Hard As Steele (A BBW Paranormal Romance) (Timber Valley Pack)

by Georgette St. Clair

  Isadora answered on the third ring. “Listen, law-dog, I haven’t stolen anything in at least five minutes,” Isadora said irritably. “Do you ever take a day off?”

  “I need to ask you a favor. Are you alone?”

  “Sadly, yes, but I’m about to go trolling for dates. Why do you ask?”

  “I need you to come over to my house immediately, and don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, or that you’ve spoken to me.”

  “I’m intrigued. Be there in ten.”

  He was about to tell her not to speed on the way over there, but she’d already hung up.

  “Roxanne, we’re leaving,” he called out. “Grab anything that you think you’ll need, because we’re not coming back.”

  “What? Why? Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you when we get there!” He ran into his bedroom, grabbed his suitcase, and began packing. He threw in clothes, and he grabbed some water bottles, apples, hard salami and granola bars from the kitchen for Roxanne. He could hunt his own dinner, but he didn’t expect her to eat raw game that he’d chased down.

  “Can I help? What’s going on?” she asked, standing in his doorway and watching him.

  “We’re going on a road trip. I’ll explain while we’re driving.”

  Someone knocked on the door. He pushed aside the curtains and checked through the window, saw Isadora, and let her in. She was wearing black jeans with zippers all over them, combat boots, and a black sweater. Her necklace was a silver chain with a padlock on it. She’d added a streak of violet to her hair recently, he saw.

  “What’s with all the secret squirrel business?” she asked.

  “I actually need your help, believe it or not. I’m leaving town, permanently,” he told her. “I’ve got to get Roxanne out of here, and I won’t be able to come back.”

  Her eyes widened with shock. “Really? Wow. I’ll kind of miss you, even if you were constantly trying to oppress me and trample on my rights, and even if you did have the nerve to imply that I am actually attracted to Dash, which is horrifying, and even if…come to think of it, bon voyage! Don’t forget to write.”

  “I’m so touched I could just about cry, if I were capable of such a thing,” Steele said dryly. “Here’s why I called you.”

  “I’m all ears.” Isadora shifted just her ears, so they were furry and tufted, then shifted them back.

  “Funny.” He handed her the picture of the blonde girl. “In a couple of hours, I need you to go drop this off at my office, and tell them that I’ve left and I’m not coming back. Don’t go before then, because I need time to get safely out of the area. I also need you to call my uncle and tell him that I’ve left for good.”

  She looked at the picture. “It’s a healer. Who wrote ‘help me’ on it?”

  “Roxanne. She also drew the picture. It’s a long story. Her memory is kind of spotty right now, and she doesn’t remember where she saw this girl, but I suspect that it’s one of the kidnap victims. As soon as she remembers anything more, I will make sure that information gets to the Wardens, I promise you that.”

  “Okay. Wow. I don’t know what to say.” She tucked the picture into her metal stud covered purse. “Good luck. Anything else that I can do?”

  “Whoever they pick as the new sheriff, don’t torture him too much.”

  Isadora threw back her head and let out a cackling laugh of delight. Then she rubbed her hands together gleefully.

  “I get to break in a new one!” she crowed, as she turned and walked back to her car.

  Steele groaned, and shut the door. God help the new sheriff, he thought.

  He heard her pull away.

  “We’ve got to leave now,” he said to Roxanne. She nodded, her expression worried but trusting. He grabbed his suitcase. She had a couple of grocery bags that she’d grabbed from the kitchen, stuffed with food and some towels, shampoo, and the guest toothbrush she’d been using.

  Steele’s heart was heavy. He wanted to be with Roxanne, but not like this. They’d never be able to stop looking over their shoulders . If he thought that leaving her behind would make her safe, he’d do it, but the shifter nation wouldn’t rest knowing that a human was out there who knew of their existence. He’d need to keep her by his side at all times.

