Wren and the Werebear (15 page)

"But—"

"I have to go to work," he said, smiling. "I know, right?"

Wren could barely speak after the shuddering orgasm that had taken her breath. Still she yearned to have him inside of her, to have more. Her fingers stroked his length through his pants. He was so big, so hard.

"Hey. No more driving me crazy." Dawson grinned. "I'll see you tonight. Then you can drive me crazy all you want. Okay?"

"Tonight..." Wren's voice trailed off.

"Tonight," Dawson said firmly. "And you stay on the trails today. No more wandering around with a gun."

"Okay," Wren said. Her mind was already imagining the things she would do to him to make him pay for leaving her. Such things...

"Thanks for coming to breakfast with me," Dawson said. He kissed her nose. He smelled like warmth and sun and the forest. She longed to stay in his arms.

But work... that was something she understood.

Chapter Seventeen

Wren changed her clothes—well, her panties at least— back at the hotel. Her body was still trembling from what had just happened and she still felt small thrills of pleasure shooting up through her back and into her shoulders.

What had happened to her? She was here on an assignment, a mission. She was here to finish what Tommy had started. There was no reason at all she should be letting herself gallivant around with some tall, handsome ranger, rolling around on a picnic blanket like some hormone-wild teenager.

She pulled on her pants and tucked her gun into her waistband, letting her blouse fall over the handle of the gun. She straightened the hem of her shirt and redid her braid, smoothing her hair down in the mirror.

Looking up at the reflection, she couldn't understand what had changed. Her cheeks were flushed, to be sure, from all of the terrible, wonderful things his tongue had done to her body. She tilted her head one way, then the other. No idea. Something had changed, something was different, but she couldn't put a finger on it.

Steeling her shoulders, she left the hotel room and headed up toward the trailhead.

As she came up to the side loop, Dawson was coming down the trail from his own cabin, his ranger uniform rather wrinkled and disheveled, an expression of pure happiness on his face.

"Ho, ranger," she said, suppressing a grin. Dawson skipped down the last few steps and picked her up in his arms, twirling her around as he kissed her. Then he frowned.

"What's this under your shirt?" he asked, his hand trailing down Wren's front to where she had tucked her gun.

"It's...it's just..."

"I thought I told you not to bring that around," Dawson said. "You know, you're more likely to hurt yourself than any wildlife you find."

"It makes me feel safe," Wren said firmly. She wasn't about to go traipsing around in the woods unarmed to look for the shifter who'd killed Tommy.

"Okay, but—"

"Isabel!" A voice came from the hotel parking lot.

"I can take care of myself," Wren said.

"Isabel! Isabel!"

She recognized her alias on the second call, and turned to see Matt, the hotel owner, huffing and puffing as he came up to the trailhead.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Isabel, I just got a phone message for you," he said, leaning forward and resting both hands on his knees. Wren waited patiently until he was breathing normally again.

"From your mom," Matt panted. "I guess she was calling you by a nickname; I didn't realize who it was until she described you."

"My mom?" Wren frowned.

"Your mom?" Dawson looked over, a confused expression on his face.

"How did she know I was staying at your hotel?" Wren asked.

"She wasn't sure, but she'd called your boyfriend, and he knew you were here, or something like that." Matt glanced over at Dawson.

"Anyway, I took a message." Wren waited as Matt unfolded the piece of paper. "She said they had to take your dad in for surgery at noon—not noon our time, noon their time— and she'll call you back once they get out in a few hours. She's going to stay with him until it's done."

"Surgery for what?" Wren's heart was pounding. She'd thought her dad would be going home this week. Not... not whatever this was.

Matt held out the note to her and she took it up in hands that were all of a sudden shaking. A tight fear clenched her lungs as she read the piece of paper.

Infection spread to lungs... major complications. Need to operate. Five hours.

The words went through Wren's brain like a poem that she couldn't make sense of. How could her dad be hurt again? It wasn't fair. It didn't make sense.

"I didn't write this down," Matt continued, "but she said she'd call back when the surgery was done. That should be in a few hours."

