Perfect Mate (7 page)

Cormac still scented her on himself. He took a step closer, right against her back,
and wrapped his arms around her.

“I can’t remember,” Nell said. He heard the tears in her voice.

“It will come.”

Cormac closed his eyes, not fighting his need to melt into her. Fighting the senses
only clouded them.

They stood together, locked as one, comfort and need twining them. Nell’s scent filled
him again, covering the stench of the garbage, and everything else but Shane and the . . .
Ah.

Cormac opened his eyes. “He was here. In the club with us. The guy at the next table.”

Nell’s eyes also came open, and she looked up and back at him. “I remember. He was
sitting alone, and Shane bumped into him. Nearly spilled his beer. Please don’t tell
me he’s out for revenge because a Shifter almost spilled his beer.”

“I don’t think so. This was well planned. The guy didn’t just happen to have a syringe
full of tranquilizer in his pocket.”

“But why Shane?” Nell’s voice rose toward panic. “Or is he a hunter who’ll take any
Shifter?”

“Hunting Collared Shifters is highly illegal. Even the human cops wouldn’t look the
other way for that. Too touchy.”

“Then he wanted Shane specifically.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Why?”

Cormac closed his arms more tightly around her. “We’ll find him, and we’ll ask.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?” Nell said, worried.

“Yes. Every detail.”

Nell looked at him in surprise. “Every detail? I barely noticed the guy.”

“Habit I picked up growing up. I notice everything around me at all times, every scent,
sight, sound, feel—taste if necessary. I learned to live like an animal long before
I understood what it was like to live as a human. I was nearly twenty before I found
the rest of my clan.”

Life had been . . . interesting. The true bears had given him a wide berth because
he’d smelled wrong.

Cormac had wandered alone, a cub calling for someone, anyone to help him, and realizing
finally that there was no one to come. He’d learned survival on his own, hunting and
killing his own food, eating it raw.

“I’m sorry,” Nell said.

“What I learned comes in handy,” Cormac said without self-pity. He released her from
his arms but took her hand. “Let’s use it to find your cub.”

The human employees still inside the club went bug-eyed when Cormac walked in naked,
but the Shifters didn’t notice. Nell noticed, but then, she’d become hyperaware of
Cormac. His scent was on her and hers on him. Scent-marked—the first step in the mating
game.

Cormac became bear again to sniff around inside, and he was joined by Jace in his
Feline form. Jace and Cormac hunted around the tables, while Graham looked on, his
human girlfriend watching with her fingers steepled at her lips.

They found nothing at the table. The guy had left no trace of himself but his scent.

Nell vaguely remembered the man nursing a bottle of beer while she’d sat at the next
table trying not to pour out her heart to Cormac. But the bartender confirmed that
the table had been cleared a long time ago, any beer bottles left there now in the
gigantic pile in the recycle bin.

“We could get fingerprints from the chair and table,” Brody suggested. “See if he’s
got a record, anyway.”

Cormac shifted into his human form as Brody spoke. “Then we’d have to involve the
police.” He looked at Nell. “You want to do that?” Cormac knew from experience that
getting human police interested in Shifter problems complicated matters more than
they helped.

“We don’t have to,” Nell said. “We have a secret weapon.”

Cormac raised his brows, unsure what she meant, but Brody relaxed. “Diego and Xavier,”
he said. “I’ll call them.”

***

“Take it easy,” Joe said. “You’re groggy.”

The Shifter-man’s eyelids fluttered as he tried to open them, then Shane gave up and
slumped back into the chair—the sturdiest chair Joe possessed.

Joe had been driving out to his cabin, keeping with his plan to kill the bear there
then decapitate him, when his cell phone buzzed. The man on the other end had been
Miguel, the Shifter who’d hired him.

“How’s it going?” Miguel had asked.

“I got one,” Joe answered. “You’ll have proof in the morning. Twenty grand, right?”

The voice took on a Shifter snarl. “I want them all.”

“Can’t promise that. Too problematic. I think a hundred grand’s even too low for all
four. I can give you this one, and you hire someone else to go after the others.”

“I want all of them, especially the Shifter bitch and her mate. I’ll give you the
hundred thousand for just those two.”

“No thanks. If I capture and kill a cop, even an ex-cop, even one who’s shacked up
with a Shifter, I’ll never live to enjoy the money.”

There was a moment of intense, furious silence. “I hired you because you were good.
Or said you were.”

“I am good. I’m just not stupid. You’ll get one of the four. I have him right here.”
Shane had been out, slumped against the truck’s door, his hands and feet chained.
The second tranq, delivered when Joe had gotten him into the truck, had knocked him
cold.

“Keep him for me,” Miguel said. “I want to make the kill myself. And then
I’ll
go after the other three, and you will help me.”

No way. But Joe didn’t argue with him. People who hired bounty hunters or ordered
hits weren’t always stable.

“Now you want me to keep him alive?” Joe asked. “For how long? I only have so much
tranquilizer.”

