GUNNER: A Forsaken Riders MC Romance: Alpha Male Biker Club Bad Boy Romance (Motorcycle Club New Adult Contemporary Short Stories) (101 page)

When she awoke in the morning, she was alone. She could hear the men preparing to leave outside and quickly dressed and went out to see what was happening. William had packed his shield and swords and was ready to mount his horse, but seeing her, he rushed to her side.

“I wanted to leave before you woke.”

“I’m glad I caught you.”

Their conversation was stilted in front of the other men and they had to resist the urge to kiss each other.

“I should have a token to give you to keep you safe.”

William smiled. “I’ll picture your face before we go into battle tomorrow.”

Rebecca had a thought. “Wait, I can do better than that!” Running into the tent, she brought out her bag and handed him the phone. “Here, take this and you can have my image with you.”

She had saved their selfie as a screensaver, and she showed him how to turn the iPhone on and off.

William tucked it into his tunic. It was time to go and the others were shouting at him to mount his horse. There was no time for long goodbyes and after touching her arm lightly, he was away.

She watched the men ride into the distance, her heart already heavy for their losses.

The day was long and she had little to do. William had warned her to keep out of sight and keep away from the other men staying behind in the camp. Many were young boys, just learning their craft and the others old men past the age of battle who were responsible for the camp.

Taking out her notebook, she began to sketch pictures with notes of what she saw. It would be fascinating reading when she got back to 2015, if she ever returned. At first she remained within the confines of the tent, but as the day dragged on, she became bored. Tucking her hair underneath her cap, she started to wander further afield. It seemed quiet and surely no one would notice her. With her slight frame and tunic and leggings, she could easily pass for one of the young squires. Eventually she came to a very large and wealthy-looking tent that bore the royal coat of arms; it must be the tent of King James. Picking up her pencil, she had just started drawing the scene when a hefty arm caught hold of her.

Two burly highlanders stood behind her, their swords drawn, and before she could speak her hands were fastened behind her and she was thrown into a tent. No one knew who she was and it was assumed that she must be an English spy.

A long time passed before one of the older men came into the tent to speak to her.

“What’s yer name sonny, and who do ye work for?”

She stuttered out William’s name and said that she was his squire. The man rubbed his whiskers. He wasn’t sure. The boy’s accent wasn’t Scots, and there was something unusual about him. He would keep him under watch until William returned.

She was brought some simple food and water during the day, but apart from that, she had no company. At night she was given a blanket but could not sleep. How different the previous night had been. She lay awake thinking of William.

A few miles away, William Stewart lay on the ground looking up at the stars. It was a beautiful night and he wondered if it might be his last. He was sure Rebecca knew something about the battle but was afraid to tell him. He feared the worse. He removed the strange device from his tunic and pressed the button she had shown him. The square box switched into life and he saw a picture of a white apple on a black background. This thing amazed him and he wondered what it was like in 2015. Would he still be remembered? The apple disappeared and was replaced by their image, his face and hers. She was laughing and he was looking confused. She looked beautiful. Kissing the image, he pressed the button to close the machine and to “save the battery” as she had put it.

He prayed to God to keep them both safe.

The next morning, the clouds had set in and what started as a light drizzle turned into torrential rain by mid afternoon. Rebecca listened carefully for any news, but all was quiet. She hadn’t slept well the previous night and was awoken by the sound of loud voices and seemed to recognise one of them. The tent opened and in walked Angus, one of William’s men who had threatened her with a sword a few days earlier. She was grateful for her disguise for he did not seem to recognize her and soon walked out again. She wondered what he was doing here and why he wasn’t at the battle. The reason soon became clear. The battle had already started late afternoon and by now the Scots were being massacred by the English. It seemed that the coward had run away from the danger. A few hours later, a messenger arrived to state that all was lost and to clear the camp. Horses were readied and Rebecca wondered if she would be forgotten when Angus walked into the tent and pulled her outside.

The older man was waiting outside. “He says he’s William Stewart’s squire.”

Angus peered closely at Rebecca, uncertain. Pulling at her cap, he released her blonde hair, which cascaded down her back.

“William Stewart’s whore, more like.” And bringing his face up close to hers, he leered down at her, his cruel mouth mocking her.

