by Kyrii Rayne
A line appeared between Darrin's brows as he processed this. “You'd think that with all the screwed-up emphasis on fighting among the Bears, that nobody would notice us limiting ourselves. But... it doesn't change the fact that I'm way easier to take out than the rest of us.”
Anna coughed. “Uh... excuse me, but which 'rest of us' are you talking about? You keep forgetting that while you're having a crisis over your 'lack of power', you're complaining to someone who has no powers. And yeah, I am scared of what happens when we find these guys. But I'm not giving up because of that. There's just no way.”
He blinked at her several times, and then hid whatever he had been planning to say in a big swallow of his coffee. His ears looked a little red.
“And then there's Mark. Once again, totally human, once again, relying solely on his tech and his skills. Just like me. And just like the Hunters.”
Darrin snorted. “The Hunters have numbers. And they don't value anyone's lives, not even their own.”
“You have numbers too. You have friends, allies, people working for you. It's....” she rubbed her cheek a little convulsively. “It's like something in your head is telling you that you're facing all of this alone, with only your own strength to fall back on, when that's a lie.”
His scowl deepened, and he let out a little grunt that almost sounded like a growl before slamming his fist against the table. “Exactly how is it a lie? I might have backup, but the Hunters are equipped to take down guys Jake's caliber in a stand-up fight.”
“So, change how you choose to fight. Like I said before, Esme probably couldn't do more in her shift form than peck somebody's eyes out, or get away. But that doesn't stop her. She uses a big damn sniper rifle, surveillance equipment and a lot of skill at tailing people. You could as well. Hunters expect Bears to rely on brute strength. So do other Bears. So take advantage of that. You're super smart and inventive, you have piles of money, and you have an arsenal. Use them. Stop talking yourself into thinking you'll lose and think about that instead.”
Darrin took a deep breath and sat back from hunkering over his breakfast, sighing thoughtfully. “It's not that I can't see where you're coming from.”
“Then maybe you should listen,” Jake backed her up in a quiet voice. “Dude, neither of us wants to see you strung out on all this crazy shit that is happening. You're the thinker of the group, man, we need you sharp.”
Darrin sagged. “I'm sorry. Everybody's got shit that makes them less than one hundred percent. Anna in danger is yours. Hunters are mine.”
“I'm not sure what more to say to you about this,” Anna admitted. “I mean, right now it's your talents that we're relying on, as much as Mark and Esme's if not more. It's Jake and I who are playing the waiting game and ready to go on what you tell us.”
That seemed to get through to him more than anything. “Well... that's kind of a waiting game for me too, though there are some avenues I haven't tried.”
“Okay, well, let's start there. See if you can't get something on these renegade Bears that can be used to give us an advantage brute strength can't overcome.”
She didn't know how well she was doing with Darrin, but at least he seemed more focused. She just wished that he had someone to shore him up more regularly. She knew the Bears had a lot of faith in the fact that they would each find their mates someday, but here was Darrin, still without anyone. Perhaps that, as much as the loss of his family, was what made him feel so isolated even when surrounded by friends.
She could only hope that fate really was on the side of these big, fuzzy hopeless romantics, and for Darrin as it seemed to have been for her and Jake.
Chapter 5 - Carly
The next few hours blurred past. Anna helped Jake and Darrin check the gear and weapons Darrin had brought, and adjusted her vest straps so that it would fit over her growing belly. Darrin spent half the time either on his phone or on his computer. Half of what the calls talked about, she didn't understand - mostly calls to his investigators and computer experts, who were combing both the Denver streets and the Net for evidence for them. As soon as they talked search or data mining methods, she got lost and had to go focus on something else.
She was considering trying a short nap to clear her head when Darrin sat back suddenly from his computer with a startled expression.
“What the Hell?”
“What is it?”
Jake came over and looked at the screen, and then just blinked in confusion, clearly not understanding what he was seeing. Anna got up from her seat on the couch and walked over as well.
“Someone's broken through the first three levels of security in the system I was hacking. He's nesting in there and pushing out any intrusions while he digs for information.”
“Competition?”
And who could it possibly be who would fight with Darrin over information like this?
“I was hacking into the house system of one of the Renegades. Two of them have vacation homes in the area, and I'm trying to figure out which one the three are meeting at, in case Esme's lead doesn't pan out. Now I'm in the system, only to find everything locked up around me, and passwords being altered to keep me out as fast as I can guess or crack them.”
“Is it someone working for them?”
“If it is, they're behaving awfully strangely. I think it's the other way around, though. I got locked out the moment that I noticed their intervention and tried to see who was logging on and from where. I think whoever this is suspects that I'm the Renegade's IT security guy.”
“Wait, wait,” Jake said in confusion. “So, this is another hacker digging for information on the Renegades? Could he be working for the Hunters?”
“Maybe, though I've never even heard of a Hunter group that was quite that sophisticated.”
“If they were that sophisticated, would they have let anyone at all hear of them?” Anna pointed out, a little uncomfortably.
Darrin swallowed.
