Unable to quit worrying about Kate, and finding nothing to help them this way, he headed back. He came around the bend of the cliff and came to a dead stop, barely breathing. A mother bear was sniffing all around the car, her two black cubs peering in the driver’s side window.
His heart racing, he couldn’t see Kate in the driver’s seat. He wanted to get the mother bear’s attention, to scare her and her cubs off, but being a protective mother, if he scared her into thinking he meant her young ones danger, he could be in real trouble. And Kate might not even be in the car. Maybe she had slipped into the back seat to get out of the bears’ reach because the windshield was gone.
He couldn’t control the anxiety rushing through his bloodstream as he worried about what to do next. Hell, he wished he’d had a noisemaker with him. Even the gun. He could have fired it in the air to scare them off.
Suddenly, the car’s alarm went off, startling the bears. And Leyton.
Kate. Thank God, she was all right, and had enough presence of mind to think of using the car alarm.
The cubs ran off and Momma bear chased after them—but in Leyton’s direction. Shit! He dove for cover behind a boulder, hoping the bears didn’t see him. If they did, he hoped the mother bear and her cubs would continue to run and not stop to check him out. Except the direction they were going was also the way he and Kate needed to go, he thought. Unless the road that led to her campsite didn’t follow the creek.
As soon as the bears ran on past him, he waited a few heartbeats. The car alarm was still going off, but when the bears disappeared around the bend, the alarm suddenly quit. He jumped up from where he’d been hiding and raced to the car, hoping Kate was all right.
She was huddled among all the camping gear, but tried to open the door when she saw him. He got it first, and as soon as he pulled it open, she practically threw herself at him. He caught her, both hugging and holding each other tight.
“Oh, Leyton, I saw you coming and was afraid the mother bear would see you and attack. I finally realized I had the perfect bear horn, the car alarm, and used it.”
“Great thinking.”
“Yeah, but then they ran straight for you.”
“I managed to get behind a boulder before they ran on past. They weren’t going to stop to look for me with the car making such a racket.” He held her tight in his arms, her arms wrapped just as tightly about his waist. They were in a real mess, but at least she seemed to have recovered enough and he was grateful for that. He was also glad things seemed to have changed between them enough, that she realized he wasn’t holding her hostage any longer. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice still dark with concern. He still didn’t know if she had any injuries.
“Back and shoulders are killing me—muscle strain, whiplash. What about you?”
“My shoulder is killing me. We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Not a great way to start a vacation. I think I might need to do something differently next year. I’ve got a bunch of ice packs in one of the coolers. I need to put one on my back. And I need to dig out the pain medication. Do you think the bears will return?”
“Probably not.”
“I’m sure they smelled the food. It’s in bear-proof containers, but they can still smell it. If the air bags hadn’t knocked out the windshield, we could have used the car as more of a safe spot. Did you learn anything?”
“No way to easily scale the ridge unless we are wearing our cougar coats. Without climbing gear, it looks pretty dangerous and it will take a long time to navigate if we attempt it. Does that road continue to follow the creek? We could walk beside the creek until we reached your campsite, and get hold of someone to pick up the rest of your things.”
“No, the road veers miles away from the creek. The cabin is on a lake. I was staying there for five days, which is the maximum time allowed, then tenting at another campsite, and then staying at another for four more days before I left. But we can’t carry much with us. You, because of your shoulder and—“
“You can’t carry anything with your back injured.”
“What are we going to do?” She pulled away from him. “I’ve got to look for the medicine.”
“I’ll make a travois like some of the Native American tribes used to make and carry their belongings.”
“They’d have a horse to pull it.” She found the bottle and brought it out, then pulled out a couple bottles of water. She gave him one and offered him a couple of pills and took a couple of them herself.
“Or a dog.” He swallowed the pills and chased it down with some of the water.
“A cougar.” She took the pills and packed away the bottle. Then she fished out an ice pack.
“Yeah, I would be more sure-footed while dragging it.”
“But doesn’t it have to have a shoulder harness?”
“Yeah, it would. So I’d have to do it as a human and just drag it by hand.” He took the ice pack from her, grabbed one of the T-shirts he’d just bought, and wrapped it around it. Then he said, “Turn around.” He pulled her loose hair away from her back, and began to apply the ice pack to her shoulders, fifteen minutes, moving it to the next area, until he’d reached her other shoulder. Afterward, he put the ice pack back in the cooler and moved things around to make a bed out of the back seat. “Why don’t you crawl in and rest. I’ll whip up some roast beef sandwiches.”
“I’ll help.”
“No matter what, it’s going to be a long haul. I figure after we have lunch, I’ll build a travois. We’ll repack our gear for the essentials we’ll need, the bear bags so we can put our food up in a tree at night, and take any noisemakers you have with us. Too bad we can’t take the car alarm with us. Clothes, food, the tent, sleeping bag and whatever else will make us comfortable and that’s necessary.”
