A Lion Shame (Bear Creek Grizzlies Book 3) (12 page)

S
J didn't want
to talk to anyone. Simon drove and Tate sat up front, silent, so at least SJ was alone with her thoughts. Dakota consumed every part of her heart, with SJ fighting off a consuming panic at the thought of her baby being held hostage by a bunch of drug dealers. And really awful ones about to be raided by equally awful cops, if what Tate said was true. She didn't want to believe anything he said, after what he'd done, but part of her knew that he had some experience with people like those.

She didn't want to pout or fume. She didn't have time. All that mattered was getting Dakota back and getting the hell away from everything that had to do with Chuck. She'd figure out a way to get out of Bear Creek, start over, and eventually return to pay Rosie back and shove it in Tate's face that she was a success and perfectly happy without him.

SJ sank lower in her seat but stared out the window. She'd get Dakota back. They'd find a new place to live and a new life. Everything would be fine. It seemed like ages ago that she'd run from Chuck and landed on Rosie's doorstep, even though it hadn't even been a week. Part of her would miss Bear Creek and Simon and Zoe and some of the other people she'd met, but clearly SJ had brought chaos with her. She didn't want to disrupt their lives any more than she already had.

The drive back to Bear Creek seemed to be over in a blink, compared to the unending hell of driving Rosie to the hospital. SJ wondered how many people didn't survive life-threatening accidents or heart attacks or diabetic shock because they were so far from the emergency room. Rosie had said something about a clinic in town, but that clearly wasn't enough for a place like Bear Creek. Especially if there were a lot of shifters. They seemed prone to fighting, from what Tate said and the way the sheriff behaved. SJ shook off the thought. They'd saved Rosie. The doctors all said she would be fine, even if it took a week or two of recovery in the hospital. SJ had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from crying as she thought of all the bills. Rosie didn't have a lot of extra income from the bar, and SJ had already put a dent in her excess funds by showing up with nothing. SJ owed Rosie even more.

Simon turned down the main street in Bear Creek and headed toward Rosie's, and SJ had to steel herself at the thought of walking into that bloodied, destroyed apartment with all of Dakota's things but no Dakota. The marks on the wall where Rosie reached for help would haunt SJ's memory forever. But Simon pulled the car into a spot a few doors down. SJ frowned as she looked around, then paused as she reached for her door handle. There were a lot of people going in and out of Rosie's. They didn't look like cops, but Bear Creek was kind of a strange place.

She eased out of the car as Simon and Tate argued on the sidewalk, then Tate stormed into the building. Simon waited for SJ, but she stayed frozen near the car and watched the scurry of people near Rosie's. "What's going on? Do you think — is the sheriff there? Are they going to investigate?"

"The sheriff knows what happened," Simon said, leaning against the hood of the truck as he, too, watched the chaos on the sidewalk and bags of trash being thrown out the window of Rosie's apartment. "But he's not investigating in an official capacity, since we already know what happened. The wolf-pack will be there to help get Dakota, though. They're a little subtler than the rest of us. Bears tend to be noticeable in the woods, even when we're trying to be quiet."

SJ stared at him, still trying to figure things out. He was a bear, the sheriff was a wolf, and Rosie was a mountain lion. Of course. She cleared her throat and pointed at all the people. "But what are they doing?"

"Cleaning up." Simon smiled and folded his arms over his chest. "I called in some favors. And it helps that everyone loves Rosie. We didn't want her to come home to a destroyed apartment, and I didn't want you to worry about cleaning that up when we've got bigger things to worry about. So I let a few people know that we needed help, and half the town volunteered. They're scrubbing everything down and replacing what was destroyed, so when Rosie's ready to leave the hospital, she just needs a ride home. Easy."

SJ's throat burned as she looked at the hustle and bustle. It must have been a nice feeling, to know that half the town would turn up if you needed help. She wished to be part of a community like that. Some day.

SJ took a deep breath and nodded, heading for the sidewalk and the huge bearded man. "Thank you. I'll repay you somehow, I promise."

