Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) (8 page)

              “Can you stop talking about it, right now?” Pyotr was pale, and shaking.              

              “All right,” Isadora said. “Pyotr, I know you’re frightened, but you may be the only one who can help us end all of this.  We are going to need a positive identification on Zador Horvath.  You are the only shifter in this country who’s seen his face.  No official records of him exist anywhere.  All that you would have to do is tell us yes or no.”

              “Do the people you’re working for have a suspect in custody?” Dash asked sharply. “You think you have him?”

              “I can’t answer that,” Isadora said, looking away.  Dash let out a low, rumbling growl of frustration.

              “Are these humans coming back to get us?” Sally asked, as they trudged through the forest towards Dash’s pickup truck.

              “If they try, I will kill them first,” Isadora assured her.

              “I will too,” Dash said. “I promise you, no human is getting their hands on you.”

              Thomas had a more urgent question on his mind.  “If we stay with you, does this mean more baths?”

              “Daily. And don’t argue with me.” Isadora saw him glance at the trees. “And don’t try to outrun me. I’m a cat, and a very fast one.”

              “I like baths,” Sally declared. “Especially bubble baths.”

              “That’s because you’re a girl,” Thomas said, scowling.  Then he brightened. “Hey, does swimming in a river count? Or a lake? That’s a bath, right?”

              “As long as there’s soap and shampoo and towels involved,” Isadora said. “Quit giving me grief.”  Then she said to Dash in a low voice “I almost finished that with the phrase ‘young man’. Shoot me now!”

              “Don’t tempt me,” Dash said.

              Then he lowered his voice, leaning in close to her. “How long have you been able to get out of those handcuffs?”

              “From the minute you put them on me.”

              “So why didn’t you just escape earlier?”

              She flashed him a wicked grin. “Maybe I just liked being cuffed to you,” she murmured.

Pyotr’s face grew paler and paler as they approached the outskirts of Lonesome Pines.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said as Dash entered the city limits. “Too many people. I get panic attacks.” At Isadora’s worried glance, he let out a bitter laugh. “You just see a crazy man here, no? Once I was not like this. I was a carpenter, a very good one. I had a wife. I had children.  They were killed trying to run from the soldiers.”

“What about your pack? Don’t you want to rejoin them?” Isadora asked.

“No!” he shook his head frantically. “I can’t see them any more. They remind me of everything that I lost. That is why I came to this country. I need to be far, far away from everything Korslovian.”

“When we get to the place we’re going, you can just stay in your room. You don’t have to come out, you don’t have to talk to anyone.  You’ll be much safer here than you would be hiding out in the woods,” Isadora said.

They were driving through the little downtown area now. Lonesome Pine was a tiny town, with one main street that ran through the center. It had been a mining town during the gold rush in the 1800s, but now mostly survived on logging and farming.

Colonel Bradwell had run his secret lab in an old abandoned mine near the town for about two years, experimenting on shifters who’d been kidnapped from all over the country.

“I know Shamans who could help you with your panic attacks,” Dash said to Pyotr.

“My panic attacks are what keeps me safe,” Pyotr said. “If I think I’m safe, I’m dead. Being afraid is what keeps you alive. Never sleep, never trust, never turn your back on anyone. That’s how you stay safe.”

There was no point in trying to argue with him.  Dash fell silent. Thomas and Sally had fallen asleep in the back seat, with Isadora sitting between them.  Pyotr, next to him in the front seat, kept glancing anxiously out the window.

Steele lived in a blue and white Colonial style A-frame house, at the end of a small street.  As they approached Dash saw there were a dozen people sitting on the front porch, some in police uniform, waiting for them. Dash had called to let Steele know he was coming, and that they’d very nearly been ambushed by human mercenaries.

A look of alarm crossed Pyotr’s face as he saw all the people there.

“Stop!” Pyotr yelled. Sally and Thomas jerked awake.

Dash stepped on the brakes, stopping the truck with a jerk, and Pyotr flung open his door and scrambled out. “Too many people!” he shouted, and then he shifted into wolf form, and shot off down the street as if a pack of lions were on his heels.

“Damn it,” Isadora said, watching him run off. “He’s our only chance of identifying Zador! Maybe you should go after him. Or I could.”

“I think he’ll come back,” Dash said. “He came to the Hobo camp looking for you; I don’t think he really wants to be alone.  I’m afraid if I grab him right now, I’ll send him into full blown hysteria and he’ll be useless to us. He’s suffering from post-traumatic stress. He might see me as the enemy, freak out and try to attack me, I’d have to subdue him – not the best way to get him to cooperate.”

