by Amy Star
“You’re the one who brought up a tox screen. People don’t usually get high on chloroform. That’s usually the kind of thing that happens to someone unwillingly.”
“Okay, okay,” Matthew said, throwing his hands up in the air. He glanced back into the back area of the van and shook his head, sighing. “You stay with her and alert that one doctor that things need to be quiet. I’ll get rid of Alex and come back, and hopefully we’ll get through this situation without blowing the whole thing any worse than we already have.”
“This is a successful job at the end of the day,” Dylan said, stretching against the back of his seat. “We got the guy, and we’ll deliver his body the way we said, and we’ll get paid. The bystander thing is something we can handle.”
“You say that now,” Matthew said glumly. “We’ll see how cooperative she feels when she wakes up.”
Dylan smirked to himself, speeding up a bit and looking for the exit they would need to take to get to the hospital. He glanced into the back of the van a few more times, making sure that their injured bystander was still unconscious—but still breathing, too. Dylan thought that her scent might not leave the van for days to come. In a week, he could probably climb into the back, bury his face against the cushions on the seat, and breathe in the heady smell of her blood and her pheromones.
Lavender, honey, and fuck if she doesn’t smell of lemon, too, Dylan thought, his mouth watering. If that was the way she smelled—underneath the stress pheromones, brittle and bitter—then she would probably taste very similar: floral and sweet and tart. Fuck me, Dylan thought, grinning slightly to himself as he took the exit for the hospital he wanted—the one staffed with a doctor who was also a shifter, who would find it in his best interest to help keep their hapless victim quiet about what she’d seen. I doubt if she even knows what she smells like…or how much that scent would draw any self-respecting bear on the planet.
“I’m going to carry her into the building,” Dylan told Matthew firmly as they approached the hospital. “And what you’re going to do is as soon as I’ve got the folks at the front occupied, you’re going to drive off with the van. If they ask questions, I’ll come up with something—we’re contractors. That’s true enough.”
“And you’re going to get to the doc as quickly as you can, right?” Dylan nodded.
“This may end up working in spite of how much we’ve already fucked it up,” Matthew said, shaking his head. He chuckled and glanced into the back, and Dylan thought that perhaps his longtime friend wasn’t as immune to their innocent bystander’s charms as he’d pretended to be.
“Take the body to where it needs to be, make the call, and get back to the hospital as fast as you can without risking anything,” Dylan said, glancing at Matthew to confirm that his partner understood and would obey.
“I know the drill,” Matthew said, nodding. “You just do what you need to do and keep me posted if anything else goes bad on this job.”
“Nothing else will,” Dylan said, almost to himself. “We’ve exhausted our bad luck by now.”
“Or outrun it,” Matthew added, grinning slightly.
Dylan pulled up to the emergency entrance of the hospital and put the van in park, jumping out of the driver’s seat quickly. A few EMTs, loitering at the entrance and smoking cigarettes as they waited for a call to come in, jumped up when Dylan hurried around to the side door of the van. The corpse of the were-lion they’d put down was concealed in the far back of the van, buried under some gear, but Dylan didn’t want to take any chances.
“I’ve got a woman here, throat cut, ankle sprained, knocked out with something on a rag,” he called out, reaching in and retrieving the woman he and Matthew had rescued.
Dylan saw Matthew climbing over the center console in the cab of the van; he made a bigger show to keep the EMTs’ attention on him and their victim, hefting her in his arms. She was light enough that it was barely an effort—but Dylan noted with appreciation that their victim was no waif.
“I need to get her to doctor Raymond Alvarez,” Dylan told the emergency personnel. “Is he on call right now?”
“Alvarez is working the ER,” one of the EMTs said. “How did you find her?”
“I was working for a client and saw the guy attack her—he ran when he saw me coming,” Dylan said quickly. “I don’t know what he drugged her with; something on a rag he put over her face. The neck wound isn’t too bad, but she’ll probably need stitches.”
“We’ve got her,” one of the EMTs said, moving a gurney in place. “Did the guy leave the rag behind or take it with him? Where did this go down?”
“Over at Highland Groves apartments,” Dylan said; he figured it was best to stick as much to the truth as possible. “The guy kept the knife and the rag. No idea why he went for her, probably an opportunity thing.”
“Sounds about right. We’ll page Alvarez. Can you stick around, help them fill out a report?”
Dylan considered; he saw the van pulling away from the curb, Matthew behind the wheel. His partner was moving quickly, but taking care not to peel off—that would only draw attention onto him.
“As long as you get Alvarez,” Dylan said. “I know him—he’ll take care of her properly.”
“We’ve got good staff here,” one of the other EMTs said, giving Dylan a slight scowl. “But we’ll get her to Alvarez unless he’s busy with something else.”
Dylan nodded his acceptance of that solution and promised himself that he’d text the doctor; tell him under the radar what the issue was.
