Bear Shifters: Hunt Collection #2 (8 page)

CHAPTER 14

After lunchtime, Kimber put a box of her belongings in the backseat of her car, got in, and left Justin’s office forever. She proceeded to follow the directions on her phone to find her way to the lab where she was scheduled to meet with Ken and Gretchen. She wasn’t thrilled about having to complete this one last task for Justin, but when the research team greeted her with warm, friendly smiles, she was able to push thoughts of him to the side. She was anxious to see their discoveries for herself.

They led her to a room where they had various animals caged for the duration of the solar storm and several technicians performing tests and recording their observations. Kimber was surprised by the way the animals all seemed to pay such close attention to her when she first entered. Ken explained, “According to our test results, it does appear that these animals have temporary telepathic abilities. Most animals will size up a new creature on the scene, but right now, they can also sense that there is a new, unique mind in the room, so their reaction is exaggerated.”

Gretchen handed Kimber two folders stuffed with papers, printouts of the scan results. In the first folder, each image was labeled according to the creature to whom the brain belonged. There were scans of a rat, lizard, bird, chimpanzee, and bear, all of which had highlighted green areas. “This is where the brain activity occurs that makes it possible for them to hear our thoughts,” Gretchen mentioned. Kimber opened the second folder, which contained more scans, though these were labeled by first names.

“And these are the scans of human brains?” Kimber assumed. She flipped through them rather quickly, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. “So this shows why we aren’t affected. Our brains don’t have the same activity levels as …”

She trailed off, pulling out a single paper. It looked like the other human brain scans, except this one had green on it, just like the animals. Stranger still, the name at the bottom read “Justin.”

“This isn’t … Did my boss volunteer to do a scan? I mean, Justin is a fairly common name, but that would be quite the coincidence if you just happened to do a scan of someone else named Justin,” Kimber rambled, feeling nervous all of a sudden.

“It’s not a coincidence. I volunteered,” came a familiar voice.

Kimber whirled around to see that Justin had entered behind them. Gretchen and Ken wandered over to a technician, giving Justin and Kimber some space, grinning like they were in on some scheme. Kimber’s mind raced, trying to put all the pieces together. “Your scan … It looks just like the animals’. Can you …”

“Read minds? Yes. But finishing your sentence was a lousy example. Anyone could have guessed that. Let me try again. Do me a favor and think about something that I don’t know.”

Almost involuntarily, Kimber obliged. As Justin saw her thoughts, his heart broke all over again. Gently, he said, “You came to my house one night during my senior year. It was dark and rainy, but you had worked up the nerve to tell me that you liked me. You got out of the car to come knock on my front door, but then it opened and I came out with another girl. You hid behind the hedge, and you could hear us talking. The girl said, ‘Why do you hang out with her anyway?’ I answered, ‘I don’t know. I guess I feel bad for her. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.’ She said, ‘Everyone thinks you want her.’ I laughed and replied, ‘Yeah, right. Kimber? I would never go for a girl who’s bigger than I am.’”

Biting her lip to keep from crying, Kimber looked down at the floor. Justin muttered, “This isn’t helping anything, is it? I’m so sorry, Kimber. If I had known…” But she hardly heard him. That moment had been playing in her head almost constantly since Justin kissed her. She had definitely been hurt when she saw him with Elle last night, but honestly, she wasn’t surprised. That memory was the moment she should have given up on him. It was the moment she should have revoked her friendship and saved herself from all these years of heartache. But the next day at school, he had been nicer than ever, probably because he could tell something was wrong, and she convinced herself that he could still be a good friend, even if he had said himself that he would never be interested in her beyond that.

She was so bothered by the poignant memory that it took her a few second to realize what had just happened. She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “You read my mind.”

“Yeah.”

“Because of the solar storm? Just like the animals?”

“Exactly.”

“But how is that possible?”

Justin took the folders from her hand and flipped through the first one until he found the image of the bear’s brain scan. He pointed to the word just below
bear
. In parenthesis, it said
Justin
.

