Shifters Unbound [5] Tiger Magic (20 page)

“Hang on,” she said, opening the car door in the driveway. “I’ll run in and open up the garage. We can’t leave this pile of junk on the street. It will definitely be noticed.”

Tiger was alert now, his eyes changing to the golden sparkle they took on when he was thinking about changing into the tiger. “Who lives here?”

“My sisters. Don’t worry, they’re in Mexico. I have the keys. I’ll hurry.”

Before Tiger could argue, she shut the door and tripped up the small flight of steps through the landscaping to the front door. A key on her ring fit the locks, and Carly pushed her way inside.

A beeping sound startled her, and for one panicked moment, Carly forgot the alarm code. Her fingers knew it, though, and soon the alarm was off.

Carly went out through a back passage to the garage and punched the control to open the garage door. Then she drove the car into the garage, Tiger still in it, turned off the ignition, and closed the garage door.

She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face. “This thing really stinks.”

Tiger didn’t answer. He followed Carly as she got out of the car, entered the house again, and led him through the back passage to the main part of the house.

“Your sisters live here?” Tiger stopped to look around the giant kitchen and the high-ceilinged living room beyond. “How many?”

“My two oldest sisters. They and my mom and my other sister all went to Mexico to shop. I didn’t go because Armand needed me for the exhibit opening.” Carly huffed. “See how well that worked out.”

“So much room for two people,” Tiger said, turning to take in the echoing space.

“True, but they earned it. My sisters run a decorating business together. Althea and Zoë, that is. The one just above me in age, Janine, is married and a teacher. I’m the youngest.”

Tiger pulled off his baseball hat and dropped it onto a chair, combing his fingers through his hair, ruffling it and making it look sexy. The black and orange strands no longer seemed odd to her.

“Why don’t you live here with them?” he asked. “It would be safer for you.”

Carly opened the refrigerator. Sneaking out of the gallery, stealing a car, and fleeing across Austin—very slowly—had given her an appetite.

“Like I said, I’m the youngest. I wanted to go out on my own, see if I could do it without everyone looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do. We’re close, my sisters and me, but they do tend to be a bit overprotective, and at times, downright bossy. Ooh, pasta salad.” She drew out a plastic container, popped the lid off, sniffed it. “Seems okay. Someone needs to eat this before it goes bad.” Carly plopped it onto the counter, then dove back into the refrigerator. “There’s plenty of lunch meat in here. Want me to make you a sandwich? And while I’m at it, you can explain to me why you told me to steal Yvette’s car and duck out of the gallery without alerting Spike or Connor.”

Tiger sat on a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar, which was open to the rest of the room, and leaned his arms on the counter.

“I will tell you everything, Carly. From the beginning. Stop, and listen.”

His face was grave, mouth turned down. Carly ceased her flustered puttering, dropped the fork she’d taken up into the pasta salad, and waited for him to start.

Tiger’s position, leaning forward toward her, made his T-shirt open at the neck, but the shadows were such that Carly still couldn’t see his Collar.

Then she frowned. She reached out, hooked one finger around the ribbed neckline, and pulled it down. Her heart beat faster.

Tiger wasn’t wearing a Collar at all. His skin bore a thin red crease across his throat, but the Collar had gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
iger saw the fear flare in Carly’s eyes as she realized she was alone with an un-Collared Shifter, nothing to control him, nothing to restrain him.

Her lips parted as she reached to him and brushed one fingertip across the abraded skin. Her touch, that one caring stroke, untightened something inside him.

“You took it off?” she asked in wonder. “Looks like that was painful.”

“Yes.” He didn’t lie. Removing the false Collar had hurt, because Liam had made it to embed into Tiger’s skin, so it would better resemble the real ones. “But not as much as it could have, because I never had a Collar on at all.”

Carly stared at him for a heartbeat then her brows drew together. “What are you talking about? It was right there.” She brushed her fingertip across the line again.

“It was a fake.”
Full disclosure,
that was the term he’d heard. If Carly was to trust him and help him, Tiger had to give her all the information he could. Nothing held back. “I will tell you all of the truth. When I’m done, if you want me to leave, I will. You’ll never see me again, and I’ll make sure you aren’t bothered because of anything I asked you to do today.”

Carly’s eyes widened. “I think it’s a little late for that. I just parked a stolen car in my sisters’ garage.”

“They made me in a research lab in a place the humans call Area 51,” Tiger said, ignoring her and plunging straight in. “They were trying to create Shifters artificially. Shifters are born Shifter—they aren’t humans who turn into Shifters because they’re bitten or whatever, like in the movies Connor laughs at. I don’t know how they made me—they might have used Shifter DNA, or only animal and human. They never told me. I was the twenty-third Shifter they made. The others all died when I was still a cub.”

