Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  “What do you mean?” Tamara re-bagged some of the grocery items and distributed them with such items as the cereal and crunchy snacks for Dustin, Alka-Seltzer and hot rod mags for Tony, and a big-ass bottle of extra-strength Tylenol for the lock-picking bear, whose name, they’d learned, was Paul. He grabbed the bag, sighing, and clutched the handles between his bandaged hands. His human hands were fine more or less…just completely missing their nails.

  Astrid took a seat at the desk and lifted her long hair free from her neck. A bead of perspiration formed on her forehead, and Tamara determined that it must be hot in that part of the bunker, although she couldn’t feel it. Clues were there, though, from the way Tony lie very still on his cot, moving as few muscles as possible as he stared at the shared television, and from the sweat stains forming at the underarms of Dustin’s Dickies shirt. Maybe the heat was a good thing, though. Maybe it would slow them down a bit should they decide to stage another escape attempt.

  “We got a lead last night on Fabian’s location.”

  Tamara perked up, her spirit high for the first time in an hour. “That’s fabulous news.”

  “Yes. But because things are so complicated right now—”

  “I get it. Sarah can’t travel, and Felipe won’t leave Sarah for longer than a day.”

  Astrid nodded. “Shitty situation for him. His own twin, right? Should be him on the hunt with Sarah because she’s the best tracker out of all of us, but fortunately they’ve got backup.”

  “Us.”

  “Mm-hmm. They think he’s being held somewhere out in the Badlands.”

  “What?”

  “We got a lead from someone in the circus who’s ready to defect. Jacques and company have been hiding out in South Dakota for a while, off the grid. Law enforcement agencies from a number of states and smaller jurisdictions are on the hunt for the guy and some of his crew, so they’re pulling the same trick those Old West bandits used to and are hiding out in the most inhospitable place they could find. Seems they’ve been using a couple of camps in particular, and we have a pretty good idea of which one Fabian might be in. He’s still in and out of consciousness, but at least we know he’s alive.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  Astrid blew out a long breath and cast her gaze to the low ceiling. “We don’t want to push our luck in case they decide to move on, so two days from now at the latest.”

  “Shit. Can Maria sub for you here?”

  “She’s tied up.”

  “With what?”

  Astrid shook her head.

  “You should know. She’s your partner.”

  “I would know, but we got our orders back-to-back. I already had one foot out the door with my keys held out when Dana started in on Maria. Touch base with Dana. See what she had in mind.”

  “We’re running out of options.”

  “I know. Seemed like this time last year, the five of us were getting in each other’s ways all the time. Always seemed like five was too many Shrews, and now it doesn’t feel like enough sometimes.”

  Tamara rubbed her tired eyes with the heels of her palms and sighed. “Not like we can start a recruitment drive. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  “Yeah. So, tell me what I need to do.”

  Bryan, who’d been changing Paul’s bandages, joined the conference. “We’re going to hit a couple of Gene’s remaining enforcers tomorrow. I’m having to amp up my plan a bit because there are too many people coming and going in the territory, and news travels too fast. I’m assuming my sister is safe because she hasn’t told our parents otherwise, but she wouldn’t pass on any news beyond that. I do have some new intelligence on Gene a couple of Bears passed on to my contact.”

  He extracted the envelope the cashier had given him earlier from his pocket and withdrew a few sheets of hastily scribbled notes and maps.

  “When I asked for the information, they didn’t know what I needed it for, but I suspect they gave it because they’re hoping for a mutiny.”

  “Made-Bears?” Tamara asked.

  “Yeah. Like I was telling you before, there are a number that were turned against their wills. In the wrong place at the right time. Drug deals gone bad, and things like that. In at least one case, Gene turned a guy because the guy owned Gene money.”

  Cracking cartilage made Tamara and Bryan both turn their gazes to Astrid popping her knuckles.

  “Oh, that fucking burns me up,” she said. “Doesn’t it bother you, Tamara? Considering what happened to us?”