Dylan followed the EMTs into the building, watching them wheel the woman off down the hall. A nurse appeared in front of him, and Dylan settled into the tedium of answering questions—or mostly, not answering them while still trying to appear to help. He told the nurse that he had never met the woman before, so he had no idea if she had any allergies; he didn’t know when she’d last had a tetanus shot. He wasn’t sure if the assailant had known the woman either. He didn’t know almost anything about the situation. Dylan agreed to hang around for a little while, and settled in to wait, taking a seat in the waiting room as far away from a coughing family of four children and two parents as the space would allow.
He took his phone out and looked around briefly, to make sure no one was watching him out of anything other than basic curiosity. Dylan was fairly certain that the police would be invited as a matter of course; even though he didn’t have anything to tell them, the woman he’d brought in was clearly the victim of some kind of assault—they would want to investigate it. Not that they’re going to find anything out, Dylan thought with satisfaction. By the end of the day, Alex’s corpse would be found by the people who needed to find it—and then it would be almost as if he had never existed at all. It would be clear to any friends the man had had that he’d been put down by were-bears; they would probably even know that it had been a contract killing. Nobody wanted a shifter to be exposed, so nobody would give the police anything they could go on.
Dylan found Ray Alvarez’s phone number in his contacts. He and Matthew had met with the doctor before; it only made good sense for people in their line of work to have a few contacts in law enforcement and a few contacts in the medical field. Those contacts could make a major difference when it came to covering for suspicious injuries, or taking care of needs in jail, or avoiding minor run-ins with the law in the first place.
Dylan considered what message he wanted to send and then typed it out carefully.
There’s a woman I brought in through Emergency. She was a bystander in a fracas with a marked were-lion. Shit’s gone pear-shaped already. Do what you can to keep her quiet, and get me in to talk to her ASAP.
He tapped send and then composed another quick message to Matthew, checking in to make sure that his partner was following the timeline, and that everything was as it should be.
Then Dylan had nothing left to do but wait for someone to get to him; whether it was Matthew coming back from the drop, the cops wanting to as
k him the same questions the nurse had asked, or Ray coming to take him to the woman he’d helped, Dylan couldn’t leave until he was sure everything was going the way it should be. He kept his attention on the TV playing a bland afternoon talk show as much as possible and checked his phone occasionally, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. It was lucky he’d taken care of Alex while he’d been in his bear form. The only blood that anyone would find on his clothes was a small amount that had come from the woman—and that was easily explained. He and Matthew had made sure to get Alex’s blood on their victim—though not anywhere that would infect anything, just as a precaution—so that if they took samples, the fingers wouldn’t point towards the people who’d brought her in.
Dylan took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, reminding himself that part of the job was patience; but it was difficult to summon up a philosophical attitude when there was so much outside of his control.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nadine woke up gradually, aware of a lingering sweet taste in her mouth, a throbbing ache in her ankle, and a competing pain along her throat. Her body felt strangely heavy, her eyes dry and her eyelids like sandpaper as she slowly came around.
“Ah, she’s coming back to us just in time,” someone said; Nadine heard the beeping of a heart monitor a few feet away from her head, and bit by bit, ambient noises filtered through her mind. Her headache—the reason she’d ended up where she was, wherever that was—had utterly disappeared, replaced by a half-dozen other sensations. Not exactly a fair trade, she thought wryly.
The smells of antiseptic and linen gave her the final clues that she was in some kind of hospital, and Nadine remembered the last things that had happened—in a hazy, foggy way—before she’d gone away. The memory of the sickly-sweet smelling rag on her face brought with it a surge of anger. Some asshole drugged me! She opened her eyes, and to Nadine’s momentary shock, she saw the face of the man who’d had the rag.
“You!”
“You’re quite lucky that this man was there,” someone said.
Nadine turned her head and caught sight of a doctor in scrubs and a white coat; he was short but obviously in good shape, his dark hair meticulously groomed, his face clean-shaven, his dark eyes peering at her from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
“While none of your arteries was nicked, you would still have been in danger if you’d been left to bleed.”
“He was there—he drugged me!” Nadine turned to look at the man who’d been at the scene, the one who she suddenly remembered had been naked. Something about that fact tugged at the back of her mind. Wasn’t there something about a bear? Was that guy there before then? When did he show up? She frowned.
“I think it’s likely that your experience has jumbled you up a bit,” the doctor said. “This man and his partner bandaged your neck, and brought you to us.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that he drugged me,” Nadine said sullenly, frowning from one man to the other. “Why is he even here?”
“He had to report on the assault to our staff, and to the police,” the doctor said. “And, of course, he was concerned with your well-being.”
“If he was that concerned, he shouldn’t have drugged me,” Nadine said, giving the doctor a sour look. Why isn’t he more worried about the fact that the guy who knocked me out is sitting a few feet away from me?
“I think after the stress of the attack, you should probably wait a little while to talk to the police about what happened to you,” the doctor said. “I’m giving you something to manage the pain in your ankle—and in your throat. The cut was mostly superficial, but I’m sure it stings like a son of a bitch.”
“It does,” Nadine admitted, reaching up tentatively and brushing her fingers against the spot where she could feel the stinging, burning pain. Instead of her own skin, she felt the roughness of a bandage.