“For as long as it takes. I’ll call you when I make it to town.”

Joe had hung up in irritation. He’d really wanted to get some sleep tonight.

Joe had continued to the cabin he’d already set up for the kill. Easiest to keep Shane
there, and it was far enough out of town that if the Shifter gave him too much trouble,
Joe could simply shoot to kill without any neighbors hearing. Miguel would have to
suck it up. The money Miguel offered wasn’t good enough for Joe to take extra risks.

Shane’s eyelids fluttered again. Joe shoved a sports bottle of water between Shane’s
lips and upended it. Shane coughed, but Joe didn’t relent.

“Don’t need you dehydrating. He wants you alive.”

Shane swallowed the water and licked droplets from his lips. “Who the hell are you?”
His voice was still scratchy with dryness. “Wait, I saw you at the club, didn’t I?”

“The name’s Josiah. My friends call me Joe. Now I have a little dilemma. I’m starting
to think I’m not going to come out of this very well, no matter if I give you to the
nut-job who wants you or negotiate with you for your release. So do me a favor and
don’t ask me any more questions while I sit here and think about what to do.”

“Huh,” Shane said, letting his eyes close again. “If you think your only problems
are me and the nut-job, it just means you don’t know my mother.”

Joe didn’t laugh. “You say that because you haven’t met
my
mother. Your mom was the Shifter lady sitting at the table with you tonight?”

Shane opened his eyes again. This time they were more focused. “Yeah, that was her.”

“Nice-looking woman. Hope it works out for her and that other bear Shifter. It’s tough
for widows to find someone new.”

“Ain’t you sweet?” Shane’s hands moved under the chains that wrapped his body, and
one spark leapt from the Collar around his neck. “How about we talk about this on
more even terms?”

Joe lifted his tranq rifle, loaded and ready to go. Another rifle lay next to it,
that one with .30-06 bullets. “If you sit there calmly, I’ll let you stay awake,”
Joe said. “If you move too much, I’ll put you out again, or shoot you with real bullets.
Either way I wouldn’t be able to let you in on the decision-making process.” He smiled
at Shane, who didn’t smile back. “So shut up, and let me think.”

***

Diego Escobar, the mate of Eric’s sister, and Diego’s brother, Xavier, ran a security
firm called DX Security. They showed up in response to Brody’s call for help, along
with Reid, the guy who called himself a dark Fae. Apparently Reid worked at the security
firm with the two humans. Weird.

Cormac liked Diego, who looked over the scene without fuss, listening to Brody, Nell,
and Cormac tell him what they’d found. Xavier said fingerprints were a long shot—there’d
be a lot of them, if they could even get clear ones, plus the waitress would have
wiped down the table when she’d cleaned up. Even so, Xavier got started checking out
the chair in which the guy had been sitting.

Diego opened a laptop at another table and had Cormac describe the man. Brody and
Nell put in what they remembered, but Cormac gave Diego the most detailed description.

“I’m impressed,” Diego said. “How long have you had perfect recall?”

“It’s not perfect recall,” Cormac said. “I just notice things.”

Not that he didn’t recall every touch, every kiss, every breath of himself and Nell
up at the cabin. The time with her had eased his heart, allowing a new spark of warmth
to grow. Cormac hung on to that spark in hope. Mate bonds were precious and didn’t
happen to everybody.

Diego had software that quickly rendered an image, then he and Cormac made adjustments.
Another laptop with more software let Xavier scan the fingerprints he’d managed to
lift and look for a match. He didn’t find anything, but said he wasn’t surprised.
If the man had been careful, he’d have touched as little as possible and wiped everything
off before he left.

Diego’s facial recognition program had more luck.

“He doesn’t have a police record,” Diego announced. “Or an FBI file. But I have access
to more information than that.” He tapped keys and brought up a photograph of their
man. It was a casual snapshot, a man of average human height with brown hair, standing
in a hunting vest in the woods. “His name is Josiah Doyle.” Diego tapped the arrow
key to move to more information. “He’s a bounty hunter. Goes after bail jumpers, escaped
convicts, and un-Collared Shifters.”

Nell’s hand tightened on the back of Cormac’s chair. “Why would a bounty hunter go
after
Shane
? He’s not an un-Collared Shifter.”

“I think we should ask him,” Diego said. “I have the addresses of his house and a
couple of cabins. I’d bet he took Shane to one of them.”

“To kill him?” Nell asked, her lips white.

Cormac squeezed her hand between his. “I’ll never let that happen. We’ll find him
and bring him home.”

“Don’t worry, Nell,” Diego said. “Xav and I have plenty of firepower and know how
to use it. And we have Reid.”

“And me,” Graham rumbled.

“Don’t even think about it,” Nell said. “I don’t want my cub getting caught in the
cross fire.”

“And he won’t,” Diego said. He had a kind voice, soothing, even with his overtone
of authority. That the human man wasn’t intimidated by Shifters like Graham, Nell,
and Jace said a lot about him. “We know what we’re doing, Nell. We’ll go, we’ll get
Shane, and we’ll bring him back.”