  Tamara hadn’t really given it any thought, but now that that Astrid had brought it to her attention, she couldn’t ignore the similarities. In their case, the rapacious entity had been Big Pharma. With the Bears, it’d been a megalomaniac named Gene who had a penchant for silver blades and bloodletting. “It does bother me.”

  “You take ’im down, Bryan,” Astrid said, propping her sneaker-clad feet atop the desk. “Whatever happens, whatever fall-out there is, I’ll help you clean it up when I get back.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I have a sickness. I’m a sucker for the underdog.”

  “How about under-Bear?” Dustin called out from his cot. “I’m okay with being on the bottom.”

  Astrid cracked her knuckles again, and this time Tamara pulled Bryan to the corridor before Dustin could flap his stupid trap once more. The guy was growing on her. She really didn’t want to see him getting beat up by an ex-law student and lover of purple gel pens and rainbow-striped knee-high socks.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The way Tamara watched Bryan undress made him feel like an exotic animal behind a glass enclosure. She was riveted, her stare moving wherever his fingers did, transfixed on snatches of skin she’d already seen several times before.

  “You look at me like I’m your last meal,” he said, grinning.

  “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been otherwise distracted the last couple of times you took your clothes off in front of me.” She drew her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. There on the hastily made bed, curled into that upright ball, she looked small. Defenseless. Although he knew better, there went that association again—that she was someone he and his bear needed to take care of. Keep things from.

  And maybe that was his in. Perhaps cutting her out of the loop was the exact thing he needed to rile her up and bring her bear to the mouth of its cave. Not now, though.

  Hooking his thumbs into the elastic of his shorts, he waited for some sort of permission from Tamara, although he didn’t really need it. Bears didn’t typically wear clothes, so Bryan had never been bashful about nudity. He was sharing space with a woman who hadn’t grown up running naked in the woods before shifting, so her comfort level was probably out of sync with his own.

  Yet another reason he was glad she wasn’t a shifting Bear. The thought of others ogling those pert breasts or that lush rear end of hers elicited a sort of rage in him he was usually far more successful at tamping down. This was his mate, though she didn’t know it yet. He’d never be completely rational when it came to her. He’d always be rash. Distracted.

  But, she’d be safe. That was what mattered.

  “Off or on?” he asked, and her gaze trailed up his naked torso to the lips he maneuvered into a smirk.

  Her lips twitched. It wasn’t laughter she was suppressing behind them, but the movement of her quaking jaws. Chattering teeth again.

  Fuck.

  “Wha-what are you thinking about for your a-adrenaline to sp-spike so quickly?”

  He crawled onto the bed, and pulled her beneath the covers. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do, but I’m too tired to press.” She rolled over so her backside fit against his crotch.

  Why can’t I just bite her now and get it over with?

  Her grandmother had been asleep, and yet her bear got angry. Why was it so much harder to rouse Tamara’s bear? It was if she and her bear were in direct opposition
. One agitated whereas the other was calm to a fault.

  And what would happen once he did rouse her bear? Was he really so certain she’d want him for longer than this case would last? Maybe once the mess in the mountains was all cleaned up, she’d flip him off with a “See ya, sucker,” and be on her way back to Durham without so much as a promise to call.

  Maybe she’d be angry he woke some part of her that would otherwise never have had a platform. This was his fault. He should never have solicited her help. Sure as shit shouldn’t have let the bear in his head go unleashed long enough for him to bite her.

  “You’re growling,” she said groggily.

  “Sorry.” He held her tighter, and lifted her tank top’s hem, grazing his palms up her flat belly. What was done was done. Maybe he’d made a mess of things, but he wouldn’t change it. He wanted her as badly as he wanted his heart to keep beating. Needed her like the next breath he’d take.

  “Sorry,” he repeated, and this time it wasn’t about the growling. It was for everything that would come next that would bring her pain at his hands.