“You’ll want to rest,” the doctor said, nodding. “In the meantime, I want to assure you that I know this man, and he is not out to harm you.” The doctor pointed to the other man in the room and Nadine wondered if she had somehow managed to wander into a terrible horror movie. “He’d like to have a few words in private with you. I would recommend you listen to him and hear him out, as much as you can, in your present state.”
“What are you, his lawyer?” Nadine crossed her arms over her chest. She realized then that she was almost completely naked—only a gown and a blanket covering her body from the two men in the room with her.
“I’m just interested in making sure that you’re okay,” the doctor said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“You’re leaving me alone with him? I just told you—he drugged me!”
“I think you’re confused,” the doctor said gently. “Until your thoughts are clearer, please try to avoid accusing anyone of anything.” The doctor wrote something on the clipboard in his hands and inclined his head towards her. “A nurse will be in to administer some pain medication; until then, please relax as much as your pain allows, and please hear this man out.” Before she could protest, the doctor turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Nadine stared at the man, seated in a chair a few feet away from her bed, looking for the entire world as if he had not a single concern.
“My partner and I have your purse and the pharmacy bag; it’s in our van,” the man told her, watching her intently.
“You drugged me,” Nadine said flatly. “I know you did, even if you are in some kind of cahoots with that doctor to cover it up.”
“I did drug you,” the man said with a shrug. “Just a little chloroform. Nothing that would really harm you.”
“I’d just had my throat cut and my ankle twisted and…been attacked by someone,” Nadine pointed out. “The last thing I needed was to be knocked unconscious.”
“It didn’t hurt you,” the man insisted. “In fact, considering the fact that you probably would have struggled if we’d left you conscious, you should be thanking me for doing what I had to do to get you here safely.”
“What the hell happened back there?” Nadine shook her head, wincing slightly at the tug she felt along her throat where the cut was. Stitches, she thought ruefully. I’m going to look like Frankenstein’s monster after this. “I saw a trained bear—and you’re not the guy who was chasing after the guy who grabbed me. Where the hell is he?”
“He’s taking care of something,” the man said with a shrug. “And you’re right—I’m not him. You’re wrong about the trained bear, though.”
Nadine frowned. “I know what I saw,” she said firmly. “I can’t exactly explain it, but I know for a damned fact that I saw a bear working with a guy who was chasing someone.” She shook her head again—carefully. “And I can’t imagine a wild bear would just cooperate with someone like that. It would have to be a trained bear.”
“Not exactly,” the man said. He licked his lips and glanced at the door. “What’s your name, by the way? We didn’t take the time to look through your things to find an ID, so you’re in here as Jane Doe.”
“Nadine. Nadine Sanderson.” She fidgeted against the pillows piled up behind her head and back.
“I’m Dylan Knowles,” the man told her. “My business partner is Matthew Forrest.”
“Why am I supposed to care?” Nadine wanted the man out of her room; more than that, she wanted to talk to the police who were presumably waiting to hear what she remembered of the attack she’d been through.
“Because I technically saved your life?” Dylan shrugged. “I mean if you want to get super technical, I probably could have done a better job of getting that asshole away from you before he cut your throat, but once the damage was done, my partner and I could have just left you there for someone else to take care of.”
“Your partner seemed more concerned about me not dying than you are right now,” Nadine told Dylan, frowning.
“We were both concerned,” Dylan said, smiling brightly. “But the fact remains that once we bandaged you up, we cou
ld have just called the cops and skipped out before they got there. Anonymous tip, no one would have known anything.”
“But I would have told them about seeing you and your partner,” Nadine said, realizing why it was that the doctor had told her to listen to the man. “Okay,” she started, taking a careful breath. “What’s the deal with this whole situation? And why were you naked when I saw you?” That part stuck out in her mind and Nadine blushed, remembering the sight of Dylan’s naked body all too well.
“Ah, you remember that part,” Dylan said with a slightly smirking smile. “And it looks to me like you remember it pretty fondly.”
“I’m not remembering it fondly,” Nadine said sharply. “It’s just—I can’t push the image of you naked out of my mind right now. It wasn’t that it’s pleasant, it’s that…” she tried to think of a way to describe it. “It’s embarrassing.”
“For who? I’m not embarrassed that you saw me naked.” Dylan grinned again.
“So explain the situation with the bear to me,” Nadine said quickly, to change the subject. “What happened to the bear?”
“You’re looking at him,” Dylan told her. “That’s a big part of why the doc wanted to give me some time to talk to you alone. There are some things you need to know about—and some things you need to keep to yourself.”
“You aren’t a bear,” Nadine said, crossing her arms over her chest again. “I’m looking at you right now, and you are definitely not the bear I saw helping that other guy.”
“I promise you,” Dylan said, his strange gray-green eyes glinting with amusement, “I am exactly that bear; I’m just not in that form right now.”
“No,” Nadine said. She shook her head. “You’re just fucking with me now. There is no way that you’re a bear in any form.”
Dylan chuckled. “You want proof? I can give you proof—you just have to promise me you won’t scream.”
Nadine’s heart beat faster in her chest. “You can’t give me proof like that anyway,” she insisted. “You’re a human being—you can’t just become a bear.”