by Lauren Esker
Her lips quivered, then firmed in a little smile. "I guess that's true."
"I promise it's true. You're brave and strong, Casey. You can get through this."
"Thanks," she whispered. "Thanks for not giving up on me."
Jack twitched his wrist, rattling the chain. "No choice," he said, and offered her a slight smile, just a sideways quirk of his mouth. "We're stuck with each other."
***
She felt better after talking to Jack about it. Cleaner, like the air between them was washed fresh and there was nothing to hide anymore. She knew his secrets, and he knew hers.
Until now, she hadn't realized what a haze she'd been in. She'd been drifting along in a frightened fog ever since waking up with handcuffs on her wrist, and now she felt a lot more grounded in her skin. She was scared, but she was also ready to fight. Fuck Roger Fallon and his whole murderous pride. She might be outnumbered and hunted, but she wasn't about to go down without a fight.
She and Jack worked their way downstream. In some ways, walking in the stream was easier than hiking through the forest—there were fewer obstacles and thornbushes to deal with. However, the rocks were slippery under her bare feet, and she had to step carefully to avoid cutting herself. Sometimes they paused and stood on first one leg, then the other, warming their cold feet against their bare thighs.
"Duck," Jack said, pulling her down before her head brushed against an overhanging branch. "We need to avoid touching anything if we can. They'll be able to pick up our scent from the vegetation, too."
"How much will this really help?" she asked, carefully going lower than necessary to make sure no part of her came in contact with the tree. "They'll still be able to find where we went into the water, won't they?"
"Yes, but they won't know where we came out. They'll have to scour both sides of the stream, and it'll slow them down."
"Then you're planning on getting out of the water?" Soon, she hoped. She was still too chilly; the cool water that had felt so nice at first was making her feet almost too numb to safely walk on.
"When I find the right place."
"What's the right place?" She leaned to the side to avoid another low-hanging branch.
"Someplace I can set traps," Jack said. "It's time to stop being the prey and go on the offensive."
"But we have nothing to make traps with."
"Sure we do." He touched his forehead, and flashed her a quick smile. "The most important tool of all, remember?"
"Our brains."
"Right."
They came to another little waterfall. Jack stepped down first, then turned around and let her use his hand for support in stepping down.
"So what sort of traps can you set without any tools?" she asked as they settled back into their usual traveling pattern with Jack in front and Casey just behind him, holding his hand.
Jack was scanning the banks alertly; if he'd had animal ears, they would be pricked. "Oh, all kinds of things," he said without lapsing in his vigilance. "A spear is really just a sharp stick, after all. A rock is even simpler, and it can bash in somebody's head. All you need to make a sling is a rock and some kind of strap. You can make pit traps, deadfalls, or set up an avalanche without needing a lot of special tools."
"Wow." Casey looked around with new appreciation. Suddenly the world was full of weapons, just like he said. That rock there was just big enough to fit in her hand. That dead branch could be wielded like a club.
It felt eerily like a new world had opened up to her—one she wasn't sure she liked. As a lynx, of course, she was a predator, but she'd never really ... well ... predated, at least not on anything larger than mice and squirrels. She'd lived in cities all her life, first in Portland and then in Seattle. Her usual prowling grounds in her shifted form were city parks or nearby rec areas.
But this felt like opening a door to her animal nature that she could never close.
It's Roger Fallon who did this, she reminded herself. He's the one who drove you to this. Everything you have to do here is simply to survive.
And what about Jack? Her gaze returned to his bare back, to the shift and flex of muscles under his scarred, tattooed skin as he navigated the rocky channel of the creek with surefooted agility.
Jack always lived in this world of danger and violence and animal instincts. He navigated it as easily as breathing.
Could she ever be fully comfortable with that?
And why did it matter?
It matters because no one has ever looked at you like he does, she told herself. Why try to hide it? She could be honest with herself, at least. In the way he looked at her, she saw a fragile thread of hope that maybe she wouldn't have to be quite so alone.
