You Had Me at Cougar

by Terry Spear

  She nodded but she didn't shift. She didn't need to. She wasn't going to talk to him in her naked human form when she really didn't have anything to say except thank you. With another cougar, she might have, but not with a male bear she really didn't know.

  Then again, she wanted to warn him there was a coyote den nearby, so he wouldn't disturb them too. She sighed and shifted. "Thanks, a coyote den of pups is over in that direction, just to let you know."

  "Okay, I wondered why a single coyote would have treed you."

  "Did you find your sister?" She arched a brow.

  "Not yet. Did you need an escort home?"

  "No, thanks. I smelled a she-bear had come this way and I was hoping to track her down in case she’s the one you’re looking for. I'm circling way around where the coyote den is to avoid them though. But Chet and I ran into Blue a little bit ago, and he told us you don’t have a sister. You have a brother."

  Jonathon opened his mouth, and then closed it and smiled. “Okay, you caught me. She’s like a sister.”

  “That you want to date.”

  Jonathon smiled again.

  “Okay, what are you doing here?”

  “I smelled her scent also. I’ve been searching for her still.”

  “So am I. I’m looking for her, to learn her story and make sure she’s all right.” Ava hoped she wouldn't need Jonathon’s help with the coyotes after she had turned him down.

  “Okay, maybe we’ll both find her at the same time.”

  She shifted back into her cougar and leaped down from the tree. Then she inclined her head, and took off running, away from the coyotes' den of pups.

  She finally lost the she-bear’s scent at a creek. Jonathon had been right behind her the whole way. She let her breath out in exasperation. She needed to return home and let everyone know so no one would kill the aggressor male coyote by accident, and she needed to update those involved in searching for the she-bear about Jonathon’s comments.

  She headed home and Jonathon watched her for a bit, then he left in the opposite direction. She should have asked him where the bears were from. When she arrived home, she slipped in through the cougar door, shifted and headed for the bathroom to take a shower. She got a call before she could do that and saw it was from Chet and she hoped everything was okay.

  “Hey, missing you. I tried calling earlier,” he said.

  “I was out running as a cougar. And I came across a coyotes’ den and had some issues, but mainly I met up with Jonathon while I was looking for the she-bear.”

  “Without me?”

  She figured he might be upset with her if she mentioned it, worried about her safety. She could handle herself on her own. She told him about what Jonathon had said.

  “Okay, so a guy doesn’t call a woman a sister and then say he’s interested in her.”

  “So you figure he’s been interested in her all along.”

  “I would say that’s a good bet.”

  “All right. Well, I miss you too. How are things going for you on your case?”

  “I just got home so I haven’t had time to investigate the cougar. But I wanted to call you and check on you.”

  And here she was out running as a cougar.

  “As soon as I finish this job, I want to see you again,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You’ll have another job after that.”

  “Probably. But I still want to see you.”

  She chuckled. “We’ll see.”

  “You can always come see me.”

  “You’ll be busy working,” she said.

  “Probably. Well, I’ll let you go. Miss you.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I miss you too.” But she wasn’t going to tell him how much and make it worse for them both.

  “Okay, call me anytime, and…hell, Ava, don’t go out alone. You know some bear’s going to be chasing you because of the premonition you had.”

  She sighed. “Yeah. Good night.”

  “Night, Ava.”

  She stared at her phone. If Chet kept calling her, telling her how much he was missing her and wanted to see her there or here, she wasn’t going to be able to put this all behind her like she thought she might.

  After she took her shower, she called Dan. "Hey, I was out running by the old creek and I came upon a coyote den with pups near the old Calvert Silver Mine. Just a heads-up so you can let everyone know not to run there. Oh, and I ran into Jonathon."

  Chapter 10

  After apprehending the car thief, Jasper Holliday, a sixteen-year-old cougar who had been stealing the cars and selling them, whose parents were done dealing with him, Chet sent Jasper with another agent to Yuma Town to have Jasper incarcerated.

