by Amy Star
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.”
“That’s exactly what I can do,” Dylan said, his smile growing broader. “Promise me you won’t scream when I show you.”
Nadine pressed her lips together. Between having her throat cut and her ankle sprained and the drugs still in her system, she wasn’t entirely sure she could trust anything she remembered—much less anything presently happening. I am losing my mind, she thought, trying to understand how she had gone from trying to get home to sleep off a migraine to being in the hospital with stitches in her neck and an IV in her arm. I am losing my mind and this jackass offering me some weird proof of being an actual bear is just proof that I’m losing it.
“I don’t believe you, and I don’t believe what’s happening to me right now,” Nadine said, looking down at the shape of her body underneath the blankets. “Clearly I’ve lost my mind.”
“You haven’t—just had it knocked around a bit,” Dylan told her. “Look—you absolutely did get attacked by a guy who was running away from my partner and me. And you absolutely saw a bear. That bear was absolutely me.”
He put one hand out, and in spite of Nadine’s attempt to ignore him, she couldn’t help but see, in a matter of moments, a rippling start up underneath Dylan’s skin. She gasped, shifting backward on the bed, her heart pounding faster in her chest and her stomach lurching inside of her as the hand in her field of vision began to transform. Fur appeared as if it had somehow come up through his skin; his fingers widened somehow, blunt claws pushing out through the tips, and in a matter of moments, what had been a long-fingered, articulate-looking hand became a broad bear paw.
“I am not seeing this,” Nadine said, even as she stared at the paw that Dylan let fall onto her lap. “This is—you or the doctor or someone spiked my meds, or…or you did something.”
“I could turn into a bear completely, but the nurse might come in any time now to give you the pain meds,” Dylan said matter-of-factly. “And it would be kind of hard to explain why there’s a bear in your hospital room.”
Almost unwillingly, Nadine’s gaze traveled up from the paw that felt so heavy in her lap; the bear fur—mottled tan and brown—extended up about halfway along Dylan’s forearm, and then transitioned somehow into his normal, human flesh.
“Do you mind if I transform back? It’s kind of hard to hold it just in one part of my body.”
“I don’t really believe what I’m seeing right now, so sure,” Nadine said, shaking her head slowly.
Before her eyes the fur melted away. The pads of the bear paw elongated, once more becoming fingers. The hand remained on her lap for a moment and Nadine squirmed, both fascinated and repelled by what she had seen.
“If you want, I can repeat the performance later—when you’re feeling a little more yourself,” Dylan suggested.
Nadine tore her gaze away from his hand on her lap and found his face; he was absolutely beaming, utterly pleased with himself, his eyes glinting with amusement.
“Assuming I ever believe this,” Nadine said slowly, scowling at Dylan slightly, “why would you show me? You could have just told me the bear thing was a hallucination.”
“Because I need to explain to you why you need to keep your mouth shut about the guy that attacked you,” Dylan said. His hand retreated from her lap and he sat back in his chair, his gaze intent on her face. “It may have occurred to you that neither my partner nor I are law enforcement.”
“That wasn’t exactly in the top three on the list of things that has occurred to me in the past twenty minutes,” Nadine said, “but now that you mention it—yeah, it’s kind of obvious that you and your friend aren’t wearing police uniforms or anything.”
“That’s because we’re sort of…mercenaries,” Dylan said, a slight frown puckering his forehead. “We’re freelancers of a kind. We hire out to other people like us, to take care of certain things that can’t come to law enforcement attention.”
“Other people who turn into bears? How many of you are there?”
Dylan shrugged. “Bears—probably a few thousand in the United States all told. Not a whole lot. The guy we were chasing down isn’t a bear though—he’s a lion.”
“So there are lions and bears,” Nadine said numbly. “Are there tigers, too?”
Dylan smirked. “Is this the part where I say ‘oh my’?”
“I think I’m supposed to say that,” Nadine said, looking down at her hands. “Okay, so you were chasing some guy who turns into a lion, because…” She looked up, raising an eyebrow in query.
“He and some of his friends pissed off our client, who’s another were-lion,” Dylan said matter-of-factly. “In fact, the particular guy we were chasing, by the name of Alex—remember that?” Nadine nodded. “He actually killed a friend of our client. Which is why—and keep in mind, you have to keep your mouth shut on this—he is now dead. He won’t be holding a knife to any more women’s throats. He also killed another bystander while we were chasing him.”
“He’s dead,” Nadine said flatly. Dylan nodded. “And I need to not tell the police about it because he’s a shape-shifter who turns into a lion.”
“Also because a murder investigation is something everyone wants to avoid,” Dylan added.
Nadine licked her lips and looked down at her lap once more, trying to work her mind around the details that Dylan had given her.
“Where the hell is the nurse?” she said finally, looking up once more. “I feel like a lot of time has passed.”
“Just do me a favor,” Dylan said, meeting her gaze levelly. “Keep your mouth shut about what you saw—the bear stuff, the fact that we were chasing after the guy. Stick with the story of some guy grabbed you while you were walking from your car to the apartment, tried to convince you to drive him somewhere, and then you fought back, and he cut you and drugged you.”
