"Now, you know that Rafe is only trying to keep the two of you out of Perry's hands," Hal interjected. "Seeing how Liam is still being targeted by WSS."
"And you really think we'll be safer if we leave here?" Shannon's tone was skeptical.
Catrina saw that her friend's normally pale cheeks were flushed with strong emotion.
Before Hal—or Rafe—could answer, Shannon slapped her hand down on the table. "Well, I'll tell you what I think, since none of you manly men bothered to ask me when you were drawin' up your fine plans!"
She glared around the table. Brett put his hands up defensively. "I had nothing to do with this plan, I swear."
"Me, neither," Dr. Joyce agreed hastily.
Catrina shrugged and did her best to look innocent.
Shannon rolled her eyes at them. "Now, look, all of you. If Catrina is right, and WSS is planning to send another kidnap squad after me rather than launching a full-scale invasion of the town, won't I be safer here, where all of you big, strong, manly—" her voice dripped with saccharine sweetness"—shapeshifters can protect me?" She shook her head. "What if Perry or his men find Granda and me in Twin Falls?" She crossed her arms over her generous chest. "What'll we do, then? You can't come with us—I know none of you can leave the ranch for that long, and the same is true of the other bear shifters too. And there isn't a wolf shifter in Elysia who wants to come anywhere near me, not after what I did to Halfdan last summer."
Silence from the kitchen.
"Besides," she added after a moment had passed. "If worse comes to worst, Elysia will need its healer. No, I'm staying right here, in my own home, and I trust that my husband and my friends can protect me."
"I'll be staying as well," Dr. Joyce said firmly. "Hal, I promised you that I'd serve as Elysia's physician. I'll not abandon my responsibilities and patients at the first hint of trouble."
"Fine," said Hal with a sigh, just as Rafe emerged from the kitchen, scowling ferociously.
"Don't you owe it to our baby to try and keep it safe?" he asked his wife.
Shannon smiled sweetly up at him, and Catrina thought, Uh-oh.
"Now Rafe, my love, my fierce mate, isn't keeping us safe your job?" she asked.
Brett and Hal both exploded into guffaws.
"She's got you there," Brett crowed.
But Rafe didn't look ready to yield the argument quite yet.
Shannon's expression turned woeful. "Please don't send me away, Rafe," she pleaded. "I wouldn't feel safe in a strange place without you there to protect me."
"Damn it," Rafe muttered under his breath. "You play dirty, wife."
Shannon brightened. "Does that mean that Granda and I can stay?"
Hal and Rafe looked at each other for a long moment, and Catrina could see the swift calculations they were making, balancing the available bear shifters against the extra guards that would be needed.
Then Brett said, "Catrina and I can pick up extra bodyguard shifts, if you like."
Catrina nodded vigorously in agreement.
Rafe's broad shoulders slumped as he surrendered to his wife. "All right. You can stay…if you don't mind sending me to an early grave from stress."
* * *
Two days later, as Catrina was tidying up and putting away the guns after her marksmanship classes, she scented a familiar jaguar shifter in the vicinity.
Shit.
She stiffened in alarm, but kept on working as if she hadn't noticed the intruder, hoping to get more information before Captain Marin figured out that he'd been made.
It was a cold, rainy afternoon, and her last students for the day had just left. She was wet and chilled and looking forward to a hot meal at Rafe and Shannon's house. She knew she should feel a little guilty about eating there so often, but as he was fond of telling them, it was easier for him to cook for five or six than two.
What should she do now? Try to sneak away and warn Hal? Or take one of the guns and go hunting for her former commander?
Marin's presence here meant that Leif and Svein had spilled the beans about Elysia. They were all in deep trouble.
"Good job on infiltrating the shifter community here, Hunter," said a familiar voice.
Captain Marin stepped around the corner of the shed.
His build was lithe and strong, his features pure Mayan, with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, strong black brows over brown eyes, and smooth brown skin. He wore his black hair clipped short in a military cut but was dressed in civilian hiking gear. He had also removed his gold Beast Warrior commander's torc.
