“Abby!” He shouted her name without thought, the word erupting from his lips in a roar. His beast aided him, made his voice boom through the air, and it silenced everyone.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, reflective golden eyes—cougar’s eyes—meeting his as they widened in surprise only to be replaced by fear. Why the hell was she afraid of him, dammit? He’d saved her. After beating a few others to shit, sure, but still…
“Abby.” He took another step forward, hand outstretched. “Wait.” Then she was gone. She spun in place and leaped over the side. He stood there a moment, immobile, and tried to get a handle on his riotous emotions. “I lost her,” he rasped. “She went wet.”
“What the—”
“Say again.”
“You’re joking.”
The men on the team mirrored his thoughts, and he didn’t reply. Not until he knew more. He raced to the edge and searched the sea for her just like everyone else on the pier. He ignored the humans’ cries for help while he plunged through the crowd. It wasn’t until he reached the spot where she’d stood only moments ago that he knew she’d be okay.
Abby delved beneath the surface of the black water, the darkness swallowing her whole, but not before he recognized the change that rippled over her. Skin as pale as moonlight shimmered, to be replaced by fur golden like the sun.
Slipping quietly away, far from the shouting tourists, he ducked into the shadows and made his way back to solid land. Chatter from the others filled his ears, invading his mind. He kept his voice low but firm when he cut through them all. “Ethan?”
“One block south of your location.”
Declan increased his speed when he hit the sidewalk and turned left. He wove through the crowd and broke into a jog when he spied the van. The side door slid open, Birch holding it wide, and the moment Declan was inside, the vehicle went into motion.
He glanced at the team alpha, noting the man’s black eyes and the layer of dark brown fur on his cheeks. Birch’s bear was right at the surface, just shy of busting free and tearing them all to pieces.
“Declan?”
“You can kick my ass later.” He turned his attention to Ethan. “Get us to her place. Grant, what else do we know about her?” Yeah, she’d escaped, but why would a cat take a swim in the sea? He thought maybe desperate times called for desperate measures, but there’d been so many other ways to escape that wouldn’t have gone so completely against her natural instincts.
“You read the history. My shit is thorough,” Grant snarled at him, and Declan’s own beast growled back.
“Hit him for me, will ya, Cole?” Declan’s question was followed by a thump and a grumbled ow from Grant. “We know she’s an orphan. Where’d she end up when her parents died?”
A silent pause, and then Grant spoke again. “Seals up in Alaska from eight to eighteen.”
“Okay.” That gave him the explanation he needed. Sure, Abby was a cougar, but she’d been raised by seal shifters. Her inner animal did okay with water and her foster family taught her familiarity with the ocean. “She’ll use the water to travel. Won’t come to shore until she’s forced to. Grant, keep an eye out for her on the cams. Ethan, get us to her ASAP.”
“You think I could lead the fucking team?” Birch’s glare slammed onto Declan’s shoulders, and he turned his attention to the bear. “What makes you think we’re gonna keep chasing her?” Birch raised a single brow, black-eyed stare boring into him.
Because Declan couldn’t not go after her. He couldn’t exactly say that to Birch though.
“When shit went sideways, she stopped long enough to grab that tablet,” he pointed out. “It’s got something on there worth risking her life over. We want it.”
Birch shook his head. “It won’t last through the swim. We’ll regroup at the office and try to salvage this op. Let’s call in a team to tail her. You know the newbies need field time. Let them chase her down.”
A flush of rage attacked Declan. The wolf didn’t want anyone else near Abby.
Declan grinned. “You think her shit isn’t going to be water resistant? It’s gotta be instinctual by now.” He shook his head. “Ten will get you twenty that our girl makes sure her gadgets will make it through a dip or two. A new toy came on the market not long ago.”
“Our girl?” Now Birch raised both eyebrows.
Declan ignored the bear—and his knowing smirk. Asshole.
Chapter Six
So. That happened.
Holy fuck a duck with a truck that happened.
