Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) (5 page)

              “He’s lived around here for years. He travels sometimes, disappears for months,” the hyena shifter named Burke said, as he refilled Isadora’s coffee cup. “I mean, that’s not unusual for a Hobo.  He travels around the country, from what I hear, going to other Hobo camps. Likes to be near to them, but not too near, like he doesn’t want to be alone but he can only handle so much contact with people.”

She felt much better after having gotten a decent night’s sleep. She’d slept in Lynx form, curled up on the limb of an oak tree.  Sally had slept on a branch near her, and Thomas had slept on the ground underneath the tree.

              Isadora had woken up when it was still dark, leaving the two kids sleeping. Thomas’s uncle was supposed to arrive that day, which was a weight off her mind. She didn’t like the idea of the kids roaming around with no adult caring for them. Most Hobos were decent enough people, but not all.

              She’d left her van parked on a small dirt road several miles away, since there was no way to get to the hob camp by car.  She had a feeling she’d need to ditch the van soon anyway; the safest thing to do was to keep switching vehicles as often as possible, to ensure that nobody picked up her trail. She’d brought a couple of bags to the Hobo camp, with clothing, some food, a few of her burner cell phones, and a wallet with cash and fake I. D’s.

              Now she sat around a campfire with a dozen other Hobos of various species, drinking instant coffee from tin cups after a breakfast of raw squirrel.  Despite all the worries weighing down on her, she felt good.  Camping out like this made her feel raw and primal and closer to her inner lynx. Of course, after a few days of it she was more than ready to return to civilization; a girl could only go so long without her flat-iron and regular supplies of chocolate.

She reached in her bag, pulled out a box of granola bars, and began passing them around the circle. “Thanks,” Delia, a bear shifter female, said enthusiastically. “Hey, got a mirror I could borrow?”

              Isadora passed her a mirror, and Delia grimaced at her grimy face. “I’m going to go take a dip in the stream,” she said. She got up and ambled off.

              “Does he talk about where he came from?” Isadora asked. She drank half her coffee in one gulp.

              “No, he doesn’t like to talk about himself. I mean, when he comes to hang out, he’s sociable enough, but if you ask anything about him he changes the subject,” Stephan said.

              I’ll bet, Isabel thought. From what her boss’s intelligence sources had dug up, Pyotr had been through years of absolute hell.

              The first rays of morning light could be seen on the distant horizon. The morning air was cool and the ground was silvered with frost.

              “If you want to talk to him, we need to go now,” Burke said.

              Isadora set down her coffee cup on a flat rock. She, Burke and Stephan quickly stripped their clothing off, shivering. They shifted, and immediately were warm again. Their breath made puffs of white vapor in the chill air, but their fur coats kept out the cold.

              Sitting near the fire were their bags of clothing, which they’d already prepared, with hooded sweat suits and slip on shoes for when they reached Pyotr’s cave.

              They grabbed the bags and set off at a fast trot. The caw of birds sliced through the quiet morning air as they leaped over fallen branches and wove through underbrush.

              About twenty minutes later, they came to a clearing.  Stephan and Burke came to a halt at the edge of the clearing, so Isadora did too.

              Suddenly a rifle shot cracked in the air. The bullet landed in a quaking aspen tree near Isadora’s head.

              “Shift back to human form! Now!” an angry male voice yelled from a distance.  Isadora could make out the Eastern European accent.  It was Pyotr.

              The three of them quickly shifted to human form and pulled on their outfits and shoes. In human form, Isadora hugged herself for warmth. 

              “Who is she?” the voice called out.

              “She’s one of us! She’s a Hobo shifter!” Burke yelled out.

              There was a pause, and then a man came trotting up to them, his rifle aimed in their direction. He wore a pair of camouflage pants and jacket and lace up military style boots. His brown hair was long, hanging over his face, and he had a scraggly beard. Half of his lean, hawk-like face was heavily scarred; Isadora could barely make it out behind the hair. His eyes were wild, darting from one person to the other.