“Now there's something I didn't want to think about.” He bent back to his keyboard, typing away rapidly. “Holy crap, whoever they are, they're good. I still don't get their interest, though.”
“Did you get a chance to see which files they decrypted before they locked you out?”
Jake peered at the screen as if the code commands there were some sort of magical script.
“He was in the household e-mail accounts when I stumbled on him. Think he also hit their backup server.” More typing. “Okay, I've got a live one here. Trying to loose a virus onto my system.”
He pressed his lips together and kept working.
“Okay, maybe fighting over the data is not the way to go. Is there any way of finding out who this is?” Anna didn't have much idea herself of what it was that Darrin was rattling away at on his screen, but from his dead-serious and slightly frustrated expression he was having to fight hard against whoever it was.
“I could always ask them,” he replied in a half-sarcastic tone.
“Well...” all right, so, maybe it wasn't part of whatever next-level hacker protocol Darrin and people like him followed, but if he couldn't force the issue, then why not? “I could think of worse ideas.”
He blinked up at her.
“Really? Well... crap, okay.” He shrugged and started a dialog session. “Let me get encryption set up... there. All right then, let's see who we are dealing with.”
Who is this?
You first.
Just diving for information.
Funny coincidence. Me too.
He paused, then kept typing.
What's your interest?
Tracking a disappearance in Vegas.
“Huh, that's weird. One of the renegades who refused to join with these guys is in Vegas.”
Darrin quickly typed a reply.
Might have info on that. Seeking info on an attempted murder in Wyoming.
Wait. Same guy?
He's been busy. He hesitated. You law enforcement?
Hell no. Though
of course you can't tell for sure. :D
Me neither and ditto.
He looked up at them.
“You think I should arrange a meet if this person is local?”
“Wait, whoa.” Jake held up a hand. “That's moving pretty fast. How do we know this isn't a trap?”
“Well, whoever this is, is pretty tight-lipped, barely volunteering anything up front. That says hacker to me more than cop in disguise. Cops throw out bait to catch interest. A Hunter would be doing the same thing.”
He bent back over his keyboard.
I'm local. Looks like we might have a beef with the exact same guy for different reasons.
You suggesting a meet?
Maybe.
Can you do encrypted video?
“Hotel Wi-Fi isn't the greatest, but I think I could manage it.” He looked up at them. “What do you guys think, should we do this?”
It was risky, but for the first time in a day it felt like they might be getting somewhere.
“I say do it,” Anna said finally.
“Me too, I'm in,” Jake agreed.
Darrin got it set up and gave their ‘visitor’ access.
"You guys step out of camera range, I don't want whoever this is knowing all of our faces and voices until I know he's safe.”
“Yeah.” Anna moved back to the couch, fidgeting a little as she went. Please let this work. Mark and Esme had been gone for hours and still had not checked in, and the further they went the more it felt like their leads would go stale on them. She had tried to be patient, but with no way of furthering things, Anna was eager to see something go right.
Jake sat down next to her, the cushions creaking under his bulk, and slipped an arm around her comfortingly. She leaned against him and closed her eyes briefly as she heard Darrin type and a couple of beeps.
“Okay, let's see what our mysterious friend looks like.” Darrin hit another key.
The faint sound of the Rolling Stones came over the speaker suddenly.
“Hey there!” said a young woman's voice cheerfully.
Darrin went silent. Anna looked up and saw him staring at his screen in intrigued surprise. She waved at him; he looked up and blinked dully, then nodded and looked back down, hastily putting on a smile.
“Uh, hi! Sorry, you're not exactly what I was expecting.”
A low chuckle.
“You mean, cause I'm a chick?”
“Yes— um, I mean, no. Uh... kind of?” Darrin seemed strangely flustered suddenly. Jake and Anna looked at each other, and then at him. “Sorry, I'm not making a great impression.” he coughed into his fist. “But yeah, look, it's like I wrote you. We're looking into some guys who engineered having a bunch of lunatics almost kidnap and kill a friend of mine. And this dude you're hacking happens to be one of them.”
“Ugh. Well, that's really fucking creepy, because this exact same guy may have sent someone after a dude that I was keeping tabs on in Vegas.”
Darrin's eyebrows went up.
“No kidding? So he's not just under the radar.”
“Hell no, I'm expecting them to find a body. Which is a damn shame, even if the guy was kind of an asshole.”
Darrin tapped at his keyboard some.
“Hang on, pulling up some notes. You mean Adam Carver, correct?”
“Yeah, that's the name. Multi-billionaire in alternative fuels, had some kind of falling out with these guys about ten days ago, and then suddenly I see these emails flying out to another group I was keeping an eye on. And they just happen to be some fanatic fucking killers, so...”
“Wait, wait. Fanatic killers?”
“Yeah.” The perky, youthful female voice on the other end of the connection went a bit grim and serious, and then paused a moment. “Look. I don't know who the hell you are really, but if you're looking into these guys, you should know that they pretty much eat their own. The guys they sent after this Adam fellow don't take prisoners. I know about their kind a little too well.”
Darrin's eyes narrowed slightly.
“I'm not following.”
