by Terry Spear
Ted cast him an annoyed look. "She might be mated or seeing someone. What has that got to do with anything?"
"She probably didn't run here from miles away. Those hunters were on foot. They must have been nearby too."
Ted frowned, then snapped his fingers. "Vehicles. They've left their vehicles somewhere nearby."
"Right. Somewhere they could park and then access the property without being seen."
"Off the main road, there's an old turnout. It used to be a road through the property—old dirt road, once even used by wagons. But the road running through the property from that direction has been fenced off for ages." Ted got on his phone and called Tracey. "Hey, Bill had an idea. The hunters, and the cougar, probably parked somewhere close by. Maybe on the old wagon road."
"We'll check it out and if we find a couple of vehicles there, we'll confiscate them," Tracey said.
Ted smiled.
"Thanks, Ted, Bill. I told Vanessa you're both on your way," Tracey said.
"How badly wounded is the cougar?" Ted asked.
"Bad enough to need a blood transfusion. She must have run some distance while she was bleeding with no pressure to stop it. I'm calling Dan to see if I can get some backup to look for the cars. Kolby's got babysitting duty and Hal's going with me, but we'll need a couple of tow trucks too once we find them. Dan's booked the men and they're all sitting in jail for now because of shooting at the property when the kids and I were out and could have been hit by the bullets. Same with you all."
"Okay, good. Let us know what happens."
"We will. Once we find the vehicles, we'll be able to verify license plates and who owns them and then hopefully learn who the woman is."
"All right, thanks." Then Ted ended the call with Tracey.
"Here I thought the business I did could be dangerous," Bill said.
"When hunters want something, there's no telling how dangerous some of them can be. Most are fine, obey the laws, and don't cause trouble. But then you've got a few bad eggs who ruin it for the rest," Ted said.
When they finally reached the animal clinic, Ted knew the woman would get the best of care. One of the beds was set up like a human bed, so that if a cougar was injured as a cougar, when the person shifted, he or she would be on a human-sized bed. They had the same for the surgery ward in the event the shifter turned into their human form during the surgery and they would be too large for a standard pet surgery table.
"Is she all right?" Ted asked Pamela Lang, the receptionist. "We're here to donate blood."
"I'll call right back." Pamela called to one of the rooms in the back.
Riley Manning, one of the vet techs, hurried out to usher them back to give blood. "You've got to strip and shift. She's still a cougar and we need cougar blood."
As soon as Ted and Bill had stripped off their clothes, they shifted and hopped up on tables where they laid down to give blood—something they normally didn't have to do. One shifter, maybe, but not two. Ted again hoped the woman would be all right. But he was thinking, if she shifted during the surgery, or before, he and his brother would have to give human blood.
Vanessa came into the room in a hurry. "No, no, one has to give human blood in case she needs it."
"Sorry," Riley said. “Hey, Ted, if you can shift back, I’ll take blood from you then.” He'd already started the IV on Bill who was in his cougar form.
Ted shifted and tugged on his boxer briefs, but he wouldn't fit on the animal table to give blood now. They had him sit in a chair that could be leaned back, then started the IV on him. He smiled at his brother. "This is one time that I can say things to you, and you can't talk back."
His brother gave him a toothy grin.
Ted really wanted to know what was going on with the woman—and learn who she was—not in a way that meant he wanted to date her. What if she had family? They had to let them know what had happened to her.
She appeared to be about thirty or so and he and his brother were thirty-three, so the right age for dating, though. Okay, so he was interested. He was fascinated by the fact she was a white cougar. He could just imagine all the kids in Yuma Town wanting to see her for show and tell. Poor cougar.
Then he finally finished giving blood and Riley gave him orange juice to drink. Once Ted had finished that, he had to sit for a few minutes, to make sure he wouldn't pass out from giving blood, though his own blood supply would build back up faster than a human's would.
His brother had finished giving blood and looked a little sleepy. He wasn't shifting back either. That's all he needed to do was shift and pass out.
