Trouble Bruin (4 page)

Chapter Seven

By the time they reached the outskirts of Cottonwood, Art was almost completely healed. From his smooth, self-assured movements, you’d never have known he’d had his side ripped open by feral wolves. It was good that he wasn’t in pain, but Charlie couldn’t help thinking about his uncanny strength, and what it meant. She trailed along behind him, watching the muscles in his back moving beneath the fabric of his shirt, if only to keep her eyes off the taut flexing of his glutes.

What was
wrong
with her? She knew damn well he wasn’t just addicted but delusional, but she couldn’t seem to stop her thoughts drifting to that almost-kiss when he’d told her that if she didn’t understand what was going on, it was up to her to find out. And he didn’t
seem
like a dangerous junkie. The way he dealt with Titch was calm, good-humored and patient. He was a natural. The girl obviously felt safe with him.

That was something else that was bothering her, though. Titch.

Since the bandit attack, Titch’s chatter had dwindled until eventually, as they came within sight of Cottonwood, it had dried up altogether. Now the girl was mooching along looking sullen, staring at her feet and responding to any attempts at conversation with monosyllabic grunts. For most teenagers that would be business as usual. For Titch, it was worrying.

They’d been walking through the outskirts of the town. Everything was neat and clean. The roads were swept, the paint on the houses bright and fresh. Well-maintained flower beds filled with brightly colored blooms bordered manicured lawns – there wasn’t a weed in sight. For families who’d had to contend with the chaos, danger and survival-of-the-fittest environment of Darwin, she could see the appeal. It was safe. It was ordered. It was…

“This is deadly dull,” Titch pronounced.

Charlie had to agree. “Well,” she conceded. “I know what you mean. It is a little bit Stepford Wives. But that’s good. You need a stable family environment.”

“Why?” Titch retorted. You didn’t. I heard you tell Art you grew up in care. Just before you guys got all intense and weird and smoochy.”

Charlie blushed. She glanced at Art’s broad back, but he didn’t give any indication that he’d heard, just kept walking. “We did not get smoochy,” she hissed, utterly mortified. “And anyway, that’s exactly why. I didn’t have a very nice childhood. I don’t want that for you. Trust me, you’ll be better off here with your mom and your half brothers and sisters.”

“Ugh.” Titch stomped along. It seemed like the closer they got to Cottonwood, the more resistant she became to the idea. Then she brightened up a little. “Hey, I read
The Stepford Wives
,” she said. “Maybe Mom will have been replaced by a lifelike robot that bakes delicious apple pies and mercilessly crushes its enemies.” She sounded like she thought that would be an improvement.

She was a weird kid. Charlie was going to miss her.

Art stopped and waited for them at the bottom of a set of broad, shallow steps. They were dazzlingly white, and led to an important-looking building complete with columns and a shiny brass plaque by the door.

“Okay,” said Art. “Here we are. Cottonwood Town Hall.”

“I don’t think we’re dressed for it,” said Charlie. She looked down at her sweat-soaked tee and dirt-stained pants. Her hair still had blood in it. Titch had been filthy when Charlie had first met her, and a fight with an incontinent wolf hadn’t improved matters. Art, damn him, looked heart-stoppingly gorgeous, but he was dusty and rumpled and travel-worn. “Do you think this Chief guy will see us?”

“He’ll see us,” Art said confidently. “And he’ll find Titch’s parents and make sure she’s settled in and safe.”

Charlie frowned. “Why are you so sure? You’re not going to threaten him, are you?”

He laughed, but she didn’t think there was a lot of humor in it. “You’ll see.”

They walked up the broad whitewashed steps into a cool, spacious lobby. The secretary was a skinny, officious-looking woman with a saber-like nose and her hair scraped back severely from her thin face. “We need to see the Chief,” Art told her.

She looked them up and down and sniffed. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked, with an expression like a debutante disposing of a dead mouse.

Art leaned casually against her shiny hardwood desk. “He’ll see us,” he said. “Just tell him Art’s here to see him.”

“I’m afraid he’s terribly busy,” the secretary said. She didn’t consult her diary. “I couldn’t possibly fit you in until a week on Thursday.”

Art shook his head. “This lady has people looking for her, and I have a kid here who’s a little too old to be left on the doorstep in a basket. Just tell him I need to see him, okay? If he says no, we’ll leave quietly so you can disinfect everything we’ve touched in peace.”