  ___

  “Gene’s Bears avoid wakefulness during this part of the day the way vampires avoid the sun,” Bryan said. He slumped a little lower in the driver’s seat and rubbed his eyes. “And don’t tell me there’s no such thing as vampires. If anomalies like you can exist, so can they.”

  “Fair enough.” Tamara couldn’t blame the Bears. She’d been sleeping so well, dancing in and out of Bryan’s dreams and held firm in his embrace. Her plan wouldn’t have been to roll her ass out of bed, either, but Bryan swore there was a method to his madness.

  She’d gotten up, dressed, wedged her knife into her boot, and held out her hand for the travel mug of coffee Bryan had perked in the cabin’s old machine. It tasted of acid and disintegrating plastic, but she didn’t care because it was hot and charged with enough caffeine it could have roused Sleeping Beauty herself.

  Hopefully, it’d keep her on her toes until lunchtime, which Bryan had already warned would be a long time coming.

  “How close do you want me to get?” Tamara asked, her hand already on the door handle.

  Bryan blew a breath through parted lips and raked a hand through his uncombed hair before mashing his baseball cap down to his brow. “How close do you have to get?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Obviously walls don’t bother you.”

  “No.”

  “Can you try from outside?”

  “I’ll try, and I’ll see if I can maneuver him through the front door.”

  “Okay. I’ll be waiting with the tailgate open and chains ready. Let’s just hope Eddie’s not snuggling with his catch of the day, and she doesn’t wake up to see where he’s going.”

  “How likely is it that he’s under the influence of something?”

  “He doesn’t do drugs as far as I know, but he’s a mean drunk. At this point, he would have only been asleep for a couple of hours, so if he was drinking last night, he might wake up mad. He’s going to have a hell of a hangover after this.”

  A hangover or worse if Tamara’s control of Eddie’s dream slipped, and he woke up as she tried to walk him. If he woke up swinging, she’d have to suppress him by any means necessary. They couldn’t afford having Eddie try to shift into a bear in a residential area, so she’d have to lay him out before he even tried that tactic.

  Bryan tipped the brim of his hat up and locked his gaze on hers. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  You’re one to talk.

  She picked her way through the overgrown grass at the side of the small, single-story house, and stood on tiptoes at one of the side windows. Most of these little two-bedroom houses of a certain age had the same floor plan, more or less, so if Eddie were in a bedroom, there’d only be a couple of access points.

  Dana regularly shared this sort of knowledge with the Shrews. She called it “continuing education.” During their now infrequent meetings, Tamara had always sighed heavily when Dana queued up her laptop and PowerPoint slides. But, in the three years of Shrew & Company’s existence, they’d seen a lot of crazy shit. Tamara knew Dana wasn’t the kind of woman to say “I told you so,” but she could have righteously. The part of her job she took most seriously was making sure her girls had the information they needed to make good decisions…especially Tamara. The other women sometimes called her Baby Shrew, which chafed her a bit at almost twenty-five. But, the name had suited her as a woman of twenty-one.

  “You’re wild, girl,” Dana had said on that day she checked Tamara out of her rehabilitation facility.

  Tamara hadn’t known who she was, but when Dana had dropped the release paperwork atop Tamara’s thighs as she lie in her hospital bed, Tamara had signed the forms. She was afraid not to, because after months of being poked and prodded, forced to re-learn how to stand and walk and make fists, Dana was the first person who hadn’t treated her as pitiful. Even Tamara’s parents had coddled her. They’d hovered by her bedside for months, speaking the same platitudes over and over, and promising to get her whatever she wanted when her body finished mending. Anything to cheer her up. But, she wouldn’t be cheered.

  That hadn’t been what she needed, anyway. She needed to do for herself—to put the right kinds of stress on her changed body and let it heal from the inside out.

  Dana and Doc had ripped her out of that facility, and Tamara would have sworn the staff was happy to see her being wheeled out by this savvy new sister of hers. Tamara knew what the staff called her when they thought she couldn’t hear. But, she was a mutant now. Of course she could hear.