"Thanks." Wren folded the paper, crisping the folds between her fingernails until the page was folded down to nothing. "I'll be back in a few hours, then. I guess."

"I'll keep an eye on the phone, just in case. I'm so sorry, Isabel."

"Thanks," Wren said. Her mind was numb, her body deadened. Matt pursed his lips, as though deciding whether to offer any other words of comfort, but instead turned and walked away back to the hotel.

Wren stood there for a moment, her fingers touching the folded piece of paper, turning it in her fingers. She tucked it into her pocket.

"Your dad?"

Wren raised her head to see Dawson staring at her, an inexplicable expression on his face. She realized dully that she'd told him her parents had been in a car crash.

"Dawson, listen."

"Your parents are alive?"

"I'm sorry." Wren closed her eyes, trying to block everything out. There was too much happening here. Too much that wasn't work. She was here to kill a shifter. That was it. Her family... Olivier... Dawson... none of this was supposed to get in the way of her work. And yet here it all was, raining down over her head in a cold rush.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry to hear about your dad," Dawson said, his face twisting in uncertainty. "Why did you lie to me?"

Wren shook her head.

"I didn't want anyone here to know anything about me. I wanted to get away."

"Your name isn't Isabel, is it?"

She breathed in, then exhaled. She didn't want to lie to him again.

"I—"

"You didn't even look when Matt called out to you." Dawson stood watching her with a curiously suspicious expression. She ached to have his arms around her. She needed—

No. She didn't need anything. She swallowed the pain and looked into Dawson's eyes. They were cold, guarded.

"No. No, it's not."

"What's your name?"

"Wren."

"You sure about that?"

"Of course!"

Dawson ran a hand through his hair, biting his lip.

"I don't like it when people lie to me."

"Dawson, I didn't mean—"

"That's alright. I hope your dad is alright. Really."

"Dawson—"

"I gotta go. Gotta work." His voice was cold, and there was something else in his words that she couldn't quite recognize. Fear, maybe. Before she could pin it down, he turned his broad shoulders squarely away. "I'll see you around."

Wren's mouth was dry. Every piece of her wanted to run after Dawson, to wrap her arms around his body and hold him close to her. She wanted the safety of his arms, she wanted his consoling touch. She wanted him to tell her that it would be okay, that there was nothing she could do here, a hundred miles away from her only family.

Tears threatened behind her eyelids and she blinked them resolutely away.

She had a few hours. She had to find the tracks.

Yes, that's what she would do. She would take her mind off of everything and focus entirely on tracking this monster down. Then when her mom called back, she could talk to her dad. She could tell her dad that she'd done it, she'd killed the shifter who'd killed Tommy. He'd be proud of her. Everything would be fine, it would, just as soon as the mission was accomplished.

And who needed some dumb ranger, anyway? Not her. She didn't need anyone. She was strong. She was the best. She was an assassin, and nothing in the world would get in her way.

Gritting her teeth against the tears, she began the long climb up the mountain loop.

Chapter Eighteen

At the top of the loop, she caught the fresh tracks of a bear. It led out and down the other side of the mountain, into the valley.

Wren pulled her gun out and held it at her side, ready for anything. She followed the tracks down, trying to be as quiet as she could. It was colder in the dense growth of redwoods and pines down on this side of the mountain. Her sneakers slipped from time to time over the muddy leaves, and she caught herself each time.

It wasn't even that cold, but the wet air made her breath puff white in front of her. Tense throughout her entire body, she kept moving, kept tracking. At the top of the next ridgeline, she approached a copse of redwoods that clustered in a circle. The tracks went straight into the circle of trees. She moved slowly, silently, her gun aimed in front of her.

She passed into the circle of trees and smelled cut wood. Around her, the only thing she could hear was the sound of birds calling in the high branches of the wood. The giant redwood in front of her was gouged with clawmarks. She stepped forward and examined the clawed wood. Sap was already beginning to seep from the tree's wound, but it was certainly a fresh cut. The scent of the tree was cloyingly sweet; it hurt her head. She reached out to touch the bark—

Her cell phone rang. Jumping back, startled, she fumbled for the phone in her pocket. She left the copse of trees and checked the clearing as she raised the phone to her ear.