Kimber’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “What are you saying? That’s you too?” Justin nodded. She considered him skeptically. “That’s ridiculous. That’s insane! There’s no way –”

“Kimber, I can turn into a bear at will. I’m a shapeshifter.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head, trying to wrap her brain around it. “I can’t take any more lies, Justin. You’ve gone way too far.”

“Do you need me to show you? Or Ken and Gretchen have seen it. They can vouch for me.”

A thought popped into Kimber’s mind, and everything clicked into place. “The bear at the party. That was you. And the bear got shot, I saw it. Your shoulder … It wasn’t from a tree branch, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t. I lied to you then, but I’m not lying to you now or ever again. I couldn’t get you to listen to me at the office, but I thought I might have a chance if I brought you here and showed you the evidence.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“I was born with the ability to turn into a bear, but I couldn’t fully control the change until I was about eight. After that, I also had to learn to control the bear’s instincts. Bears are mostly peaceful creatures, but I wanted to be sure that I would never lose control, no matter how angry I was. That’s why I was homeschooled until high school.”

Kimber’s hand flew to her mouth. “Your parents. Their scars. You told me they had survived a bear attack.”

Justin looked grim as he confessed, “Another lie. They actually survived multiple bear attacks. Fortunately, my bear form grew at the same rate as my human form. Bear cubs obviously aren’t as dangerous as adults bears.”

“I can’t even imagine. They must have been so brave. They must have loved you so much to deal with all that.”

Floored by how she was empathizing with his parents, even after getting hit with such earth shattering news, Justin smiled at her adoringly. When Kimber looked up at him, she almost returned the smile, mostly out of habit, before stopping herself.

“Not so fast, Justin. I can understand why you lied to me about all this bear shapeshifting stuff. But what about last night? Why did you lie so you could be with Elle? Do you still love her?”

“No way. I never loved her. Seeing her last night was torture, especially when I knew I could have been with you instead.”

“Then why did you meet her?”

“She found out about the shapeshifting. She saw me change after the party and she got it all on video. She threw all this at me Monday night, after our elevator adventure, so to buy some time, I pretended that I still wanted to date her. I knew, because I read her mind, that she wanted to blackmail me, and I thought I could find a way out of it before she realized that I really didn’t want to be with her anymore. I met her for dinner last night because I was trying to play the part, but I didn’t even last the whole meal. I told her we were really breaking up this time, she demanded ten million dollars in exchange for her silence.”

“You know what’s crazy?” Kimber inserted. “When I was reading up on all this solar storm stuff, I found out that some people believe that solar activity does affect humans, but just emotionally. Supposedly, the solar activity messes with our circadian rhythms, which leads to an increase in depression, anxiety, and other emotional issues. In fact, they claim that incidences of civil unrest and revolutions and such coincide with the peaks in the sun’s cycle. I wonder if Elle lost it a little bit when the solar storm hit.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Still, I had no choice but to agree. I’m supposed to be meeting her later today to give her the money.”

“That won’t stop her,” Kimber said. “We have to figure out another way.”

“Wait, did you say
we
?” Justin asked hopefully. Was it possible that she had forgiven him that quickly? Did he deserve to be forgiven at all?

“I did,” Kimber said, finally smiling. “Can I have my job back?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Justin said.

“Why not?”

“Because you deserve a promotion. I want to put you in charge of the operation for the research foundation I’m starting. Would you mind working with Ken and Gretchen?”

“Not at all! That sounds amazing! Thank you!”

“There’s one more thing. I’d like to make your promotion conditional, pending your agreement to this stipulation, but that would be unethical. So the job is yours no matter what, but I was hoping that you might be willing to give me another chance. I want to become the man you believe I can be. I want to deserve the chance to love you.”

A part of Kimber wanted to hesitate and protect her heart, but she had never been one to avoid that risk. She knew she could never be completely happy if she turned him down, so she said, “I would love that. More than anything.”

Feeling lighter than he ever had before, Justin held out his hand to Kimber. She took his hand and stepped toward him, standing on her tippy toes to kiss him tenderly.

