by Holley Trent
“If you’re referring to Maria, she’s in the RV making phone calls, I believe.”
“Ah. I looked into her company while I was sprawled on my back last night digesting all that bacon and that pound of fake eggs. Counting sheep didn’t work, so I surfed the Internet.”
“Oh, yeah? Did you like what you saw?”
“Well, the info was vague, but I guess that would be the case for any private investigation agency. I get the feeling they’re not quite normal if they’re tangled up in Bear business.”
Eric snorted. “‘Not-quite-normal’ could possibly be the understatement of the century.”
“They hiring?”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “You looking?”
Jim shook his head and crooked a thumb toward Hardy and Nate. “Not me.”
“Are you so quick to get rid of lieutenants?”
“Hell no, man. I want to keep them, but I know they’re bored here. I’m hoping if they go for a couple of years, they’ll come back refreshed and will stop nagging me.”
“Come on, Jim,” Nate said. “It’d be different if there were chicks around here any of us would actually touch. If some of us don’t leave, we’re going to slaughter each other.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Eric said.
Jim made a waffling gesture. “Only a little. I don’t know about Bears, but Coyotes tend to get a little reckless when our population isn’t balanced.”
“But there are no Coyotes in the Shrews or even any associated with them.”
“Doesn’t matter. As long as there aren’t a bunch of male Coyotes around them, they’ll be a lot better off there than here. I mean, it’d be short-term—just until we can slake some of the tension here.”
“Why those two and not some guys you could actually spare?”
Jim leaned his forearms onto the porch railing and looked out at the west field where the RV was parked.
Maria was picking her way through the high grass toward them, and Eric hoped that whatever Jim had to say wouldn’t be scandalous enough to earn either of them a ball-withering Shrew glare. His ego had already taken enough blows during the short trip.
“I have other lieutenants. Not as close as these two, but…you know.”
“Favoritism has its perks?”
“Nah. You gotta do right by the folks who’ve stood by you the longest. I can train those other guys up, but I’ve gotta give the most loyal their due.”
“Good man. I’ll run it past Dana and see what she has to say.”
“Say about what?” Maria asked.
Eric canted his head toward the alpha. “Jim wants to see if Dana can absorb a couple of Coyotes in her associate list for a while.”
“To babysit or to employ?”
Jim chuckled low. “I like her.”
Yeah, me, too. Fat lot of good that had always done Eric, though.
“To employ,” Jim said. “They’re big boys. They can take care of themselves. I just want to make sure if I’m gonna let them go, they’re not gonna be sitting around down there twiddling their thumbs when they could be gainfully employed.”
“I’m sure she’d be interested in having a conversation about it, at the very least, especially if we’re talking about a couple of self-starters.”
“We don’t need babysitting,” Nate said. “Give us something to do, and we’ll get it done without a whole lot of hand-wringing and micromanaging. We’re pretty creative when we need to be.”
“But do you try to stay on the right side of the law while you’re expressing that creativity?”
Hardy pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Hmm.”
Jim kicked the side of his boot. “Don’t embarrass me, asshole.”
“Hey! I’ve always had trouble thinking in shades of gray. Things are black-and-white for me, and…okay. Sometimes we bend the rules to accomplish something necessary for the greater good.”
Maria put her hands on her hips. “And by greater good, you mean…”
“I mean that we try to make sure that if we’re going to do illegal shit, we do it in self-defense capacities only. Still, a law’s a law.”
“That sounds like something Astrid would say,” Eric muttered.
Maria looked pointedly at Jim. “So, are you going to let our Bears into your territory?”
“Well, damn, you cut right to the point, don’t you? You don’t want to hang out for a little while and chat? Get to know your new friends a little? It’s a beautiful day. The birds are singing and gas prices are down. Take a load off.”
Maria shifted her weight and looked from Jim, to Eric, back to Jim again wearing that neutral expression Eric knew disguised darker emotions.
What’s wrong now?
Had he agitated her? If that were the case, he wasn’t so sure he was going to be so broken up about it. He’d said what he needed to say and she’d heard him. If those words wounded her somehow, he wasn’t going to apologize. She needed to work it out—to digest it—and get the fuck over it.
“So, yes or no, Mr. West? Bryan’s waiting on word.”
Jim gave a dismissive flick of his hand. “Yeah, Keely and her guard are clear. Tell her to come get her babies and that pathetic mate of hers, too.”
“Thank you. I’ll go make the call.”
Maria started toward the RV again.
Eric watched her walk away, her skirt catching against the grass as she moved, and then straightened up. What the fuck am I just standing here for?
“I need to confer with my alpha about what we’re supposed to do next.” Eric bounded down the stairs and turned to walk backwards.
Jim gave him a salute. “Can’t promise there’ll be any breakfast left if you take too long. We’ll try to be gentlemen, but if you leave dogs unattended for too long, they get into the food.”
Coyotes sounded a lot like Bears to Eric. In the presence of the Ridge crew, he’d learned quickly not to leave food sitting out at the lodge.
“I’ll take that risk.”
Eric arrived at the RV’s passenger door right as Maria tried to slam it.