              “Why did you bring her out here without telling me? I don’t like surprises,” he yelled at them.

              “She asked to talk to you. She said it’s important,” Burke said, holding his hands up placatingly.

              Pyotr sniffed the air suspiciously, and glowered at her. “How did she even know I was here? She doesn’t look like a Hobo. Doesn’t smell like a Hobo. Too clean.”

              “Hey, some of us like to bathe,” Isadora said, exasperated. “I need your help, Pyotr.  I found you because I put out the word to Hobo groups online, letting them know that I was looking for shifters from Korslovia.  There’s a good chance that we’re going to be able to capture the scientist known as Zador Horvath.”

              Horvath had been the second in command at the illegal lab.  He was the last known person alive to have escaped from the lab.

              He went pale at that. “How? Is he close to here? Is that why you came?” He looked around fearfully, as if expecting Zador to pop out from behind the nearest pine tree.

              “I can’t reveal any more information than that, for security purposes.  However, I hear that you’ve told people that you were held in his laboratory. Is that true?” Apparently when Pyotr got drunk, he got more talkative. She should have brought some alcohol with her, because apparently he wasn’t feeling too talkative right now.

             
He was backing away slowly, the rifle trained on her.

              “He’s a monster,” he said, his voice hoarse and fearful. “Do you see this? ” He gestured at his scarred face. “He laughed when he did that to me. All the time.”   His eyes were huge with fright now.

              “If he sent me, the area would be crawling with soldiers already, wouldn’t it?” Isadora pointed out.

              “Maybe.” He stopped backing up.  “Where is he? How did you find him?”

              Isadora walked forward slowly, hands still up in the air. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me these things, I’m just a grunt,” she said. “Will you come with me to talk to my friends? I can arrange a meeting in an open area, if that makes you more comfortable. The information that you can give us could be vital to catching him.”

              “I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry. You don’t know what it was like…” he lowered the rifle. He was starting to shake, and tears filled his eyes and ran down his scarred cheeks.

              “You’re right, I don’t know. I’m really sorry,” she said soothingly. “Let me give you my cell phone number in case you change your mind.” She handed him a piece of paper with one of her numbers written on it. It was a burner cell phone that she’d purchased recently.  She’d ditched her old cell phone so that the Wardens and Pride Patrol wouldn’t be able to track her.

He accepted the paper with trembling hands and  tucked it in his pocket.

              “What do you need me for?” he asked gruffly.

“There are very few pictures of him in existence, and they’re all blurry. There’s no fingerprints. We don’t have a lot to go on other than verbal accounts, and not many of his victims survived.  You’re the only person in this country who has seen him.  We’re going to need help identifying him.”

The color drained from his face. “You don’t know what you’re up against. He’ll kill you,” he whispered.  “He’ll make you suffer in ways that you can’t imagine.  He’ll make your loved ones suffer. Let it go.”

              She felt ice running through her veins, but she stood firm.  “My people can protect you,” Isadora protested.

              He threw back his head and let out a long, hollow laugh. “Nobody can protect me against him! Nobody can protect you, either. Go back home, little girl.” And abruptly, he shifted, exploding out of his clothes, and before the rifle fell and hit the ground he’d grabbed it in his jaws. Then he turned and ran, jaws clamped firmly on the rifle, vanishing into the woods.

              Isadora’s mood was gloomy as they slogged back to the Hobo camp. She’d have to wait for further instructions.  She’d heard that Pyotr was squirrelly and paranoid, and it was a miracle that she’d managed to get this close to him. Others had tried and failed.

              All that she could do was check in with her boss and await further instructions.

              When Isadora got back, Thomas and Sally were awake, and there was a new Hobo by the fire, an older hyena shifter in his fifties. He was sitting next to Thomas and Sally and Delia, who were all eating bagels with cream cheese. He wore a denim jacket and jeans, faded but relatively clean. His long brown hair was shot through with gray.

