Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

  Someone was targeting shifters. Someone else wanted to make certain they got their hands on any shifters or shifter allies in rodeo.

  One of his own horses came over to the fence around one of the outdoor stalls, whickering quietly and asking him for sugar or carrots or just to have him scratch up and down the velvet of her long nose.

  "Hey, girl." He clicked his tongue at her, leaned his forearms on the railing and held out a cut up apple. She took it delicately off his palm, chewed thoughtfully and head butted him, knocking him back several steps.

  It was easy to forget how strong animals were when he wasn't one.

  "Very funny."

  Nothing was going according to plan. Once Colby had been snatched outside a Las Vegas rodeo venue and taken to one of the abandoned ranches in the desert, they'd been keeping an eye out for anyone offering promotional contracts or any other inducement to meet after the event ended and before heading out of town.

  Nobody had contacted Holden, and he'd been counting on it. The whole clan had separated, leaving Holden prime snatch-and-grab material. Jacob was purposefully AWOL from this performance, to make it look like Holden had zero backup. Eddie and Colby were riding in a rodeo in Northern California, and Owen's wife Marybeth had just had their first child – he was definitely AWOL if one didn't count the 99 texts an hour all bearing pictures of the cub. He'd have his hands full – the child was a child except when hungry or frustrated or wet or – well, bear.

  With the rest of the clan – his backup – somewhere else, the field was wide open for anyone who wanted to snatch a tall, rangy, copper-haired guy with liquid golden eyes. He, Holden Tyrell, was the lone bear on the scene at this show as far as anyone watching knew. Jacob knew about the plan and was backup at a distance. Eddie knew about the plan and thought it damned stupid but he was in California. Not much he could do about it.

  The plan was simple: For Holden to get himself caught, then Jacob would come after him. They'd find out who the hell was behind the disappearances, at least the ones operating outside events.

  No offers though. No one wanted to meet with him outside the performance. No one even pretended to.

  He felt like a wallflower.

  A year had passed since he'd started looking into the disappearances. Back then he was researching obviously, finding out everything he could about anyone who was said to have vanished. He'd found a couple and made some interesting enemies among men who were ducking out on child support and one set of dealers selling speed. He'd uncovered one cowboy out on a drunk who didn't even know anyone considered him missing.

  He'd only found one missing bear, though, and the man was so rattled and drugged he couldn't tell anyone anything. Something had happened during his kidnapping and he woke up in Bishop, California, with a headache that sounded like the one Holden had now.

  Seriously, if the headache didn't stop it wasn't going to matter if he never got kidnapped. His head would just explode and the haters would have one less bear to hate.

  "Boss?"

  Holden turned. Fight or flight was already bringing up ursine chemicals in his blood. He forced himself to take a breath. If he turned before they had a chance to grab him –

  Wasn't them anyway. Just one of the stable workers. Big guy with a still healing scar on one side of his face. Holden had asked him – Terry? Terrance? Jeff? Sucked at names – and the guy said bar fight.

  Paranoia said bear claw.

  Probably not. Holden was just – paranoid.

  "What's up? Terry, is it?"

  "Dave."

  Holden nodded. Yeah, great at remembering names.

  "There a problem, boss?"

  Holden frowned. All facilities had their own rules. Where riders could be. Where audience could be. Where fans could congregate if they wanted to get autographs or try their luck at going home with somebody.

  But show was over and Holden was the owner of a bunch of the animals here. "Maybe I should ask you that." His fingers curled, threatening to become claws.

  Dave spread his hands. "Just offerin' help if you need it."

  Didn't sound that way. Or look it. The guy was big, muscly in an intimidating way. "Nope, I'm fine. I think there are some trucks over at the loadout could probably use a hand." He didn't look away from the horse, waiting to see what Dave would do.

  Not much, as it turned out. He clicked at the horse, who actively ignored him, prancing away, then ambled back across the arena. "Give a shout if you need me."

  Sure. Point me to the kidnappers, would you?

  Fact was, nobody was planning on attacking him. Time to start his own loadout, then, and on to the closest watering hole. If nothing happened there, face it, probably nothing was going to happen in his vicinity until he got back from the right hand coast.

  "Hey, Honey. Time to pack you and the others up and hightail it." He dusted his hands together and turned. He'd bring the truck round, load the girls, call his brothers and cousins and get ready to get out.

  Long early sunlight came through the arena door. He ambled to it and leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, pulled out his phone and called Jacob. Easier to text, he could let everybody know at once, but Jacob often didn't bother to read texts.