He pulled it open, nearly sending her toppling down the steps.
“Ugh!”
“Can the attitude, Shrew.” He got her inside and locked the door behind him.
She stomped toward the kitchenette table, muttering under her breath, and he didn’t bother trying to make sense of it. He got the gist, though—she wanted some space. He’d give her some, but not yet. He still had a thing or two to prove.
“Make your call, Maria.”
“You know, I don’t need your permission.” She snatched the phone off the charger and angrily pushed her hair behind her ears.
Silently, he sank onto the sofa, leaned back, and entwined his fingers over his belly as she dialed.
She paced in front of the sink, avoiding his gaze—agitating his inner bear. The bear didn’t like being ignored. The bear thought Eric was making the wrong choice by being so gentle with her when she wanted it so rough. The part of him that was just man took a more measured stance. He wasn’t going to wait forever for her—no way was his bear going to let him do that—but he never wanted anyone to say he hadn’t tried to do all he could for her.
“Dana. Hey! Do you have Bryan available?” Maria paced a little more. “Okay.” She glanced Eric’s way and said, “She’s going to patch him in.”
“Feel free to put it on speaker.”
Maria stared at him for a few seconds as if the suggestion was either obscene or completely novel to her.
He wondered if she’d had something to say to Dana that she didn’t want Eric to overhear.
Tough. Call her back later.
With one more glower at him, she put the phone on speaker and set it on the corner of the table.
“All right,” came Bryan’s deep voice. “Who’s in conference here? I’ve got Tamara on my lap and Soren Ursu at my back.”
“Just me here,” Dana said. “That dirty cat of mine went back to Durham to take care
of some pub business. I’m babysitting a few of his young Catamounts.”
“And I’m here,” Maria said, then added flatly, “and Eric.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Well, let’s get right to it, then. Jim says we can bring Keely through to rendezvous with the kids and Marty.”
“Awesome. I’ll get in touch with the cousin who’s guarding her,” Bryan said. “Shoot the address to me in a text.”
Eric rooted his phone out of his pocket. “Doing it now. There’s another matter I’d like to bring to your attention since you’re both on the line.”
“What’s up?” Dana asked.
“Jim wants to talk to you about sending down a couple of his Coyotes. Apparently, the Coyote population is unbalanced, and he wanted to give a couple of his trusted lieutenants the opportunity to go elsewhere for a while if it’d help stabilize things a bit.”
“Well, he doesn’t need my approval for that. We don’t have a Coyote group anywhere near here, so they wouldn’t be offending anyone if they entered the territory, except for perhaps the Wolves, but two Coyotes is hardly a threat.”
“No, what I mean is, they want to work for you. I don’t think Jim would send them down unless they belonged to a group of some sort while they’re there.”
“Ahhh, gotcha. I’ll certainly entertain the idea, assuming they have some skills I could use.”
“Tell me they’re not scrawny,” Tamara said.
Eric would have recognized the ensuing sigh as Bryan’s even with one ear plugged.
“They’re pretty big for what I’d imagine a Coyote to be built like,” Maria said.
“They tend to be pretty lean, if we’re talking about born-Coyotes,” Soren said.
“Most of the Coyotes here are born,” Eric said. “Jim told us last night that the demographics are what make them such a stable group, even if they do have a bit of a male problem.”
“What do you think, Soren?” Dana asked. “You’ve worked with Coyotes before. Are they generally trustworthy?”
“Some are, some aren’t. Depends on the culture of the group and how good the alpha is. I’ve never heard anyone say anything negative about Jim West aside from his frustratingly adamant refusal to give people free passage through his territory.”
“So, I should entertain the offer?”
“I think you should meet with them and put them through their paces, at the very least. My brother and I would be happy to assist you. Assuming he’s out of his mate fever by then.”
“Peter?” Maria asked, sounding understandably worried. Intense was an understatement when it came to describing the man. “You mean, with Drea?”
“Don’t worry,” Soren said soothingly. “We’ve got him contained for the time being. Fortunately, the two of us almost never have overlapping fever periods. His always seems to start a couple of weeks before mine, so chances are good we’ll be swapping places in about ten days. I’ll be the one locked up in the bunker, and he’ll be the one staring through the window and laughing at me.”
“Drea’s fine,” Bryan said soothingly. “She has no idea what’s going on. She’s so fucking naive that she’s almost a stereotype. She has no idea why Peter’s been sniffing around her so much.” He added in a mumble, “And why she’s practically throwing herself at him.”
“Marty’s been pretty pathetic pining after your cousin, so it’s definitely in the air,” Maria said.
“How are you doing, Eric?”
Eric twiddled his thumbs and ground his jaw as Maria narrowed her eyes at him. “Everything’s just fine. What do you want us to do after we’ve reunited the happy family?”
Bryan scoffed. “Don’t assume it’s gonna be happy. Keely is probably going to try to kick Marty’s nuts into next week for taking her kids. There’s gonna be fur flying all over the place. Mark my words, it’ll be a while before either of those two are fit to travel, assuming she lets him go with her. She can hold a grudge like nobody’s business.”
