Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (4 page)

Once Bruno was gone, neither Carla nor I moved from where we were sitting at the table. We watched each other carefully, neither of us so much as moving an inch, until she let out a deep, heavy sigh and I gave her a weak smile in return.

“Crazy, huh?” I asked.

She nodded. “It sure is. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's hardly the first time one of those guys got taken out. What's weird is that Bruno told us. Whenever something like this happened in the past, he always made a story up. It was always stupid, and no one believed it, but whenever he rubbed out one of his guys they ended up supposedly going on vacation, or finding a job down in the lower forty-eight, or visiting a sick grandma and never coming back.”

“So him confiding in us is new?”

“It is, and I don't like it at all. Did you see the look on his face? That man’s scared shitless, and there's if there’s anything more dangerous than a Bruno who’s just mean, it's a Bruno who’s desperate. Mark my words Zoe, things are going to get bad before they get better. If you were thinking of getting out of here, now might be a perfect time.”

I shook my head sadly. “As much as I'd like to, I don't have the cash saved up yet. I could make it there, but that's it. I’m not going home until I can get my son, and that isn't going to happen just yet.”

“Okay. I understand, I do. But just remember that you're going to be no good to your son if you get tangled up in things here.”

I nodded.

But Carla wasn't done. “And I don't just mean tangled up in this Bruno thing we were just talking about. I've seen the way you look at that guy that comes in. Don't think you're fooling anyone, because you aren't. Maybe you don't care that he’s a drunk, and that's fine.
Maybe
you can even see that he’s damaged goods, though I'm sure that’s a bonus to a girl your age. A fool like you will get it into your head that you can fix him.”

“But…”

“And yes, he's clearly gorgeous. But he’s trouble. You’ve got to believe me when I say that. He’s bad news, exactly the sort of bad news that would you don’t need in your life. You think it’s hard to get your boy back into your custody now? Wait until you show up at the courthouse with that dude on your arm.”

“I know…” I said, feeling remarkably like I used to when my mother scolded me.

“I'm not trying to be a bitch, Zoe,” Carla said sadly. I’m only trying to look out for you.”

“I appreciate it,” I told her. “You’re right. I promise I'll be as careful as I can, but you’re going to have to let me make a few of these mistakes on my own. You know that, right?”

“I do. That's what scares me.”

I put my hand on hers and gave it a squeeze before standing up and moving toward the door.

“Where you going?”

I looked back at her over my shoulder and flashed her a winning grin, trying to kill any other questions before they could make their way out of her mouth. “I'm off to go make a few mistakes on my own, just like I said. I'll be back before we open, I promise.”

Even though the tracks from last night were long gone, I was pretty sure I remembered exactly what direction they'd been headed. Rather than turn down the street and take a right at the outfitters like I had last night, I simply walked straight out of Bruno's and toward the snow-choked forest that surrounded us.

It may have been the middle of the afternoon, but I didn't see anyone on the street. Barrow was good like that. You’d only see a couple of people, and they’d have their heads down against the wind.

It was a quiet place, and around here people kept to themselves and did their own thing. It was an odd mix of hardworking mavericks who didn’t want to be told what to do, strung-out junkies lost in their own worlds and people like me. And then there were the people like me, running from something or someone…

The snow had stopped falling sometime while I'd been asleep. I glanced to my left one more time, suddenly nervous as I was about to enter the tree line. Up until now it had been easy to crunch through the snow, and I saw that in a few steps it would be even more simple. The branches above me were full of snow and long, wicked icicles that dropped melting water everywhere in a stuttering cascade.

I was going to get wet, and it was going to be cold.

No matter. I might've been flippant when I’d spoken to Carla a couple of minutes ago, but my motivations were real. Something happened out here last night, and I’d be damned if I didn't try and find out what. Call it curiosity, or call it gut instinct. Whatever label or name I tried to attach to it didn't matter.

If they’d found Everly’s body, what about the person that had made the second pair of tracks? Could my gentle drunk be out here right now, injured and alone?

With that thought driving me on, I stepped away from the field of freshly fallen snow and moved amongst the trees.

A few things happened at once, so quickly as to be disconcerting. The sun may have been bright back there, but in
here
it became suddenly dark. The trees grew so close together that I couldn’t see very far in any direction, and with each step it got noticeably colder.