  Dan had told him they’d do a trial with their cougar judge, and Jasper would be sentenced to supervised probation while working at Hal Haverton’s ranch, mucking out horse stalls and such for four years. As a parttime deputy sheriff, Hal did a good job straightening out wayward male teens, of the cougar persuasion. He was fair and expected the work to be done, and he and his family provided the love and support the teens needed. Not to mention their foreman, Ted Weekum, kept them in line.

  Chet was given the mission of chasing down another murderous cougar shifter, this time a suspect by the name of Joe Sharp. He figured he needed to call in reinforcements. Thankfully, he was able to get some help from Yuma Town, though he was surprised Travis and his mate were coming. Bridget hadn't taken on a mission since their twins were born.

  Chet was waiting in the lobby of a hotel in Cody, Wyoming for them. They were due any minute. Then he saw them coming into the hotel and he hurried off the chair to greet them. Of course as soon as he saw them, they reminded him of what he was missing in Yuma Town—being with Ava.

  Chet motioned to the steak restaurant off the lobby. "I've got reservations for dinner at the restaurant."

  “Oh, good,” Travis said, “We’re starving, and I know they have good food here.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I said to meet here.” Chet led them into the restaurant where they took their seats in one of the red vinyl booths. "Joe was spotted seven miles east of Cody, fifty miles east of Yellowstone National Park. But I knew I needed backup assistance this time because the other newly hired agents are gone, working on other cases."

  "You asking for backup is saying a lot," Travis said. "And we're glad to have your back on this one."

  Chet, Bridget, and Travis had worked out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, so all of them were familiar with much of the state and of course working with each other.

  "You know, the first thing I thought of when you mentioned the assignment and coming to Cody was that our two more newly turned cougar brothers in Yuma Town, Ricky and Kolby, are from Cody. Would anyone know of them from here?" Bridget asked.

  Travis smiled. "I asked Ricky before we left. He told me no, but he said he didn’t want us looking anyone up. Mostly because they are cougar shifters now and Cody, Wyoming was their past life. But I suspect the Jones’s brothers hadn’t wanted us to learn of their past shenanigans in the city either," Travis said.

  Chet laughed. He could understand that feeling.

  “I still feel like I’m neglecting the babies,” Bridget said.

  Chet had been afraid of that and that she wouldn't be able to remain focused on the job when she was worried about the kids.

  “Your mom and dad are thrilled to take care of Theo and Phoebe for a couple of weeks. This is the first time you’ve been back to work, and they’ve wanted to take care of them since they moved down from Ely, Minnesota to see more of them anyway. Besides, Benjamin and Bernadette said you could call them night or day to check up on the kids. They’ll be good. But if you’re too worried and don’t want to leave the kids for that long yet, you can fly home or take the car and I'll fly home once this is done." Travis rubbed her back.

  “No, it’s okay. If I don’t do this now, I might never return to work, and I really do want to work again.”

  A pretty, redh
eaded waitress, her name tag saying she was Irena, brought glasses of water and their menus. They smelled her cougar scent and their mouths gaped. She was a cougar shifter like them.

  Irena smiled. “Well, this is a surprise. We don’t get many of our kind passing through here.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know a Kolby and Ricky Jones, would you?” Bridget asked, on the off-chance Irena knew them from the small town. She was just curious.

  “Kolby Jones. Yeah, he and I went to high school together before his father was shot in a hunting accident. It was a real shame. Everyone felt terrible for the family. The mother moved them to Durango, Colorado, the last I heard. A lot of us had a crush on one or the other of the brothers, but their lives where shattered by the death of their father. Their mother couldn’t cope. It was a real tragedy.”

  “Their mother died from a prescription overdose, and they believed she’d committed suicide, unable to live with losing her husband. The brothers were turned and are now living in Yuma Town among more of our kind. Cougars run the town,” Bridget said.

  Irena’s mouth gaped and Bridget read her thoughts. Irena had immediately thought of going to Yuma Town to give them her regrets about them losing their mother. Especially Kolby. “They’re cougars like us?”

