Shifters of Grrr 1 (104 page)

She gritted her teeth. “Explain.”

“He’s been undercover in China, in a province where they had supposedly shut down all the bear bile farms. Although the authorities had made a spectacle of the fact the farms had closed, raw product continued to come out of that area. Romer went in for a little ‘look-see’ and vanished off the radar.”

“Perhaps he found some sexy little lady who took his fancy. I wouldn’t worry about him; he’ll be bored with her in no time and resurface licking his paws.”

Ranger’s brother was a big-time player. Unerringly charming, fun, gorgeous looking like all the Sachs-Severin men, and a total man-whore. Ada had forbidden him from meeting any of her friends.

“Ooh, harsh. If it were true, I’d be immensely happy with him for a change. But this is serious.

“The last we heard from him was when he located the farm, two months ago. He sent out the details to the team, and since then it’s been radio silence. A group from the Sanctuary in the area have been working with officials and went in last week for an inspection. They’re confident they’ll have the place shut down. They’re taking all the bears, and this is the problem. We’re concerned one of them might be Romer, and we can’t risk him shifting at the Sanctuary. If he was taken as a bile bear, something may have happened that stopped him shifting once he was caged.”

“So what are you expected to do?”

“I’m going to the farm to see if he’s there. If he is, I’ll simply help him to shift and bring him home.”

Ada’s chest tightened. That was a big ‘if’. “And if he’s not?”

Ranger shrugged and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Tell me, Ranger.”

He threw his head back and focused on the ceiling. “If he’s not, a Bear Force team will assemble, and we’ll go looking for him.”
 

“You see, that sounds dangerous, and I still don’t see why it has to be you. Yesterday, you resigned from combat ops, and in less than twenty-four hours, they’re at you to go on a mission. Not only that, you capitulated!”

“He’s my brother.”

Ada stood. Her entire body trembled. Although she had no siblings, she understood the bond Ranger had with his brothers. But she was flummoxed by the memories of her childhood, of her mother’s begging and her father’s hard-nosed drive to do what he felt was right.

“I understand why you have to do this, Ranger, but I’m not waiting at home for you. I’m sorry, but you know my reasons, and I can’t do it.”

Her stomach churned. He’d made his decision without even discussing it with her. What was worse, was she began to have some empathy for the way her mother had felt every time her father stepped out the door to do his job. She simply couldn’t go any further along a path that destined her to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

Her face was hot, the pressure behind her eyes building, so that all she wanted to do was get out of the apartment, fast.
 

She hurried through to the bedroom with Ranger hot on her heels. It seemed to take an age to grab her clothes and assemble her few things into her handbag. Of course, her underwear was trashed. She pulled on her sweats. When she headed for the bedroom door, he stood there blocking it with his immense frame.

“Back off, Ranger.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Ada, until we have this sorted.”

“You have a job to do.”

“Christ, this is just going in circles.”

“Let me through the door, please.” She couldn’t believe how composed she sounded when her insides tumbled, defeat forcing her to bolt for cover.

Ranger stood aside, and she couldn’t find the courage to look at his face as she passed him.

“Ada, please, don’t leave.”

She talked as she marched along the hallway towards the apartment door. “I’m sorry, Ranger. Yesterday was a mistake. Believing your hasty promise that you couldn’t even keep for twenty-four hours was a mistake. I wish I could do this, but I can’t, and you know why.”

She’d made it to the door, surprised her legs were still cooperating. “Please don’t try to contact me,” she said.

As the door clicked softly closed behind her, the tears finally tumbled from her eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

~ADA~

Back at her house Ada took a long shower, relieved that Jessa and Nicki were both away. She didn’t want to explain her red eyes and an impetuous hook-up with Ranger to her friends. As the hot water beat down on her shoulders, the tenderness of Ranger’s mark deepened.

She dressed carefully, ensuring the bruising was covered, and headed into the office. Even though she was late, for once, she didn’t hurry. One good thing to have come out of the past twenty-four hours was that she’d made some important decisions about her future. Starting today, her life would change dramatically.

Ada marched into Sally’s office and dumped a bag on her desk. “Here, you’re going to need this.”

Sally opened the bag and peered in, only to hastily back off to avoid the contents. “I don’t think so,” she said, sneering as she shoved the bag back towards Ada. The effect of the deodoriser had worn off, and the nasty smell had returned to the bear costume.

Ada gave it a little nudge back. “Oh, I think you do. You see, I’m not doing your dirty work again. Actually, I’m not going to do your good work, either. You know those stories I research and write that carry your by-line—the work you present as your own—not happening anymore. So you can shove the bear costume up the back woods of your ass for all I care. Your appointment as a collector for charity is at eight-thirty Friday. Be standing outside Starbucks, Queen Street, in your costume, carrying your bucket. If the idea humiliates you, you’d better start praying that nobody you know grabs their morning latte there.”

Sally’s eyes widened so far Ada was surprised they didn’t fall out of her face. Her mouth gaped producing a strange squeaking noise while she struggled for the words to reply.

“You can’t do this,” she finally managed.

“Looks like I just did.” Ada smiled. “Now you be nice to the people on the street this Friday and make sure you collect lots of donations. I’ll be checking up on you.”

“I’m reporting you to Barry.”

“Will that be before or after your mid-morning blowjob?”

A string of curses followed Ada as she headed towards her cubicle.

“Mind your language, Sally. Barry won’t want to put his little cock into a dirty mouth like that.”

 
Ada sat at her desk tapping a pencil and counting down from one hundred waiting to be called to Barry’s office. She was at twenty-eight when her phone rang. Sally must have managed a complete story for a change.