His nose wrinkled briefly. "But you missed your check-in."
Catrina's throat felt dry. She swallowed convulsively and had no idea what to say. She settled for straightening up and acknowledging him with a crisp, "Sir."
"We received some interesting intelligence a couple of days ago," he continued, his skin and hair beaded with raindrops. "A couple of those missing wolf shifters turned up at HQ. They told us that Erik Redclaw and Wolf Team were living here, along with Dr. Donlon, and that this was a bear-shifter community." He pinned her with a hard look. "You didn't answer the email I sent you about it, so I decided to come down in case you needed a hand. What's your plan, Hunter? Extraction or elimination?"
This was the moment of truth. Her last chance to pick sides. Catrina took a deep breath. I pick Elysia…and Brett Thorfinnson.
"Neither, sir," she said quietly. Her heart was pounding frantically. "As of right now, I'm resigning my commission as a Beast Warrior. I've decided to retire."
Captain Marin's expression hardened. "And here I was hoping that those wolves were bullshitting me when they said you'd deserted and joined up with the bears."
Catrina shook her head. "I'm done. I've put in ten years of good work for the firm, and now I'm ready for something different."
"Like mating a bear?"
At Catrina's involuntary reaction, Marin's face twisted in disgust. "You reek of bear shifter, Hunter. I thought you had better taste."
That stung, and she struggled not to show him how much. She had always respected Hector Marin and found him to be an excellent commanding officer.
She had known this conversation, when it came, would be difficult. But it hurt more than she had expected to be the object of his contempt and his disappointment.
"And don't you think you owe Colonel Perry your loyalty after he gave you, a shifter, a place to belong after the US military used you up?" Marin continued, sounding angry now.
"You mean after Perry wiped my memories?" She shot back. "I found out that he messed with my head, so I don't even know if I joined up willingly."
Marin opened his mouth to deny her accusation, but she continued, "C'mon, sir. You know what dragons can do…and what Perry's capable of."
He gave a sharp sigh but didn't try to protest.
"If you've deserted, does this mean that the bear shifters in this town know we're coming?"His voice was hard as carved jade.
Catrina nodded. She owed her former commander this much honesty, at least. "I didn't think Perry would just abandon the mission once I left WSS."
"And are Dr. Donlon and his granddaughter still here?"
"You know I can neither confirm nor deny that, sir."Catrina took another deep breath and prepared to humble herself. "Please, Captain, just pretend you never found me," she pleaded. "You owe me one for Chechnya."
Captain Marin's stare was the flat, intense stare of a jaguar sighting its prey. She felt as if he were gazing into her very soul.
Then her new phone rang with the special Emergency Services Alert ringtone. She was supposed to ride along on every call received by the Elysia Fire Department this week so that she could learn how things were done here.
At the sound, Catrina glanced down involuntarily at the pocket of her coat, where she had tucked her phone.
When she looked up again, Captain Marin had vanished.
"I am so screwed," she muttered as she ran for her car, which was parked along the fence t
hat surrounded the training area.
As she ran, she called up the contact list on her phone and selected Hal's number, aware of a strange sense of relief mingled with apprehension about what was going to happen next.
She knew better than to hope that Marin had come to Elysia on his own.
And she realized that she was now fully committed to her new life in Elysia…and to Brett. There was no going back now.
My mate, she thought, and for the first time, she didn't feel the least bit conflicted about the notion. My bear. Mine.
"Catrina?" Hal answered the phone on the second ring.
"Sir, we've got a serious problem," Catrina told him. "Jaguar Team is here. And you were right about Leif and Svein—they've told Captain Marin everything about Elysia."
"I know," Hal growled. "Someone just called 911 to report an explosion at Dr. Joyce's house."
Catrina's blood went cold at his words.
She should've known that Captain Marin wouldn't wait to make his move until they'd talked. She had reached her car but turned around now and sprinted for the storage shed…and the gun safe.