“I’m going with you,” Nell said. “I’m not sitting at home waiting and wondering if
you’ll find him before it’s too late.”

“Graham sent Misty home,” Diego pointed out.

“She’s human,” Nell returned. She fixed Diego with a steely stare. “Don’t argue with
me, Diego. I know what you did when it was your mate and cub in trouble.”

“Yeah, and I also took the help I was offered,” Diego said.

“But you didn’t wait at home.”

“No,” Diego admitted. “I didn’t.”

“Well, then.”

“Nell’s right,” Cormac broke in. “We need her. We’ll have to split up and check each
location—we don’t have time to check them all in turn.” He pointed at the locator
map on Diego’s computer. “I think his house is the least likely place. We should check
it in case but put most of our might on the cabins. Graham and Jace can scope out
one cabin with Xavier; and Nell, Brody, and I will scope out the other.”

“While I grab backup and go to the house?” Diego asked. He grinned. “You’re good at
giving orders, but I’m modifying them. Xav and I will go to the house. Less fuss if
only humans drive up to see Mr. Doyle, no Shifters in sight. Two teams of Shifters
will check out the cabins, but I’m sending Reid with one.”

Cormac blinked. “The Fae? Why?”

“It’s all right,” Nell said. “Reid is useful, and he likes Shane. I trust him.”

Interesting. But whatever.

“Good,” Brody said. “Let’s head out. Anything’s better than hanging around here sweating.”

Nell put her arm around her son. Cormac rose and joined them, and the three closed
into a warm, comforting huddle. Cormac had no inclination to step away, to let Nell
and Brody be private. The encompassing hug meant they accepted him, that Cormac was
part of them now.

Cormac brushed his hand over Brody’s hair and kissed Nell briefly on the lips. Then
they broke apart to go hunt for Shane.

***

Nell knew Shane was in the cabin at the end of the track as soon as Cormac stopped
the truck out of sight on the mountain road.

The sun was rising, touching the folds of land flowing down from the woods that all
but hid the cabin at the end of a clearing. The tiny cabin had a wide front porch
that overlooked the clearing, its back wall shadowed by ponderosa pines.

Josiah’s second cabin, the one Graham, Jace, and Reid were checking, was a small house
in the middle of a desert valley, reachable only by a narrow dirt road. Such a setup,
Nell had noted when Xavier showed them the map, would allow the bounty hunter to spot
anyone approaching from miles away. On the other hand, Josiah would never be able
to get himself away from that cabin without being seen.

No,
this
cabin was the better candidate, with its escape route into the woods, which was why
Nell insisted that her group come to check it out. Graham had understood that and
hadn’t protested, and Nell had been silently grateful to him.

“We should shift,” Brody said. “Come at him from three sides.”

“So that way he can shoot only one of us?” Cormac asked dryly. “I would guess he has
a good rifle with a scope, plus rounds big enough to take out a Shifter. One of us
would be very dead.”

“You have a better idea?” Brody asked.

“I go myself. I’m good at woodcraft.”

“I’m a grizzly who grew up in the northern Rockies,” Brody countered. “I know from
woodcraft. And that’s my brother in there.”

“You lived in a house and wore clothes,” Cormac said. “I assure you, I spent most
of my growing-up years sleeping on leaves and eating raw fish. He’ll never see me
coming.”

Nell briskly stepped between them. “Will you two stop playing king of the woods? I
have the best chance. I can walk right up and knock on the door. The bounty hunter
is human, and the majority of human males have taboos against shooting or hurting
a female.”

Cormac turned on her. “And some humans see females as beings who should be treated
like crap. Even if he doesn’t shoot you, he might take you hostage.”

“And then we’d have two of you to rescue,” Brody said.

“No, he’d have a snarling mama bear ready to kill for her cub,” Nell said. “I hope
I rip this stupid dress when I shift to beat his ass.”

“Aw, Mom, you look pretty.”

Nell ground her teeth. “I don’t know who I thought I was kidding, wearing this thing.
It’s not
me
.”

The look Cormac gave her would have seared her to her toes if she hadn’t been so scared
for Shane. “I for one prefer you
out
of the dress, but we’ll talk about that later.”

Brody briefly closed his eyes and shuddered. “Goddess,” he said. “They don’t stop.”

Cormac stripped off his coat and shirt. “I can get behind the cabin and inside before
the hunter knows there’s a danger.”

“Want us to provide a distraction?” Brody asked.

Cormac slid out of his jeans. “What, dancing up and down saying
Shoot me, shoot me
? I don’t want him knowing
anyone
is out here yet. You’ll know when to come assist.”

“When he hangs your dead bearskin out the window?” Nell demanded.

“Nell, honey.” Cormac came to her in nothing but his boxers, the cold not concerning
him. He slid his arms around her waist, his skin so roasting hot he warmed the January
morning. “You’ll know. I already know everything you feel.”