by Chant, Zoe
“Got her, Fletch.”
The big blond giant loomed in the doorway, grinning. “Now we’ll have some f—”
His tone changed from threat to the squeak of disbelief when Jameson, one hand clutching his bleeding side, charged straight at him.
Then halted when two hulking guys, one swinging a chain, stepped out to flank Fletch, who flashed a murderous grin at Jameson, who slowed, swaying.
But before he could speak, a long shadow fell in the doorway. Framed alone there stood a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired man wearing an elegant white shirt and dark slacks, carrying a shotgun in one hand.
Those strong bones—that long face—familiar?
Jameson swayed again. “Charlie,” he said quietly.
Fletch growled at the newcomer, “Back off. This fucker is mine.”
“Think again, asshole,” Charlie said, raised the shotgun, and blasted both bodyguards in the legs and lower body with birdshot.
The men howled and danced back frantically, one crashing into a serving cart full of beer cans and greasy dishes of dried food. He fell in a spectacular smash.
“You want to play that way?” Fletch whirled and came straight at Kesley, fingers out.
Jameson’s teeth bared, he lunged after Fletch—and midair blurred into the massive, magnificent form of a ten-foot-tall dark brown Kodiak bear, tatters of clothing falling away at every tromping step.
A seriously pissed Kodiak bear.
The world and time seemed to slow as Kesley stared in a delirious mix of astonishment and joy at her mate. He had found his animal, because she was in danger. Across the distance of that filthy, cigarette-butt and beer-can-strewn lobby, his honey-brown gaze met hers, the impact ringing through her.
His mouth opened and he let out a roar that rattled the windows. His mate was threatened, and he came on the attack.
Kesley couldn’t move—couldn’t even breathe. She could not stand to let her mate out of her sight for a heartbeat.
Swat! A huge paw knocked Fletch into a wall. A bunch of the bikers swung their weapons toward Jameson, but his bear was much faster.
With the speed of pure rage, he thwacked and slapped gun-toting thugs in every direction—backed up by Charlie, who reversed his shotgun and used the butt of it to knock bikers flying.
The shocking stutter of automatic weapons stitched holes of destruction up a wall into the ceiling, and another blew out the front windows before Jameson knocked those two guys off their feet—one tumbling through the window he’d just blown out to crash into a row of fly-buzzing garbage cans. The other guy smashed into one of his buddies, both tumbling to the ground in a tangle of struggling arms and legs.
The rest of the bikers froze. Jameson stood up, the top of his head brushing the ceiling, one paw moving down his side, where the fur gleamed redly, matted with blood. At that horrible sight, Kesley hurled herself toward him, her first thought to protect him—all she was aware of was the thrill of terror, and yet she had never felt more alive.
Then she paused as the Kodiak bear stilled, exchanging a long look with Charlie, who lounged back against the wall, shotgun dangling from his fingers. Then the bear swung about, looking for Kesley, and once again their gazes met with that ringing impact: she knew without words that Jameson recognized her, and her safety was more important to him than anything.
As his was to her. Then she was subliminally aware of the subtle sounds of little paws scratching on the warped wooden floors, the flutter of wings overhead, and the soft hissing slither of a rattler and a garden snake nearby.
A bunch of bikers appeared from a side hall—to be attacked by two snakes, a coyote, a porcupine (the three guys who got sprayed with spines would be picking them painfully from their skin for hours), two cats, a hound dog, a hedgehog, a flock of various birds, and a sloth.
Kesley, midway between tears and laughter, could not help but noticed that Elliot’s sloth didn’t really attack, as it could not move very fast. But Elliot thoughtfully closed his paws around fallen weapons while the harassed bikers tried to fight off the unexpected shifter animal ambush. As one guy dropped his automatic weapon to scrabble at the cat stuck to his face (Kesley recognized her sister, all four sets of claws dug in deep), Elliot nipped up the guy’s weapon and carried it to Charlie, who tossed it into the ornamental fish pond, obviously uncleaned for years. One by one, weapons splorped into the thick coat of algae scum, and vanished.