  He heard a car pulling up in front of his house, and paused where he stood. Had Isadora betrayed him? Or had the Wardens decided they were just going to come take Roxanne from him, no matter what? He only heard one car, which meant there wouldn’t be too many shifters for him to handle.

  “Go in the kitchen,” he ordered her. She hesitated. “Hurry!” he barked, and she turned and ran, glancing over her shoulder. “Shut the door!” he called out to her, and she did.

  Annoyed, he stalked over to the door and yanked it open.

  There was a human and a wolf shifter standing there, with rifles pointed at him. They were clearly civilians, not military. One of them was a skinny redheaded girl with glasses, the other was a tall, lean, blond man who definitely smelled of wolf shifter. A closer look revealed that the redheaded girl was holding a tranquilizer gun.

  “What have you done with her, you son of a bitch?” the redheaded girl yelled at him. She and the wolf shifter advanced on him, weapons pointed straight at him.

  Steele backed into the house, keeping a wary eye on them.

  “Roxanne!” the redheaded girl shouted. “Roxanne, we’re here! You’re safe now! Roxanne, come out!” She glowered at Steele. “I swear to God, if you’ve hurt her…”

  Roxanne rushed into the room, holding the frying pan up defensively. “Don’t hurt him!” she yelled at them. Steele would have smiled if the situation hadn’t been so serious. That was his girl, tough as nails.

  “Oh, thank God! I thought he’d killed you!” The redhead ran over and hugged Roxanne, while wolf shifter kept his rifle trained on Steele. Roxanne slowly lowered the frying pan and stared at the girl in confusion.

  “Who are you?” Roxanne asked.

  The girl took a step back. “Roxanne. You know me. What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “What do you mean? How do I know you?”

  Roxanne shook her head, confused.

  “I’m Katherine,” the girl said, staring at her. “You know me. We’ve been best friends forever. You were missing for seven months, and you just called me out of the blue two days ago. Do you remember that?”

  “I was missing for seven months?” Roxanne asked, looking shocked.

  “Yes. You disappeared in February. You were headed to the doctor, and he said you never arrived. Are your memory problems acting up again?” the redhead peered at her, forehead wrinkling in concern.

  “You’re lying,” Steele said angrily. “My men have run her name through the system. She was never reported missing.”

  “I tried to report it to our police chief. They acted like they didn’t believe me, but he’s in on it,” the blonde girl said.

  “In on what?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “In on whatever weirdness is going on in our town.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Steele argued. “If she was missing all that time, how could he not believe you?”

  “It’s a long story. I don’t have time to explain, and for all I know you’re in on it too.” She raked him with an angry glower.

  “You think I’m somehow conspiring with your police chief, two states north of here?” Steele demanded, exasperated. “You people need to leave. I need to get Roxanne out of here. I can help her. I know someone who can fix her memory.”

  He looked at the wolf shifter. He considered asking him what he was doing consorting with humans, but then, who was Steele to talk?

  The redhead ignored him, and said to Roxanne “You’ve got to come with us. He’s lying to you. When you called me, you told me that he was holding you prisoner so he could bring someone here to erase your memory. You told me that he’d taken your cell phone, but you brought an extra one with you just in case. Seriously, we’ve got
to go. Where’s the baby?”

  “What baby?” Roxanne looked even more confused.

  “Your baby.” Katherine’s eyes went wide with alarm. “Your baby. The last time I saw you, in February, you said that you had just realized you were pregnant, and also really far along. You didn’t believe it at first, because you were a virgin, but then you’d been having all those weird flashbacks about your weekend with the werewolf, and you thought they might actually be true? Remember? You went to see the doctor, but he said you never showed.”

  Steele felt as if he’d been hit by a thunderbolt. A baby? Roxanne had a child?

  “Roxanne. Is this true?” he demanded urgently. “Do we have a baby?”

  Roxanne’s eyes went wide and her face went white. She fell to her knees. Steele knelt down next to her.

