He picked up his pace, quickening into a jog. Sweat streamed down his back and into the armpits of his uniform. He didn't stop as the cool air chilled his body and made a shiver go up his spine. He would find his mate. He would save her and her sister. The sick bastards who took young girls for whatever purposes they had in mind were not going to get away with it. Heath Reynolds was going to put an end to it here and now. These men would never take another girl again. They would regret the day they messed with his mate and her sister.
He continued running, each stride faster than the last. By the time he made it to the steep incline that would take him up a rocky hillside, his breath was raspy. He'd run at least ten miles at this point. But he wasn't going to rest. It wasn't time for rest now. Now was the time to pull out whatever strength he had inside him and use it for the greater good.
Finding his mate and bringing her home.
He charged up the hill, Rosa’s scent growing stronger at the top. Off in the distance, he saw the faint flicker of a campfire. From his viewpoint it appeared to be at least a mile or two away. He knew he had found them.
He brought the walkie-talkie to his lips and spoke softly into the mouthpiece. “Cadet Bear to Commander Bear,” he said. “I have the location of the kidnappers.”
He stated his coordinates over the walkie-talkie, and Rollo confirmed that he had received the information.
“We're on our way,” Rollo said. “Good job Cadet Bear.”
Heath felt a rush of pride swell in his heart at his Alpha’s words. Rollo was an excellent leader and a good man. Heath wanted to show him that he was a valuable member of the team. Being the new guy meant that the rest of the crew didn't know him as well as they knew each other. They had all been welcoming, but Heath sometimes still felt a little like the odd man out. Having Rollo commend him made him feel more a part of the team than ever.
Heath hurried down the hill, the smell of Rosa’s scent growing stronger. He was confronted by the sharp scent of her despair as he made it to the bottom of the hill. They must've found her.
Rage exploded up from his gut and he ripped out of his human form. His grizzly tore up from deep within him. By the time he came to his senses again he was standing on four massive paws, panting in the cool mountain air. His heightened shifter senses allowed him to see in the dark while in his animal form.
He grunted and tasted the air with his tongue. Rosa was close. He could smell the scent of the man who’d taken her. He would taste that man's blood on his tongue before Heath would let that man harm a hair on the head of his beautiful mate.
He trotted into the forest, moving through the thick trunks of evergreen trees on his way to the camp. The smell of campfire grew stronger. He could make out the scent of a dozen different females. He could smell their fear, their desperation and hopelessness.
Rosa’s scent was still strong and defiant. She was trying to break free but could not. His animal mind was a torrent of rage and barely rational. Heath tried to keep his beast under control but the grizzly was not listening. The animal picked up the pace, growling and grunting as he galloped through the forest.
Heath covered the distance between the hillside and the camp in a few short minutes. Soon he was at the edge of a clearing where he could see a dilapidated mobile home. Four men were patrolling the area and two more sat in front of the campfire. There were six men in total. The grizzly was about to charge through the camp and take them all out, but Heath's human mind tried to hold back the beast. If he went into the fray, he would very likely be shot. A shifter could withstand several bullets, but not many more.
All of Heath's rationalizations didn't seem to matter to the beast. The grizzly reared up on his hind legs and let out a terrifying roar. The girls inside the mobile home screamed at the sound. Heath’s grizzly charged through the clearing, rushing straight through the fire. He jumped onto the men sitting there. Sparks sprang up around him as he bit down on the man's shoulder.
The kidnapper screamed in pain and the bear tasted his blood on his tongue. The beast felt the sting of a bullet shoot into his hide. He spun to face the shooter. Heath reared up, bashing the second man holding the gun. The gun flew across the clearing as Heath came down on the man who'd shot him.
He bit into the man's leg, and the shooter screamed. The other four men ran into the clearing from their patrols and began to fire at Heath. The bullets stung one after another, slicing into his hide, his legs, and his shoulder. The pain throbbed but he was still standing. He whirled around, focusing on the four men who were pointing guns at him.
They screamed and yelled as if trying to scare away a wild animal, but Heath was no wild animal. He was an angry shifter trying to protect his mate. These guys didn't know what they were messing with.
It didn't even matter that he was bleeding from about six gunshot wounds. He was pissed as hell and he wasn’t putting up with this bullshit anymore. Heath charged at the other men, taking out a third as the other three shot at him again. Two shots missed but one more bullet sliced into his hide as he bit into the third kidnapper.
He was bleeding badly now, his strength waning. The girls inside the mobile home were screaming their heads off. He could hear Rosa. He knew the sound of her voice even in the den of chaos. He had to save her, but his mind was fading. He was losing blood and about to black out.
Out of the distance, he heard another round of gunshots. This time hitting the three men left standing. As Heath’s vision faded into blackness, he saw the silhouettes of his crew descending from the hills around him and into the clearing.
The Bear Patrol had arrived.
Chapter 10
Rosa sat on the floor against the far wall in stunned silence, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, making her numb. Suddenly the door burst open and one of the Bears walked into the mobile home. Rosa didn’t remember his name but she did recognize him from before. She was too stunned to stand up at first. The other girls started to ask questions all at once.