"There's no need." Simon patted her shoulder and caught her arm to get her to slow down on the still icy sidewalk. "Careful here. And Rosie's family. There's no cost for any of this, I promise. Don't feel like you owe anything to anyone. Rosie would have done the same for any of us."

And SJ knew it. That was why she'd run to Rosie first. SJ pushed away guilt once more as she followed Simon up the stairs to Tate's apartment, and she pushed away as well the memory of sitting next to Tate on the couch in the firelight. Instead, she stood next to the battered kitchen table and folded her arms over her chest, waiting.

Tate returned from his bedroom, carrying a brand new phone in its packaging. He unwrapped it, setting it up to charge, and started fiddling with the keypad as well. Simon watched just as closely as SJ, and before she could force herself to ask, the bearded man made a clucking sound. "What the hell is that, brother?"

"Burner phone," Tate said under his breath. "It's prepaid."

"Who is it registered to?" Simon didn't sound at all happy.

"Does it matter?" Tate gave him a sideways look, and SJ could read the "don't ask me about my business" tone of his voice better than Simon could, because the alpha bear looked even more irritated.

Simon frowned. "Yeah, it matters. What if they're tracking shit the same way your friend is? Won't that tip these guys off that Sarah Jane is getting help?"

"They won't be able to do what Killswitch does, believe me."

"Killswitch?" SJ said, just as Simon snorted and asked, "Why should I believe you?"

Tate straightened, the phone in his hand and an exasperated look making him almost boyish. "I asked him how tech-savvy these guys were, and he told me. There's a reason half a dozen federal agencies are about to land on these guys' heads tomorrow morning, and it's not because they know how to maintain comms security. Okay? They won't know the difference. She can say she borrowed the phone from a friend because hers died or was cut off. Easy."

Then he looked at SJ, and it might have been her imagination, but she thought his expression and his tone softened. For a second, she caught a glimpse of a patient teacher. "A kill-switch is something you put in a vehicle to disable it from inside. We had one in a car Killswitch was in on a mission; I was driving. We got stopped by some look-outs and he shoved his gun way down inside the car and hit the kill-switch by accident. Which killed the car."

"That's not good," SJ managed to say, trying to imagine the very capable Tate trying to drive a car that was totally disabled by his pal.

"Yeah." Tate made a face and went back to fiddling with the small cell phone. "So I'm trying to get the damn thing started, thinking the engine flooded or the battery died, and he just keeps shoving his gun down farther to hide it more as these look-outs stared down at us. Which meant he hit the kill-switch again. We had to push that junker almost five miles."

Simon shook his head, clearly trying not to laugh. "Seriously."

"Seriously." Tate handed SJ the cell phone, though he glanced at the other man. "Almost got us killed. I still think he might've done it as a joke."

Then he looked at SJ. "And in our business, when someone dicks up, they get a call-sign. So he's Killswitch."

"Oh," she said, and couldn't think of anything to add. What the hell kind of business had he really been involved in, if they needed things that could disable the engine of a car? Maybe it was really for the better that he'd turned into an asshole, so she wouldn't be tempted to stay. It sounded like he knew the same kinds of people that Chuck had, and that was how they all ended up here.

Luckily, Tate didn't seem to expect a response. Instead, he handed her the rumpled piece of paper with the cell phone number on it. "We want to get the baby tonight. We can drive anywhere to get her. They'll get the car and everything in it. You haven't talked to the cops or anyone else, you're here alone, okay?"

She nodded, taking the paper and a shaky breath as she fumbled with the cell phone. Simon pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and gestured for her to sit. He tried to smile. "Easy peasy, Sarah Jane. Take a deep breath. It's all going to be fine."

She didn't believe him. But she sat and punched in the phone number, then held the small plastic phone up to her ear and closed her eyes. She hadn't prayed in a long time, but as that damn thing rang, she asked everyone and everything to please be on her side.

Someone picked up but didn't speak, and all she heard was breathing.

SJ cleared her throat and forced words out around a knot in her throat, wanting to vomit instead. "You have my baby."

"You have my car."

She gripped the edge of the table until her fingers hurt, and used the pain to clear the panic from her mind. She had to be strong for Dakota. She had to focus. "I don't want the car. I'll drive it anywhere you want. Just don't hurt my baby."