              “My Uncle Bo. Look what he bought us!” Thomas said enthusiastically, around a mouthful of bagel.

              “I got more. You want one?” Uncle Bo gestured at a big cardboard box. “I made some money doing construction up north. Nice to eat human food once in a while.”

              “Don’t mind if I do.” Isadora settled in next to them. She felt her tension loosen a little bit. Now that there was an adult in the picture, she wouldn’t have to worry about Thomas and Sally as much.

              “Isn’t he a sweetheart?” Delia said enthusiastically.

              Uncle Bo winked at her. Hmm, Isadora thought. This could work. A hyena and a bear? Weird combination, but she’d seen stranger. Maybe Delia could be a domesticating influence on him.

              She grabbed a plastic knife from the bag, and began smearing cream cheese on a bagel.

              “So, how long are you going to be in town?” she asked Bo.

Dash glanced around to make sure that none of the Wardens, or the Shaman Cody, were within earshot.  They were standing by their pickup trucks; after their long drive from Timber Valley, they’d pulled off on a dirt road and scattered into the woods to relieve themselves.  Now they’d shifted back into human form, which meant their hearing, while still superior to humans, wasn’t as acute. 

For the moment, they were just standing there jawing, and stretching out their legs.  Cody was there so that as soon as they captured Isadora, he could compel her to talk.

              He quickly punched in the number on his cell phone.

              When Steele answered, he felt his gut tighten. He was breaking the law by calling him. He’d been raised to believe in following the law to the letter. There was no bending it, there was no skirting it, the law was the law. It was what kept shifters safe, and concealed from humans.

              Still, Steele was his family, and he might be in danger, and the same went for the other shifters in Lonesome Pine.  If he didn’t warn them, they could be kidnapped, or killed.  What was Dash supposed to do when the right thing to do and the legal thing to do were two different things? He’d never been faced with this dilemma before.

              He could ask the Chief Warden, or the Sheriff, for permission to contact Steele, if he wanted to stay on the right side of the law, but if they said no, where would that leave him?

              “Dash?” Steele answered, sounding puzzled.

              “Hello, Steele,” he said. “Long time no speak. Yeah, I know, that’s all on me.”

When Steele had fallen in love with the human female and run off with her, Dash had been the one to report it to the Wardens.  Dash had his reasons at the time – the human female had seen shifters, and her memory had not been properly erased. That posed a threat of exposure to all shifters – and Steele had taken her out of their territory before their Shaman could come and erase her memory.

              Shifters had kept their existence secret and survived in modern society by following the law rigidly: any human who’d seen a shifter changing form had to be immediately taken into custody and held there until a Shaman could erase their memory for good. There were no exceptions.

              So Dash had done his duty, but he hadn’t felt great about it. Still didn’t.

              “You’re not supposed to be calling me, are you?” Steele asked.

              “No, and I’m going to have to keep it short.  I may have to hang up at any moment.” He glanced across the grove.  Two SUVs were pulling in, and he thought he scented mountain lion shifter. That would be the local Pride Patrol, come to assist with Isadora’s capture.  They knew the terrain and could hunt down a cat shifter much better than he or the Wardens could.

“Have you heard about Isadora?” Dash asked in a low voice.

              “What about her, specifically?” Steele’s tone was cautious, and it told Dash that Steele had likely still been communicating with members of his family, even though the Council of Elders had forbidden it. His family had probably told him about Isadora being charged with treason and going on the run.

              “Long story, and I don’t have much time. Basically, we had reason to monitor her phone conversations, and she is communicating with humans.   We followed her and saw her meet with them, and give them blood samples that she’d stolen from the Timber Valley Medical Clinic. Then we overheard her talking with the humans and apparently planning the kidnapping of a wolf shifter.”

              “Are you sure about that?” Steele sounded shocked. He clearly hadn’t gotten that part of the story. “That doesn’t sound like her at all, and I’d like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

              “I know. If I hadn’t heard her talking to the humans, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.”