“Who are you?” one of the girls demanded.
“What’s going on out there?” said another girl.
Rosa scrambled to her feet, making her way toward the door as the Bears tried to explain what was going on to the rest of the girls.
“You shouldn’t go out there,” one of the Bears said.
Rosa brushed past him, jumping out of the mobile home that had no stairs, and landing on the ground. In the dirt, laying near a dying campfire, she found her mate. He was in grizzly bear form, bleeding out into the dirt. She ran to him, crying and screaming.
She sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around her mate’s fuzzy neck. His black eyes blinked at her in the fading light of the Fire.
“Heath, what have you done?”
The grizzly growled softly, his strength abating. Rollo came up behind her and tried to pull her away from Heath’s bleeding body.
“I can’t leave him,” Rosa said.
“We need to get him to the hospital. I already have guys coming around the other direction with an ambulance.”
“They took Maria,” Rosa said, finally remembering why she’d come here in the first place.
The Bears were helping the girls out of the mobile home and wrapping them in blankets. Rosa watched as Heath slowly transformed from a massive grizzly bear into a naked, bleeding human man. She gasped and tried to go to him as the EMTs bent to lift him onto a gurney.
“You can ride with him in the ambulance,” Rollo said.
Rosa follow the EMTs through the clearing around the corner of the mobile home and found an ambulance waiting there along with a legion of patrol cars from the Fate Mountain Police Department and the Fate Mountain County Sheriff’s Department.
“Someone came and bought my sister Maria,” she said to whoever would listen to her.
She climbed into the back of the ambulance, not sure if she should focus her attention on her missing sister or her bleeding mate. Everything was in utter chaos. The EMT shut the back doors of th
e ambulance and Rosa sat next to Heath, holding his hand.
“They took Maria, Heath,” she whimpered.
“We’ll find her,” he said in a raspy voice.
“Just rest,” the EMT said to Heath.
“He’ll be fine soon,” said another EMT to Rosa. “With some fluid and bandages he’ll be on his feet in no time. He’s a shifter, ma’am. Don’t worry. We’ll get him fixed right up.”
The ambulance drove down a bumpy dirt road and out onto the highway. They were back in Fate Mountain village in about thirty minutes. The EMTs opened the backdoors of the ambulance and pulled Heath’s gurney out. They wheeled the gurney into the hospital, through the sliding glass doors, and Maria followed them. The EMTs then parked Heath in a private room. The doctors came in and began removing the bullets still lodged in Heath’s body. Maria could hardly watch the horror and finally had to leave the room.
She stood outside, unable to think or speak or feel.
“How’s our boy?” Rosa heard a familiar voice say.
Rollo walked toward her down the hallway with a cup of coffee in his hand. He handed the warm liquid to Rosa and she cradled it in both hands, drawing strength from the warmth.
“They say he’ll be fine,” Rosa said. “But I’m really worried.”
“He is a shifter. He took a lot of bullets, but he’ll be all right,” Rollo assured her.
“I wish I had your certainty,” Rosa said. “They took Maria. Someone bought her,” Rosa growled.
“That’s why I came down here,” Rollo said. “I need your help Rosa. There’s no telling how far your sister’s buyer has been able to travel. We have no way of tracking him down. I wouldn’t ask you to leave your mate at a time like this, but we need your help finding Maria.”
“What about Heath?”
“He’ll be fine in a few hours.”
“We don’t have a few hours to wait,” Rosa said.
“Do you have any feelings about where the buyer might have taken her?”
“I can’t feel anything. I’m too worried. All I feel is panic.”
“Maybe it would be better for you to stay with Heath until he’s well. Then you can calm down a bit and focus on finding your sister.”
“I can’t stop thinking about what that maniac could be doing to her.” Rosa said. “He said he wanted to break her.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat the danger your sister is in, Rosa. But your sixth sense isn’t going to work if you are too panicked to use it.”
“We’re finished in here,” a nurse said from the doorway of Heath’s hospital room.
Rosa strode into the room and Rollo followed her. They stood on opposite sides of the bed, looking down at the bandaged Cadet Bear who had taken out the entire gang single-handedly.
“You’re a real hero,” Rollo said.
“I didn’t get there in time,” Heath protested.
“It’s not your fault,” Rosa said, a tear dripping down her face.
She wiped it away, sniffing. Rosa threaded her fingers through Heath’s hand and squeeze gently.
“You have any leads on the girl?” Heath asked Rollo.
“Not yet,” Rollo said. “That’s why I came down here to speak with Rosa.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Rosa said.
“She needs to relax or we won’t get anywhere,” Rollo said. “That’s why I advised her to wait with you until you are well enough to leave the hospital.”
“I’m well enough to leave now,” he said, sitting up in bed. He cringed from the pain of the bullet wounds in his side and gripped his abdomen.
“No,” Rosa said. “You are not well enough to leave the hospital.”
“Nonsense. Let’s go find your sister,” Heath said with a wince.
“If you’re sure,” Rollo said.