"I'm heading over there now," she said. "Tell Dave—" he was the Fire Department's dispatcher "—to keep everyone away from the house. It may be an ambush. If Jaguar Team is there, they'll be armed to the teeth."
Chapter 12–Ambushed
Catrina realized that Jaguar Team had commenced an extraction operation as soon as she arrived at Liam Joyce's home.
Brett's truck had caught up with her on the highway leading into town, and he had tailed her to the modest cottage located in a rambling neighborhood on the outskirts of Elysia, several blocks from Main Street.
The streets were gravel-paved here, the lots large and irregularly shaped with big gardens and old trees surrounding modest homes that looked as if they had been built in the 1940s or 1950s.
Catrina pulled over on a side street a block away from Joyce's cottage, and Brett parked behind her. It didn't look like anyone else had arrived yet from either the town's small police force or the fire department.
Hal had told her that he would put out the call for his former Beast Warriors to respond and had ordered her to wait for backup if she arrived first.
She had assured him she only planned to scout out the situation until the other shifters arrived, but she knew it might be a while before any of them might get here.
It was still daylight, and the others would likely be widely scattered. Some had gone off to enjoy the last two days of hunting season, and others were working in remote parts of their ranches.
With Brett letting her take the lead, Catrina cautiously approached the house. It was raining harder now, and that not only affected visibility, but it served to dampen any scents. She would have to make visual contact to assess the situation.
She was armed with the M4 rifle and the Glock pistol, and the pockets of her cargo pants and jacket were stuffed with spare magazines for reloading.
As she drew closer to the cottage, she noticed two dark-gray SUVs with Montana license plates parked across the street from Joyce's home.
"Hey," she whispered to Brett, pointing at the vehicles. "These are the same make and model that WSS uses…and the color is about right, too." She moved closer and smelled jaguar shifter. "Yeah, they definitely belong to Jaguar Team."
Brett eyed the vehicles. "You want me to take care of those for you?"
She flashed him a quick look of appreciation. "Can you do it quietly?"
Instead of replying, Brett quickly ducked behind the nearest parked car and stripped down. Catrina looked appreciatively at his tightly muscled back and fine ass, and then he began to shift.
In a few moments, the brief but painful transformation was completed.
Brett was now a mountain of shaggy fur and dense muscle, with paws the size of dinner plates. His eyes, even in bear form, remained bright blue, though his fur was golden brown, several shades darker than his human hair color.
As Catrina watched, he lumbered forward to the first dark gray SUV, extended a forepaw, which was tipped with curving claws longer than her fingers, and effortlessly tore a long gash in the sidewall of the rear driver-side tire.
The only sound was a long sigh of air, indistinguishable from the wind soughing through the neighborhood trees.
Brett swiftly moved on the next tire. When he was done, both vehicles were left sagging to one side on flat tires. Whoever tried to drive these SUVs for a getaway wouldn't make it far.
Now for the bad news: each WSS SUV could carry four or five Beast Warriors and their gear.
Not good. Eight to ten Beast Warriors meant that nearly all the members of Jaguar Team had been deployed on this op.
Brett had apparently come to the same conclusion. He nudged her arm with his nose and gave the cottage a meaningful look.
From here, she could see that the front door of the cottage stood open, and the doorframe looked splintered, as if it had been forced.
Acrid white smoke was billowing out of the doorway, and a fog-like mass of it hung over the front yard.
"Can you go around back and see if anyone's hiding there?" she asked Brett in a whisper. "I'll go to the front and see if I can tell if anyone's inside the house, and if so, how many."
Since the SUVs were still parked out here, she thought there was a pretty good chance that Jaguar Team might still be inside the house. And that Dr. Joyce might have made it to his panic room in time.
Brett hesitated, then nodded and moved away swiftly and silently despite his great bulk. In seconds, he had crossed the street and disappeared around the side of the cottage.