Kesley shoved and dodged the groaning, snoring bikers and ran to Jameson in bear form. He was even bigger up close, and she paused for a moment, anxiously searching his fierce gaze. He had found his bear, but how about his memory?
Would he be able to shift back?
Jameson gazed down at her from his massive height, eyes locked on hers, honey-warm with light . . . and he blurred and fell to his knees, one hand pressed to his side, which bled sluggishly.
A hawk flew in through the bullet-smashed window and blurred, elongating into man form as Abe Rosen, the sheriff’s deputy. He landed heavily, a huge purple welt on his head, and bruises half-healed all down his body. “Teddy is calling for backup,” he said hoarsely, wincing. “Get everyone out.” He whirled his hand in the air, then looked around. “Hear that? The state police are on the way!”
Several bikers moaned, trying to crawl toward the door. The ones still on their feet fought to get free of attacking animals, and the sound of biker boots clomping in rapid retreat sounded from various directions.
At once the town shifters began fluttering, hopping, and slithering through doors and windows, vanishing into the shrubs where they had stashed their clothes.
Charlie looked across the room at Jameson. “Later, bro?”
“Later.”
Charlie touched his fingertips to his forehead in a wry salute, and slipped out the door.
Kesley ignored them all as she bent to help Jameson rise.
“Kesley,” he murmured, burying his face in her hair. “You’re here. You’re all right.”
“Yes, but you’re not,” she said, sliding her arms around his shaking body.
“A bear,” he whispered. “I’m a bear. Can you . . .”
“It’s all right,” she said as she searched his bewildered gaze. “I know. I mean, I suspected you were a shifter, I didn’t know what kind. What I do know is that you are my mate. My big, burly, bearly mate.”
All the anxiety smoothed from his face. “You’re not afraid?”
“Not for a second. I love you. I trust you. That’s what matters right now.”
“Yes.” He stood, wincing as his arm bled. “Love. Trust.” His whisper was almost too soft to hear. “Charlie . . .”
“Not an assassin,” she stated.
“No,” Jameson whispered. “I had it all backwards. Lied to.” His skin had paled, slick with cold sweat, and she felt viscerally how hurt and dizzy and confused he had to be, as if those sensations were inside her.
“We’ll talk, but first let’s get you out of here,” she said as she looked around at the unconscious bikers sprawled everywhere in the midst of the trashed lobby.
She chose one approximately Jameson’s size. She grunted, using all her strength to flip the guy over, who promptly began snoring loudly. She unzipped his jeans, yanked his boots off, then grabbed the hems of the pants, and yanked.
One of the wounded bikers lifted his head and blinked owlishly from the other size of the room. A waft of stale beer breath floating her way as he said slurrily, “Hey, naked lady. You can’t pants Vic!”
“Watch me,” Kesley said over her shoulder as she flourished the jeans.
“Aw, fuck it,” the guy muttered and slumped down again.
Kesley threw the pants over the back of a chair and swept up the remains of Jameson’s clothes, ripped to ribbons when his bear burst out. Even his shoes were ruined, and she scooped those up, too—there had to be no evidence left behind of shifting.
She wrapped them in a ball, grabbed the jeans, and together she and Jameso
n walked back past the kitchen, and out the back door to where she’d stashed her clothes.
“Kesley,” he said softly. “My head is about to explode—lies. Memory. The bear. I did see your friends shift, right? The two snakes, the porcupine, and the rest? What about you?”
She shifted to her raccoon. Then stared up at him, sniffing hopefully. She smelled his wounds—not infected, so far—and the sweat of hard work and residual anger, and beneath those his own dear scent.
“You are a shifter.” He smiled tenderly. “Bandit. Of course. Do you like being called Bandit?”