Rollo went out to the car and came back a few minutes later with a change of clothes for Heath. Rosa and Rollo left the room while Heath changed. He limped out of the hospital room a few minutes later, wearing Rollo’s clothes. The three of them walked out to the parking lot and got in Rollo’s SUV.
“The Bear Patrol is meeting down at the station,” Rollo said. “Let’s start by getting together down there.”
“Where are the rest of the girls,” Rosa asked.
“Their families have all been contacted, but they need a good night sleep, a shower and a place to rest. We booked them hotel rooms, and we have security watching over them outside. Our main concern now is finding Maria.”
“What about the men who took them? What have they said?”
“A couple of them needed medical attention, but they’ve all been booked and jailed.”
“Can’t you get any of them to tell you where Maria is?”
“None of them are talking, but we aren’t done with them yet.”
They made it to the police station and everyone piled out of the car. Heath limped badly and Rosa helped steady him as he walked into the station. In Rollo’s office, the Bear Patrol was waiting for the rest of them to arrive.
“Why can’t you get these guys to tell you where Maria is?” Rosa asked.
“They seem to be protecting someone. Probably their ringleader,” said Deputy Knox.
“You believe they’re taking orders from someone else?” Rollo asked.
“I think it’s someone far more dangerous than any of these men. We promised them a lighter sentence if they either told us where she was or sold out the other man. But nobody took the plea bargain. That tells me that they’re afraid of something much bigger than what we see here.”
“We have to find Maria,” Rosa said.
“Rosa is right,” Rollo said. “Our main concern is finding the girl now. Later we will find out who is behind this kidnapping ring.”
Rosa was terrified that she had failed her sister and failed her family. Now the Bear Patrol was talking about some big crime ring, this was beyond anything she had even imagined before.
Girls all over the country were at risk of being sold into some twisted sex slavery. She felt responsible for them all. But she couldn’t do anything. The intuition that had led her to Fate Mountain and had led her to the camp, now seemed to be silent.
“Could you give me a description of the man who bought your sister?” Damien asked.
“Maybe. It was really dark inside the mobile home.”
“Give me whatever description you can. I’ll enter it into the computer and see what we can come up with.”
Rosa and Heath followed Damien into his office. She and Heath sat on a constable couch while Damien sat behind his desk at his computer. She gave him as much descriptive information as she could about the man who’d taken Maria.
Damien asked Rosa questions to fill in the blanks, drawing out as much of her memory as possible. Finally, he entered the last of the information into his computer and waited for the software to process.
“It’s going to take a little while. I’ll have more information for you as soon as it’s done processing. But I can tell you that it’s going to take at least until morning to do the search. Why don’t you two go home and get some rest. I promise to call you as soon as I know anything.”
“I guess that’s our only option,” Rosa said to Heath.
“I’ll be in much better shape after a nap,” he said.
Damien drove them home in his private car. Once they were home, they collapsed in bed with exhaustion. No matter how tired Rosa felt, she was still too amped up and beside herself to rest. It took several hours of staring at the ceiling for her to finally even nod off.
In the morning she woke up to the smell of bacon and coffee coming from the kitchen. She scrambled out of bed and hurried into the kitchen to find Heath cooking breakfast in his underwear.
The bandages he’d been wearing the night before were all gone. The wounds were replaced with ruddy red marks. She walked over to him and ran her hand over the places where there had been bullet holes mere hours before. They were almost healed, only the discolor
ation that was left indicated there had been wounds there at all.
“I can’t believe how fast you heal,” she said.
“That’s one of the perks of being a shifter. Part of the reason the military wanted us to enlist so bad.”
“Well it certainly saved your life,” Rosa said gratefully.
If he hadn’t been a shifter, he would surely be dead now. Rosa would be eternally grateful that her mate was able to heal so fast. She didn’t know what she would do without him.
“I made you breakfast,” Heath said. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll dish you up something to eat.”
Rosa slid onto the stool pushed up against the counter and Heath gave her a plate full of breakfast foods. He’d made scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and bacon, along with toast and coffee.
She hadn’t thought that she was hungry until she took the first bite and realized she was starving. She shoveled the food into her mouth, barely stopping to breathe. Heath just looked at her with a goofy expression on his face.
“I love a woman who likes to eat,” he said.
He ate his own food quickly and waited for Rosa while she showered and dressed. When she was done she found Heath dressed and ready to go outside in the living room. Just then, the phone rang.
Chapter 11
Heath picked up his phone and answered.
“What do you have for me, Damien?” he asked.
“Come down to the station,” Damien said. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”
Heath and Rosa went outside and got in Heath’s car. During the drive across town to the police station, Rosa tried to make sense of everything that was happening. Her mate, who was a shifter, had been shot half a dozen times yesterday and now was perfectly fine and driving a car.
She had known that shifters had the ability to heal, but the truth was beyond anything her human imagination had conjured up. Then Rosa had to remind herself that she had used her own sixth sense to find her sister in the first place. Just as they were pulling up to the police station, Rosa began to feel as if her connection to Maria was opening up again.
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