“Well, William’s dead so she’s no use to him now. I’m sure I can make good use of her, though.” With that, he dragged her back into the tent.

Rebecca didn’t know what was happening to her. Her whole body had gone into shock. If William was dead, then she was lost, too. The old woman had been wrong after all. Perhaps it was her fault; she had upset the balance of time.

She had a sense of déjà vu but seemed lost in a dream. Angus was suddenly in front of her and from the smell on his breath, he had been drinking a great quantity of ale. His hand was squeezing her arm, but she could not struggle. She had given up the fight. His eyes were like slits and there was cruelty in their steely grey as he looked her up and down.

Licking his lips, he sneered at her and brought his face directly in front of hers.

His breath was stale and sour, and Rebecca turned her face away from him.

“Little whore, I’ll show ye.” He pulled her to the floor as his free hand started to work its way underneath her tunic.

His other hand was around her neck and almost choking her. She thought she might black out when suddenly he released her, his whole weight lifting away from her.

“Angus.”

The voice was his. William had returned and had pulled Angus away from her, punching him to the floor.

Once again his strong arms were around her and she wept softly into his chest.

“But I thought you were dead?”

“I was saved by this.” Reaching into his tunic he pulled out her phone. The glass had been smashed but surprisingly it still worked.

“I took a direct hit from an English archer, but luckily I kept your picture next to my heart and the arrow pierced your machine and not me. Ye saved my life.”

Things were as they should be, as they were always meant to be.

Rebecca returned home to Selkirk with William. She married him a month later and he had a special portrait of her commissioned for the occasion. He wanted her to look like the first time he had seen her, standing in the bed chamber with her hair plaited. She wore a blue velvet dress and a pearl necklace that he bought her as a wedding gift. As a surprise in return, she asked the painter to make two small additions to her picture. In her hand, she would hold an apple to symbolize the phone that had saved him. Remembering the original locket, she had already guessed what the twin-tailed symbol of the siren signified: It was the Starbucks logo from her coffee cup that they had kept it as a reminder of her past.

They lived happily ever after despite the fact that she could never return to her own time. They had four children, two girls and two boys. Her past was now her future. She worried about her Mom missing her and thought of a cunning plan. She recorded a message for her parents on the iPhone, using the last remaining battery power. She hoped they would understand.

James Anderson was furious. He had been digging at the site and found a surprisingly modern object buried quite deeply. It seemed as though a thermos flask had been buried on the site of the old house and inside it were two objects: a mobile phone with the front smashed in and a small locket. He recognized the phone; the students seemed to be glued to them these days. This one was housed in a pink sparkly case and it belonged to Rebecca, that strange American girl that he couldn’t get out of his head. Students weren’t allowed to come onto the site without permission, let alone dig.

It might be a practical joke, but just wait until he saw her; he would definitely give her a piece of his mind.

THE END

Cynthia Wilde

Copyright ©2015 by Cynthia Wilde. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Thank you so much for your interest in my work

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter One

I put on my work uniform, tied my hair in a ponytail, and looked myself in the mirror. Every day, I had to make sure I looked as non-threatening as possible to all the kiddies. My uniform, which had cartoony animals on it, such as a giraffe, elephant, and monkey, made me feel not so intimidating, but I still had to work on my “resting bitchy face”. When I relaxed myself, I realized just how snarly I looked, like I was going to bite someone’s head off if they even looked at me. I practiced smiling, and when I decided that I didn’t look like a homicidal killer, it was time to work.

As I left the changing station, a fellow zookeeper past me by. “Morning, Stacy,” he greeted, a twinkle in his eyes.
Yeah, in your dreams,
I thought. No wonder I had a bitch face.

I started checking each cage to make sure the animals had an adequate supply of food. The monkeys still had plenty of fruit in their cages, the elephant was busy munching on some oranges, the giraffes were eating from the trees behind their fences, and I saw another zookeeper throwing fish into the mouth of a walrus, so it looked like all the cages were accounted for. Except for one.