She took a seat opposite her editor and gave him a sweet smile. In his late forties, he was starting to show the effects of a desk job and a preference for alcohol and pies over exercise.

“I’m not going to dick about being friendly, Ada. Go back to Sally’s office, apologise, collect the bear costume and do the chugger piece.”

“Sure, Barry, I’ll do that, but I have one requirement.”
 

His eyebrows shot up. He wasn’t used to demands, but Ada didn’t give a shit. Barry had lost her respect months ago so he could either give her what she wanted or she’d walk and make trouble. Today was not the day she felt like being messed with.

“I’ll do the charity piece in its entirety. You know it will be good, but it won’t be made better having Sally messing about with it, so keep her away from my work. Oh, and Barry…the story carries my by-line.”

Barry shook his head. “That’s Sally’s story.”

“Fine. Make sure she removes the bear suit before she services you on Friday. The bloody thing stinks.” Ada stood.

“Sit down.”

In that moment, the focus of the meeting shifted to a different level. Ada lowered herself to the chair keeping a steady watch on Barry’s face.
 

“Advertising and subscriptions are sinking. The parent company’s asked me to put forward five names for redundancy. I’m sure you don’t want your name in the mix, so I suggest you readjust your attitude, whack a smile on that face and make sure you’re wearing that bear suit on Friday morning.”

Ada exaggerated a sigh and leaned forward a bit noticing Barry wasn’t able to keep from stealing a glance at her cleavage. “That sounded like a threat, Barry.”

“You can call it what you want, Ada, but it’s reality.”

“Uh-uh. You messed with my career because I wouldn’t suck that mangy little noodle you call a cock. That’s reality, and that’s sexual harassment. I’m happy to take up a personal grievance case with HR, or a lawyer if you don’t want to talk about it.”
 

Fuck me, he’s turning purple before my eyes.

He lifted his hands. “Come on, Ada, I was joking about the blowjob. Where’s your sense of humour?”

“Let’s go back to the start. Give me the story with full credit—”

“I can’t.”

“Because…?”

He was actually squirming in his seat, and at her best guess, it wasn’t because his dick had turned hard from peering at the furrow between her lush tits.

“I know Sally can’t write for shit, but if I take her off features, she’s threatened to tell my wife about the thing we’ve got going.”

Ada roared with laughter. “Jesus, Barry, looks like the screws are turning from both directions. Tell you what; I’m going to let you off the hook because I think in the very near future you’re going to get what’s coming to you.”

A little of the panic slid from his face.

“This is what’s going to happen. I’ll take that redundancy, effective immediately, with the full payout package my contract entitles me to and an excellent reference. I’ll go now and pack my things. By the end of the day, I want a glowing reference from you and confirmation from HR about my payout. I know how much it should be, so let’s hope you’re sensible enough to match it.”

The panic was back. “I don’t know if I can do—”

“You can do it, Barry, because if you don’t, I’ll have to get myself a lawyer, and then the flying monkeys are going to turn up hurling fistfuls of shit. That stuff’s going to fly. Apart from your personal problems, the media’s going to love a story about how management at
In Depth
magazine—the champion of the downtrodden—bullies and sexually harasses their staff.”

Ada stood, noticing Barry’s colour had changed from purple to white. Perhaps he’s a chameleon shifter, she thought with a smile. “I’ll send you an email to confirm our agreement, and you’ll have HR back to me with the details by day’s end.”

~o0o~

No boyfriend, no job. She sure was making short work of sabotaging her life. Luckily, she had savings and, of course, her redundancy payout, to see her through for a bit. The Grey Lynn house she shared with Nicki and Jessa was the family home she’d inherited from her parents, and it was debt-free due to her father’s insurance policies. Now all she had to do was decide where to go from here.

When she left for work that morning, she’d purposely abandoned her phone on the kitchen counter. As she made herself a cup of tea, she continued to ignore the alerts to text messages.

In minutes, the adrenaline she’d been surfing since leaving Ranger’s apartment and dealing with Sally and Barry finally ran out. She took her tea through to the sitting room and grabbed her laptop, wishing she had a cat to cuddle.

She did an internet search for Bear Bile Farming and was sickened by what she discovered.
 

Bear bile was used in Traditional Asian Medicine. In the past, the bears were killed in the wild, and their gall bladders removed and sold. Bear numbers plummeted, so the Chinese government decreed that to preserve the bear population, it was acceptable to keep bears in cages, so that their bile could be repeatedly drained. Bears would be bred on the farms for the purpose.

Kept in too-small cages that they frequently outgrew, many bears were deformed by the constraints of the bars. Added to that were other problems, like blindness and brain damage, the result of stereotypical behaviour such as repeatedly beating their heads against the bars.

Some bears were kept in what were known as metal jackets, with spikes and restraints reminiscent of some sort of mediaeval straight-jacket.

If the means of their imprisonment wasn’t horrific enough, the methods used to extract the bile, from catheterisation of the gall bladder, to a permanent fistula which allowed free dripping of the bile, added to the cruelty.

She slammed the cover of her laptop shut unable to read any further. Was it any wonder Ranger and the others in Bear Force felt compelled to go to their rescue? She should have taken the time to understand his work rather than pushing her own selfish concerns.

Jessa.
She’d recently finished her volunteer time at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand and, the last time they’d Skyped, she mentioned the possibility of heading to China to work with a different animal welfare agency.

Part of Ada hoped she wasn’t working with the bears, because she didn’t want to think of her friend dealing with that sort of horror. The other part hoped she was, because Jessa was exactly the sort of person you’d want on your team in a situation like that.