  “Yep,” Chet said.

  “Ricky just mated a girlfriend he’d known from here. A Mandy Richards.”

  “Oh, my, she and Ricky were born at the local hospital practically at the same time. My mother helped deliver Mandy while the doctor ran between delivery rooms, trying to catch first one, then the other baby.”

  Bridget laughed.

  “What would you all like to drink?” Irena asked.

  “Caffeinated coffee for me,” Travis said.

  “Coke for me,” Chet said.

  “Tea for me,” Bridget said.

  Irena brought over a pot of coffee and poured a cup for Travis.

  “I’ll get the rest of your drinks.” Then Irena hurried back to the kitchen.

  “It’s a small world, isn’t it?” Travis took another sip of his coffee.

  “I’ll say. I hadn’t really expected Irena to know the brothers.” Bridget watched as Irena brought a tray with glasses of water, a tea pot, and tea bags to their table and a Coke for Chet.

  “I’ve given you your choice of teas. So what are you all doing here? Just passing through on your way to Yellowstone for a vacation?” Irena had her order pad out and pen ready to take orders.

  “We’re with the Cougar Special Forces Division out of Yuma Town. We take down rogue cougars,” Bridget said.

  Irena whispered, “You’re after Joe Sharp, aren’t you?”

  "What do you know about Joe?" Chet sounded like he was ready to bolt from the chair and grab the guy if the waitress knew where he was and he was close by.

  "He's from here, if you didn't know. As far as everyone knows he has been caring for an aging mother until she passed recently. His dad died years ago of a heart attack. Not everyone in these parts believes he's guilty. Of course the police aren't involved in this because the murderer has only killed shifters so far and our kind have hidden the fact that we’ve had any shifter deaths and that the perpetrator is a cougar. It's all rumors and speculation though. He still owns his mother's home. But don't kill him unless you know for sure he's the villain in all this," Irena said.

  Bridget was reading everything going through the woman’s mind, that she’d dated him, that he had been involved in minor crimes. Irena had no thoughts about telling Joe that the CSF agents were looking to take him into custody for questioning. “Yeah, we'll give him every opportunity to give up so we can question him about the crimes. But if he tries to kill us, then all bets are off.”

  “Understandably. I’ve never heard of that organization—the CSF. But you might have some trouble capturing him before someone else does. There’s another guy who is after him,” Irena said.

  “A cougar with the force? Or a boyfriend or family member of the dead woman?” Travis asked.

  Though Bridget knew he couldn't be someone on the force or Chuck Warner would have told them about him.

  “Not a cougar”—Irena leaned over closer—“the man who came in here for breakfast yesterday morning reminded me of a bear. Smelled like one too. I figured he was a zookeeper at the zoo nearby or a bear reserve, or owned a pet bear, despite how dangerous they could be. He really was into honey and everything berry. It sure had me wondering. Have you ever heard of bear shifters before?”

  Bridget, Travis, and Chet exchanged looks. Some bear shifters had helped some of the cougar shifters out up on the North Shore. Not to mention the case of the two male bears and the female bear running around their territory. Bridget could see where they could have more trouble headed their way if other kinds of shifters did exist and started causing problems between the shifter kind.

  “We have,” Travis said. “Are you certain he could be a shifter?”

  Irena shrugged. “No. Just like he couldn’t be certain about me, but he was…curious. Smelling the air, smelling me.”

  “It wouldn’t be hard to be a bear shifter living near Yellowstone,” Bridget said. “Did he react strangely about you being a cougar? If he was a shifter?”

  Irena shook her head. “Then again, unless he visited a zoo, he might not know what a cougar smelled like. Maybe he would think I just owned cats.”

  “Unless he’d run into them in the wild. From the sounds of it, he was surprised to smell that you were different,” Bridget said.

  Travis began a Google search for bears in Wyoming. “They have grizzlies in the area, though they don’t usually like the prairie habitats. And they have black bears.”