Abby’s heart pounded so hard it threatened to break through her rib cage, but she didn’t have time to die. She was too busy trying to swim to safety. As in, somewhere very, very far from Port St. James.
Abby jerked and twisted, muscles and bone stretching and contracting. Familiar pain assaulted her, an experience she’d endured for years, as parts of the cougar overtook her human body. When she’d first shifted, her screams could be heard throughout the state. Now she reacted with no more than a small shudder. Her new shape ripped her clothes; bits of thread and cloth drifted from her body, portions of her skirt suit lost in the ocean’s currents.
She pushed harder, flexed, and spun. Rather than fighting the flow, she moved with it, allowing herself to be dragged down the coast.
The tablet clenched between her teeth wiggled, and she tightened her bite. She couldn’t lose it now, not after what she’d gone through to get it out of the building. The shifter council needed to see it, look over the evidence, and then send in their bogeymen to do whatever it was they did. She didn’t want to think about how they did their jobs. She just wanted FosCo and Eric Foster to not exist any longer.
Buh-bye.
God, her fear was making her even more sarcastic than usual.
Fear of being caught. Fear of being killed. Fear of the tablet not getting into the right hands.
Fear of that blue-eyed stranger who’d saved her. The one who’d known her name.
And if he knew her name, he had to know where she lived.
She couldn’t get caught. Not with the device in her possession. She had to hide it before she ventured onto land.
Abby twisted and bolted away from the beach, racing for Palm Island. No one would think to look there. It would be safe. It had to be safe.
Her destination came into sight, and she put on a last burst of speed, racing to the rocky gathering of coral and stone. Less than ten feet from the outcropping, she dove beneath the rolling waves, down and down until she reached the opening she sought.
She ducked into the pure darkness and used her claws to climb the interior walls of the small cave. Cool water enveloped her fully, the black encroaching on her like a monster from her nightmares. Her cougar pushed the panic aside, reminding her this was a safe place, a welcome place. Her cat loved the cave or running on four paws across the island—a place closed to humans.
Abby burst past the surface of the water, sucking in a breath of air. She placed her palms on the stone edge surrounding the cave opening and heaved herself onto a small ledge. She rolled to her back, laid one arm across her eyes, and pulled the tablet from her mouth with her free hand.
She fought to recover from the mile-long swim to the middle of the bay, preparing her body to do it all over again and get her home. Her cougar wanted to wait for a little while. It wasn’t ready to venture back into a world of being chased.
They didn’t have a choice. The tablet was safe. Now she had to nut up or shut up. It was one of her foster father’s favorite sayings and one he’d often repeated when she’d hesitated to dive into the frigid waters off the coast of Alaska. “I don’t have a thick layer of fat like the rest of the family” was not a good excuse for avoiding swims with the other seals. Neither were the polar bears that had tried to eat her. Or the killer whales. Or the bull moose. Those suckers didn’t play.
Abby squared her shoulders and huffed, taking a deep breath before diving headfirst back into the inky sea.
Now she needed to swim home, get clothes, and disappear. Go somewhere and call someone, and when things weren’t so hot, she’d come back and—
Look at her, sounding all gangster and like a criminal. When things weren’t so hot…
Some of her fear floated away with her swim back to shore, exhaustion replacing the rapid race of panic and terror. The adrenaline that’d powered her every move no longer filled her veins, and her heart gradually slowed to a regular beat. Which, yay for calming down, but she needed the panic to keep her going. Abby dug deep, refusing to let the adrenaline crash sap all her strength. She’d do this. Home. Run. Call.
Abby lifted her head and scanned the beach, searching for landmarks, and sighed in relief. She was home. Or as close as she could get with the hundred yards of sand separating the waves and her building.
The hundred yards she’d have to walk half naked.
Great.
The night was just fan-fucking-tasmagorical.