Now and then I could hear the wind blow, which made the branches above me rub against each other with a creaking that reminded me of the door of a haunted house. It set my teeth on edge. I wasn't normally one to jump at shadows, but I could see why this place had a reputation for being infested by spirits. If there really were ghosts, this would be as good a place as any of them to hang out until they waited for some idiot mortal single mother to enter the forest and be either gobbled up or possessed.

I may have been young, but my days of being afraid of silly things like that were supposed to be well behind me. I'd had to grow up fast in the years since Jake had been born, and I’d put things like superstition and silly fears behind me. I didn't have time for that. I was a mother with a boy that relied on me for everything.

Teenagers can waste their time scaring themselves, pretending that someone was going to reach through the crack in the stairs and grab their ankle or snatch at your feet from underneath the bed, but
women
can't. Real women have to put all that shit aside and face something far more frightening.

Real life.

I stepped carefully through the forest, though it was impossible to do it silently. Everywhere I walked I stepped on twigs and branches strewn across the ground, and though the leaves of the bushes that made up the undergrowth were wet they still rustled when I pushed through them.

Not for the first time, I wondered exactly how stupid I was being. I knew that there were moose that ate the tender leaves from these branches and used the trunks to bang their horns against.
Antlers
, I reminded myself.
They're called antlers. You might not be a local, but you better start thinking like one
…

And bears. Grizzlies. I hadn't brought any bear spray, not that I owned any. If I was going to take up a hobby of traipsing through the woods, I’d do well to invest some of my meager savings in a can of mace. Every day I walked past the outfitters I saw it there in the window, $17.99 for a one use canister. I hoped I wouldn't regret the fact that I didn't have any in my pocket as I turned in the direction that I thought the tracks had been leading last night pushed through the forest.

Even though I thought I was heading in the right direction, it was difficult to be sure. It was easy to get twisted around in here, and as I angled away from civilization and headed North toward the wilderness, I wondered if that was what had happened to Bridget.

Had she simply wandered off? I'd heard stories of people doing things like that, forgetting about how quickly the cold can kill them and simply going for a walk from which they never returned. Maybe her car had broken down somewhere and she frozen to death inside of it, waiting for help that never arrived.

I didn't know what had become of her, but I didn't like the dark turn my thoughts were taking. I tried to think happy thoughts, of Jake's birthdays and the look on his face that I was sure he'd have when I retrieved him from my grandparents but even though things like that usually cheered me up, they seemed to have no power here in the woods.

There was something about this forest that robbed me of hope. I may have laughed at the idea of it being haunted, but there was certainly a dark, powerful feeling of oppression within these trees.

I told myself that I should hurry up and get back to Bruno's. I didn’t have that long before he would open, and not only was it not fair to leave Carla there on her own but my absence would certainly be noticed by the Bruno if he decided to put in another appearance. The last thing I wanted was the Wolf pack sniffing around, trying to work out why I wasn't where I was supposed to be. They were
all
dangerous men, and being on the wrong side of them was the quickest way to disaster I could think of.

Forget the woods. The real terror in town was those guys…

And I worked for their boss! If anybody should be on their best behavior right now, it should be me…

Ten more minutes
, I told myself.
You can walk in this direction for ten more minutes and then that's it. If you don't find whatever you're looking for, too bad. Jobs out here are few and far between, and there's no point risking yours on some fool errand.

I hurried. I didn't know what I was running toward, but suddenly I really
was
running, brushing against branches, the twigs yanking at my hair and tearing at my clothes as I pushed through them into an area of the forest where the undergrowth was even thicker.

I had a pretty good internal clock. I’d know when ten minutes was up, and the little alarm inside my head hadn't gone off yet when I accidentally slid down a rise on my butt and came to a stop in a little frozen gulley. I look up to find myself surrounded by closely growing trees that seemed to lean over the blank space in the forest I'd found.

I was in some sort of clearing. There were leaves everywhere, piles and piles of leaves. As a girl, I probably would've thought this place was perfect. My first instinct would've been to jump into them back then, the way I had when my dad had raked up the yard and built a massive pile for me to do just that in.

For a moment, for the briefest slice of time, the ghost of a smile crossed my lips as I remembered my parents. They’d done their best, and though we hadn't had money the simple joys still resonated with me. Like that pile of leaves in the front yard. Things like that stuck with me, and I was glad that they always would.

The smile disappeared as I studied the leaves closer, and I saw a pale, waxy grey hand sticking out from the middle of them, like a man pushing up through the ground from his own grave.

