by Anna Lowe
Not Jess. Not my Jess, his bear chuffed in pride.
No, not his Jess. But Christ, it would be nice if she didn’t have to be so damn tough.
“Are you okay?” Janna asked.
He could see Jessica’s eyes flutter about before she answered with a terse, “Fine.”
He let out a little snort. She was about as fine as he was.
“Listen, I was going to go dancing. You okay with that?” Janna asked.
Jessica’s head snapped toward the door in alarm, and he could read her thoughts. Rogues. Closing in. Hunting…
“Some of the guys from the ranch invited me out,” Janna said. She leaned in and whispered the rest. “And Cole is coming, too.”
Simon looked out the front windows, where a couple of trucks were parked, surrounded by three ranch hands. Wolves — big, hardy wolves toughened by hard work and the sun. Ty wasn’t kidding when he said he’d send someone over to keep an eye on things.
Jess glanced over at him, and he gave a curt nod. Honest shifters from an honest pack were nothing to worry about. Neither was Cole. Janna would be fine.
“Um…sure,” Jess said. “Have fun.”
Knowing Janna, she would.
“I’ll do the cleanup next time,” Janna promised and headed for the door, where Cole was waiting.
A second later, trucks started up outside and drove away, and Simon and Jess spent a long minute staring at each other, not knowing where to start.
“You sure she’ll be okay?” Jess asked.
“The guys will keep an eye on Janna,” he said. And I’ll keep an eye on you.
She stared for a moment, as if she’d read his thoughts. Then she shook herself a little and sputtered into the next sentence. “You think that Cole is an okay guy?”
He shrugged. “Seems like a decent guy. No clue about shifters, but with the rest of the guys around…Janna will be fine.”
“Good,” Jess mumbled. “What about Soren? Where did he go?”
“He had a meeting at the ranch.”
Just you and me left, his bear rumbled inside. Just you and me.
Her eyes widened. She gulped. Her nostrils flared.
And just when Simon thought she might say something to jump-start the conversation they had to finish, she swung into action. “Got to clean up.”
And zoom, she was off, headed for the kitchen.
“Jess…” he tried, but she immediately shook her head.
He sighed and watched her disappear, then eventually reappear with cleaning supplies.
“Gotta clean up…”
She murmured the words like a mantra, so he backed off. Maybe now wasn’t the time to push an off-kilter she-wolf. Even he had enough sense to know that. If cleaning and numbering and organizing helped her feel together, he’d let her go at it.
So he dragged out a dishcloth and started closing down the bar, peeking at her from the corner of his eye. She wiped every table twice. Some of them, three times. Rearranged the salt and pepper shakers until they were angled exactly right. Nudged the tables into place until she was satisfied, then headed out for the mop.
He sighed and started flipping chairs, which brought her to a sharp stop when she came back.
He raised his eyebrows in challenge. Yes, I’m stacking chairs for you. Yes, I love you. No, I never stopped.
She scurried to the corner where the pool table sat, turned her back, and let the wet slap of the mop do the talking. Not ready. So not ready. I still hate you…I think.
Of course, she didn’t hate him. But he’d hurt her, badly, and she wasn’t ready to forgive.
He rolled down the metal gate that covered the swinging saloon doors, then closed the inner door, and locked everything for the night. Checked them twice before going back to the bar to finish up there.
And on it went, the two of them dancing around the silence that hung between them. They were champs at awkward avoidance by now. Why not keep it up?
When the phone rang, they both jumped and stared. Eventually, Simon picked it up.
“Hello?” he barked.
“Simon?” came the voice at the end of the line.
Not a rogue. A familiar voice. “Kyle?”
“Listen, can you come out and help?” The urgency in Kyle’s voice made him stand straighter. Kyle Williams, wolf shifter and Arizona state cop. Twin Moon pack’s inside man in local law enforcement.
“What’s up?”
Jessica cocked her head, listening.
“You got that she-wolf with you?” Kyle asked.
Every nerve in his body went on red alert. Jess had heard, too; he saw her hands go white around the mop handle.
“Simon!” Kyle half-shouted.
“Yes,” he admitted, locking eyes with Jess. If they could trust anyone, they could trust Kyle.
“Good. Bring her. We need every nose we can get.”
Chapter Eleven
“Which one is Kyle?” Jess asked, sliding out of Simon’s car, still thinking about everything Simon had said.
Please. Just sit. Listen…
I never knew how to explain…
Second son is second best…
What hell had he been living in all these years?
“Tall guy, spiky hair. Cop uniform.” Simon pointed to a handful of people huddled in the headlights of a vehicle in the state park lot, but his shoulders still had that uncharacteristic slump.
Stupid. I was so fucking stupid…
God, how long had he been beating himself up over what he’d had to do?
She stopped dead in her tracks and looked up, sniffing. Was that smoke in the air?
Her nostrils flared. Definitely smoke. But with the breeze blowing from behind her, it was hard to ascertain how near or how far the fire was. How big.
She shuddered and rubbed her hands over her arms.
