Damnation: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 1) (10 page)

“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 fire. 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?

“Simon!” She ran forward, then promptly retreated. Two fallen trees were burning in a vee-shape that pointed her way, forming a barrier.

Again, the movement — and a whimper.

Jess shoved at the end of one tree. It was hot but not burning at the end nearest her — yet. Even shoving with all her might didn’t budge it, though. She screamed her frustration into the night. “Simon!”

The breath it took to yell forced her to inhale, and she folded over, heaving and coughing, on the cusp of defeat.

The earth shook. A huge, bristling shape rocketed past her and thumped into the tree.

She looked through a curtain of tears, through the smoke. Simon.

He roared at the tree. Bulldozed it along the ground, sending crackling flames flying. He pushed it upslope and out of the way, only for it to roll back.

Simon bellowed. Braced his legs and pushed again. The tree shifted and rolled closer, but a tiny gap opened up.

Get her! Get her!
Simon’s roar said.

Jess darted through the gap Simon barely held open. Jumped a line of fire that reached for her in midair, but she was a hair ahead. She stumbled to a stop and looked down. A round face darkened with soot and a pair of wide, beseeching eyes shone at her from a hollow.

“Laurel!” Jess yelped.

She snatched the child up and jumped back over the burning branch. Cut left, then right, around the only patch of ground free of flames, and leaped for her life. The tree thundered back into place, closing the gap behind her with an angry shower of sparks. Simon was nowhere to be seen, and a second log started rolling downhill behind her.

There was no time to think. No time to scream for Simon. All she could do was run for her life and the child’s. She ran in bounding kangaroo steps down the slope and prayed as she went.

The woods behind her hissed as the rolling log hit a tree and careened to a stop, shooting a hailstorm of sparks her way.

She didn’t stop to look. Just tugged the fabric of her shirt up, hid the little girl’s face in it, and ran on. Two thin hands clutched at her back; two thin legs bounced against her hip as she ran and ran and ran.

God, where was Simon? Where was he?

She raced across the bottom of the valley and up the other side, crying for Simon in her mind. Her lungs screamed for clean air as she pounded uphill, toward safety, and when she reached the top, she looked back, hugging the whimpering child.

“It will be okay. Everything will be okay,” she whispered. The words were as much for herself as for the child, because where was Simon? God, where was he?

A helicopter zipped overhead, circled, and cast a curtain of water across the hill. Flames and shadows danced everywhere. Any one of them could have been a bear or a man. Her eyes darted back and forth. God, where was Simon?

“Mommy…” the little girl cried.

Jess clutched her closer to her aching heart. “It will be okay…”

Her fist rose in a triumph a moment later. “Simon!”

There he was, running up the hill. Stark-naked, in human form, with his clothes bundled under his arm.

Jess hunched over the little girl and let herself shed a few tears before turning for the way out. Within a few strides, she was back to a jog with Simon racing up behind.