She rolled her eyes and huffed, but she swept out of the room, heels clacking on the marble floor.

When she came back, she sat behind her desk and spent a couple of minutes pointedly rearranging papers and picking up her hole punch and slamming it back down again before she turned her attention back to them. “He’ll see you now,” she said with bad grace.

As they headed down a plushly carpeted hallway, Charlie murmured, “Do you think she’s a dragon shifter? If I had a hoard of gold I wanted guarding, I’d hire her.”

Art snorted. “I know what you mean. Uncle Orson usually hires bears, though.”

“
Uncle
Orson?”

Charlie’s mouth dropped open as the Chief of Cottonwood strode forward and took Art’s hand in a firm grip. Then he grinned and swept him into a bear hug.

The Chief was a big, solid-looking man, still muscular but starting to run to fat. His middle-aged spread was straining the front of his shirt and wings of gray at his temples gave him a certain gravitas.

“Art, my boy. It’s good to see you. It’s been too long. And is this your charming mate?”

Art choked. “No!” he answered, a little too quickly. “These are a couple of waifs and strays I’ve picked up along the way.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow. He didn’t have to sound so
horrified
by the idea.

“Yup,” said Titch, “that’s us. Surplus to requirements.”

Charlie glanced sharply at her. Titch’s jokes often had an edge to them, but that one had felt like it slashed to the bone.

The Chief settled down behind his vast mahogany desk. His chair creaked under his weight. “So what can I do for you?” he asked. “I assume this isn’t a social call?”

Art put his hand on Titch’s shoulder. “This is Indica Indigo-Child Duckett. She’s a runaway. She tells me her parents are here in Cottonwood. Do you think you’ll be able to track them down?”

The Chief observed her with an avuncular eye. “Duckett… Duckett… I can’t say it rings a bell, but there are plenty of people choose a new name when they move to Cottonwood. You understand. I’m sure we can get this little lady back to her folks,” he said kindly.

Titch scowled ferociously.

Art laughed. “This little lady just kicked a bandit’s furry butt halfway around the Badlands,” he said.

The Chief hadn’t got to where he was by being a stupid man. He looked Titch critically up and down, then smiled. “A force to be reckoned with, hmm? Well, Cottonwood will be glad to have you, Miss Duckett. And I’m sure you’ll be glad to be home.”

To Charlie’s astonishment, Titch burst into tears. “No, I don’t want to. I’m a free spirit. I don’t want to live in a stupid house with my stupid brothers and sisters and go to boring school,” she wailed.

The Chief stared at her for a moment, then opened the door and called, “Sarah? Sarah, would you mind coming here for a moment, please?”

The humorless secretary appeared, and the Chief said, “Sarah, we’re going to find this young lady’s family. She’s a little bit overwhelmed. Could you take her away and…er, give her some cake or something? Thank you.”

The door swung closed behind them, Sarah looking completely horrified by the quantities of snot Titch was producing.

The Chief looked thoughtful. “Fights werewolves, does she? But bursts into tears at the drop of a hat. Something doesn’t quite add up there.”

Charlie had a feeling she knew what it was.

Chapter Eight

Charlie drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair for a moment. Then she jumped to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I need to go check on Titch. Would you excuse me?”

As she left the room, the Chief laced his large hands over his paunch and leaned back in his chair. “She’s a pretty little thing,” he remarked. “Are you sure she’s just a random stray you want to get off your hands?”

“I don’t have feelings for her,” Art snapped. The Chief just regarded him with a knowing expression and said nothing. Art remembered that he’d never been able to lie to Uncle Orson, not since he was a cub caught with his paw in the cookie jar.

Art sighed. “Okay,” he confessed. “I
do
have feelings for her. She’s gorgeous, and resilient, and sweet…and smart. And that’s why I can’t trust her.”

The Chief raised an eyebrow. “I know it’s been a while, but I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve never struck me as the kind of guy who’d want a
stupid
mate.”

“No, I don’t. It’s just… she’s working for some seriously bad people. If she wasn’t so sharp, maybe I could persuade myself they’ve got her fooled. But as it is…” He sighed.

He told his uncle about the cargo of Starweed in the crashed Cessna, about Charlie’s belief that she was engaged in a project to wipe out an epidemic of addiction, and about the paperwork that showed Dynamic Earth’s true intentions – to wipe out the wild-growing Starweed, kill the bears who depended on it to live, and tweak its pharmaceutical properties to create bear soldiers with super strength, super-healing, and sky-high levels of aggression – practically unstoppable.