CHAPTER 15

“If this were a movie, we’d just kill her off.”

“Kimber!”

“I know, I know, it’s horrible to even say such a thing. But I
really
hate that woman. I might have suggested it even before I knew she was blackmailing you.”

Laughing, Justin commented, “This is a side of you I’ve never seen. It’s kind of hot.” He leaned in and kissed her neck a few times, just until she giggled.

“Come on, we have to figure this out. You’re supposed to meet her and hand over the money in an hour. What are we going to do?”

“Well, it was a good suggestion, but I don’t think we should kill her. Especially when I’m trying to become a better person, right?”

“That would set you back quite a bit.”

“We could go to the police,” Justin suggested, “but then we risk them finding out my secret. Besides, who knows how many copies she has of that video? Even if she was in prison for extortion, I’m sure she would find a way to leak it as revenge.”

At that moment, there was a knock on the door of the room Justin and Kimber were using at the lab. “Come in,” Justin said, and the door opened to reveal Gretchen and Ken.

“We found something,” Ken said, his face glowing with excitement.

“What is it?” Justin asked.

“If you’ll recall, we took a blood sample last night? We’ve been running tests on it all day, and we just realized something extraordinary. It has properties similar to blood-borne pathogens. We think the ability to shapeshift might be contagious via blood.”

Justin and Kimber took a moment to soak it in. She whispered, “That’s incredible.”

Ken added, “We took the liberty of mixing your blood with that of another human subject, and the pathogens appeared to thrive. Of course, we have no idea whether it would actually work in practice, but in theory, it seems to check out.”

“Hypothetically speaking, if we wanted to find out for sure, how would you go about it?” Justin wondered.

Ken and Gretchen exchanged nervous glances. “We would have to inject a normal human test subject with your blood and see what happens. I don’t think there’s any other way. That would take us into the territory of human experimentation.”

“In your professional opinion, would it work?”

“I do believe it would. But I’m not sure if we would be comfortable pursuing that route. There is always the possibility that the test subjects could suffer irreparable damage or even death if we introduce the pathogen to their systems.”

“I’ll take that into consideration. Thank you for your candid opinion. I’ll let you know when I’ve made a decision.”

The scientists left the room again, and Kimber’s thoughts floated into Justin’s mind. “Is that really what you want?” Justin asked. “To inject Elle with my blood?”

Kimber looked at him, baffled for a moment before realizing he must have read her thoughts. “I don’t know. It seems like the perfect solution. If it doesn’t work, well, we’ve talked about that briefly. At least it wouldn’t be intentional. But if it does work, she becomes a shapeshifter too. She can’t blackmail you if she is exactly like you. We could even get a video of her transforming, just like the one she’s holding over your head.”

“But I’m afraid she would be dangerous. She might not be able to control her bear impulses, or she might be angry and go on a rampage.”

“Plus, it would be completely unethical.”

“Extortion is unethical too,” Justin insisted, playing devil’s advocate.

“Yes, but I think the two are on totally different levels.”

“Well, what if we could convince her that she wanted this? When I was trying to stall her by keeping her interested in dating me, I explained that the bear was the reason I had become so rich and powerful. She liked that idea, and I’m sure she would love it if she didn’t have to be dependent on a wealthy boyfriend anymore.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, each trying to decide what lengths they were willing to go to. Justin could feel that Kimber was leaning towards the idea. The way she wanted to protect Justin was nearly as fierce a mother bear defending her young. But he knew she would come to regret it someday, and she might even resent him for it. He knew he had to be her guiding star when her judgement was so clouded.

“We can’t, Kimber. It would just be immoral. We wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if anything went wrong,” he said.

Kimber was quiet for a while longer. She knew he was right, and he could feel that she was talking herself out of it. He gave her the time she needed. Eventually, she said, “Well, I didn’t know science fiction was fair game. I have a few more ideas. Memory wipe. Brainwashing. Alien abduction.”

Justin chuckled, mostly just happy to have his sweet, blameless Kimber back after she had considered going down such a dark path. “How exactly would you orchestrate an alien?” he asked.