“Fuck, I hadn’t thought about that. You know, Marty really is pathetically endearing after a while. Maybe she’ll come around once he explains everything.”
“We can only hope. I’d always thought the two were good for each other. I was probably more surprised than anyone when Marty took off the way he did. Anyway, once she’s ready to go, haul ass and get them to Buffalo. I’ve got someone on the other side of the border to get them up to the airport in Toronto. Cut it as close as you can so there’s no chance of them being spotted and followed. We’re going to have them fly in a very indirect route to Alaska using a few different airlines, so they won’t be the easiest to track, but I’d like to add in mystery wherever I can.”
“Got it. And when we’re done there, do you want us to keep tracking Gene?”
“Negative on that. Not necessary.”
“Why not?”
Soren chuckled. “Those coordinates from Marty came in very handy. We don’t need to watch the little bastard so closely.”
“What’d you do?”
“Me personally? Nothing.”
“Oh, hell,” Dana muttered. “Do I want to hear this, Bryan?”
“Mmm. I dunno.”
“Don’t get my Shrew tangled up in anything illegal. If you get Tamara in trouble, I’m going to kick your ass, Soren’s ass, and Peter’s, too, just for being related to him.”
“Ah, come on. I’m not gonna get my mate in trouble.”
“That’s right,” Soren said. “Leave the questionably ethical stuff to us.”
Tamara made a disgusted sound, and then muttered something about untrustworthy mercenaries and family shame.
“All right, then,” Dana said. “I’m gonna pretend I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. I want to put this behind us so we can go back to working actual investigating cases and not acting as some kind of supernatural law enforcement squad. Keep us updated and let us know when you’re ready to move out.”
“Understood,” Maria said.
Dana, Bryan, Tamara, and Soren said their goodbyes, and Maria hit the End Call button on her phone.
For a while, she clutched the device and stared at the counter, saying nothing.
Eric folded his arms over his chest and waited. He could wait just as long as she could, and when that looked like it was going to be a while, he decided to make himself comfortable. He propped his feet up atop the armrest and fluffed the pillow under his head.
Finally, she whipped around, and snarled, “There’s a lot of space on this farm. You don’t need to be in here.”
“Neither do you.”
“Go away.”
“No. I have as much right to be here as you do. In case you’ve forgotten, this mode of transport is how I got here, just like you.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Bye.”
Growling, she stomped toward the door, only to stop with one hand on the knob. She made a fist with her other hand and pounded it against the metal panel, swearing under her breath.
He sat up and laced his fingers between his spread legs, watching her.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” She punctuated each word with a pound, and each pound left a little dent in the door.
Someone was going to have to pay to fix that when they got back to North Carolina, but Eric wasn’t going to stop her. He wanted to see where her rage took her, even if he didn’t know what had triggered it. It obviously hadn’t been anything said during that teleconference. She’d been on edge before she’d made the call.
“Fuck.” She stepped away from the door and paced in a short track behind the driver’s and front passenger’s seats. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
The question seemed rhetorical. He suspected she was in her own head at the moment, so he kept his lips zipped and just watched her.
She stopped pacing and looked right at him. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
He shrugged. “I can’t answer that without context. You have a habit of not giving me any.”
She s
talked over and knelt in front of him, dark eyes narrowed and brow deeply furrowed. “I’m sick of people lying to me.”
“If you’re talking about me, I invite you to name one lie I’ve told you, and good luck. I’ve been saving all my lies for everyone else—for all the folks who don’t know the actual nature of our relationship.”
She gave her head a hard shake and poked his knee. “You’ll be the next in line to drop one on me.”
“Tell me what happened. Something upset you, and I can’t possibly guess what it was if you don’t tell me.”
She stood and paced some more, crushing the fabric of her skirt in her hands as she walked. “I don’t know who my mother is.”
“Pardon?”
“I talked to Dana earlier—before that conference call. She looked into some things for me. I don’t think she wanted to tell me with me being on the road, but she said that since I’m so good at compartmentalizing things, that she’d let me have it.” The laugh that fell from Maria’s throat was dry and ironic.
Dana had no idea how messed up Maria was, and there was no one to blame for that but Maria.
“I’d only wanted Dana to find out some things about my grandparents. You know, the ones my mother ran away from as a teen.”
“I take it you got more than you bargained for.”
She turned to him and pushed up both eyebrows. “My mother isn’t my mother. My mother is…my aunt.”
“Wait.” He put up his hands. “Rewind and break that down for me.”
“My birth mother—my biological mother is dead. She was dying even when she was pregnant with me. She had a twin.”
“The lady you thought was your mother.”
Maria nodded and started pacing again. “My aunt somehow forged some documents stating that she was supposed to adopt me at my birth, and I guess my mother—the woman who had me—wasn’t lucid enough to put up enough objections. I was born six weeks early following an induction when her condition began to deteriorate and she died about three days after that. My grandparents were supposed to take me home.”
He thought he knew where the story was going. “Your aunt took you.”
She nodded yet again. “Dana talked to them. My grandparents, I mean. Obviously, this is just their side of the story, but I don’t believe they would lie about it. Not like my so-called mother has been.”
