by Selena Scott
Danil took a huge bite of breakfast, as if to show that he had very little interest in this conversation, but Emin knew better.
“I caught her scent in the woods last night. Back behind Mama and Papa’s house,” Emin said.
Danil stopped chewing. He leaned back in the chair and eyed his brother more like a wolf than a bear. “Was the scent fresh?”
Emin nodded. “She’d been there not twenty minutes before Anton and I came back down the mountain.”
“God damn it,” Danil cursed, tracing a hand through his wet hair. “In the fucking wilderness in the dead of the night again.” He stood. “Finish your breakfast. We’ve got someplace to go before I have to go to work today.”
Half an hour later, the two brothers pulled up to the spot where Danil had tasted heaven a few mornings ago. He parked his car in the same place as before and got out, walked over to where Dora’s car had been parked. Sniffing the air, he growled in frustration and started stripping out of his clothes.
As bear shifters, they all had very attuned senses of smell when in their human forms. But her scent had waned so much over the last few days that he’d need to be in his bear form to be able to track her path now.
Emin followed suit, stripping down and shifting before they ambled into the woods side by side. In their bear forms, the two brothers picked up her scent easily. Their thoughts invaded one another’s in a way they’d become extremely accustomed to over their lives together.
“She came here in the night?” Emin asked Danil.
“Yes, a few nights ago. She was arrested for trespassing.”
“She is a writer, you know. An investigator.”
“Yes, of course I know that. How did you know that?” Danil snapped at his brother. He didn’t like how much of an interest his brother was taking in Dora. In fact, it irritated the crap out of him.
“I googled her,” Emin replied matter-of-factly as he sniffed an old mossy pine, picking up her scent again.
Danil stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at his brother in his sleek dark form. He pictured Emin’s rustic cabin up the mountain, covered in half-painted canvasses, electric lights he never bothered to turn on in lieu of candles. “Excuse me?”
“What?” Emin looked up, his dark furry face cocked to one side in mild insult. “I’m not a caveman. I google.”
Danil shrugged his massive shoulders and kept on his way through the woods. It was a few miles further before they came upon a ten-foot, chain-link fence. He could smell where her hands had touched each link. Rearing up on his back feet, he found a little patch of denim that must have ripped off her jeans. It smelled good. Like her skin.
Neither of the brothers was willing to shift back to human form to scale the fence, so they traveled on the outside, tracking her path along it. It was only a few minutes before they came upon the outbuilding. Her scent gathered here, as if she’d spent a while there.
Something skittered up Danil’s spine and his brother’s low curse confirmed he felt it too.
“Do you smell that?” Danil asked.
“Fear,” Emin confirmed. The place reeked of the sticky, metallic scent of fear. It had staled, by maybe a year, but it was there. Forever clinging to the building. To the entire area.
“Danil,” Emin called to his brother and the men came upon a tear in the fence. Danil used his mighty paws to hold back the chain link for his brother and Emin did the same on the other side.
They padded through and once around the building. A sick feeling washed over Danil. The scent intensified. There was animal fear and human fear clinging to the building. And pain. So much pain. They reared up on their back feet to look in the window and Danil caught Dora’s scent. He realized she must have looked in the same way.
Emin was cursing again when they saw what lay inside the building. A testing site. There was fur and surgical instruments and chemicals in syringes. Danil’s shoulders bunched with rage. He knew the smells of those chemicals. It was the same way that Anton had smelled when…
He bit off the thought, hating to be reminded of that time in their lives, but the look in Emin’s eyes confirmed that he’d made the connection too. This was bad. This was a dangerous place.
A white hot streak of rage lanced through Danil. What the hell had she been doing here? Alone? What had she been thinking? Did the woman have a death wish? How could she have been this reckless? Endangered herself this way?
“Where is she staying?” Danil bit the question out as if it were made of knives. He hated that he had to ask his brother that question. Hated that his brother knew the answer before he did.
“I tracked her back toward the other side of town the other night. That little motel off the highway with the broken sign.”
Now the rage was actually blurring Danil’s vision. He confirmed that the woman really did have a death wish. She’d die of tetanus in a place like that.
Danil turned. He was bounding back toward the fence when the wind shifted. Both brothers froze. They scented the breeze. There was another animal in the woods with them. It wasn’t far but it was getting farther. Fast.
“Have you ever smelled anything like that?” Emin asked, the fur on his spine rising up.
“Not outside of a zoo,” Danil answered, his head cocked curiously. There was only one animal that smelled like that and there was no way that it was living in the woods of Spokane.
He shook his head, not his problem right now. He only had one problem. And she was sleeping in a crappy motel across town. The two of them slid through the fence and started in opposite directions. They paused, looked back at one another.
“I’m going to her,” Danil growled.
Emin nodded, wisely hiding the smug look on his face. “Fine. I’ll find my own way back.”
Danil took a step away and then looked back at his brother. “You’re following that scent?” The mysterious scent was still wafting on the air.
Emin nodded. “I have to find out what it is.”
“Be careful,” Danil said. “They scratch.”
The two brothers grinned at one another for a moment before bounding away in opposite directions. Both racing toward something they couldn’t help but chase.
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