Despite leading a relatively isolated life, she'd never been truly lonely until the last couple of years. But now it seemed that everyone she'd loved had been systematically taken away from her. First her parents, then her grandmother, then Wendy.
For the last two years, she hadn't dared get close to anyone at Fallon's company, for fear of accidentally letting something slip about her self-appointed undercover mission. And she didn't have time to make friends outside the company. She'd been completely and utterly alone, surrounded by people she didn't dare let in.
And it had been a brutal reminder of just how alone she was outside the company, too. She had no family except for a handful of distant relatives she hardly knew. Wendy had been her only close friend. She'd had a few casual boyfriends over the years, but nothing had ever come of it; most of them weren't shifters, so she couldn't share the most important part of her life with them. And for the last two years, she hadn't even had time for that.
Jack was the first person she'd felt a connection to since she lost Wendy.
And yet, she'd known him for less than a day. Could this fragile, tenuous bond survive back in civilization, when they weren't forced to spend their every waking moment together?
She'd never even asked if he had a girlfriend.
If Wendy were here, if Wendy were still alive, she'd probably laugh her deep, throaty laugh and say, You're getting ahead of yourself, girl. First things first. You can fret about whether the cute boy—check that: the big, dangerous, tattooed boy—likes you when you're home and safe, and aren't being hunted by lions.
Good advice, pseudo-Wendy, Casey thought, and she almost smiled. It was the first time she'd thought of Wendy in two years without wanting to cry.
Somehow, having Wendy's fate confirmed, in an oblique kind of way, made the loss easier to bear. At least there was no longer the terrible uncertainty and fear that the problem was in her, that everyone else was right and Wendy had moved away without telling her. That she was only deluding herself to keep from having to admit her best friend in the world had abandoned her.
But no, she'd been right all along. It was a terrible kind of satisfaction, but it came along with a rush of bone-deep relief. She wasn't crazy, she wasn't deluded, she wasn't wasting her life on a fool's quest.
She'd told Jack the truth about her mission to bring Wendy's killers to justice, and he'd said she was brave.
We can do this. Jack's friends and his partner are looking for us. Fallon picked on the wrong shifter this time. All we have to do is stay ahead of them until they can get here—
She was torn from her musing by a deep, booming roar.
It shivered the air, reverberating down the ravine. Casey had never heard a lion roar before, but she recognized it as soon as she heard it.
"Oh God," she whispered fervently as the echoes died away. "Oh God. How far away was that?"
"It wasn't right on top of us, even though it sounds like it," Jack reassured her, but he was whispering, too. "Maybe a couple of miles."
"We should run." Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it would pound out of her chest.
"No. That's what they want. You've hunted as a lynx, haven't you? Panicked prey gets careless. That's exactly what we can't let ourselves do."
But she didn't object
when Jack hustled them to a faster pace. The creek was wider here, the banks less steep and further apart. This allowed more sunlight to get down to them, dappling the water and warming Casey's shoulders. But it also meant they were more exposed. And she felt very exposed. The back of her neck itched; the hairs prickled on her arms.
Without warning, Jack stopped and she almost bumped into him. "What?" she asked, heart pounding.
He crouched and plunged his hands into the water almost up to the elbows, dragging Casey's arm along for the ride. Through the clear water, she saw what he'd seen: a big chunk of waterlogged wood, polished by ancient floods and half-buried in rocks. She helped Jack pry it out. It was a hefty log, bigger around than Jack's wrist and about three feet long. One end was crudely sharpened as if a kid had tried to whittle a toy spear. It came to a pretty good point.
"Now we're armed," Jack said with a fierce grin.
"Did the water do this?" Casey asked.
"No. Beavers. Look." He pointed up the bank. It took Casey a minute to figure out what he was pointing at—she was looking for beavers, but didn't see any. Then she noticed a scattering of stumps among the trees where beavers had nibbled them off, leaving stumps that tapered to sharp upright points.