She shifted back to herself. “It’s okay. Whatever you call me I’ll love because I love hearing my name on your lips.”
He reached down with the hand not covered in blood, and gently touched the top of her head. “A raccoon. Every minute I’m around you, I discover more delightful things about you.”
“It was the secret I couldn’t tell you. We all grow up promising not to. But I wanted to tell you, so much.” She slid her arms around him, and for a long moment they stood there breathing, holding one another tight.
Under her ear his heartbeat began slowing from a desperate thunder to a more normal quick beat, and he loosened his grip. “Marlo. We’ve got to get her and the kid.”
He reached for the biker’s jeans she’d brought, and winced his way into them as she wrestled into her clothes.
He kept his hand pressed to his side as they reentered the motel, which had been completely abandoned by the bikers still on their feet. From the far side of the motel, where the garage was, came the sound of revving engines.
Kesley had her shoes on, but Jameson was barefoot, so they picked their way carefully over all the broken glass and dishes. When they reached the back stairs, they met Abe Rosen—in his clothes—just starting up. “They’re locked into a closet at the top,” he said in a low voice. “Tonio found them. I’m taking them to the station as soon as the state police are done here. Unless you need to wait for Ms. Evans, maybe you want to be somewhere else.”
“I need to talk to her,” Jameson said. “I’ve got a lot of questions.”
Abe scratched his head. “Okay, I get that, beginning with why these clowns came after you, but right now I need to make certain the state police only find a botched kidnapping, and no evidence of shifters.”
“Roger that. Thanks,” Jameson said, and to Kesley, “Let’s get out of here.”
He led the way to where he’d parked the VW, and felt on the floorboard for the keys. “I’ll drive,” she said. “Shall I take you to Doc Weinstein? He’s, um, one of us.”
“I’ll be all right. It’s all superficial stuff. A metric shit-ton of little stuff,” he added in a low tone as he eased himself into the passenger seat, one hand pressed to his ribs.
Kesley didn’t think a bullet wound was little stuff, even if it was only a scrape, but she bit her lip hard against protest as she backed the car up and turned it. “Your memory is back?”
“Hit me like an avalanche. I saw you in danger—and so did my bear, next thing I knew, there I was.”
“That must have been horrible—the shift, and then your memory, while everything else was going on.”
“It could have been worse,” he said, smiling across at her. “To my bear, there was only one thing that mattered: you. That much my human self agreed with, so I guess it loosened something inside me enough for me to make the shift. But damn, ripping out of my clothes hurt almost as much as that .38 nicking my rib.”
Kesley made a small noise. She knew it would be a long time before that memory ceased to make her shiver.
He went on, “The last thing I remember before I lost consciousness in the crash was thinking over and over that I had to hide the bear. I guess that’s what took down my memory, more than anything else. Because basically I lost every memory after my first shift, except for random glimpses of my life with no shifting. Because my dad and my brother are both shifters as well.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “Somehow I never thought that losing your memory could be a self-protection thing.”
“Unfortunately, it played right into Beth’s hands. Because she has to be the Boston rich bitch.”
“Your stepmother?”
“Let’s just call her the lying, gold-digging jerk who ruined the end of my father’s life. Though I suspect she wouldn’t have gotten away with it if the stroke hadn’t left him pretty wiped out.”
Kesley’s heart hurt for all these people she didn’t know, as Jameson went on. “So I woke up in the hospital with no idea who I was, and even when basic stuff trickled back, the shifter side stayed hidden. The bear was just a voice inside me—one I thought was some kind of weird psychosis as a result of my injuries. But the instinct was super strong to keep it secret, even when the bear roused enough to warn me, like not taking those damn pills that I am increasingly sure Beth poisoned. When I think back, I distinctly remember her using my bathroom. That was right before the dose that made me puke.” His voice went husky, all smoke and whiskey. “Kesley, I want to tell you everything. I need to. But may I use your phone first?”