The Chief listened gravely, and thought for a moment before replying, “I see. And you don’t believe she could be sincere in believing she’s doing something noble and worthwhile?”

Art shook his head, frustration welling up inside him. “Come on,” he said. “Like I said, she’s smart. She works for these people. She’s had coffee breaks with the scientists tinkering with bear genes, and shared the locker room with the people developing a Starweed-specific herbicide. Hell, she was part of that project. She’s worked in what has to be a multi-billion-dollar facility…and she thinks it’s all to
help
people? Nobody could be that naïve, that idealistic. And if she is…” He let the sentence trail off. If she was, she didn’t deserve to be with a wounded soul like him, dragging around the ghosts of his dead comrades.

The Chief heaved himself out of his chair and came around to perch on the desk close to Art. He put a meaty hand on his shoulder. “I imagine you saw some terrible things during your time in service,” he said.

“I did,” Art said cautiously. He didn’t like to think about that time in his life, and he certainly wasn’t going to wax nostalgic about it with his uncle, however in need of guidance he felt.

Uncle Orson nodded. “Pain, grief, loss…they can make you cynical,” he said. “But don’t let them poison you. I remember when you enlisted. Your daddy was so proud, God rest him. You said the bad guys shouldn’t get to win just because they were bigger and meaner and had more expensive toys. You were going out there to save the world. It’s seems like all that’s been beaten out of you, and I’m sorry to see that.” He leaned across his desk and looked Art directly in the eye. “Try to hang on to just a scrap of that idealism, and maybe it won’t look so alien to you when you see it in other people.” He sat back. “Now, much as I love the sound of my own voice, we have a pretty big problem to deal with. What do you propose?”

Art chewed his lip. “Charlie wants to contact her bosses at Dynamic Earth so they can send a team out to retrieve her and her plane. She’ll need to use your long-range radio.”

The Chief pondered. “And you want to let her invite a team here, into the Badlands? Even knowing what they plan to do?”

Art nodded. “I think we have to. If she doesn’t do exactly what they’d expect, they’ll realize we know they’re up to something. If we let the team retrieve her, it’ll buy us some time and you can take this to the Hudsons and the other Badlands leaders, work out what to do about it.”

“Won’t Charlie tell them about your suspicions?”

Art set his jaw. “I’ll convince her not to.”

“How are you going to do that? I thought you couldn’t trust her,” said the Chief. He cocked a brow at Art.

“I’ll convince her. And I’ll…” he thought about the advice his uncle had given him, about hanging on to the shreds of his idealism “…I’ll trust her.”

* * * * *

Charlie’s head snapped up when Art came through from the Chief’s office. He looked grave, but he managed a crooked smile when she stood to greet him.

“The Chief gave permission for you to use the long-range radio to contact your higher-ups at Dynamic Earth,” he said. He glanced around. “Did you check on Titch?”

Charlie shook her head. “That snotty secretary has already hauled her off to social services, or whatever substitutes for it out here.” She frowned, a fretful crease appearing above the freckly bridge of her nose. “I’m worried about her, Art.”

Art felt the same way, but what could he do? “She’ll be fine,” he soothed her. “She’s basically a hurricane in a people-suit – she’ll be running the place within a week.”

Charlie shook her head. “She was so upset, Art. Miserable and just…lost. There’s more to her story than a runaway with a wild imagination.”

Art sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe so,” he conceded. “But what’s the alternative? We all just saw how dangerous it is out in the Badlands. She’s tough, and she’s been lucky, but that won’t last. You know how she’s been surviving? Raiding the food warehouses around Darwin. There’s a bounty out on her – and there’s a lot of people in the Badlands more interested in collecting the payment than keeping Titch safe.”

“I just… It doesn’t feel right, handing her over to strangers.”

Art’s heart skipped a beat…then sank. “Charlie,” he said hoarsely. He reached out and touched the back of her hand, just briefly, with the tips of his fingers. “
We’re
strangers.”

She nodded unhappily. “Your uncle…” she said. “He seems like a good man?”

He caught the ghost of a question in her voice – a plea for reassurance. “He is,” he told her. He’ll track down her parents, work with family services, make sure she’s safe and happy. This is the best thing to do. The only thing we
can
do.”

She nodded, but he could tell she wasn’t convinced, and in his heart of hearts, neither was he.