"How nice of them. Thank you, beavers! Do you think you can actually spear something with that?"
"With enough strength behind it." Jack's voice rumbled in something that was almost a growl.
"I'd feel better if I had something too. Do you think you could find a beaver spear for me?"
He didn't, but a few steps farther along he located a hefty chunk of fallen deadwood that fit in her hands well. She tried a couple of experimental swings. Her first try went wild; her second almost clocked Jack in the head. He caught it before it could hit him.
"Sorry."
"With the cuffs on, we're going to get in each other's way. We need to account for that. Are you right- or left-handed?"
"Right," she said.
"Me too. Which means my left is the one I have to work with. You get to use your dominant hand." Jack clasped their cuffed hands together again, and pushed her behind him. "Put your back to mine."
This, she could see, would work much better. She was shorter, but with their bare backs pressed together, she had a full half-circle to swing her club without hitting him. She assumed Jack had his spear in a ready position behind her; she felt his elbow jostle against her side. And they could see in every direction. She kept scanning the woods like Jack had been doing, her lynx instincts coming to the fore.
"How's it feel?" Jack asked.
"Like I'm ready to take out a lion." Actually, she was so nervous she felt sick, but she was willing to try the false-bravado thing and see if it helped.
"If we get attacked, we need to fall into this position automatically. It's the best way to cover our backs and keep from hitting each other by accident." Jack took a couple of sideways steps, so they were both facing forward again. "Okay, we're going to start walking, and when I say 'now', we both stop and I'll turn around to face behind us."
"Why not me?" she asked. Her heart was tripping rapidly again.
"Because if it comes, it'll probably come from behind. You cover my back while I try to stab it."
She swallowed. "Okay."
On their first try, she didn't stop in time and yanked him off balance. On their second, they got their legs tangled together. The third time, though, they fell into position as if they'd been practicing for years. Casey swung her club, letting the momentum carry her arm around. Jack was wielding his spear; she could tell by the feeling of his back muscles flexing.
"Like that?" she asked.
"Exactly like that." He swung around to face her, grinning, and squeezed her hand. "You're good at this."
She had to look away from the pride on his face. "I used to daydream about adventure, you know. I wanted to have some kind of job where I helped people by performing acts of heroism, like a cop or a wild-country firefighter."
"Why didn't you?" Jack asked. "I think you'd be good at it."
She darted a quick glance up at his face to see if he was making fun of her. "Seriously, do I have to spell it out? I mean, look at me, Jack. I'm ... I'm fat. I don't think firefighters want a short, pudgy girl on their crew."
In everyday life, she dressed to downplay her lack of a figure, choosing clothing that flattered the better aspects of her body—her ample chest and wide hips. In her present situation, though, all those secrets were right out there for the world to see. There wasn't any way he could miss her round belly, her heavy thighs, the little rolls over her hips. No wonder Jack didn't seem distracted by running around naked in the woods with her.
"You're also smart, resilient, and tough." He smiled, and got a tiny, answering smile out of her. "I'm not just trying to build you up, Casey. You've kept it together better than a lot of guys I worked with, you haven't flagged no matter how hard I've pushed the pace, and every time I tell you to do something, you do it cheerfully and well. There's no one I'd rather be handcuffed to in the middle of nowhere."
"Ditto," she admitted in a small voice. "Jack—"
She never got any further.
The only warning was a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye—tawny yellow, very different from the dark greens and grays of the forest. Casey started to turn, and Jack snapped into motion at the same time, swinging around and trying to shield her. She had a clear view of an enormous lion, seeming as big as a house from this vantage, springing onto them from the bank, and then they all went down into the water together.