"I've got an orange juice for you too, when you shift," Riley said to Bill.
Bill opened his eyes and nodded. He was strapped to the table so he wouldn't fall off if giving blood had made him feel woozy.
Then the vet tech left with the blood and Ted waited until he was done waiting, got up, and started to pull on his jeans. But the next thing he knew, the whole world was shifting, tilting, half of it turning black and then all of it dissolved in blackness.
"Ted! Ted!" he heard Dr. Vanessa calling from far away and he looked up at her, feeling a killer headache coming on and his stomach was revolting.
"You weren't supposed to move from the chair until I said so," Vanessa said, looking down sternly at him as she applied a bandage to his head.
"What...?" Ted felt disoriented, unsure as to what had happened, realizing he was lying on the cold, linoleum floor.
"You got up too quickly after giving blood, passed out, and hit your head on the edge of the counter. You'll have a goose's egg, bruising, and you had a cut, but not bad enough to require stitches. We're going to help you up, but you have to sit in the chair until I tell you that you can move." Vanessa was part stern, part concerned. She told Riley, "Next time we have one of our shifters donating human blood, strap him or her in too." She shook her head, then she pulled off Ted’s jeans still resting at his ankles.
She and Riley lifted him up and he couldn't believe how unsteady he was on his feet. Then they helped him into the chair. Ted couldn't have been more furious about what had gone down at the ranch. But he'd been just as angry at himself for injuring himself just because he was so damned impatient to see the cougar who'd been shot, once he realized what had happened to him.
"Can we rely on you to stay put?" Doc asked, looking worried again.
He let out his breath in exasperation. "Yes, ma'am."
"Good. Stella White is out of surgery and in recovery. They found her vehicle and towed it into the sheriff's department's compound along with the hunters' pickup. We know who she is now, but she's still out of it, really groggy."
"Oh, okay. It’s good that she's going to be okay, right?"
"Hopefully. We won't know until she comes out of the recovery room completely. She's still in her cougar form."
Bill had been sleeping, apparently, and now was lying on his table as a human, legs hanging over the end of the table, a blanket over him and a pillow under his head. He was watching Ted, a silly smirk splitting his face.
He'd probably seen what had happened to Ted, or maybe he'd only seen the end result.
When Vanessa and the technician left, Bill shook his head. "You always try to rush things."
Ted scoffed. "As if you wouldn't? You were strapped down as a cougar or you would have done the same thing as me." Ted knew his brother well enough to know he would have too.
Bill only smiled. "Okay, you're probably right. I would hope I would have been more graceful about it. Just so you know, I called for help as soon as you began pulling on your jeans and then threw out your arms as if you were trying to stop yourself from falling. And not in a way that said you were losing your balance, but that you were passing out. You know it's hard to cry out as a cougar when I wanted to yell for help as a human. I even considered shifting, but I was afraid I would do the same thing, and no one would come to assist you."
"I felt fine, just a little dizzy when I rose too quick
ly, but then I thought I would overcome it."
Family physician Dr. William Rugel came into the room, folded his arms, and looked crossly at Ted.
Ted smiled. "Hey, Doc, what brings you here?"
"I came to check on Vanessa's other patient, but then here you were injuring yourself, so she asked me to step in and take a look at you."
"Is Stella in her human form now?" Ted asked, eager to see her.
"Yeah, she is, which is why I've come to see her."
And his mate, Vanessa, Ted figured. They took every chance they could to see each other as newly mated cougars. Sure, they mated last year, but that still counted as newly mated.
William flashed a light in Ted's eyes and checked over the head wound. "You should be checked over for a concussion."
"I'm fine," Ted said.
His brother was smiling, getting too much of a kick out of this.
"We'll see what Hal wants done," William said.
"Hal? It's my damn head. And he knows how hard it is."
"That's for damn sure," Bill said.