“You may be right. I don’t want him to end up getting injured.” Isadora didn’t sound too happy about it, though.

Dash pulled up in front of the house and parked. On the front porch, Steele sat next to Roxanne, his wife.  Roxanne’s son Flint was curled up on Steele’s lap, in cub form, and Roxanne was stroking his fur.

Sally and Thomas yawned as they climbed out of the truck and followed Dash and Isadora up the flagstone path towards the house.

“Why did Pyotr run away like that?” Sally asked.

“He’s stone cold crazy,” Thomas replied with a shrug.

One of the men with Steele was a tall, lean man who Dash recognized as Mayor Bertelsen.  Dash recognized another as Edvin Gund.   The Gunds came from a pack that had gotten cut off from the rest of the shifter nation in the 1800s, and had intermarried with humans. He also recognized Edvin’s cousin Axel Gund, who had been kidnapped and held in the laboratory for more than a year.

Axel looked much better than the last time Dash had seen him. That had been right after Dash had helped to free him from the underground lab, and Axel had been pale and so thin he was almost skeletal. Now he’d gotten his color back and he’d put on weight. He managed a smile, but Dash could see the thousand yard stare in his eyes.

“Dash. Isadora. You made it.” Steele handed his son to Roxanne, and stood up, brushing the fur off his jeans. He quickly climbed down the steps and walked over to greet them.

“So, tell me what’s going on,” he said. 

“Long story,” Dash said as they climbed up on the porch. “This is Thomas and Sally.  A bunch of human mercenaries just raided the camp they were staying at, about two hours from here.”

“Anybody hurt?” Steele asked.

“No, the shifters smelled them coming and took off before they got there.  It’s not a good thing that they’re this close to your town, though.”

“No, it isn’t,” Steele said grimly. 

              Dash tried not to stare at the human cops standing there on the porch. Human cops, working for a shifter police chief. This town was absolutely unique. It was a shame that it couldn’t be like this all over the world. Even though these people represented the best possible outcome of humans discovering the existence of shifters, unfortunately, they’d also encountered the worst possible outcome, in the form of Colonel Bradwell and his men.

              Roxanne’ son Flint shifted to human form, turning into a chubby toddler. He ran over to Sally, who picked him up. “Oof. He’s heavy,” she said. She stared at Roxanne, then back at him. “Wait. Are you his mother? How is that possible?”

              Flint, laughing, leaped into Roxanne’s arms, and then squirmed to get back to Sally.

              “Oh, we’re playing that game, are we?” Roxanne held on to him, ruffling his hair.  “It’s a genetic mutation,” she said to Sally. “Some of the humans in this town can have children with wolf shifters.”

Then she glanced worriedly at Sally and Thomas’s skinny frames.

              “Not my fault!” Isadora said quickly. “They were living at a Hobo camp.”

“Who wants to help me make cookies?” Roxanne asked. She worked as a short order cook in the town’s diner.  “Chocolate chip. You can lick the spoons afterwards.”

              Sally’s hand shot up in the air. “We do!” 

Thomas shrugged, pretending indifference. “I guess I could help.”

              Sally turned to Isadora, grabbing her hand. “Come on, come help us.”

              “Go on ahead. I’ll be right there,” Isadora said.

              “She’s not coming. She’s going to leave us again,” Thomas said to Sally. “We’ll come out and she’ll be gone. It’s okay. We do okay on our own, don’t we?”

              “Oh, for God’s sake.  I’m coming,” Isadora said, sounding exasperated as she followed them inside. “And just for that, I may make you take two baths tomorrow.”

              “No way! Not fair!” Thomas howled.

              “It’s a cruel, cruel world we live in,” Isadora said. “A world filled with regular baths, and I forgot to add in brushing of teeth, with a toothbrush and toothpaste, twice a day, every day.”

              “What?” Thomas’ voice was outraged as Isadora shut the door behind them.

              “So, what’s going on?” Steele asked.

              Dash quickly filled him in on what he knew so far.  “The problem is, I can’t call Warden Redthorne for help. I’m about 99 percent positive that he’s not collaborating with the humans, but I can’t ignore the fact that after I revealed where Isadora and I were headed, those mercenaries showed up and tried to ambush us.”

              “No, you can’t ignore that,” Steele said.