Behind the cage, I saw the bear. It was a large grizzly, and it always gave the onlookers a stare that sort of freaked some people out. It was a very odd bear. I’d heard it hadn’t been with the zoo that long actually. He’d arrived just before my time apparently. This was supposedly a temporary place for him before they found a more permanent home. I wasn’t really sure. I wasn’t privy to that kind of information. But, what I was aware of what that its trough wasn’t filled, so I grabbed his special slop from the prep room. It looked like someone had been getting ready for work, or ready to feed him or something, because someone had left their uniform and a bag just outside the cage. I typed in the keypad combo that gave me access to the trough. It was easy to remember because they used the same combo for all the pads, even the ones on the inside of the cages. When I started dumping an amalgam of fish, raw steak, and other meat byproducts into its trough, it came up to me and nuzzled my hand with its nose.

“Who’s a good boy?” I asked him. To me, this bear was like a big puppy. Everyone thought that he was scary and many zookeepers neglected him attention wise.  I was the only one who seemed to care. In fact, we were getting so close that it felt ok to give him a little pat on the head as I left the cage. Thankfully my instincts were on, and he didn’t bite my hand off.

“Bye, Barry,” I said as I left, making sure to lock the door. That was my cliché name for the bear.  I had named him that, but I still made an inner eye roll every time I said it. As I left, I had to sigh. That bear was the highlight of my day, and I didn’t know why. Before coming to work  here, I’d thought I’d be starry-eyed over the more exotic animals, such as the tigers, gorillas, and the manatees, but instead I found myself relating to an animal that you could find in the local woods if you were lucky, or unlucky, enough.

I spent the rest of my day cleaning out the cages, keeping the food and water in check, and giving the sickly animals their medication. Being at the peak of summer, I was sweating and wished I could take this uniform off already, but I was determined to finish my rounds. It was my job, after all.

It may not pay much, but it’s just a summer job. Besides, it will look great on your qualifications when you finally decide to get your dream job,
I kept thinking.

As I tried reassuring myself, I looked at my phone. Just an hour and a half left and I could return to my apartment. I began making last minute checks of every single cage out there until finally I arrived at Barry’s cage. I expected to see him sitting all by his lonesome, and was shocked to see his cage was empty.

I entered to make sure. The cage had an environment that kind off simulating a bear’s habitat. I walked past the small stream as I looked to see if he was gone. At the end of the cage, there was a giant concrete structure poured in a shape to simulate a cave. Maybe he was resting? I peered inside, but there wasn’t anything there.

“Maybe one of the zookeepers moved him for some reason,” I said to myself. Of course, there wasn’t anything on the schedule to confirm this, but you never knew with these guys. I decided to leave the cage and find the nearest zookeeper I could find to figure out what was up. Unfortunately, it was the same guy that was always hitting on me. He was a lanky creep, and he never got the hint.

“What do you want, Stacy?” he asked.

Yes, I know that is my name. Now, could you please stop saying it?

“Do you know what’s going on with the bear cage? I can’t seem to find the bear, and I don’t think they moved him.”

“Let me check with the others, hon,” he replied.

Please don’t call me hon.

In a matter of minutes, zookeepers were standing at the cage, and everyone testified that there were no plans to move the bear. Of course, all the blame began shifting to me.

“Didn’t you feed it?” one asked. “Did you make sure to lock the cage?”

“Of course I did,” I replied. I remembered myself locking it up tightly. There was no way that I messed up.

The eyes were all still staring at me, but I just ignored them. Eventually, their fingers stopped pointing. Our boss, an older man who looked like a shaved orangutan, ordered us to search the entire vicinity of the zoo. The intercoms began announcing that the zoo would be closing early and to please head to the nearest exit.

For the next hour, I spent what energy I had left searching every nook and cranny that the zoo had to offer. It was a bear, not a poison dart frog, yet it was nowhere to be seen. This was getting bizarre. A wall surrounded the zoo, so it wasn’t as though it could have escaped. The front and back doors were heavily guarded. How could a grizzly bear just disappear like this?

“Maybe he’s a Houdini bear,” one of the guards commented, thinking how clever he was.

The zookeepers were freaking out, but relieved that no one had been harmed, whatever had happened. In fact, many of them seemed to be more concerned over the public backlash they might receive if the bear were found wandering around the streets, than they were about the fact he was gone. It was true that the potential lawsuit if someone were to be attacked by our animal was the last thing any zoo needed.

Two teams were sent out to hunt for the bear. One team started to review the security camera footage from outside the cage as well as the surrounding areas. The other began searching outside the zoo. There was a small forest behind the zoo, so if a bear somehow did escape, that’s where they would most likely be. I was sent on the second team.