"I’m having it okayed by him because you work for him and he's not going to want you to work at some of the heavy lifting or other chores you do on the ranch until he knows for sure you're all right to finally return to work." Doc got on his phone and said, "Hey, Hal, I'm seeing Ted now. I think he needs an MRI just to make sure he's all right…yes, I will." He smiled. "Right. I'll tell him." Then Doc called another number. "Yeah, have the ambulance brought over to the animal clinic. We're taking a patient to the clinic to have an MRI done. Ted Weekum." Doc looked up at him. "Yeah, he's agreeing to it, per his boss's and my orders."
Bill said, "I'll tell Stella you want to see her as soon as she comes out of recovery."
Yeah, if the cougar was single and lived around the area, Bill was making a move on her. She better not think Bill was the one who had helped her when she'd been wounded, as similar as he and his brother looked.
Chapter 3
Stella finally had more of a clear head and realized she was dressed in a clinic gown and lying under a blanket of white. She was in…she glanced around at all the pictures on the walls—an animal clinic, pictures of dogs and cats featured on the walls everywhere. And there were even a few plant-eating dinosaurs, that she smiled about. A brachiosaurus and a brontosaurus. Even Halloween decorations of pumpkins and black cats.
She was surprised to see a regular clinic bed here, but then recalled what Ted Weekum had told her about the place being cougar shifter held territory, and that the vet was a cougar too.
A man entered the room and said he was Dr. William Rugel. "I'm having you transferred to the clinic. I'm a family physician and my mate, Vanessa, took care of you when you were in your cougar form. She'll come by to see you off, but she did an excellent job of removing both bullets and you should be good unless you end up with an infection. She also gave you an antivenom for the rattlesnake bite while you were still a cougar to counteract the poison as quickly as possible. We'll keep you at the clinic for a couple of days to ensure you'll be fine for the gunshot wounds and the rattlesnake bite."
“How did she know it was a rattlesnake bite? Oh, Ted asked me, and I nodded my head. Okay. What if I accidentally shift into the cougar?" She was afraid she would cause the clinic real trouble then.
"We have a couple of patient rooms for cougars only. We send patients who are strictly human off to other clinics once they're stabilized if they come to us with health emergencies. You’ll be safe."
What a great deal that was. "Oh. Okay, thanks."
Then Vanessa came into the room and Stella vaguely remembered seeing her before the drugs had knocked her out.
"You're in good shape to leave," Vanessa said. "I have to tell you right now, the bachelor cougars of Yuma Cougar will want to know if you're single or not, even if you have no intention of living around here."
Stella chuckled. She couldn't believe being shot and bitten by a rattlesnake, then hiding out at a horse ranch might lead to a date with a cougar. "I'm single, but I'm a paralegal for a law firm in Grand Junction, Colorado. So I don't have any plan to leave the job."
"Okay, I'll let anyone know who asks."
"Like me," a man said who looked similarly to the man who had bandaged her in the barn. But he…didn't smell the same.
"I’m Bill Weekum. But I live in West Texas normally. I'm just visiting Ted, my brother."
"Ted…" she said softly under her breath.
"Looks like a lost cause for me," Bill said. "I'm glad to see you awake and alert. My brother had to be taken to the clinic for an MRI, but I'm sure once he learns you're over there, he'll want to see you for himself."
"Did they catch the hunters?" She immediately worried they were still running loose and ready to shoot other cougars.
"They did. They charged them and put them in jail. Your vehicle and theirs have been impounded. They did that with your vehicle so it wouldn't be vandalized or stolen. You're free to go as soon as you're healed up enough."
"One of the men is named Jeffrey Sims. He was caught trespassing and shot wildlife on another ranch owner's property, but one of the lawyers I work for got him off," Stella said.
“Okay, we’ll check into that further. I think we can get the charges to stick this time.” Then Bill snapped his fingers. "They shot you. A human."
She frowned at him. "They shot me as a cougar."