"Marty, you scared the shit out of me," she said. "I'm tracking the bear."

"You're tracking a shifter."

Wren's brows knitted together and her pulse jumped a beat faster.

"You got the second sample?"

"It's a match," Marty said. "They just got the results back from the lab."

"A match to the East Coast shifter?"

"That's right. I'm sending all the agents we have to Maugham now. They want to take this one alive."

"Alive?"

"To see if they can find whoever it was they were sending the letters to. They're saying there might be another shifter over where you are. Maybe even a few of them."

"Okay," Wren said.

"If it attacks you, Wren, don't hesitate," Marty said. "Kill that fucker. But if you can wait until the other agents get there, that would be better."

"Sure. Tell them that the trail starts at the top lookout on the trail loop. I'm following it now, Marty." Wren kept her voice low, her eyes darting around the forest that surrounded her.

"Is your phone charged?"

She checked.

"Half-charged."

"Use it as a transmitter, okay? Just hit video on and keep it—oh, I don't know. You have a shirt pocket?"

"Yeah, yeah." Wren's heart was pumping hard as she fiddled with the phone and put it facing outward in her shirt pocket. The video camera just peeked over the pocket. Her fingers were shaking.

"Good?" she whispered.

"Good." Marty's voice came low and crackling from the pocket.

"Okay. Continuing to follow the trail."

"By the book, Wren. You'll have reinforcements soon."

The bear tracks led her clearly across the hillside, and she followed the path easily, even with her heartbeat thudding in her ears. Every muscle in her body was tensed and ready to fight. Step by step, she made her way through the trees.

Coming around a cluster of redwoods, she stopped dead in her tracks. The bear was right in front of her on the trail, just fifty feet away.

It growled, its black fur bristling along the ridge of its backbone. The sound traveled through the thick air of the valley and made Wren's skin prickle. She lifted her gun and aimed it directly at the bear's face.

"You see this Marty? Send our guys in," she said to the cell phone in her pocket. She wanted the shifter to know that it was useless to resist, that there were other agents coming.

"Already on their way," Marty said.

"Turn yourself in!" Wren yelled at the black bear. The huge, hulking figure snarled at her, and she looked into his eyes. There was an intelligence in them that made her nerves quiver.

"Don't make me shoot you," Wren said, moving towards the bear slowly. It backed away, its huge paws leaving deep tracks in the leafy forest floor. "If you run, I'll shoot."

The bear whined, twisting its head, and continued to backpedal. Wren kept her gun aimed right between its eyes. If it started to run, it would be a dead shifter.

She wanted to kill it now. Thinking of Tommy, her jaw clenched. The CSE might want to interrogate this monster, but it had killed her friend. She almost wanted it to turn and run so that she had an excuse to shoot. But instead, it was backing up slowly, backing against a copse of pines. She would have it trapped there.

"Come on, you stupid animal," Wren murmured, moving forward. "Come on—"

The ground moved under her feet. The bear let out a roar just as she lost balance, and she realized too late that she had walked into a trap.

The rope hidden under the leaves snapped against her ankle and she was yanked sideways. She landed hard on her side and rolled, her gun falling away from her, and heard a crack at the same moment she felt the sharp pain in her right arm. White explosions obscured her vision with agonizing pain.

"Ahhh!"

She rolled down the slope, her arm clenched to her chest. Each turn brought with it another shooting pain, another involuntary cry. Her feet scrambled for purchase. Reaching out with her good hand, she grabbed a branch and stopped herself rolling any farther.

"Wren? Wren!"

Her cell phone was down at the bottom of the slope. She could barely hear Marty's voice. She looked around for her gun. Her gun. She needed her gun.

Above her the bear roared. She looked up and saw her gun halfway between her and the black bear. It snarled again, its white teeth dripping cords of saliva.

With a cry of pain, she scrambled forward, up the slope. If she could get the gun, if she could only get the gun—