“That’s your job. I came up with the idea, you carry it out.”

“Carry it out and dump it in the garbage,” Justin muttered.

“Excuse me, some of us are trying to figure this out. If you’re going to make lame jokes, I’m out of here,” Kimber teased. She stood to leave, but Justin threw his arms around her waist, begging her not to go. She enjoyed the embrace for a while, then asked, “Are you going to behave?”

“For now,” he replied, moving his eyebrows up and down suggestively.

Kimber sat back down, thinking,
I love this. I hope he’s always this happy when we’re together.

“Me too,” Justin concurred. “And I hope the same for you.”

A lightbulb switched on in Kimber’s head. “That’s it! We’ll use your superpower. She can’t outsmart us when you can read her mind. Does she know about the mind-reading?”

“No. We would definitely have the upper hand, but I’m not sure I follow how it would all play out.”

“Well, let’s think this through. We can either eliminate her, which we’ve already discussed, or we can eliminate the evidence. She could still claim that you’re a shapeshifter, but I’m sure we could convince the world that she’s insane as long as there’s no proof.”

“Right,” Justin said, beginning to catch on. They talked through a plan, put a few integral pieces into place, and with deep, steeling breaths and kisses for luck, they went together to meet with Elle.

“Oh, how sweet. You brought your pet,” Elle said when Justin walked into the deserted warehouse with Kimber at his side.

“She’s my girlfriend now,” Justin snarled, “and if you reveal any details about this transaction while she’s here, the whole deal is off and I’ll have you arrested.”

“Fine. Do you have the money?”

Justin held a briefcase horizontally in one arm and popped it open with the other hand, revealing piles of money. “Ten million dollars. Just as you requested,” he said, spitting out the sarcastic word.

“Excellent.” She held up her phone, with which she had recorded the incriminating video. She let Justin and Kimber watch as she deleted the file permanently. “And I think we have a deal,” she said.

“Did you make any copies of the video? Did you back it up to the cloud?”

Glaring at him, Elle accessed her data cloud from her phone. Begrudgingly, she deleted the video once again. “There. Are you happy now?”

“Only if the video doesn’t exist anywhere else.” Justin stared at her, concentrating on her thoughts to be sure he wouldn’t miss anything. He saw the video file saved on her laptop, and he watched the images in her mind as she made a copy on a USB flash drive. He knew she kept her laptop on her kitchen counter, but he needed more direction if he was going to find the second copy. “A flash drive, perhaps?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t use such prehistoric technology,” she lied. It was enough though. She had pictured the location, and Justin was sure he could find it in her nightstand.

“Alright,” he said, handing over the briefcase. “Ten million dollars in exchange for your silence.”

Elle sneered at him triumphantly, but before Elle could take even one step away, the city’s head detective and her partner stepped out from behind a pallet stacked high with boxes. Elle looked as if she might explode with fury, and Justin could feel her grasping at straws, trying to think her way out of her unfortunate situation.

“Very well done, Mr. Woods, Miss Haze,” said Detective Ferguson. “That should hold up quite nicely in court. Elle Sucar, you are under arrest for extortion. If you would kindly drop the briefcase and put your hands behind your head.”

She did as the detective suggested, but she wouldn’t go down without attempting to take Justin with her. “You’re arresting the wrong person. That man can turn into a bear. He’s dangerous. He’s the one who needs to be imprisoned.”

“Miss Sucar, you have the right to remain silent,” began Detective Ferguson’s partner, putting her in handcuffs and forcefully leading her out of the warehouse to their vehicle.

“Thank you, Detective, for meeting us here on such short notice,” Justin said, shaking her hand before she followed her partner out.

“It’s no problem. You do know, though, that she might still have copies of that video. I know you watched her delete them, but it might not be wise to take her word for it.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m pretty good at knowing when she’s lying,” Justin said confidently. “I think we’ll be fine.”

“A bear, huh?” asked Detective Ferguson. “That’s a new one. I suspect she’ll be seeing a psychiatrist in the very near future.”