I wanted to run. I wanted to turn around and sprint back to the bar. But I wouldn’t stop there I’d scrounge up the money for a bus ticket and flee Alaska altogether, urging the driver to set a breakneck pace for home. I’d get Jake, steal him if I had to, and we wouldn't stop running until they either caught us or we got away.

Looking at that dead hand and the way it reached endlessly for the sky above shook me to my core.

It was Everly, under the leaves. I was sure that it was. Once I forced myself to look close enough I could see the tattoos along the knuckles, the ones that spelled
HATE
. It was obviously him, which meant I had no desire to see the rest of him.

He was a corpse now. A body. Even when he'd been alive I dreaded the days that he'd walk into the bar, and now that he was gone there was no more reason to lay my eyes on him.

Even though that was true, I found myself reaching out with a trembling hand and brushing the leaves away from his face. It was him all right, his jaw locked in a snarl, his blazing eyes still open as he glared up at the branches above us.

There was a perfectly round mark between his eyes. It was so clean and so neatly placed that for a moment I didn’t even realize what it was.

A bullet hole…

This was wrong. This wasn't how Bruno had described it. He'd made it clear to both Carla and I that Everly had his throat ripped out, but what I was looking at now was a clearly gunshot wound. I pushed even more leaves aside, trying as hard as I could not to physically touch him. It didn’t take me very long to be able to see Everly’s intact throat.

Why had Bruno lied to Carla and I? Was it a suicide? It seemed stupid to make up a story to cover up that sort of thing. It wasn’t as if any of the bikers he was in charge of were pillars of the community.

Even though they hadn’t done a CSI Alaska yet, the rest of the crime shows I used to watch on TV told me that there was no way he’d killed himself. At least, if he had, somebody else had been the one to cover him up with the leaves.

And that look on his face. That tortured, anguished look that was locked on his skull and forever would be… There was no way I could look at that and pretend that he’d gone willingly to his death.

I didn't know what was going on, but I had a feeling that the only reason Bruno would be telling stories was to cover his own ass. Which meant that anyone that knew the truth, particularly a young, blonde-haired single mother who really should be back at the bar and not on her hands and knees beside a corpse in the forest was in
way
more trouble than she knew what to do with.

I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't know what I knew, and now that I did I was scared. Terrified. Petrified, quite literally. As much as I screamed at myself to get up and get my ass back to the bar, I couldn't physically make myself get up off the ground.

The crack of a broken stick rifled through the forest like a gunshot, and I froze.
This is what a deer feels like
, I heard that little voice tell me.
This is what they feel like when they know the hunter is on the way. They freeze, just like this, and the next thing that goes through their stupid head is the bullet
…

There was another noise, in the same direction as the first, and I whipped my head around to try and find the source. The trees grew too closely together for me to see past them, but there was no doubt that someone was on the way. Whoever was approaching was about to find me bent over this corpse…

I was in deep shit, and I knew it.

A rush of movement behind me took me by surprise. Strong, lean arms wrapped around my waist and lifted me effortlessly off the ground, and before I could scream or struggle a warm mouth pressed itself to my ear. “I'm on your side,” a male voice said, ringing a chorus of bells of familiarity. “Be quiet, and come with me.”

I didn't have much choice about the second part, but I could fulfill the first condition by biting my tongue and nodding, both silently and furiously. I wasn't going to make any more noise than I had to, not when it was clear that there was still someone on the way.

His grip on me loosened as he set me on my feet, I turned to see the cute guy from the bar. The broken drunk, as I'd kind of started to refer to him in my head, though right now his bright blue eyes were as clear as the sky above us. His arms were still around my hips, holding me protectively. I couldn't help but step into him a little bit, both for warmth and safety.

“Who's coming”, I whispered, hoping it was just some other idiot out for a stroll same way I'd been.

“I'm not sure,” he said, his voice low. “The wind is blowing in the wrong direction for me to tell.”

I frowned, but before I could ask him how that mattered, we crossed with incredible silence through the leaves as he showed me a way the other side of the gulley, directing my feet on to tree roots so that I wouldn't leave tracks in the snow. Once or twice he lifted me across a patch that would've revealed our presence, but after no more than ten or twelve feet I heard him hiss under his breath as he pushed me down into a snow bank.

I fell to my stomach and he dropped on top of me, most of his bulk draped across my back.

He was incredibly warm, and even though we were clearly hiding from someone that he thought we should be afraid of, I couldn't help but bask in the heat rolling off of him. It was like sitting down in front of a campfire. He gave my flesh that same baked-dry feel that made you think that you could never be warmer than you were right then.