Simon noticed, too; he tilted his chin up to sniff. But his eyes were intent on the people ahead. “Come on. Kyle wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”
“Cop?” she asked nervously. There were good cops, and there were bad cops. “Why does he need us? Why does he need me?”
Simon put a hand on her shoulder, and damn it, her wolf calmed right down. The beast had been sniffing and yowling for him on the twenty-minute drive out of town. She glanced up and cursed the three-quarter full moon for the tenth time that evening. No wonder her wolf was so close to the surface tonight. And it would only get worse in the coming days as the moon grew fuller.
“He’s one of us,” Simon whispered.
A shifter? She didn’t dare ask. Didn’t need to once they’d gotten close enough for her to clearly identify the one shifter by his telltale scent. No human would ever pick up on it, but a fellow wolf sure could. Kyle was tall, with spiky hair, just as Simon had said, and his brow was furrowed in deep rows. He nodded at her and Simon in a quiet greeting.
“The child was last seen in Sunrise Campground five hours ago,” a uniformed woman said.
Jessica’s mind exploded with alarms. A child? Lost?
That’s when she heard the sobbing coming from the right. A woman was hunched at a picnic table, surrounded by two or three others trying to console her. “My baby! Oh my God! Laurel!” She rocked back and forth, crying into her hands.
The police went on with their brief, the very picture of cool and calm. Their brows were furrowed, though, their jaws tense.
“Which means,” the female officer said, “the girl could be anywhere within this radius.” She drew a red circle on a map spread on the hood of a car.
“We’ve got state police searching this quadrant.” Kyle’s hand waved over the map. “And a couple of National Guard volunteers over here.”
“Oh God, oh God…” the mother wailed in the background. The sound tore the edges of Jessica’s heart.
“Under no circumstances are you to head north and approach the perimeter of the fire,” Kyle said.
Fire. Jess looked up as her blood ran cold. Please, not a forest fi
re. Not tonight.
An owl hooted from a stand of cottonwoods marking the head of the trail.
“You’re to search the western slopes only,” Kyle said firmly to the volunteers gathered around. “Coconino, Pine, and Pinyon trails. Circle around, then check back here.”
Everyone ducked to check out the map except Kyle, Simon, and Jess. The cop-shifter’s eyes met theirs in a clear message. You follow your noses, wherever they lead you.
Simon gave a tiny nod and looked up, his nose twitching. Facing north, the direction of the fire.
Jess forced herself to breathe evenly. This was about a lost child, not about her and Simon, or her own fears.
Kyle turned back to the others. “The time is currently 11:25 p.m. I want everyone back in ninety minutes. There’s no telling which way that fire might go.”
“Cell phone reception in the park is spotty, but just in case…” The female officer dictated a number as Simon led Jess quietly toward where the mother sat.
“I checked the tent, and she was gone,” the mother was crying. “I should have checked earlier. I should have checked…”
Jessica’s eyes went straight to the woman, but Simon’s were in her lap. “That her teddy bear?” he asked.
His voice was gruff as ever, but gentle, too. Gentle enough for the mother to look up through her tears and hold the toy up.
“Yes,” she whispered, then collapsed into sobs again. “Oh God…”
Simon grabbed Jessica’s hand and pulled her toward the trailhead for Sunrise Trail. He took off, taking long, swinging paces up the trail. Jessica’s steps were shorter, but she glided along behind him with her quick, efficient stride.
“You got the scent?” he asked, just as a bat fluttered over their heads.
Jess threw a hand up as it whooshed overhead and plowed on.
“Got it.”
The woman had held the teddy bear up long enough for both of them to get a whiff, thank goodness. And a whiff was all they needed. Even in human form, Jessica’s sense of smell was much more sensitive than any human’s. And bears had the best noses on the planet. If anyone could find that child, they would.
She balled her hands into fists, picturing the mother’s anguish. Picturing the child, lost and afraid. They had to find that little girl. They had to!
Pale moonlight trickled past the branches of the trees, casting shadows that shifted and slid as she strode past.
“Jesus, why was that family camping when there is a fire?”
Simon didn’t look back. “The fire just broke out. The whole valley’s been too dry. All it takes is one spark, one cigarette…”
It might have been something as innocuous as that, but Jess couldn’t help picturing a dozen crazed rogues, throwing fuel on a fire. Circling her homestead to block anyone’s escape. Chanting into the night.
Purity! Purity!
She caught a shiver before it got too far down her back. This was not about that awful night. This was about that little girl. And fire or no fire, she’d get the kid out, just as she’d gotten Janna out of the inferno in Montana.
She sniffed as she walked, trying to match something with the buttercup-and-baby-shampoo scent she’d picked up from the teddy bear, but there were too many competing scents on this part of the trail. The scent of hikers, fresh and sweaty, young and old. Someone had tossed a rotting apple not far from the trail, and a deer had brushed by not too long ago. A dog had run zigzags across the trail, too, hours ago. She couldn’t see much in the shadows, but her nose caught it all.
She walked as fast as she could without breaking into a trot, because that threatened to bring the panic out. Simon seemed to sense it, too, and kept his pace in check.
“You good?” he murmured thirty minutes later, cresting a rise just ahead of her.