              “Maybe she’s working as some kind of double agent?”

              Dash sighed. “It would be great if that were the case. But for who? All of the shifter species work together when it comes to things like this. We’d know if she was working undercover for any of them, and she isn’t.”

              “She came into the tunnels with us to rescue those kidnapped shifters. If she was working with those men, wouldn’t she have warned them that we were coming? We managed to get right on top of them and wipe them out,” Steele said. “She had plenty of opportunity to tip them off before we got there.”

              “It doesn’t make sense to me either, but when we went to take her in to custody, she didn’t even try to explain herself to us. Then she escaped from her jail cell and went on the run.  That’s why I called you. We monitored Karen’s email, and Isadora had sent her an email from on the road, telling her to be careful and keep an eye out for her family.  We traced the ISP of the computer she’d sent it from; the email came from a location that’s fairly close to you.  I’m here with a bunch of Wardens, meeting up with the local Pride Patrol. We’re maybe two hours’ drive from you, looking for her. You and all of your people need to be on guard. If Isadora’s helping humans kidnap another shifter, they could be targeting your community.”

              “All right,” Steele said. “But listen to me, Dash. You’re a smart guy, when you think for yourself.” Ouch. That was a jab, and probably a well-deserved one. “What I’m saying is, trust your instincts. And thanks for the warning. Call me if you need me.”

              “Likewise,” Dash said. “I’ll let you know how it turns out. Just watch your back.” And he hung up and tucked his phone in his pocket, and went to rejoin the others.

“Dash, these are Officers Leonides and Magnusson,” Warden Kerrigan said, nodding at two mountain lion shifters.  “They’ve heard reports of a blonde female lynx in the general area, who may be Isadora in disguise.  The lynx shifter fit the general description, if Isadora wore a wig and dressed to hide her tattoos.  She was seen with two children who appear to be Hobos.”

“Children!” Dash was shocked and angry in spite of himself. Isadora couldn’t possibly be intending to kidnap shifter children…could she? He’d seen her around kids. She used to babysit Karen’s kids. She was great with children, even though she didn’t see herself that way. She’d probably be a great mother some day…if she survived this treason charge, that was.

“Yep. She bought them a bunch of stuff, new clothing, shoes, new backpacks, and she paid for it in cash,” Magnusson said.

“This information may help us narrow down where she is,” Kerrigan pointed out. “There are a couple of Hobo camps in the area. Apparently it’s pretty Hobo friendly around here, so they tend to use this as a way station from all over the country.”

“Okay,” Dash said. “So we split up and check out the two camps? I’ll go west.”

“You know where the camps are?” Officer Leonides asked, looking surprised.

“Ah, no, I was just guessing.” It was more than that. He thought he’d caught the faintest whiff of Isadora’s scent. Once he was in wolf form he’d know for sure.

What he really needed to do was get her alone so he could talk to her. He needed to make her see what would happen to her if she didn’t cooperate. Even if she was guilty of something, maybe a deal could be negotiated – if she gave up the information that they needed. If not, he hated to think about what was going to happen to her.

“All right. Check in is in two hours,” Warden Redthorne said. Dash nodded.

              “Let’s take my car,” Officer Leonides said. “We can drive a couple of miles, then we’ll need to shift and go a few miles into the woods.”

              Dash climbed in the car and they headed west.

              “I understand she used to give you quite the runaround, back on your territory,” Leonides said as they drove towards the area of the Hobo camp.

              “Yes, she did,” Dash said. He smiled ruefully. “She did pose quite the challenge.”

              Then he found himself wondering why he wanted to help her now, when in the past, all that he’d wanted to do was shove her in a jail cell and leave her there to fume.

              Maybe it was because now, he felt, in some odd way, she really needed his help.

              Leonides turned down a dirt road and drove about a mile. Then he parked. “We shift and run from here,” he said. He and Dash climbed out of the car and stripped off their clothing. The air had a bite to it, but the sun overhead warmed them.