"She's fine." The male voice didn't seem concerned, and the slight accent made it hard to tell if he meant it. "I will send an address to your phone. Be there tonight. Nine o'clock. No earlier, no later."

SJ's heart dropped. "Nine o'clock." She glanced at Simon and Tate, both of whom nodded to confirm it was okay, and she took a shaky breath. "Okay. Just — please let me talk to my baby. She needs to hear me; she needs —"

"Don't fuck around," he said, though there wasn't any anger in his voice. Just business. "There's bears and shit all over this place. I don't want to leave that kid outside, but I will if you're a second late or I get the feeling you called the cops. No one else shows up, or the baby meets a bear. You hear me?"

"I know, I know — I understand. Please, just let me —"

"Nine o'clock." The connection cut off.

SJ's hands shook as she put the phone on the table, afraid she'd drop it or throw it across the room in despair. She hadn't even heard Dakota crying in the background. She looked at Simon. "What if they've already killed her? What if she's already gone?"

"She's not," he said, and immediately sank into the chair next to her. "I promise, Sarah Jane, Dakota is still alive. Some of the wolves have gotten close enough to smell her around the cabin. Dirty diapers and things like that. And they know the difference between alive smell and ... not alive smell. She'll be fine. We'll get her."

SJ wanted to believe him, but as she stared at the cell phone and it lit up with a text message sharing the address, she didn't know if she had enough faith in Tate and his people. She'd been unlucky her whole life.

She handed the phone back to Tate, feeling as if the entire world landed on her shoulders. Nine o'clock seemed an eternity away. "Now what?"

"We hunt," he said.

When she looked up at him, the mountain lion stared at her through his eyes. SJ started to feel the smallest bit better. The men who took Dakota hadn't been expecting shifters, clearly, even if they saw Rosie. Maybe the bears and wolves and lions would be enough to get Dakota back in one piece. SJ would do anything she had to in order to make sure her baby was okay.

W
ith three hours to
kill before Sarah Jane had to move the car toward the cabin, Tate was going stir crazy. He always hated those last few hours before a mission. Hated it. If it was a normal mission, he’d have gone to the gym and worked out for a hour, taken a nap, and maybe found other ways to distract himself until the time came. Instead, he had Sarah Jane sitting on his couch, wooden and uncomfortable and clearly panicking over not having her cub with her. The mountain lion hated her being uncertain and upset, and wanted to do nothing but comfort her.

But with Simon still there as chaperone, Tate could barely figure out his own emotions, much less have a meaningful conversation with Sarah Jane. Not that that was the best time to talk to her about his ex-girlfriend and all the reasons he suspected Sarah Jane wasn't really supposed to be his mate. Her baby had been kidnapped. She didn't need Tate talking about shit like that.

So instead Tate paced around his apartment, debating whether he could run in the snow, and when Simon gave him another dirty look, Tate took himself outside. He stood on the landing outside the door, shivering in the chill of the poorly-insulated hall, and called over to Finn, who was in the forest outside the cabin with the rest of the bears.

The kid answered with a lazy sigh. "Yep?"

"Have you seen the kid at all?"

"No positive identification," Finn said, and yawned. "But we caught one of those assholes when he went outside to take a dump. Cooper mauled the shit out of him. Literally." And Finn chuckled.

"Did Cooper kill him?"

"Nah, just tore him up a bit. He'll probably die by tomorrow, though."

Tate pinched the bridge of his nose, even though he wanted to congratulate the kid and give Cooper a high five for getting a little vengeance on the assholes who hurt Rosie. "You can't drive them off, man. What if they took this guy with them to a hospital or something? The plan would be fucked."

"Nah," Finn said. "They didn't even start looking for him for about twenty minutes, so we figured he wasn't that important."

Tate stared up at the cloudy sky and prayed for patience. At least he was starting to know what Simon must have felt every time Tate changed the plan at the last minute when they were in the Legion. It always seemed like a good idea at the time, to Tate, but Simon never seemed to appreciate his vision. So Tate cut Finn a little slack and looked for the bright side. "Don't kill anyone else, okay? Unless you think they're going to hurt the baby, then fuck everyone. Just save the baby."