“Just a bunch of nuts conducting a modern witch hunt. They killed my best friend in front of me, okay? So take the damn warning. If you're looking into these guys, maybe don't, unless you plan on never making contact.”
Darrin hesitated, looking up at them. Anna shrugged and shook her head at him, not sure what to say.
It sounded like maybe this woman had had a bad run-in with Hunters. But that didn't explain why she was keeping tabs on them, or on the renegade Bears.
“Okay, look, let's go back a little. Names.”
“I don't do names.”
“You want my information on Adam, and these guys we're both looking into, I'm gonna need a name.”
She hesitated. “...You first.”
“Name's Darrin. You can probably guess or research the rest. I've been on the cover of Forbes twice.”
She either already knew, or was very fast with Google, for she paused only a few seconds before asking dubiously, “...The fuck is a tech billionaire doing nosing around on the Internet after guys like these?”
“Like I said, they tried to kill my friend. And besides, I like handling my own work when it's this important.”
“Okay. Well, that's not too bad. Name's Carly. And yeah, to answer your earlier question, I'm local. And maybe we do have an enemy in common, straight up.” She hesitated. “Look, how good is your information?”
“Good enough that I won't trust it even to an encrypted channel.” Darrin's face was dead serious. And well that it would be, because in the end he was talking not just about personal secrets, but about shifter secrets.
Wait, she basically just implied that Hunters killed her best friend. Does that mean that she already.... knows? Anna sat forward a little, and Jake looked at her curiously.
“Something?” he whispered.
“She mentioned her best friend being murdered by Hunters. Maybe she already knows about you guys.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked over at Darrin, who was typing something with an expression that went grimmer by the moment. “Carly, was it? Look. Before this goes any further, I need to know something. Those... fanatics... who killed your friend. Did they ever make it clear why they targeted her?”
“Yes, yes they did. But it's not the kind of thing I would discuss on an open channel either.”
Darrin sat with this assertion for a few moments, then slowly nodded.
“Okay then. Look. I think we do need to get together and compare notes. I have a couple friends with me—”
“What, you're bringing bodyguards?”
“I'm bringing my drinking buddy and his pregnant wife,” he replied in a tone of slightly annoyed reassurance. “Let's hit a steak place, I'll buy.” He managed to put his smile back on, and get a little lightness back into his tone. “You can pour too much beer into me and ask me embarrassing questions.”
Well, this is a weird development. He almost sounded like he was flirting a little. But then again, Darrin was generally more charming than he had to be with women.
“Screw that. Brewpub with a Scotch list. I'll send you the address.” Her tone brooked no disagreement.
Darrin got the address and signed off, then shut his laptop and sat back, looking a little baffled, but intrigued.
“Well, so far she seems on the level. I might be a little biased, though. Damn.”
Jake looked confused for a moment... then slowly cracked a grin.
“Knockout, huh?”
“Hell yeah. Not hard to look at, at all. Not that that's in any way relevant,” he added quickly, glancing at Anna.
She just laughed a little.
“No worries. So we're hitting up a brewpub?”
“No booze for you,” the two men chorused, and Anna just laughed louder.
Chapter 6 - A Flower on the Battlefield
Jake was glad to get out of that hotel room. They had talked to Mark and Esme before leaving, just in case the t
rip to the brewpub turned out to be some kind of weird trap, but he really didn't suspect that. Instead, he just wondered. Who the hell was this Carly hacker person, and what was her interest in shifters and Hunters?
The brewpub had a fake log cabin look to it that looked laughable after the rich full-timber architecture of the Lodge, and made Jake immediately homesick. He had lived in dorms and apartments for years, and had only lived at the Lodge for a few months, but it had still stuck in his head as home. Maybe because he had already put so much work into defending it.
Jake pulled into the parking lot in their rental van, locked up, and went around to help Anna across the icy asphalt.
Darrin led the way, walking fast, a strange eagerness to his gait that made Jake wonder. Exactly how hot was this hacker chick anyway? Or was Darrin just desperate to meet a nerd girl with similar interests? Or...?
No way of knowing. He followed his friend, arm protective around Anna's shoulders as she picked her way along. “He seem a little impatient to you?”
“Yeah, he's been acting weird since he saw Carly's face. I wonder if she looks familiar or something. Or if there's something about her that he's not telling us.”
“Guess we'll find out soon enough.”
Darrin barely remembered to hold the door for them as he pushed his way inside, so Jake stepped forward and grabbed it, pushing it open for both of them.
Inside had even more of that fake hunting-lodge look, including a few threadbare animal heads and a lounge area with antler furniture.
“Holy crap,” Jake scoffed under his breath, but Darrin was too busy looking around at every face at the dim-lit bar. “Hey buddy, what's going on—” he started to ask— and then blinked, because Darrin stopped almost at once and simply stared.
Beside him, Anna tilted her head slightly. The three of them looked at the bar, and after a moment Jake could guess who Darrin was staring at. Okay, so she really was a knockout. Long straight brown hair, olive skin, tall enough to have looked Darrin in the eyes.