  “Oh my God!” she screamed. She looked around the room wildly. “I remember. I have a baby boy. His name is Flint. We have to find him. Dr. Polaski did it, he helped those men kidnap me. I told him all about my weekend with you, and how I’d seen you turn into a wolf. He injected me with something and the next thing I knew I was in the back of a van, and they took me somewhere underground, and after I had my baby…” she was panting.

  “What? After you had him, what?” Steele grabbed her face with both hands. The humans tensed, shifting uneasily and training their guns at his head, but he didn’t care. He had to know.

  “I was…we were underground, in an old mine that they’d made into a prison. They kept taking him away from me for blood tests, but they’d always give him back. Then last week, they took him away and wouldn’t give him back to me, so Bertrand…he was a mountain lion shifter…he helped me…” her eyes glazed over. “He did something. I don’t remember what. He killed guards, and we were going to escape, but something happened. Dynamite. Bertrand had gotten ahold of dynamite. He blew up the tunnel behind me, and he was killed, but I got out.”

  Steele felt his world tilting on its axis. He had a baby, and it was being held prisoner in a secret laboratory. He was a father, and his baby was in danger.

  He couldn’t control himself. Fur rippled under his skin, and then burst through, and he felt himself starting to shift.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alarm shot through Katherine as the big man named Steele went furry and sank down to all fours. He was intimidating enough as a human; if he turned into a wolf, forget about it.

  “No!” she screamed, and at the same time she shot him with the tranquilizer gun which she’d swiped from her uncle, a large animal vet.

  The wolf let out a yelp, fell to the ground, and the fur vanished. His body rippled and contorted, tail disappearing, ears sinking back into his head, and a minute later he’d turned human again. Roxanne had been telling the truth; she really had been with a man who turned into a wolf.

  This explained many things, including all the stories she’d heard whispered as a child. Katherine felt a chill run through her; the world was suddenly a much scarier place.

  The man lay sprawled in the doorway, half naked. “How long will that last?” she asked Edvin.

  “I’ve never been shot with a tranquilizer dart, so I wouldn’t know,” he said.

  Funny how he said that. Was he comparing himself to a wolf-man? Katherine was dying to ask him if the rumors were true, but it seemed rude, somehow.

  Roxanne was staring at Steele’s sprawled out, unconscious body. “Who is he?” she demanded. “What happened? Katherine…why are we here? We should call 911, he might be hurt.” She peered closer. “He looks like he’s breathing.”

  Katherine grabbed Roxanne’s arm. “He was holding you prisoner. He’ll be fine. We need to get out of here,” Katherine said, despair washing over her as they rushed to her car.

  Roxanne climbed in the front seat, Edvin climbed in the back, and Katherine scrambled into the driver’s seat. They quickly pulled out of Steele’s driveway and sped away.

  Katherine was starting to get really worried. She thought that she’d swoop in, rescue Roxanne, and everything would be fine, but clearly her memory problems had gotten much worse. Before, she’d be fine for weeks on end and then forget an entire day or two. Now, she seemed to be forgetting some things and remembering others every few minutes.

  What could Katherine do to get her help? She was afraid of what would happen if she called the authorities. She already knew she didn’t trust the police chief in Lonesome Pine, so who could she call? Not the sheriff of Timber Valley – according to what Roxanne had told her when she’d called the day before, that was the man they’d just shot with a tranquilizer dart and left lying in the doorway.

  Was there no law enforcement she could trust, anywhere?

  “What are we doing?” Roxanne asked.

  “I need to call my father,” Katherine said. “We’ve got no other choice.”

  Her father answered, sounding annoyed. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. I stopped by your house and you weren’t there. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  “It’s going to be really hard to explain this to you without you thinking that I’m completely crazy,” Katherine said. “I want you to try to keep an open mind about this. Roxanne is with me, and also, werewolves are real.”

  “Oh, everyone knows that. Are you talking about the Gund family?” her father said. “It’s been kind of an open secret among the older people here in town for generations now. What does this have to do with Chief Fennell? How does Roxanne fit into all of this?”