“Sure. In my shirt pocket.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice steady, but every muscle quivered with reaction, and her eyes stung. Poison—accident—Kesley had never been the violent type, but she wanted to drive until she found that Beth and toss her into a volcano.
Warmth radiated through her as Jameson caressed her shoulder, then slid his fingers into her pocket, brushing against her breast. The warmth promptly became heat, and she cast him a quick smile, to see him smiling back. Horrible as the day had been—and despite the fact that they were both filthy and blood-spattered and full of questions—that smile held promise.
She was still scared, and confused, but she was with her mate. We’re going to be all right, because we are together.
He pressed numbers slowly—who memorized phone numbers anymore? But a few seconds later he said, “Charlie? It’s me. Thanks for backing me up, bro.”
Chapter Twelve
The thing that made Jameson angriest about all Beth’s lies was the wedge she’d driven between him and Charlie. The brothers had been best friends all their lives—even when they squabbled, it was never serious.
She’d managed to twist everything. No wonder he kept feeling like nothing fit. This was why the sight of his brother had disturbed him more than anything else he couldn’t remember.
He tried to keep his report short. “I’m pretty sure that she not only hired those thugs, but was trying to poison me as well. I’ve got the evidence in town here. What I don’t know is why.”
“Because I’ve been one step behind her, and she panicked, Jay.” Charlie’s familiar voice was firm at the other end with residual anger. “It started with the plane crash. She thought the FAA would rush it through and find pilot or mechanical error, but I was able to get the local DA to throw a cordon around the wreckage, and the authorities and I are near to sorting out who does the forensics.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find sabotage,” Jameson said grimly.
“No surprise there, or she wouldn’t have gone bat-shit over it, and done her best to first get you to sign over everything to her. But while I couldn’t get in to see you at the hospital—”
“Sorry about that. She’d given me this bull about how you were trying to kill me.”
“I figured that out later. The thing is, I managed to get through to your doctor, and he believed me enough to refuse to let any lawyers in to force papers on you while your memory was gone. Then I blew it trying to get there to see if the sight of me would do anything for you, and next thing I knew she had you bundled off to California under a false name.”
“Shit.”
“And she fired the decent doctor. She found some shady guy who’s been under investigation in a couple of states. I feel pretty sure his medical license will soon be toasted. Anyway, I am so glad your head is back in the game. It’s the best news I’ve heard since—well, since before Dad’
s first stroke. Can I call Mom, or do you want to do that yourself?”
“How about we call her when this is wrapped up? I don’t want to add any more shit to the pile Beth has already buried her in.”
“Right. Speaking of which, I have guys poised back east—but I can talk to you about that later. Listen, Jay, I’m going to hole up and make a bunch of serious phone calls so I can get her and her buddies locked down tight before they desert the sinking ship. Because we have to assume one of those idiots she hired to snuff you called her, if only to jack up the price, since it looks like you were more difficult to take out than they thought.” Charlie chuckled grimly.
Jameson laughed at how piratical his buttoned-down lawyer brother sounded.
“I’ll call you when I’m done dealing with the shit back at home. Will this number still be good?”
“Yes. The phone belongs to Kesley. My mate.”
“The pretty one with the brown hair I saw trying to get in there to save you? I gotta meet her. But later.”
“Later, bro.”
They hung up, then he took Kesley’s hand again. Once more she gave him that smile like the first rays of a new sun, and he felt measurably better in spite of the shocky cold nerves from the rib wound. But he knew how to handle that.
He blew his breath out. He knew how to handle that. Oh, how precious was memory!
“Can you tell me more?” Kesley’s voice was small, worried.
Another surge of warmth flooded him. She’s the one, his bear said contentedly. You were right, Jameson thought, and the bear sank below the surface, preserving what little remained of his strength: he was going to have to get through what would probably be a long day.
First, and most important, getting everything square with his mate.