He told her about the long days he’d been left alone in his cage, then taken out only to be shot full of chemicals or given electric shocks or other things, then observed to see how he reacted. His reaction had usually been screaming agony. Tiger told her about the days they’d chain him to a treadmill and make him run for forty-eight hours without a break. They’d alternately starve him and force-feed him to see what he could take, then they’d enact an interrogation scenario, torturing him when he couldn’t answer their questions.

Carly watched him with her beautiful green eyes as Tiger revealed the horrors in his flat voice. They’d let him see his cub once, he related, before they took it away. When Tiger had asked to see his boy again, begged them, they’d told Tiger the cub had died. The grief of that had been worse than any torture they could ever manufacture.

Tiger had talked until his voice grew hoarse, he who rarely said many sentences together. “Walker said that when Eric destroyed the building in Area 51, it was investigated, and the investigators found files and notes that didn’t get burned. At first they thought I’d died either in the experiments or in the explosion, but Walker kept an eye out. When he found out there was a Shifter in Austin who came from nowhere, he started watching me. Today he told me that the Shifter Bureau wants to start the research again, officially. The Area 51 people were trying to create Shifter soldiers, off-book. Shifter Bureau now wants to see if the project is still viable, if they can make Shifters who will be controlled soldiers, using me as the prototype.”

Carly had gone very still, her gaze fixed on him in shock as he’d told the tale. Now rage flared in her eyes. “Dear God. I’m guessing they aren’t asking you to volunteer.”

Tiger shrugged. “Officially, I don’t exist. I’m not a registered, Collared Shifter. Feral Shifters, un-Collared, can legally be hunted and killed.”

She planted her fists on the counter. “This is all bullshit.”

“As a research subject, I’m perfect, because it doesn’t matter if I die.”

“It damn well does matter,” Carly snapped. “And
Walker
told you all this? Why, because you were nice and let him go?”

“He doesn’t like what the idea has been turned into. The Shifter Bureau sent a soldier out to wreck the car and shoot me as part of the experiment. The mission risked civilians, and Walker doesn’t like that.”

“How sweet of him. Well, consider me risked. Along with Ellison. And they had you shot in cold blood. Why didn’t they scoop you up and take you with them right then, if they wanted to watch what would happen to you?”

“They thought they could scoop me up anytime they wanted, and they didn’t want to pay for the medical care.”

“Let the Shifters foot the bill and spend the time taking care of you while the Shifter Bureau sits back and watches?”

“But now they’re ready to take me in. I’m pretty sure Liam will let them—and he won’t be given a choice.”

“Why would Liam let them take you?” Carly asked. “He seems pretty protective of the Shifters, at least from what I’ve seen.”

“The other Shifter leaders want him to put a real Collar on me. Or kill me. Liam’s choice. Except he told
me
to make the choice. He might see handing me to the Shifter Bureau and their special team as a way out of the problem.”

Carly blinked. “Liam told you to choose between putting on a Collar or letting him kill you? What the
hell
?”

“Liam’s job as Shiftertown leader is to protect all Shifters. I’m a threat, a danger to the Shifters in his Shiftertown. He has to contain the danger any way he can.”

“Tiger.”
Carly pointed a polished fingernail at his face. “Don’t you even sit there and tell me that he’s right. If Liam’s supposed to protect all Shifters, that means
all
Shifters. Individually. You as well as all the others. None of this
needs of the many
crap.”

She was so beautiful, her eyes flashing, her face pink with anger and indignation. Carly was angry
for
him, at Liam and the Bureau, not at Tiger.

When Walker had called him and told him the Shifter Bureau wanted to start experimenting on him again, Tiger’s instincts had told him to run and never stop running. He could have simply disappeared, using his incredible ability to survive to see him through.

But Tiger had a mate now. He couldn’t go and never see Carly again. He knew he risked exposure and capture by calling her and coming here with her, but Tiger needed her. He needed to breathe in Carly’s scent, and touch her skin, if only one last time.

Carly came around the counter and leaned on it beside him. The stance pushed her breasts toward him through her thin dress and washed him in her scent.

“So, what are we going to do?” she asked. “You can’t go back to Shiftertown, obviously—that’s why you had me give Spike and Connor the slip. I’m betting the guy who shot you before will be after you too.”

“The Bureau doesn’t realize I’m gone yet. Walker met me on the edge of Shiftertown and gave me a ride halfway to where I met you and told me to disappear. I didn’t tell him I was going to call you.”

“I’m glad you did.” Carly leaned to him and slid her arms around Tiger’s shoulders, her warmth soothing the shaking deep inside him. “We should be safe here for a while, but eventually they’ll start checking with my friends and relatives. I’ll have to pull some cash if we’re going on the road, because credit cards are too easily tracked. And we have to get a different car.
That
one won’t hold up fifty miles. I bet the guy left his keys in it hoping it would be stolen.”

She wanted to come with him. Tiger sat in stunned silence as he realized that Carly was calmly planning how they could get away from Austin and anyone after him.

But the cruel fact was that Tiger could move faster and farther without her, could cover his tracks in ways she couldn’t imagine. He’d survive, but he’d have to do it alone.