  Katherine glanced in her rearview mirror.

  “Are you a werewolf?” she demanded of Edvin.

  He shrugged. “If you mean can I turn into a wolf when I want to, then yes. Our family doesn’t normally talk about it with outsiders, but since you already saw that man back there turn into a wolf, I guess the cat’s out of the bag. So to speak.”

  “Who are you talking to?” her father asked.

  “Edvin Gund. I asked him to come with me because I didn’t know who else to ask, and you never took me seriously when Roxanne disappeared. I was afraid you’d go to Chief Fennell if I told you I’d heard from her again.”

  “Tell him I say hello.”

  “You knew the Gund family were really werewolves, and you never told me?” Katherine squawked indignantly. “I totally thought that grandma made all that up to keep me from going into the woods by myself!”

  “Only some of them are werewolves,” her father said, as if that made everything okay.

  Freaking werewolves! She’d grown up living only a few miles away from werewolves, and nobody felt the need to share that information with her? Nobody but her grandmother, who barely had half of her marbles?

  “Anyway, the feeling around town was that it’s really their business, and if the word got out, they’d be in danger,” her father continued. “Unfortunately, I think that’s turned out to be true. The Gund family came to me a couple of years ago when Axel disappeared, and they said that they believed that Chief Fennell had something to do with it. I’ve been trying to look into it, and a few of the city council members have too, but so far we haven’t been able to come up with any solid proof. You still haven’t answered me. Where are you, and what’s going on?”

  “I’m in Colorado, but we’re headed back your way now. Edvin and I drove to Colorado to pick up Roxanne, because a couple days ago, out of the blue, she called me and told me that she had found that man she’d spent a weekend with, and he was a werewolf, and she was at his house and…oh, God, it’s so complicated. She may have been held prisoner ever since last February. Her and her baby.”

  “Roxanne’s baby?” her father said, sounding bewildered. “You’ve completely lost me now.”

  “It’s just way too complicated, I need to tell you in person. Here’s what you need to know right now. Dr. Polaski is a kidnapper. Remember how Roxanne went to see Dr. Polaski back in February, but he claimed she never showed up? She went to see him because she had realized she was pregnant. She
was actually almost ready to have her baby – and the father is the werewolf that she spent the weekend with, after the car accident. So Dr. Polaski kidnapped her, and he conspired with Chief Fennell to keep it secret. And I’ve been following Chief Fennell into the woods and I’ve seen him meet with a bunch of military looking guys out there, several times.”

  “I see.” Even though her father wasn’t right there with her, Katherine could practically see the wheels turning in his head. He was calmly, methodically making plans.

  “You need to be way more freaked out about this!” Katherine yelled. “There are freaking werewolves, and crazy soldiers kidnapping them, and they still have Roxanne’s baby!”

  “What good would it do for me to get hysterical? I believe you’ve got that covered for both of us,” he pointed out. She hated it when her father acted all reasonable. “We need to find out where these soldiers are stationed. If they’ve been having meetings with the chief near town, then they can’t be too far.”

  “Roxanne said that she remembered being held in some old mine.”

  “Well, nobody knows the mines like the Gunds,” her father said. “I’m going to call them right now. If Chief Fennell really is in on this, I don’t want you coming anywhere near town. I’m going to start driving towards you so we can meet up halfway. Just tell me where you’re headed.”

  Katherine had always known her temperament came from her mother’s side of the family. She wanted to scream and jump up and down and throw things. Unfortunately, she had to drive, and her father, as usual, was right. Having a hysterical meltdown wouldn’t help Roxanne get her baby back. It sure would feel good though.

  “Hello,” Roxanne spoke up. “Are we making any progress towards finding Clara?”

  Katherine felt her throat clenching with panic. “Who is Clara? You said your baby’s name is Flint.”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say my baby?” Roxanne stared at her in bewilderment. “I’ve never, you know, been with a guy in that way. I couldn’t possibly have a baby.”