  “The horrible one,” they’d whispered. And she’d said nothing, because deep down inside, she’d believed it was true. Wasn’t that why her lover had snuck her into that drug trial? Because she was a horrible girlfriend. Her tongue was too sharp, and far too often, she told him no.

  While Doc had buckled Tamara into the backseat of Dana’s SUV, Dana, leaning on the cane she still used at that time, had locked gazes with Tamara and said, “You were the last one left for me to claim. Me, you, and three others in this clique. That’s it. You’re going to hate me for a while, and hate your parents, too, for asking me to take you. They didn’t know what else to do.”

  Doc had shut the door. And Dana had been right. Tamara had hated her for months, and her parents, too, for giving up on her. For disappearing on those nights when she needed someone to yell at.

  It dawned on her that for her to be the type to hold grudges for so long, she sure did have a lot of apologies to make herself.

  She took a deep, bracing breath, and focused on the task at hand.

  Looking left, right, and behind her, she scanned the wooded lot at the right of the property, and through it to the neighboring property. The house on it was unlit, just like every other home in the vicinity. Blue-collar neighborhood. No neighborhood watch or fancy security systems, save for the shotguns residents probably had propped up near their front doors.

  Dig deeper, Dana would say. What else do you need to know? Make sure you know before you act.

  Pressing her palms against the window, Tamara closed her eyes and tuned into the air around her. Seeking out thoughts and dreams was a bit like walking around in search of a new and unfamiliar scent. She wouldn’t know what she was looking for until she encountered it. And when she did, she’d follow it back to its source and hijack the vessel—the person projecting it. Some folks called what she did dream walking, but no one else had the sort of control she did. Few others had a brain reorganized by catastrophic cellular mutations, either, though.

  There was nothing to be found in the room beyond some animal’s dream of chasing a squirrel. Dog, perhaps. She filed that information away, just in case it was a big dog. She had no fear of the beasts, but one could certainly get in the way if this situation went wild. A guy like Eddie G. would probably have a pit bull or two. They seemed to be the breed of choice amongst Gene’s Bears.

  Padding around to t
he back, she stepped over discarded tires filled with stagnant water, and other detritus. She muttered under her breath and cursed her lack of a flashlight. Just her luck, there’d be a snake or some other vicious beast waiting for her to take one small misstep. Shrews seemed to be immune to venom, but that didn’t mean the bite wouldn’t hurt.

  She paused at the left rear corner, and tuned in again with her eyes closed.

  Two dreams. Separate, but practically entwined because of proximity.

  Shit.

  Pressing her palms against her temples, she paced.

  A year ago, she might have drawn both people out while trying to get at only one. She’d been the kind of woman who’d make broad strokes, unconcerned with finesse because she could probably take down two or three untrained fighters on her own. Yeah, she’d probably walk away from the fray with a bruise or two, but she’d get the job done, and Dana always cleaned up the messes.

  Well, sometime in the past year, one of her best friends got knocked up, then shot, and suddenly, Tamara became very concerned with minimizing collateral damage. If she could paint with fine strokes instead of the broad ones she was used to, there’d be less mess to clean up when the painting was done. Sometime in the past year, she’d grown up.

  “Okay.” Blowing out a breath, she leaned against the window screen and projected her dream-self into the room, into the slumbering woman’s dream.

  Tamara planted a seed. A simple, but effective ruse.

  The woman pushed her lover’s arm off her hip, and rolled over, believing he was getting up to take a piss.

  Tamara waited until the woman fell back into a deep slumber, and massaged her dream, putting her in the thick of a fantastical exploration adventure that would have her in thrall for at least twenty minutes.

  Tamara turned her attention to the other dreamer, and immediately upon settling into his thoughts, bile rose in her throat. She shook her head, wiping her hands on her physical world thighs as if it’d help cleanse her of what she’d seen. “Eddie G., you are a pervert,” she whispered. She gave the sleeping man a mental nudge that made his dream self pull his physical self upright, to his feet, and toward the bedroom door.