  "Giving up?" Jacob asked. He'd been opposed to the plan on no other grounds than if someone wanted to get kidnapped, it probably wouldn't happen. And maybe a little bit on the grounds that he thought it was a stupid plan with too many variables that could go wrong.

  "Yeah. I'm going to load up and head out. I'll text everybody and tell 'em to stand down. I should be out of here in about two hours."

  "Great," Jacob said. "I'm heading out, then, with Gemma. We're gonna stop in Reno, let her gather some more of her stuff from home and then head to Redding."

  He'd forgotten Jacob and Gemma meant to get in a couple days of honeymoon. They'd still be on this coast, then. "I'll catch you in Philly."

  And that was that. He turned and surveyed the arena. Honey Girl, Cody and Black Bart paced around various parts of the arena. He'd bring the trailer around, load out from here. Quickest way to where the trailer was stored was through the facility itself, down a long dark hallway with dirt floors and stalls on either side, and out the back into the bright light of morning.

  He shoved off the doorframe and headed back inside, watching Honey Girl as he went by, taking a sharp right and heading down the dark hall. The outside door was a good distance off, maybe a hundred yards. Stalls branched off the hallway, and narrow aisles between them led off either side, deeper into the dim. He smelled hay and horses and dirt and sunlight beating on the roof of the facility. He'd just broken into a slow jog when the scream came from down one of those dark aisles.

  Instinct instantly dove Holden down that aisle. From ahead he could hear sounds of a scuffle. He shifted, just enough to supercharge his hearing, little sounds directing him which way to turn without even a second's hesitation.

  Three twists and turns, from horse stalls to tack rooms, and he found them in a maintenance storage area right before a door that would lead outside into the bright summer morning.

  Two guys, big guys, muscle bound and every bit as threatening as the guy named Dave who'd called him "boss" back in the arena. Between them, a girl, golden brown hair, smeared mascara, tears in her eyes. She was screaming again, tearing against their hold, her tank top ripping and her hair coming out of a thick braid as she fought.

  The instant she saw him she shouted. "It's a trap! Run! I'm fine!"

  He didn't hesitate. Of course it was a trap. All his instincts said it was.

  But she wasn't fine. Her cheek bloomed with a handprint where someone had hit her, hard, and her clothes were torn and the men weren't going to stop once Holden was either down or had run. She didn't think she was in trouble, but Holden did.

  As for Holden himself being in trouble, he knew that. The second he'd seen the girl surrounded by guys big enough to have picked her up and thrown her over a shoulder but who were still figh
ting her? He'd known right then it was a trap. They were waiting for him to come.

  Didn't change that he had to help. He was already shifting, all the way, teeth and claws and raw power.

  The men holding the girl were waiting for something. They continued to fight with the girl, never quite overpowering her, but they hadn't moved toward Holden and they weren't pulling away and running off even though there was an aisle they could take.

  They both looked like the jackass from the arena.

  Just that fast he realized they probably were the same as the jackass from the arena and where was he, anyway?

  Holden spun, just a second too late.

  Dave was behind him. Not close enough to be grabbed. Not close enough that Holden's wild swipe with one clawed, enormous paw was able to connect.

  Close enough to sink the tranquilizer dart solidly into Holden's thigh as he turned and started to charge.

  He wasn't bear yet. He was still half human. The drug, formulated for bear, hit him hard. His heartbeat doubled, tripled and threatened to flat line as the world went dark, spun in a nauseating blur and dropped him to the dusty dirt floor at Dave's feet.

  He heard someone laugh and then everything was dark.

  When he woke, he was in a cell. And the girl was with him.

  Holden scrambled up to his feet fast. He'd been laying on a bale of hay, nothing else. Around him metal bars created a cage of sorts. Not a cell after all, because the cage wasn't attached to anything. Should be something he could tear his way out of, except the bottom of the cage was complete – square metal bars underfoot.

  The cage itself was inside some structure. Overhead old fashioned florescent lights of the blinding variety focused down on them. The ceiling, walls and floor were all concrete. That suggested underground or basement to Holden.

  Across from the cell a window was set high on the wall, small and oblong. Sunlight angled through it and fell a few feet from the cage. The window didn't offer any information at all as to where he was. It could face any direction. It could be any time of day.

  No idea how long he'd been out. But he wasn't alone.

  The girl sat across from him, her hair back in a braid that looked like she'd done it without aid of a mirror. She had scratches on her arms, and a black eye starting on the left side where the handprint had marked her face. One of the straps of her tank top was torn, hanging down in font, exposing the lacy black bra on the right side.