Abby gulped and breathed deep, preparing herself for her cat’s retreat. It was bad enough she’d come limping out of the ocean. She couldn’t sport claws, fangs, and fur as she emerged. Then she repeated the slow, deep breathing for good measure, bracing herself as best she could.
Right. No screaming.
Her fur retreated first, her bones snapping and reshaping at the same time. The claws retracted and fangs receded. Her muzzle and whiskers were last, gold and dark brown replaced by her pale skin.
She was back to her human form, and she reached for her side, hand slapped over her wound. It hurt like a killer-whale bite—firsthand experience at sixteen, don’t ask—but a quick glance told her it wasn’t all that bad.
The cougar disagreed. Between the bullet wound, her black eye, and her limp, it believed it was dying—dying.
Chest deep in the water, she eyed the shore once more, searching for any hint of someone watching her. She stared into the shadows, trying to see past the darkness that filled the corners. She didn’t see anything, but…
Abby had no time for “but.” She had to get her ass moving.
She trudged through the water, feet sucked down by the sand, as if the ocean was trying to keep her. Like it knew what stupidity she was walking into and wanted to save her from herself.
With the water at her knees, she stumbled forward, falling to the sand and catching herself with her free hand. She shoved herself to her feet once again, strength all but gone. When she looked down at her injury, she was kinda thankful for the sea water. The blood didn’t stand a chance against the waves, brushed away before she could realize the wound was a little worse than she’d originally decided.
The ocean lapped at her feet, and then she stood on dry land, the sand shifting beneath her soles. She was close now. The glowing lights of her building loomed, and she forced herself forward. Her body tightened and jerked with each step, muscles and skin around her injury pulling with her movements.
Thanks to the awesomeness of spandex, at least her bra and panties had survived the impromptu swim.
It hurt to breathe, to think, to do anything but hopefully trudge in the right direction. She knew her cougar worked to heal the damage, but she’d been logging long hours at the office—leaving early and coming home late—and hadn’t been eating properly. Her body was tired before she even got out of bed in the morning, and with the injury…
The cat was doing the best it could, but it couldn’t do much.
The entry to her building came into sight, the glowing door a beacon to her exhausted body. She pushed herself, determined to do this.
She could.
She would.
Suddenly fabric enveloped her head and wrapped around her body, swallowing her in darkness. Strong arms kept her in place, holding her immobile. A large body aligned with hers, her captor’s front against her back.
“Got you.”
Chapter Seven
Abby was dead. Done. Ex-living, un-living, once upon a living, and now heaven and hell fought over her soaking-wet, shivering, miserable corpse. Apparently, her soul wasn’t worth having because she still seemed to have that along with parts of her deluded mind.
Wait. It wasn’t heaven and hell fighting over her wretched body. It was a couple of men. Maybe three? It could be a hundred for all she knew. The scent of the sea, briny and tinged with a hint of eau de fish, filled her nose. It obscured the different flavors in the air, and she couldn’t figure out who—what—surrounded her. She could only go by voices and sounds coming from her captors. The baritones, scratchy rasps, and deep breathing echoed around her, bouncing off the metal walls.
She frowned and tilted her head, urging her cougar to come forward and give her a hand, er, paw. The persnickety feline hissed at her, reminding Abby she was the reason they were in this mess and she could be the one to get them out.
As if they weren’t one and the same. She mentally groaned. Stupid, stupid cat.
Giving up on her cougar, she focused on the world around her. Her vision was masked by the thick blanket over her head, but she could tell she was in a vehicle, large and heavy. She sniffled, but only inhaled seawater.
The cat released a wheezing chuckle.
Bitch. Just see if she ever bought catnip at the pet store. Just see.
That assumed she made it out of the hot mess alive so she could go to the pet store. If she had a Magic 8-Ball, her fortune would be “outlook not so good.”
The voices echoed in the space, muffled by the blanket and too low for her to figure out what they said. So she focused on the tones, the tiny variances in speech patterns and pitch.