Alone. Without his mate. Or his cub.

Tiger touched Carly’s lips. “You are my mate. You always will be and no other. But you will stay here and be safe, and I will go. Once I am gone, and they know you don’t know where I am, they will leave you alone.”

“No.” Carly jerked away from him, rising and taking away her warmth. “You’re not running out on me.”

“Keeping you safe,” Tiger said catching her wrist in his big hand. “I can run for days without stopping, I can live for days without food and sleep. You can’t.”

“But you can’t run forever,” Carly said. “The best thing to do is to hide in plain sight. As long as I can get my money in cash before we go, we can go anywhere. Mexico—I’ve always wanted a trip to Mazatlán, or Cabo. Once your neck heals, and if you hide your hair or dye it, we’ll fit right in. A young couple in a rental on a Baja beach. Sounds good to me.”

“It’s that easy to leave the country?” Tiger asked. He was skeptical. There were papers and cards for humans, and Shifters were forbidden international travel.

“They don’t pay much attention to a young woman hell-bent on shopping at every bazaar in a border town, or buying bikinis in Baja. You, Mr. Stealthy, can go cross-country when we get close enough to the border, and I’ll pick you up on the other side. Once we’re settled in Cabo, I’m sure I can find some enterprising person to make me a new ID.”

“You’d never be able to come back,” Tiger said. “Or see your family again. Taking a Shifter out of the country is illegal. You’d be arrested, maybe imprisoned.”

Tiger saw Carly’s indecision when he mentioned her family. The hope that had flickered within him for a few moments withered and died.

“I wouldn’t be
taking
you out,” Carly said. “
Meeting
you in a different country is a different thing.”

Tiger shook his head. “Too risky for you.” And for their cub.

Carly straightened and planted her hands on her hips. “Now, you listen to me, Tiger. I’m not letting you go.”

“I treasure you.” Tiger looked up into Carly’s eyes. “If the world changes, if Shifters are freed, then I’ll be back. I will always come back to you, my mate. No matter how long it takes.”

* * *

D
amn him.
Tiger sat there looking at her with those beautiful eyes, telling her he was leaving.

He couldn’t leave. She’d just found him.

Carly flashed back to the day she’d realized her father was never coming back. The pain, like a kick in the stomach, had flattened her for weeks. She’d gone to school in a daze, barely able to talk to anyone, unable to study or focus on homework. She’d started flunking her classes, which had made things worse; then had come the counseling.

Carly had struggled for years before she figured out how to go on living, how to push the anger and grief to the back of her mind so she could pay attention to what was in front of her.

“My dad left us when we were kids,” she said in a hard voice. “He left my mama and four teenage girls with no money and a mountain of debts. He just walked out.”

Tiger said nothing. His golden eyes fixed on her, and his hand around her wrist was warm. But he was still leaving.

“I agreed to marry Ethan because I thought he was safe,” Carly went on. “He wasn’t anything like my dad. Ethan wasn’t a wild drinker or a gambler, he brought home a paycheck, he owned a house, he didn’t have debts, and I knew he’d never walk out and leave me to solve his problems. Ethan prides himself on being Mr. Responsible. I was right about all that, but I was wrong about Ethan respecting me or truly caring about me.”

Carly leaned down to Tiger, her breath coming fast. “Then I met
you.
And I realized that all my life I’d been looking for safety. A good job, a nice place to live, friends I can trust, the right husband—anything to keep me from that feeling of falling with nothing to catch me.”

“But I’m not safe,” Tiger said. “Nothing about me is safe.”

“I know.” Carly started to laugh, but in a crazy way, not finding anything funny. “And
wham
, I realized that safety shouldn’t be the most important thing in my life.” She poked his chest. “
You
make me want to be wild and take chances and grab happiness while I have it. With Ethan I was content, and I admit, a little bit smug. But with you, I’m hot and happy, excited whenever I see you or hear your voice. You walk into a room, and I’m glad. When I woke up with you this morning, I knew it was the best morning of my life. I want more mornings like that, and I want each one to be even better than the last. I lost my dad, I lost the safety of marriage to Ethan, and for about the third time this week, I’ve probably lost my job. On top of it all, I sure as hell don’t want to lose
you.
”

Tiger watched her with the close stare of a predator. His tiger-striped hair was a mess, his face stubbled with whiskers and still marked with a few bruises from the accident. His black T-shirt under the flannel shirt was marked with sweat, his arms, exposed by pushed-up sleeves, corded with muscle dusted with golden hair.

He was absolutely nothing like the clean-cut, perfectly groomed man Carly was supposed to date, and then marry.

“You’ll never be safe if you stay with me,” Tiger said.

“And I say screw it.” Carly shook off his grasp but only to plop herself onto the slant of his lap. “I’m not going through my boring, safe life wondering whatever happened to you—wondering what would have happened to
me
if I’d grabbed you and held on to you with both hands. Don’t you get it, Tiger? I want
you
.”