Nadine took a slow, careful breath. “I think I can stick to that,” Nadine said finally. The image of Dylan, naked, looming over her, leapt up into her mind once more, and she pushed it aside ruthlessly. “Where’s your partner?”
“He’s been taking care of closing out that assignment,” Dylan said, looking away. “He’ll probably make an appearance soon. Let me go and check on your nurse.”
Dylan stood, and Nadine watched as he moved around her bed and then walked out of her room. She couldn’t help but notice that his spare, slim body—almost gangly-looking—was a lot faster, and a lot more graceful, than she would have expected. He opened the door quietly and stepped through it, clearing his throat. Nadine sighed and closed her eyes as the door closed behind him, wondering for at least the tenth time since she had come back into consciousness, how it was she had ended up in such a mess when all she had wanted was to get a little sleep and hopefully get rid of her headache. The next time I get one of these, I’ll go to a damn hotel. That would be safer. Nadine sighed and shook her head, wondering if she was going to have to call into work the next day, too—and explain how she had ended up in the hospital.
*
Matthew looked at Dylan intently, watching as the other man paced the living room floor, prowling back and forth like a caged animal.
“On the plus side,” Matthew said, shifting his weight against the couch cushions, “we made a hell of a bonus on the job.”
“On the down side,” replied Dylan, “we’re ‘out’ to a one-natured human, and the guy we killed has friends.”
“We knew he had friends when we took him out,” Matthew pointed out. “And we wouldn’t have ‘come out’ to that girl if you hadn’t transformed while we were chasing him.”
Dylan let out a low growl. Matthew knew it wasn’t directed at him.
“We didn’t know his friends were any kind of organized,” Dylan countered. “God. Maybe you were right, maybe we should have just dropped her off at the hospital. Or called Ray and told him to sen
d someone for her.” He sighed.
“What’s done is done,” Matthew said. “We need to focus on what we need to do next.”
Matthew slipped his hand into his pocket and took his phone out; he opened up his messages and shook his head. The bonus on the most recent job—given to them two days before, when their client had confirmed that Alex was dead, his body delivered—would carry them for more than a month. He re-read one of the texts he'd received.
You and your partner better keep out of the streets. It’s dangerous for rogue bears with delusions of grandeur in South Florida.
Matthew hadn’t been able to trace the message, but it was one of several that he and Dylan had received in the last day.
“We have to get Nadine,” Dylan said, coming to a stop and turning to look at Matthew intently. “They’re going to go after her.”
Matthew frowned. “Why?” He flipped through the most recent messages: threats, most of them, from burner cell phones. Matthew wasn’t sure just how many friends Alex had, but it seemed to him like all of them were determined to settle the score—and that they blamed Dylan and Matthew more than their client.
“Because they’ll have smelled her on Alex,” Dylan told him. “They’ll come after her, too; and she’s not as capable of taking care of the situation as we are.”
Matthew snorted. “She’s the one who stomped his instep and elbowed his solar plexus while we were figuring out how to disarm him,” Matthew pointed out. “I mean, sure—she ended up getting sliced at the throat and spraining her ankle, but she’s pretty tough.”
Matthew didn’t want to admit it, but he had come to grudgingly respect the hapless bystander they’d had to rescue. Once he had heard about the relative aplomb with which she’d accepted the knowledge of what Dylan and he were—and he had the crisis situation of the disastrous end of the job behind him—Matthew had almost wanted to get to know the woman better.
“There are at least five or six different lions involved in this—maybe other kinds of shifters as well,” Dylan pointed out. “Do you think she can take all that?”
“Why are you so concerned about her?” Matthew frowned, looking up at his longtime friend. “I mean, I get not wanting her to bleed out or talk about what she saw, but this is kind of above and beyond.”
“What do you think is going to happen if she gets cornered?” Dylan crossed his arms over his chest, pinning Matthew down with his gaze. “She’s going to either try and find us—and lead them to us on accident—or she’s going to go to the cops and it’ll blow the whole thing wide open.”
“You like her,” Matthew said, staring up at his friend. “You want her.”
Dylan shrugged, rolling his eyes slightly. “She’s hot. She smells like sex. Neither of us has gotten laid in weeks.” Dylan’s lips twitched with the start of a smile. “Are you telling me you don’t want her?”
Matthew pressed his lips together, taking a slow breath.
“If you want her, I’m not going to cut in,” Matthew said, shaking his head. “But yeah—whatever, she’s hot and smells like candy.” He couldn’t resist smiling slightly at the memory of the woman he’d met—no longer the hapless victim, but a defiant, if slightly drugged woman in the hospital. She had taken a shower sometime between when she’d arrived and when Matthew had finally disposed of Alex’s body and gone to the hospital; underneath the sharply antiseptic smell of the hospital soap, he’d caught her pheromones.
“We’re going to have to keep her here, you know,” Dylan said. He smiled slowly. “At least until we can guarantee her safety.”
“What are you getting at?” Matthew felt the animal within him starting to rise up, a sensation like crackling electricity rushing through his bones. His heart beat faster in his chest.
“We could give her the choice,” Dylan suggested. He raised one eyebrow. “Let her get to know us both, see if she favors one of us.”
