit. “Obviously, I found out I wasn’t the best at law abiding. Or studying, or taking tests…” he chuckled after he trailed off. “You were always better at that stuff than me. Everyone was. So I changed my name and became a rodeo cowboy, because gymnastics have to come in handy somehow.” He stared at his hands, off in some far-away memory.

  She laughed at his joke, but his tone was so sad that her heart broke despite his gentle smile. She touched his shoulder, bringing his attention back to her for a moment.

  “Hey,” she said. “Law school is for kids too stubborn to realize you can’t do anything with a philosophy degree. You’re doing fine; you made the right choice.”

  “Did I?” Chase asked bitterly. “I’m thirty, I’m single, and I’m throwing wild hints toward a woman I’m very interested in, but she’s not picking them up. And why? Because she’s probably gonna get whacked, and it’s all my fault!” His eyes were swimming with tears again; he pressed his hands over them and took a deep breath.

  Elizabeth was startled by his shouting, but even more disturbed by his tears. This is my fault, she thought desperately. How can I fix this?

  How do you want to fix this? Asked a sly voice in her head.

  Elizabeth pulled Chase’s hands from his eyes and held them between hers, and he stopped crying immediately. She leaned forward and kissed the tears from his cheeks, and he sat completely still, as though he were afraid to scare her away. Then she leaned back and gazed into his eyes, trying to decide if the sparkle in his eye still meant what it meant before.

  Suddenly, he was kissing her, pushing his hands underneath her silk shirt to feel the curve of her lower back as she pressed her body against him. It had been years since she let herself want anyone so badly, and maybe now—on what may be the final night of her natural life—was the time to act on foolish desires. She had his t-shirt over his head faster than he could get her bra off, and their bodies were in a tangle for a moment while they fought to strip the clothes away.

  Elizabeth finally tugged her panties and skirt over her wide hips, and relished the look of astonishment in Chase’s eyes as his electric green gaze took in her grapefruit-size breasts, full and tear-drop shaped, above the gentle curve of her soft waist. She did a slow turn for him, and he let out a low whistle of appreciation at the sight of the curve of her plump ass. She felt his large hands reach forward to cup her heavy cheeks, and she squealed and stepped backward—right into his erection. She felt his rigid staff slip between her thighs momentarily and shivered.

  “Cold?” he whispered, pressing his lips to her ear and slipping one hand in front of her to cup and knead her breast.

  “No,” Elizabeth moaned, unable to find anything else to say. Her pussy was soaking wet, and she caught sight of him in the mirror hanging above the couch—his eyes crackling with the energy of desire, his lips parted and moist as he watched her writhe in pleasure under the manipulation of his skillful fingers. One hand slipped between her thighs to play with swollen button of her clit, and she cried out and leaned her weight against the strength of his broad chest.

  “Lizzie, I want you so bad,” he breathed desperately in her ear, tightening his grip on her breast as he made slower, firmer strokes with his fingers on her clit. Her body was alive with pleasure, and her hips were moving automatically with the motion of his hand. Eventually, his breath grew too ragged, and he lost his patience.

  “I need you,” Chase growled. “Please, please…let me make love to you.”

  Elizabeth shivered and turned around, breaking his hold on her breast as she did. He cupped her chin as she gazed up at him, seemingly in awe over the features of her face—her soft brown eyes, her nose, the wrinkle between her eyebrows. In that moment, she really did believe that he had been thinking of her all these years. How did I never notice you? she wondered. Her eyes drifted down the incredible definition of his body and she let her fingers drift over his stomach and back.
Then she smiled, kissed him, and pushed him on the sofa so he was flat on his back.

  After she was finished taking in the glory that was Chase—sprawled out with his thick cock jutting straight up, ready for her body—she crouched over him on the couch, placing one leg on either side of his body and shivering as he took hold of her ass with both hands.

  The heat in his eyes was all-consuming; it was in every sound and motion he made, however small or subtle. He grunted as she lowered her wet pussy over his thick head, digging his nails into the meat of her ass as she slid slowly down his shaft. Elizabeth moaned in happiness as she settled on him. He was so thick that he nearly stretched her past the point of comfort, but as she moved her body up and down the length of his member, the pleasure started to build.

  “Lizzie,” Chase moaned throatily, peering up at her curvy body as she bounced on his rigid cock. “You’re perfect!” He tenderly slid one big hand up her side, stopping at her breast to thumb her nipple and moaning softly in time with the rise and fall of her body. She felt every single inch of him as she moved, as if she could isolate each nerve ending being massaged by his magnificence in turn. It was dizzying, and the beauty on his face only gave her a deeper sense of unreality. To combat that, she placed her hands on his barrel chest to steady herself, and brought her hips down harder on his.

  “Oh, fuck!” Chase held onto Elizabeth’s soft waist, helping her to come down harder on him even as he gently undulated his hips against her downward stroke. Elizabeth rocked her hips against his in a forward and backward motion, and her moans increased as the head of his cock nuzzled against her velvety g-spot. “Yes, yes! Fuck me, baby, please.”