  The door to the diner opened, and Irena glanced in that direction. “Well, speak of the devil.”

  They turned to see who she was talking about.

  The man was about six feet, two inches tall, clean shaven, his brown hair brushed neatly back but if the wind caught it, it would be shaggy. If they hadn’t heard what Irena suspected, Bridget would never have guessed the man could be a bear. Not that he could ever guess they were cougar shifters either.

  "Well, I’ll be damned. That's Luke Bier. One of the bears who helped us with the rogue shifters in Ely, Minnesota," Chet said, already getting up from his chair to greet him.

  Travis was on his feet in an instant too. And Chet introduced them, then asked him to sit with them. Luke eyed Irena, who was smiling at him.

  “Here I thought you were a tiger,” Luke said, winking at her.

  Irena blushed and smiled and gave him a menu.

  “Do you need a minute to look at the menu further?” Irena asked them.

  “No, thanks. I’ll have the ribeye steak, medium rare, mashed potatoes, and asparagus,” Bridget said. “And a glass of water.”

  “I’ll have the T-bone steak and fries, medium rare on the steak, and broccoli,” Travis said.

  “Roast tenderloin for me, baked potato with everything on it, and salad,” Chet said.

  Luke smiled at Irena. “I’ll have blueberry waffles smothered in blueberry sauce, toast, with a side order of sausages. Wild berry tea and honey.”

  “Again. All right. Coming right up.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re looking for bad guys in the area,” Luke said to Chet.

  “Yep. And from what Irena says, you’re looking for the same man,” Chet said. “At this rate, we’re going to have to have a combined shifter force. So how are you involved?”

  “He killed a former girlfriend of mine, if we have the right suspect in mind. I finally had to end our relationship because she wasn’t one of my kind, but I still cared deeply for her.”

  Bridget shook her head. “I hope we find him soon then.”

  Chapter 11

  Ava headed to Nina and Stryker’s house for dinner of barbecued ribs, french fries, mushroom, onion, and bell pepper shish-kabobs, and watermelon. She knew her sister and her brother-in-law wanted to know just where she was going with
Chet. If he were to be Ava’s mate, they would also be his family.

  Ava hoped she wasn’t being premature about this, but she sure wanted him in her life—for more than just a date here or there.

  As soon as she arrived at her sister and brother-in-law’s home with the apple pie she’d baked, fresh out of the oven, Nina was handing her a strawberry cooler—fresh strawberries, sugar, lemon juice and ginger ale, the best!

  “Stryker’s got the barbecued ribs and shish-kabobs on the grill. I’m nearly done with the french fries, so just enjoy your drink and we’ll start eating in a minute,” Nina said.

  But Ava helped to set out the silverware, plates, and ice water for everyone.

  Then they sat down to eat. A light, cool breeze swept over them, making it delightful to sit outside tonight.

  “How’s the baking going?” Nina asked. “Now that your certified as a master baker, any changes?”

  “Oh, yeah. Florence is giving me so much more responsibility for managing the shop, planning for special desserts and baked goods, and she wants me to start teaching baking to a couple of teens to give them an idea on how to bake either for their families or become bakers like me someday.”

  “Oh, wow, that’s wonderful,” Nina said.

  “Yeah. And she even wants me to take the kids on a tour of the bakery when fall homeschooling starts. That should be fun.”

  “I agree.” Nina finished another bite of her shish kabob. “So tell us about Chet.”

  Ava smiled. “I was surprised you wouldn’t ask about him first up.”

  Stryker laughed. “She has been dying to talk to you about him, which is the reason for this lovely dinner.”

  Ava shook her head. “I knew it.”

  Nina hit Stryker in the arm with her napkin. “It is not. We haven’t had Ava over since she made master baker and I wanted to know what she was going to be doing now that she is certified.”

  “And you’ve been dying to ask Ava about the situation with Chet since the Fourth of July weekend.” Stryker ate some more of his ribs.