As I looked at my phone, I realized that I should be home by now. I was worried plenty about “Barry” and I was also exhausted, hot and sweaty. How did he disappear like that? Could someone have bear-napped him and if so, who?

During our trip through the woods, we saw nothing that would indicate the bear had been this way. There were no tracks, no droppings, and really no sign of anything bigger than a squirrel.  After exploring every acre, we returned to the zoo and we regrouped with the security team.

“What do you have to report?” the team leader of my group asked us. “We saw no signs of the bear in the woods. We’ll probably have to send the police to search further, but there are absolutely no signs of him” reported Jim, the most senior member of my group.

“Nothing off about the security footage, either,” the zoo search team leader said. “I mean we see the bear moving around a bit in the areas we monitor. We saw Stacy Paddington enter and leave the cage, and we can confirm that she did lock it. Then later the bear does move out of frame from the monitored areas, but he was acting normal.”

“Are there no cameras on the door to the cage?” Jim asked.

“Only on a few areas inside the cage. We have cameras for studying the bear, not to see if he feels like going for a walk outside. But yeah, it seems that must be what he did,” he joked. No one laughed.

This began to remind me of the picture game “Where’s Waldo” as everyone kept saying that they couldn’t find the bear. Of course in my head it was “Where’s Barry?” Finally, everyone was dismissed and allowed to go home as police arrived to take over and converse with the remaining head staff. As I returned to my car, I began pondering just who was responsible for this. Did the bear somehow escape on its own? Was there someone behind this? Why would someone want to steal a bear? As I continued to think this over, I began driving.

When I returned to my apartment, I immediately headed to the bathroom. I took off my uniform and looked at myself in the mirror. I was drenched in sweat, and my makeup wasn’t exactly on very well. I looked like a mess, and the bathtub next to me was tempting. After I wiped off my face, I poured myself a bath and then immersing myself, allowed some of the days fatigue to be soaked out of me. Finally, I got out, dried off and put on my robe before turning on the TV. Already, the media had caught wind of the disappearing act. The Zoo president – yes the zoo has a president - was being interviewed, and they were showing footage of the empty cage. Great, just what the zoo needed. More negative publicity in a year when attendance was already down.

“The Longforest Zoo is known for causing some controversy. In 2009, it was scrutinized for health violations, and in 2013, one of the lions got too close for one boy’s comfort, although thankfully he was unharmed.” the report finished.

“Great,” I said as I shut off the TV. I did have to admit that this zoo wasn’t the best, but it was the only one this town had, and it brought some life to an otherwise pretty dead town.

As I relaxed myself, I received a call from my boyfriend Josh. I answered the call and he began with the worry immediately.

“I saw the news report, are you all right?” Josh asked.

“Yes,” I replied. It started off being a call of concern, but Josh soon changed his tune.

“So when are you going to come see me?” he asked, a bit of impatience in his breath.

“You know my work schedule is really busy, and you live three hours away. Plus, it goes both ways. You don’t have a job, so why don’t you come down here?” I replied.

“I don’t have the money,” Josh replied.

I wanted to call him out on that. Josh had been bragging on Facebook about some new video game he bought. For a fraction of that, he could have seen me. It wasn’t like gas was four dollars a gallon anymore.

“Can’t we just wait until you come back here for college?” I asked.

“But I really want to see you, babe,” he said, sounding pretty pathetic.

“Then come here. I know that you can afford it. Sell one of your games.”

There was silence on the other end, and then the call ended.

Well, fuck you too,
I thought to myself. His gaming was a touchy subject. He played a lot. Too much. Some would say addiction level too much. I grabbed myself a glass of wine and began sipping on it. At least tomorrow was my day off. And if they said I had to come in to search for the bear, it just wasn’t happening. Even though I was concerned for the bear, I needed a break. Besides that, it was confirmed that the bear wasn’t in the zoo or its surroundings, so what would be the point. After a bit, I received a text from Josh. “Sorry, I was in an area with poor signal and the call got dropped,” it read. I decided to ignore it for now. He was clearly hanging up because he knew I had put him in a checkmate, and pushed his buttons to boot. Instead of owning up to it like the strong man he claimed to be, he just ran away.

“Oh well,” I said, and soon fell asleep.