“I’m goo—”
She stopped cold, taking in the sight ahead. A valley fell away before them and a pine-dotted hillside rose on the other side. All was quiet there, but behind it, a higher ridge stood out, covered in flames.
“Jesus,” she whispered. The whole forest was on fire.
She jumped when the bushes rustled. A rabbit shot past, then a deer. She could feel their urgency, their fear. Could feel her own fear, welling up.
“You good?” Simon repeated, stepping closer.
Mate. Focus on our mate, her wolf said inside.
He’s not our mate, she wanted to protest, but she couldn’t summon the willpower. Simon’s voice was her anchor, her keel. Her light.
“I’m good.” She nodded.
He studied her for a second, then took off downhill. Into the valley. Closer to the fire.
The air grew heavy as they descended. A thin layer of smoke crept over the landscape, filling the lowest contours of the valley. But the scent of the little girl grew stronger, too.
Simon kicked at the ground around an abandoned tent then headed upslope again. She veered away from him, following a different trail, until they met again a few steps later.
“Okay, so she went in circles for a while…” Jess started.
Simon growled and they both circled again, moving more urgently all the time.
“Here!” she shouted, finally locating a trail that led away from the campsite.
Simon loped over, and they both set off again. Jess tried keeping the child’s scent in the forefront of her mind, but the fresher scent of smoke was overpowering everything, throwing her concentration off.
“I’m losing it,” she cried in frustration.
“I got it.” His voice was a gruff, let-me-focus tone.
Bear noses were keener than wolves. Keener than a bloodhound’s. But could he track through the thickening smoke?
“Stop!” Jess shouted a few minutes later, and both of them held absolutely still. “I heard something!”
A faint, crackling sound, like a person crawling through the undergrowth.
“Shit.” She drooped. It was only the sound of the fire consuming the woods.
Simon plunged ahead, then stopped, pulled his shirt off, and threw it at her. What the hell was he doing?
He cursed. “I’m losing the scent, too.” He shucked his pants, too, then his briefs, and she had a wide-eyed look at all the parts of Simon she hadn’t seen for far, far too long before he bent over with a low huff.
He fell to the ground and landed on all fours. His back curved and darkened with hair. Short, thick strands that quickly became fur, exactly the color of his sandy brown hair. His rear dipped and rounded into haunches, and when he swung his head around…
Jess caught a breath. Her bear. Her mighty, fearless bear.
“Simon…” she whispered.
The scent of him pushed everything else away. All the worry, the nightmares, the doubt. The scent of Simon the man wafted from the clothes bundled in her arms, and the scent of Simon the bear drifted to her from two steps away. The scent of her past.
God, she’d loved him so much.
God, she still did.
His head dipped and he murmured a mournful syllable, blinking at her.
God, I love you, his dark eyes said. At least, they seemed to. And for the first time ever, she was tempted to break down the barriers she’d erected around her mind. Tempted to let his thoughts in and share hers in return.
A bird of prey whistled, soaring overhead, and both of them whipped their heads around. The flames were licking over the ridgeline now, the fire rumbling ahead.
“Go,” she whispered. “Go.”
Simon studied her for another second, then blinked. He let his nose lead his body in a wide arc, chuffed once, and took off again.
Jess stood rooted for a moment, mesmerized by his flowing bear gait. Then she snapped into action, too. She balanced his clothes atop a boulder and took off after him on two feet. No use in shifting into wolf form right now. Simon had the scent, and if they did find the child, she’d be the one to grab it.
Not if. When. When we find the child. She told herself that again and again
as she ran up the hill behind her bear. We. We…
The we was the only part of the situation she liked. That, and the part about her bear. God, if they made it down the mountain alive, they’d have a lot of talking to do.
Her panting breaths turned to coughs as the smoke grew thicker, the fire louder. Up and up and up they ran, with Simon slaloming left and right, following an invisible trail. How he could pick up anything but the fire was beyond her. He ran on even when the treetops above them crackled in the intense heat. He ran on as the pines all around erupted in flames. He ran on, barely flinching when a towering pine groaned and crashed to the ground in an eerie, slow-motion way.
“Simon!” she screamed, squinting through the smoke.
He glanced back and grunted at her.
Her cry turned into a curse. Like hell, she’d turn back now. She leaped over a burning branch and followed him through the trees, straight at a wall of fire no sane creature could pass.
Simon paced the fireline, roaring his frustration into the flames. The fire teased and taunted him with strands that darted out then danced away. He paced left; Jess ran up behind him and paced right, ready to scream into the night. Where was the child?
“Laurel!” she yelled.
The fire laughed back.
“Laurel!” she tried again, running along the slope. “Laurel!”
Simon set off in the opposite direction, roaring into the night.
Jess ran another few steps, bounded over a log, then stopped and whipped around.
“Laurel?” She called softly. Too softly, really, to be heard above the flames.
Her ears twitched at the sound of a scratch. A sniff.
“Laurel!” Jess ran back around the log, looking frantically around. “Lau—”
She looked upslope and caught the tiniest movement. Something small and bright. Yellow cloth. Yellow pajamas?