“What if she likes us both?” Matthew asked with a smirk. “What do we do then? Come on, Dyl. You’ve seen what happens when two bears go after the same woman.”
“If she likes us both, we work that out,” Dylan said with a shrug. “I mean it’s not like we belong to a sleuth anymore. We can go by our own rules.”
Matthew’s eyes widened. “You don’t want to see if we can find another clan to join?” That was news to Matthew. He had thought—he had assumed—that once they had established themselves, once they were clear of the scandal that had caused their exile, he and Dylan might look into joining one of the other clans; maybe one in Florida, or in another state, depending on how things went with their business.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Dylan said. “In the meantime, we need to get her and bring her back here.”
“Are we sure we’re the safest people she could be around?” Matthew glanced down at his phone as another text message came in.
Just try to keep working, asshole. We’ll find you and we’ll take you down.
“I mean, these aren’t threats of a good time we’re getting. They’re going to find us eventually.”
“And when they do, we’ll be able to handle them on our own turf,” Dylan said, shrugging the concern away. “Or we’ll go after them. We’re bears, man. Since when are we scared of a bunch of lions without even the strength to call themselves a pride?”
Matthew pressed his lips together, considering the problems that came along with what Dylan was proposing. It was true that the lions looking to avenge Alex would almost certainly have scented his corpse and having done that, they would have found Nadine’s pheromones on the man. They’d go after her if only to get information about the circumstances of their friend’s death, along with trying to find out whatever Nadine might know about him and Dylan.
“How did they get our numbers?” Matthew frowned, looking at his clan-mate. “I mean, I know they caught our scent on him—they couldn’t avoid it. But how did they get our phone numbers?”
“That is an excellent question,” Dylan said, nodding slowly. “We need to figure that out, too. Maybe they got to someone affiliated with Beckerman and found it out that way. We know they didn’t get to Beckerman—we’d have heard about that.” Dylan began to pace again. “But they don’t have our address. They’ll probably track us eventually, but for right now we’ve got a window before they get to us.” Dylan exhaled sharply, threading his fingers in his hair and staring up at the ceiling. “She’s going to have to take some time off of her job. We can’t risk her going to and from work every day.”
“We should probably run some of this stuff by her,” Matthew pointed out. “I mean, I don’t doubt that she’s got a will to live or anything, but I doubt she’s just going to go along with ‘hey, you’re going to have to completely abandon your life for the next couple of weeks, so come with us.’”
Dylan snorted, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “We have to get to her before those asshole lions do—that’s non-negotiable,” he said firmly. “Then we figure out just how much of her life is going to be derailed because of this.”
“So do we even know how to get to her? I mean, we know about where her apartment is, but we don’t know where she works.”
“We’re investigators, dude,” Dylan said, shrugging and letting his arms fall to his sides. “If we can’t figure out where she is, then we’re not worth the money anyone’s paying us.”
“Stake out her apartment and wait for her to get home?” Matthew raised an eyebrow. “I mean, that’s the easiest course of action, isn’t it?”
“What if they’re already tailing her, though? They might snatch her on her way home.”
“Do we track her? That’s going to be a tough thing,” Matthew said.
Dylan shrugged. “I got a little out of her before you showed up,” Dylan explained. “I know she works an office job, some kind of data analysis thing. It’s about a thirty-minute drive from her place.”
“Almost everything in this damn county is a thirty-minute drive away fr
om everything else,” Matthew countered.
“Yeah, but we can figure it out,” Dylan said, shaking his head. “Based on what she told me, we do a little research and we’ll know where to go. We stake out her office, get to her when she goes to her car, and explain to her that we need her to make a quick stop at her place and then come back with us.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t think she’s going to go for it,” Matthew told his friend. “She seems to be pretty independent.”
“You do like her,” Dylan said, grinning. “Even more than that, you respect her.” Dylan shook his head. “You sneaky son of a bitch. You played all annoyed and superior when she was knocked out in the back of the van, but you want her, too.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “I want to keep her from getting killed or from exposing us,” Matthew insisted. “Wanting her…I can take or leave it. There’s plenty of girls down here.”
“So how are we going to get her to do the right thing and come with us? Since you’ve got her figured out after talking to her for what—twenty minutes?”
“I’m not competing with you,” Matthew said firmly. “If you want her, then go for it—I’m not going to stop you. But don’t let this fuck with your head. You want her and you want to protect her—that’s two different things going on. Keep your mind on protecting her first, that way, she’ll live to maybe get interested in you.”
“Oh, she’s totally already interested in me,” Dylan said, brushing that concern aside. “She saw me naked.”
Matthew laughed. “Not every woman who sees you naked is just massively impressed with your physique, asshole,” Matthew pointed out. “Alicia didn’t think much of it.”
“She blushed when she mentioned it,” Dylan said, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “And she mentioned it in the context of not being able to get her mind off of seeing me naked.”
“You traumatized her,” Matthew told his friend, laughing harder. “She couldn’t get it out of her head that some naked guy, who may or may not have been a bear moments before, was giving her a dose of knockout gas. Of course she blushed. That’s mortifying as hell.”