As soon as he was gone, Catrina, who had decided to remain in human form so that she could use her weapons, cautiously approached the cottage in a crouching lope.
She skirted the brown, skeletal stalks of frost-killed summer flowers and knelt behind the scanty cover of the leafless bushes in the front yard so that she could peer through the large kitchen and living room windows.
She needed to find out how many operatives were inside the house and whether Dr. Joyce was still there…and still alive.
It was very possible that Colonel Perry had decided that the human scientist was more trouble than he was worth, and Jaguar Team had been sent to assassinate rather than abduct.
Trying not to think about the fact that she might shortly be forced to shoot or kill her former teammates, Catrina crept closer to the cottage.
Then, amidst the drifting clouds of smoke, she caught a glimpse of a body sprawled on the floor of the small mudroom that separated the cottage's front door from the living room.
Her heart sank she recognized the big man as her fellow firefighter, Ebbe Freyrsson.
Only then did she remember Ebbe mentioning that he wouldn't be on call for the fire department because he had pulled bodyguard duty today.
Is he dead? She fervently hoped not. She really liked Ebbe, with his easy smile and laid-back manner.
Taking a huge chance, she called softly, "Ebbe! Status?"
In response, she saw the wolf shifter stir slightly, heard him groan, and felt an instant surge of relief.
She sensed movement further inside the house an instant before a weapon fired through the thick pall of smoke filling the living room behind Ebbe.
It missed her.
Reflexively, she raised her rifle and returned fire.
Someone staggered forward through the smoke, and she could see a weapon in his hand. Catrina's next shot was aimed at her opponent's forehead.
She saw him collapse just behind Ebbe.
Knowing that the element of surprise was gone now, Catrina hurried forward into the mudroom, keeping low.
She knelt at Ebbe's side and quickly checked him. Gunshot wounds to the chest, leg, and arm. If he got medical attention soon, he should recover.
And she would get on Hal's case about ordering body armor as soon as possible.
He roused at her touch. "Dr. Joyce…" he managed. "Drake took hi
m…basement."
"Okay," Catrina told him, feeling relief flood through her. "Good."
If Dr. Joyce had made it downstairs to his basement, where his panic room was located, then he might still be okay. And Drake was with him. Even better.
"How many hostiles?" she asked urgently, but Ebbe had lost consciousness again. Damn.
She patted him gently, knowing that she couldn't call for an ambulance until the cottage was secured, and crawled cautiously forward into the smoky living room.
She stopped to check the man she had shot. She was shocked to recognize Svein, a pool of blood spreading rapidly from under his head.
Even before she checked his vitals, she knew he was dead. Even shifters couldn't survive a bullet to the brain.
She looked down at Svein's corpse, "Okay, now I'm really glad you skipped marksmanship class, you jerk," she muttered.
Footsteps sounded somewhere ahead of her. Uh-oh.
Staying low, she waited until she saw a silhouette in the doorway that led from the living room to the kitchen.
She fired, a sweep of bullets that cut the hostile's legs out from under him. When he went down, she scrambled forward to finish him off.
Then she recognized the jaguar shifter in the helmet and dark fatigues. It was Dig—Diego Rodriguez—but he was in too much pain to recognize her in return.
Catrina knew she should finish him with a head shot. Leaving an opponent alive in this kind of situation was the kind of stupid that could get you killed.
But she found she couldn't bring herself to kill someone in cold blood who had been her comrade-in-arms for a decade.
Instead, she swiftly disarmed him and used one of the zip-ties she found in one of his belt pouches to bind his hands. Without the use of his hands and with both of his legs shredded and bleeding messes, he wasn't going anywhere.
The next few minutes were a confusion of gunfire as Catrina advanced further into the smoke-filled cottage. Her throat and eyes were both burning, and she couldn't see for shit.
At least the same was true for her opponents. Someone appeared to have set off a smoke grenade in here, and now they were all equally hampered.
Hunter: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Beast Warriors Book 2) Page 14