              Dash partially shifted, scenting the air. He caught a faint whiff that told him that she’d been here recently, and left a trail. 

              Steele’s voice echoed in his head.
Trust your instincts.

Steele had never steered him wrong yet.

Dash looked up.

              He sniffed the air again. “Lynx!” he announced, pointing southeast.

              Leonides tipped his head back and also sniffed the air. “I’m not smelling it,” he said.

              Feline shifters had a better sense of smell than humans, but not as good as a canine.  The bobcat looked at him for guidance. Dash pointed. “About a quarter mile away,” he said. “Unfortunately, the scent is coming from up on high. She’s in a pine tree, I can scent it.”

              “I’ll get her. Stay here and wait for me,” the bobcat said, and he quickly shifted, and turned and ran southeast.

              Dash waited until he was gone, then seized his clothes in his mouth, turned and ran northwest.

              He had not actually lied. He’d smelled a lynx shifter in the direction that he’d sent Leonides, all right – but it wasn’t Isadora.

              He dashed through the woods, following Isadora’s scent.

              The scent trail got stronger and stronger. In about  twenty minutes, he reached a riverbank where he scented many shifters.  This had to be near where the Hobos congregated; he could smell a lot of unwashed body odor, and the scent of cooked meat and a recent campfire. He suspected he was within a quarter mile of their camp.  They probably got their drinking water at this river, which smelled sweet and pure.

              He shifted and pulled his pants on, and then his shirt and jacket, and then he stepped into his slip-on shoes.

              “Isadora!” he yelled. “Damn it, get out here! I need to talk to you! If someone else arrests you, there’s no telling what they’ll do to you! I can scent you, so don’t pretend you’re not here! I’m alone, it’s just me, get the hell out here and talk to me!”

              The forest was silent except for the screech of birds and the rustle of the wind through the leaves. She was nearby. Her scent hung in the air, strong and sweet. Why hadn’t she run off yet?

              There was a blur of motion, and a female mountain lion shifter cub came running out and swiped at him with her paw.

              “Whoa!” he yelled at her. In one swift motion, he reached down and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck.

              A jackal shifter, a teenaged boy, ran out of the woods in human form and yelled at him. “Let her go!”

              Isadora came running out from behind a thick stand of underbrush and trotted over, looking annoyed. She had a bag slung over her shoulder. Her makeup was scrubbed clean and she’d taken off her nose ring, but she wasn’t wearing a wig at the moment. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

He felt an odd thump in his chest at the sight of her. Ever since she’d moved to Timber Valley, he’d gotten used to seeing her around all of the time, and he suddenly realized how much of a hole her absence had left. All that energy and humor and teasing…damn it, he didn’t like where those thoughts were going.

There was no way that he could like Isadora. Not in that way.

              The mountain lion shifter cub hissed and swiped at him.

              “Put her down,” she snapped.

              “Are you going to run off?” Dash said, with a hard edge to his tone.

              She flicked a glance at the kids, and he knew she wouldn’t leave them.

              “No,” she said stonily. He set the girl down.

              The girl shifted back in to human form. Isadora fished around in her bag, and pulled out a dress and a jacket, which she tossed to the girl.

              “Get dressed,” she said to the girl, who angrily yanked the clothing on, and then turned around and shifted one paw, swiping at him and hissing. “Stop that,” Isadora said severely. “And I told you to stay hidden.”

              “He made me mad. He wants to arrest you!”

              “All the more reason to stay hidden.”

              The girl started to cry. “He’s going to arrest you now, isn’t he? It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”  The boy glared at Dash, and put his arm around the girl. Dash felt like a monster. Great. He was making little kids cry.

              “I just need to talk to her,” he said.

              “Guys, it’s fine. He’s a good person. I promise you that he won’t hurt me,” Isadora said. “Just stand there a minute while I go talk to him. He’s not taking me away.”

              “I’ve got my eye on you. And I’ve killed before!” Sally yelled after them as they walked away.