  As soon as he was up, Holden's head began to throb and the world spun. He grabbed hold of the bars to keep himself upright. That was automatic, the need not to show weakness. Automatic, and pointless. There was no one else in the big empty room, just featureless walls, concrete floor, the overhead lights, huge doors he bet were locked. And the cage, with them in it.

  He didn't want to show that he was powerless in front of the girl, either. She might be more than a pawn in the events. She might be actively dangerous. But whoever had put him n the cage had already seen Holden out cold. The girl had shared his cage while he was unconscious. Didn't get much more powerless than that.

  No food, no facilities. There was a plastic gallon jug of water.

  He still faced out into the room, his eyes scanning for anything that might help. His roommate he'd taken in with one glance. The girl from the arena facility, she was beautiful, with big dark eyes and that thick hair the color of a lion's mane.

  He hadn't bothered to look again because she wasn't the point.

  Except. She was. He'd known she was a trap the minute he saw the tableau. The idea that whoever was taking shifters was willing to use innocents in the process didn't surprise him.

  No proof she was innocent. How long had robberies been committed by people playing at being broken down on the highway?

  What surprised Holden was that she'd warned him. She'd tried to help him by shouting him away.

  He still hadn't turned back when she spoke from behind him, sounding cross. "What part of I'm fine and run did you not understand?"

  Holden turned back, trying to quell his surprise. "You're welcome for my coming to your aid." Jeez, what kind of bitch doesn't even notice the nobler instincts?

  The kind who gets you trapped in a cage.

  What if trying to warn him off was part of the act? What if far from being an innocent pawn she was a plant? A spy?

  Only, a spy for what? They already had him. Theoretically his captors now believed that whatever they wanted from him they could get. People who stuck other people in cages didn't seem the kind to go all tenderhearted at the idea of torture.

  What they'd torture him for was a good question, but the thought alone was enough to cause heat to rise along his spine. His hands thickened and his senses began to heighten. He fought the shift. There was nothing to battle here. Locking the girl in a cage with an enraged bear wouldn't help anyone. His captors may even have left her in the cage with Holden to keep Holden from shifting for fear of hurting her.

  If that were true, even if she was part of the plan, she wasn't a valued member of team anti shifter.

  He believed the girl was as much a victim as he was.

  Only he wasn't a victim. Wrong place wrong time. And since he'd been trying to get caught, right place right time.

  He turned around and looked at her. She'd tucked the ragged shoulder strips of the tank top under her bra strap, weaving them in and out so they'd stay there. The braid was a mess, bits of hair escaping, and her bruised eye looked bloodshot. The makeup she'd been wearing was rubbed off or, in the case of her mascara, smeared.

  She was amazingly beautiful. Luminous, fey, otherworldly, and any other word he could think of that would make the rest of the clan snort laughter at him.

  Yeah, well, the rest of the clan wasn't here.

  "What's your story?" he asked. "You don't have enough sense to let someone help you when three thugs are tearing your clothes off?"

  She made an inelegant sound and rolled her eyes. "Dude, I was a part of it. It's not like they were going to – "

  He interrupted her by nodding. "It's exactly like they were going to. They were enjoying themselves. And then there's – " He nodded at her and indicated his own face.

  She touched her cheek tentatively and winced. "We've done this a whole bunch of times. They just got carried away." She glared at him and said unconvincingly, "I was fine. I was trying to get you out of there. If you'd run, you could have gone to the police."

  He saw what she'd just said hit her eyes and she shut her lips tight.

  "Yeah, you and I both know cops respond to shifter in distress calls with great haste." Even through his boots the square bars on the bottom of the cage were uncomfortable. He sat back down on the hay. "Why did you warn me?"

  Her expression was sour. "I was trying to stop it this time." She waved a hand as if he'd said something she wanted to dismiss. "Not just send you away. I was trying to get a photo or a recording or both. Then I could go to – "

  "The police, provided they're not in the pockets of whoever this is?" He'd seen that knowledge hit her.

  She knew he knew she didn't trust the police either. She gave him a sour look that accused him of treating her like an idiot. "I was going to go to the FBI."

  When he raised his eyebrows, she nodded. "It's interstate. Bears are taken – all over." She swallowed hard and Holden wondered what condition they were in when they were taken.

  He thought he knew. And even though he'd gotten himself into this on purpose, and even though he had a burner phone tucked into the boots he still wore – and even though he was a bear – for the first time he swallowed over bile and fear.