"You were in the barn and they fired through the walls of the building. We have holes all over the place. If you hadn't been hiding behind the stacks of hay in the hayloft way up above, they might have killed you. But they were aiming lower where they thought the cougar was down below. They were too afraid to go in and confront you first, instead, shooting up the building, hoping to kill you that way," Bill said.
"Then that's it. I didn't see them, but their bullets were in me so that proves they shot me. They can't say they only shot a cougar.”
“Exactly,” Bill said.
Then the ambulance returned to the animal clinic to transport Stella to the clinic and all she could think of was what had happened to Ted? Had he been shot by the hunters while trying to protect her? All kinds of scenarios were rushing through her mind and she should have asked Bill first thing about him! She’d been so worried about the hunters still shooting all over the place at the ranch.
Bill said he’d see her at the clinic in a little while and while she was in the ambulance on the ride over there, she asked the EMT, "What happened to Ted?"
"He rose too quickly from the chair where he was sitting after he'd given blood and passed out. He'd hit his head pretty hard."
"For me? He'd given blood for me?"
"Yes. I'm sure he'll be all right, but he's going to have a goose egg and be black and blue for a while."
"Thanks for telling me."
"I didn't want you to believe it was something worse. His boss, Hal Haverton, wanted him checked out before he returned to work. Hal didn't want Ted further injuring himself while performing duties at the horse ranch."
"Ted's a foreman."
"Yes."
They finally reached the clinic, and she was taken inside on the gurney. The man she'd seen before, the real Ted, was just coming out of a room and gave her a big smile when he saw her, a bandage on his temple. Then he looked worried. "Are you all right?"
She scoffed. "I probably look better than you do now."
He smiled at her again.
Then they wheeled her into a room, and he came in to help them move her to a bed.
Once she was settled, the nurse, Elsie Miller, wearing pumpkin and ghost scrubs came in to take her vital signs, but Ted didn't leave.
"So you're not from around here," Ted said.
"I think that would be obvious, especially from the white fur coat I wear."
"Yeah. That's pretty special."
She sighed. "Unless you're so rare hunters want to kill you to show your pelt off."
"All the kids in Yuma Town and the surrou
nding areas want to see you. No picture taking as we don't want the word to spread that we have a rare white cougar out here. But probably none of us have seen one, so if you're agreeable, when you're on your feet again, could you shift and show them?"
"A great science project, like show and tell."
He chuckled. "Yeah, I guess. They may never see another one in their lifetime." Elsie had left, and he said, "If you want me to sneak anything into you that they might not have on the menu for dinner—"
Dr. Kate Parker Hill walked into the room, shaking her head at him. "You will be banned from the clinic during Stella's stay after you leave here." She gave him a sweet smile.
He laughed. "Well, I'm sure all their food will be great."
"I’m so glad you think so because you're staying overnight," Kate said.
"No way in hell."
Stella smiled at the cougar. He looked like he could wrangle horses with finesse, lift hefty bales of hay, and she thought he was cute in his western wear. She'd always had a thing for westerns and cowboys. A cowboy that was also a cougar? Now what a great combination. But she noticed he had blood on his plaid shirt and wondered if that was her blood.
"Yes, way. Doc William and I looked over the MRI and we both agree it's prudent for you to stay overnight. So no outside food for you either," Kate said.
Then Ted's growly expression brightened. "Can I share a room with a fellow patient?"
"It's up to the patient in question," Kate said.
Ted looked so hopeful Stella would agree, she smiled and nodded. She wanted to know more about this town that was cougar run. But while he was stripping and climbing into a clinic gown behind a curtain, appearing eager to room with her tonight, she fell asleep.
"Now, let her get her rest," Doc told Ted as he laid down on the bed and she covered him with the blanket.
He fully intended to once he and Stella talked a bit. But when Kate pulled the curtain aside, he saw Stella had rolled onto her side, facing him, and was sound asleep.
"Let her sleep," Doc said softly, reiterating her orders.
He knew Dr. Kate would move him out of the room in a heartbeat if he disobeyed her.