"Yeah." Another yawn punctuated whatever followed, and Tate wanted to reach through space to strangle the kid. He hated those damn bears some times. But then Finn chuckled and went on. "Kira's on the roof in her jaguar form, so if anything starts to go wrong, she'll know."

"She's on the roof?"

"Over the room where they've got the baby," he said. "She can go through the window, and she can hear what they're saying inside. She signaled that the baby's in there and still breathing. She ain't happy, but she's there."

"Kira's not happy, or the baby isn't happy?"

"Baby's crying on and off," Finn said. "Kira won't stop bitching about doing all the work, though, while we're all out playing in the woods."

"You're killing me, Finn." Tate took a deep breath and focused on the fact that at least the jaguar would be able to get to the baby. And Tate knew to his bones that Kira would die to protect the kid just the same as Rosie almost had. He also knew it would kill Ethan to lose his mate, so he hoped it didn't come to that. Tate stared at a strange shape on the wall across from him — water damage from some long-ago broken pipe — and started thinking about a bigger apartment, in a nicer building. Maybe even a house with a backyard so Dakota could play outside whenever she wanted. "Look, Sarah Jane will drive the car up at nine o'clock. We'll use that to draw as many of the guys out of the cabin as possible and to get a proof of life on the baby. Once we know for sure where she's at and Sarah Jane has her, we get Sarah Jane clear and then kill all of the drug dealers."

"They're city guys," Finn said. "Won't be a problem."

"Don't get too confident, kid." Tate's thoughts drifted to another time and place, a much darker time and place, and getting ready for a different operation with another cocky kid. That kid ended up in a body bag. He didn't want that for Finn. "These guys are where they are for a good reason. They're ruthless. Cold-blooded. They don't fuck around. They will not hesitate to kill Sarah Jane or that baby if they think she's a risk. So play it safe and don't get them any more nervous than they already are."

"We got you." Something crackled in the background and Finn whispered to someone else, then murmured into the phone, "Someone else is coming out. We'll update you in ten."

The call cut off and Tate stared at the phone in his hand. He hated being so far from the action. He wanted to be at the cabin. But he knew — and so did Simon — that if Tate had been anywhere near the cabin, he wouldn't have been able to wait to get Dakota. He'd have gone in by himself, consequences be damned.

So he remained on the cold landing until he almost couldn't feel his hands, then returned to the apartment and the living room where Sarah Jane sat like a statue. The mountain lion wanted to comfort her, but she looked like she would shatter at any moment. So he sat on his heels across the coffee table from her and started moving coasters around to make a map of the cabin and its surroundings.

Simon handed him some utensils and other kitchen things so Tate could make his depiction of the cabin a little more accurate, and stood by to watch as Tate pointed out where Sarah Jane would approach the cabin. "The road comes up here, to the front of the cabin. There are guards on the road, so someone will probably come out of the trees from about here. Don't make any sudden moves, try to stay calm. They'll tell you to go the rest of the way up to the cabin once the guys inside are ready. Park the car and get out when they tell you. If everything goes right, they'll check the car to make sure all their stuff is still there, they'll hand you Dakota, and you start walking back down the trail. One of our guys will pick you up once you're out of sight of the cabin."

"And then?" Sarah Jane watched him, still unmoving. She reminded Tate suddenly of Monique, when he explained that he was a shifter and Monique flipped out. Right before she screamed at him and started throwing things, she'd been very, very still. He wondered if Sarah Jane was at her breaking point, too.

"And then you come back to Rosie's apartment and make sure Dakota is okay. Have a good rest and get ready for Rosie to come back from the hospital. That's all you've got to worry about." He meant it to be reassuring and easy.

But her eyes glinted with a hint of anger. "I meant to them. What happens to them after I'm out of sight?"

"Cooper already mauled one of them," Tate said, though he hesitated a little. Maybe she didn't really want to know the details. People thought they'd enjoy revenge, but usually it didn't work out that way. "So I expect when the cops show up tomorrow morning, there will have been several animal attacks outside the cabin."