              “We’ve already held a town meeting, advising everyone to be on alert,” Mayor Bertelsen told Dash. “The Gunds are aware.  We check in with them hourly. None of them are travelling alone now, and they’re armed. They have radios and cell phones. If anyone attacks them, we’ll be all over it.”

              Edvin and Axel both nodded. They wore gun holsters with Glock .40 caliber pistols.

Axel looked around, tipped his head back, sniffed at the air.

              “What is it?” Edvin asked him, frowning.

              “Something…I don’t know. It’s nothing, I guess. I just thought…nothing.”

              “You thought what?” Edvin persisted.

              Axel shook his head wearily. “Flashbacks. I get them all the time.  Like a horrible déjà vu, like I’m back in the laboratory.  It’s all right, really, it’s nothing.”

* * *

An hour’s drive from Lonesome Pine, Chief Warden Redthorne and two dozen Wardens and Pride Patrol members were gathered in a wooded area at the end of a dirt road.  Redthorne stood by his truck as the assembled shifters checked their weapons and got ready to move out.

Redthorne called Dash’s cell phone number and listened to Dash’s cell phone go straight to voicemail for the dozenth time. “Dash. Call me,” he said curtly, and hung up. 

              Under other circumstances, he’d have been worried that Dash wasn’t returning his calls, but he didn’t think that Dash had been kidnapped or injured.   It was much more likely that Dash and Isadora were laying low somewhere, hiding out from the human mercenaries.

              The fact that Dash was disobeying his orders was an issue he’d have to deal with when Dash resurfaced, of course. 

He saw Warden Marsh walking towards him. “Are we ready to go?” Marsh asked.

“Yep.” He tucked his cell phone back in his pocket and walked back to rejoin the group.

Marsh and everyone else there thought that they were gathering to pounce on Isadora and take her into custody.  They were wrong. Redthorne still had no idea where she was.

              However, their manhunt for Isadora was a convenient way to flush out the spy or spies in their midst. The mere thought of that level of treachery filled him with a deep, burning anger.

              Was it Isadora herself who’d revealed her and Dash’s whereabouts? He still didn’t know, although if she’d been with Dash continuously, then she would have had no way to phone in her exact location to tip off the humans.

              Whatever the case, he meant to find out.

He’d announced that he had received a credible tip about Isadora, indicating that she had a rendezvous with a group of humans in a wooded area near Lonesome Pine. He’d kept very careful track of who actually knew the truth – the chief Elder, and his second in command Warden Roderick, who was also his nephew, were among the few who were aware that he was carrying out a sting to flush out the traitors in their midst.

He’d gathered up his Wardens in Timber Valley and they’d flown out to Montana in a private plane.  A group of local Wardens had come with him, as well.  The location that he’d claimed she would be at was close to the last place that Isadora had been seen.

              This time, he’d not only kept careful track of everyone that had been told about their mission, he’d also had his niece in the Warden’s IT department place surveillance devices in their rooms and bugged their phones and computers without their knowledge. 

              If anyone tried to ambush them today, at the very least he’d confirm that there was a spy, and hopefully they’d be flushed out.

              He’d made it very clear how they were going to approach the rendezvous point, along a road that led to an old quarry. He’d told everyone their route, mapped it out deliberately, so that he could control where the mercenaries would lay in ambush for them. Now, he was going to throw a monkey wrench in their scenario.

              “Change of plan,” he said to the assembled group. “You’re going to follow me.”

              “Which way are we going, sir?” Warden Marsh asked him.

              “You’ll see when we get there,” he informed him.

              They’d all brought bags to carry their weapons and gear in.  They quickly shifted, grabbed their bags in their jaws, and ran through the woods.

              Instead of running down to the road, he led them uphill, climbing higher and higher until they reached the top of a ridge overlooking the area where Isadora allegedly would be.

              The smell of humans drifted his way. They were about half a mile away, and the scent was getting stronger.

He shifted human form, and everyone else followed suit.

“You smell that?” Marsh growled.

“Hell yes. It stinks of human,” Redthorne said.

              At least twenty human soldiers in camouflage gear were headed towards the spot where they thought Isadora would be.

              “Do we go after them now, or wait for her to show up?” Marsh said.

              “Isadora was never going to show up here.  I released that information because I suspected that we had a spy in our midst. It’s clear that someone leaked the information to those humans, who were going to ambush both Isadora and us,” Redthorne said. The information was greeted with a chorus of growls and snarls of anger around him.