And heat. There was one man close to her, utterly silent but warm. A warmth that chased away the cold and made her forget about the bullet hole in her side. The vehicle swayed, tires rumbling over uneven ground, and she used the rocking motion as an excuse to ease closer to him.
The van rocked hard to the left and then right. The sudden movement threw her forward and then back, slamming her head against the unpadded wall of the vehicle. A soft whine escaped her.
A low rumble, no words, just a rolling sound, reached out to her, and a large hand cupped the back of her head. It rubbed her gently, touch easing the throbbing ache, and as quickly as the caress came, it was gone. But it reduced her panic just a little. That meant he cared, right?
Could she develop Stockholm syndrome after just five minutes?
She needed to focus on how the hell she was going to get out of this mess. Three men had kidnapped her. Oh, it’d been only one guy to toss a blanket over her head and shove her into the vehicle, but she heard two others. When she got free, they’d all go down and get carted off to jail.
When. Not if. She had to stay positive. She’d be free and they’d be gone.
More murmurs, one voice snapping, another snarling, and one that was soft and hard at the same time. One the rest listened to without question.
The van swayed, and she rocked forward with the rolling motion, losing her balance. She tensed, waiting for the inevitable pain from slamming into the floorboard. But it didn’t come. A thick, strong arm wrapped around her waist, hand settling on her hip as he pulled her closer. His touch slipped from her waist to her shoulder, and a soft tug pulled her against him—Hot Guy.
“Rest.” The low murmur reached out for her, and Abby was torn between doing as he said and refusing whatever comfort he provided. This had to be some sort of good cop/bad cop scenario. Except his actions had been a mix of the good cop/bad cop behavior. Maybe he didn’t know how to play the game.
Regardless, resting seemed like a great idea. As adrenaline fled her body, the ache in her side grew, agony increasing with each passing second. She lowered her head to his shoulder and slumped against him, giving her captor her weight. There was no harm in relaxing and conserving her strength.
Abby beckoned the cat once more, needing its help to heal her wound. If she saw a chance to escape, she’d take it, but her bid for freedom would be hindered by the injury.
; The animal grumbled but pushed forward, the beast’s rapid healing swirling and surrounding her wound. It tingled, a warm rush sliding over the area, followed by the burning itch of knitting flesh.
She gritted her teeth and trembled against her captor, the pain snatching her control. He tightened his grip, tugging her even closer until their bodies were aligned. They fit together like two pieces of a puzzle sliding into place. As if they were made to complement each other.
And wasn’t that a screwed-up thought? Exhaustion, pain, and fear were making her crazy.
“Six minutes out.” A low murmur filled her ear—Hot Guy again. His voice was soothing, and somehow it drove away the sharp edge of pain. Her cat responded to his deep tenor, releasing a low, trilling purr of her own.
So. Fucked. Up.
Instead of replying, Abby swallowed hard and nodded. She needed to focus, dammit. These might be the last six minutes of her life.
The van slowed, rolling to a stop for a moment, and the mechanical hum of a window rolling down filled the space. A few beeps and the sound repeated, window going back up as the vehicle rocked back into motion. Then they were going around and around in what seemed like a never-ending spiral.
The squeak of tires and the roar of the engine echoed around them, and she took a little comfort in that. The space they drove through sounded empty, a large cavern that only held their vehicle. Maybe she’d only have to face the guys that currently held her and not some big team of baddies.
The van took one last sharp turn and rocked to a stop, gears thumping when the driver put the vehicle in park before he turned the key and cut the engine. It dropped them into silence for one beat and then two before her captors burst into action. Metal grinded against metal, someone yanking open the side door. That was followed by the heavy thud of boots on a hard surface. Concrete?
Metal clanged, cloth rustling but not cotton—something else. Nylon? The rasp of Velcro and then a heavy weight thumped beside her. She squeaked and jolted with the sudden sound, and followed that up with a moan. Her wound pulled, what little healing she’d managed now undone by her thoughtless movement.
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