Chapter Seven
Casey shifted instinctively as they went down into the creek, and suddenly Jack had a snarling, spitting lynx handcuffed to him as well as a lion on top of him. He started to shift himself as he hit the water, adrenaline and battle instinct combining to submerge his rational mind, but the searing pain in his wrist cleared the red haze from his brain and he threw all his willpower into fighting it back down.
The lion was a big male, heavily maned and solidly muscled. Jack tried to struggle out from under both of them. Thank God the creek wasn't more than a foot or two deep, but drowning was still a danger with several hundred pounds of apex predator on top of him. Casey had her teeth latched onto the lion's shoulder, and they thrashed around in a snarling whirl of fur. Jack was whipped around with them, like being caught in the middle of a dogfight—in which he was handcuffed to one of the dogs.
He'd managed to keep hold of his makeshift spear, but he didn't have the leverage to use it properly. All he could do was wield it like a club to fend off the lion. Fortunately, most of the lion's attention was on Casey, which gave Jack the opportunity to score a solid hit in the skull. The lion staggered back, dazed, and Casey lost her grip. Both cats' coats, the lion's tawny one and Casey's brindled fur, were dark with water and splattered with blood. Jack swung the length of wood and cracked it across the lion's face, making it fall back another few steps.
"Casey!" he yelled. "Shift back!" Her weight on the cuffs was holding him down on all fours. He couldn't stand up while she was in her four-legged shape.
Casey shifted. Now he was on his hands and knees in the churning water with a naked, wild-eyed woman. The lion was still recovering, down on its haunches in the water, shaking its head to clear the daze.
"Now we run?" Casey gasped.
"Now we run!"
They ran, splashing through the water, sending up huge waves and cascades of spray. Behind them, the lion roared. The sound was terrifying up close, sending a primal surge of fear racing down Jack's spine from the most primitive part of his hindbrain, the part that still thought it was a tiny rodent-shaped creature hiding from a world filled with predators.
Damn, he wished he could shift! His bear form would have outweighed the lion, and he had it outmatched in the claw department too. He probably couldn't have handled the whole pride by himself, but he could have taken out this advance scout and improved their odds.
Instea
d, all he could do was run, hand in hand with Casey. There was no time to stop and find out if she was all right. For that matter, a searing pain across his ribs let him know that he wasn't okay himself. But it wasn't slowing him down, and that was all that mattered now.
They pounded through the water. Gravity helped; the creek was still flowing downhill, and they leaped and scrambled over boulders. No time to worry about rocks bruising and cutting up their bare feet. They couldn't hope to outrun the lion, but they could put some distance between themselves and him, to hopefully ... well ... Jack didn't know, but maybe he could come up with something if he could get a chance.
The sound of rushing water got suddenly louder, enough to be heard over the tremendous splashing they were making, and they stumbled into the confluence between their creek and another one. Coming down from the hills, the two creeks met in a V shape. Jack looked ahead and his heart sank. The beavers who had made his spear had been even busier here.
He and Casey were at the upper end of a series of beaver lakes, stair-stepping down the valley like terraces on an ancient field. Most of it was lost to the blue and green blur of distance, but he could tell at a glance that they couldn't keep running through that. The water got too deep, and the bottom of the lakes would be nothing but mud.
The crack of a beaver tail echoed through the valley as one alarmed beaver, finally noticing the danger, alerting its buddies. Jack turned his head and caught a blurry glimpse of the most terrifying sight he'd ever seen—an enraged lion bounding down the creek after them. It was covering fifteen or twenty feet at a bound, throwing up a huge cloud of spray every time it landed.
"Jack!" Casey gasped.
"I know!"
He left the water and scrambled up the hillside, herding Casey in front of him as well as the handcuffs allowed him to do. The beavers had nearly deforested this patch of hillside. Aside from a few bigger trees, nothing remained but knee-high, pointy stumps, sticking up through the brush like a forest of sharpened pencil ends. Jack used them for support as he and Casey climbed, propelling himself from one to another.