She studied him closely, then nodded. "Okay."

"Okay." Tate frowned down at the mishmash of coasters and cutlery, and wished that Simon found somewhere else to hang out. Tate didn't know if he could love Sarah Jane the way she deserved to be loved, but there wasn't any way for him to figure it out with the alpha bear hanging around like a chaperone. So Tate picked up the kitchen stuff and started to put it away. "It'll be okay. They just want the car. Once they have it, everything will be fine."

He almost believed it himself.

Sarah Jane, though, clearly didn't. She didn't look at him, staring instead at the coffee table. "Except that's what they're thinking — that it'll be fine once they have the car. But there are bears and wolves and God only knows what else waiting to kill them in the woods. So why should I believe that they don't also have some other plan in mind?"

Tate didn't know what to say to that. She was right, after all, and he'd worked around men like those drug dealers long enough to know they wouldn't want to let her leave alive. She wouldn't walk very far down that trail before something happened. If he told her that, though, there was no way Sarah Jane would have the strength to drive up to the cabin. She already looked near panic.

He took a deep breath and attempted a smile. "Because I know how these guys work, and all they're interested in is that car."

"Bullshit." Sarah Jane lurched to her feet and started to pace the small living room. "I'm a witness. I know what's in that car, I know where they're at. They have no way of knowing I didn't call the cops, or that I'm actually showing up alone. The second I park the car, they have no reason to let me walk away alive."

Simon eased a little closer, as if he feared Sarah Jane might make a run for it or try for the window. Tate shook his head at the alpha bear and remained near the couch, wondering if she'd be able to stay calm enough to actually drive the car an hour to the cabin. Maybe he'd have to drive it, then hide in the trunk while she took the wheel for the last little bit. Tate cleared his throat. "While that may be true, we know where they are and what they're doing. We'll know where every single one of them is. They don't know about us, so we have surprise on our side. There's risk in going, of course there is, but that shouldn't stop us from —"

"You're goddamn right it's not going to stop me." She faced him, her eyes narrowed and throwing sparks. "They have my child. I'll walk there if I have to, to get her back. I'll do anything I have to to save my baby. And there's no way in hell you're stopping me from going, so if you think for a second that you'll drive that car, you're out of your fucking mind. That car was my mistake and my child is suffering because of it, and
I'm
going to make it right. So sit down and stop looking at me like you're scared I'm going to cry."

Tate blinked. Her hands trembled as she made fists and put them on her hips, scowling at him with such ferocity that even the mountain lion wanted to retreat. He caught a glimpse of the mama bear inside of her, ready to scorch the earth to save her child. Her expression darkened and he held up his hands, taking a step back. "I'm not going to stop you from driving the car."

Simon, though, eyed her with more concern. "Are you sure —"

"I'm damn sure." Sarah Jane turned the ferocious scowl on the alpha bear, and Tate wanted to smirk as even tougher-than-nails Simon retreated. And Sarah Jane didn't stop there. She advanced in his direction and jabbed her finger into Simon's chest. "And if you think for a second you're going to stop me, I'll call Zoe and tell on you."

Simon's bushy eyebrows rose in alarm. "Hey now. No need for that. She's fine at the hospital with Rosie."

"Exactly." Sarah Jane spun on her heel and paced back across the living room, pausing only to stare out the window at the quiet street below. "Fine. We've got an hour before we have to leave, right?"

"Yeah, about an hour." Tate braced himself for another tirade, but she didn't react.

"Good."

Tate looked at Simon, waiting for the alpha bear to do something, but Simon just raised his hands and widened his eyes, as if he didn't know what the hell to do either. So Tate dropped on the couch and put his feet up, keeping an eye on Sarah Jane as she paced and occasionally muttered to herself, and he tried to figure out a better plan. One that kept her safe from the plans the drug dealers were making. Nothing came to mind, though, and he wondered if he was only sending Sarah Jane into an ambush that would leave both her and her child dead. He sank lower on the couch and thought harder. There had to be a better way.