“We don’t have a horse to pull this. Despite your strength, you can’t carry a car full of equipment.”
“We’ll do what we have to do. We’ll stay here the night, safe in the car, and then tomorrow morning, we’ll eat a hearty breakfast, and we’ll head out.”
“You know, they say it’s best to stay with the car in an emergency like this.” She began pulling out the bread and mayonnaise, package of sliced roast beef, and a knife. “Maybe we shouldn’t go anywhere. We’ve got enough food to last us here for quite a while, and the creek for fish and plenty of water if we run out.”
He let out his breath on a heavy sigh and started making the sandwiches. He was a survivalist and his motto was to move, find a way out of their predicament, not just wait for a rescue. But Kate did have a point. A valid point. Park rangers would say for them to stay with the car. They often would find the vehicle before they found the people, if they wandered off. Because of the wreckage they’d made, a path of destruction all the way down the hill, someone would surely realize someone had ended up down here, given time. But when he looked back up the mountain, smaller spruce trees had survived the onslaught of the car’s path, and instead of breaking, just bent under the weight of the vehicle, righting themselves as soon as the car had passed over them. So there wouldn’t be a completely clear path all the way down from the road. If anyone could see the trees that had snapped in two, he could tell the trunks had broken recently.
There were other considerations too though. For one, they were both injured, so no matter what they did, they were going to be in a lot of pain. Even Kate’s whiplash could take a couple of days of rest before she felt better. For another, the car would provide them some protection from bears or cougars—the non-shifting kind—if any came upon them. But mainly, if they got really lucky, someone might drive along the road, see the newly-torn up trees, pull over, and peer down to make sure no one was injured. Though Leyton couldn’t see the road from down here. Anyone peering down the mountain may not see the car either. Still, the driver might get word to a park ranger or the police that the trail they left could mean an injured party at the base of the mountain and law enforcement officials would most li
kely investigate. Send a helicopter over even.
And here they would have tried packing it out and risked running into other trouble.
Kate wouldn’t be missed for a couple of weeks, unless Dan worried when she didn’t call to say she made it safely to the campsite. Leyton figured he wouldn’t be missed until the evidence was found that incriminated him for killing his informant. Even though Leyton was supposed to call in soon, when they were hot on a suspect’s tail in cougar form or at other times where keeping contact at a minimum could mean the difference between a life or death situation, his boss would just assume he couldn’t get in touch.
Leyton couldn’t help but be annoyed that he had probably lost any chance to catch up to Butch though at this point. The bastard would be off marketing more weapons on the black market with no one to stop him.
“Leyton,” Kate said, touching his hand, sounding worried that something was wrong.
He looked up from making the sandwiches. “I was just thinking over what you said. You’re right. Let’s stay here for a couple of days. See if anyone comes to rescue us. That will give me a couple of more days to recuperate from the bullet wound, and you time for your back to feel a little better. We can set up camp, you can sleep in the car, and I’ll sleep in the tent at night. I can even catch us some fish tonight and cook it over an open fire if you’d like. Maybe someone will see the smoke near the creek and come investigate.”
She sighed with a bit of relief. “Okay. But let’s eat the food we have. The ice in the coolers won’t last forever. We might as well eat up the food in there first.”
He agreed and gave her a plate with one of the sandwiches.
She took the plate. “But about the sleeping arrangements…”
He’d raised his sandwich to take a bite, but paused.
“The sleeping bed is big enough for two, and we can’t split it.”
“I can sleep as a cougar.”
Leaning against the car, she shook her head and groaned. And he knew she had to really watch how much she turned her head.
“I’d have to keep bandaging your wound over again, and I don’t want to waste all the bandages…“ She paused, her cheeks reddening a bit, and he liked the blush on her. “I mean, I don’t want to use them all up in case we have any other emergencies. I don’t want to borrow trouble, but it is good to be prepared out here.”
“You’re right.” He couldn’t believe her change of heart about him. Was she truly trusting that he was one of the good guys now? Or just felt they had to get along if they were to survive out here. Not that they couldn’t turn into cougars and get along fine. But walking out of here as two naked humans wouldn’t be smart either. And in a situation like this, it behooved them to work together.
“If the car is too confining, we can sleep in the tent. We can set it up with the car behind us for some protection,” she said, then took a bite of her sandwich.
“If we have trouble with bears, we can shift and climb a tree. Even though some bears can climb them too, they’ll never be able to reach us if we climb high enough.”
“Deal.”
He finished his sandwich, still concerned about her. “You seemed really shook up earlier. I was worried about you. Are you sure you’re all right, Kate?” She’d seemed so despondent at first when they had come to a dead stop against a couple of trees, he wondered if there had been more to her just being in shock.
She finished her sandwich and said softly, “They died.”
He frowned. She couldn’t mean someone up on the road. She would have said something about it before this.
“My aunt and uncle.” She took a deep breath. “That’s why I became a doctor, you see.” She was still speaking softly. With the rush of the creek nearby, he wouldn’t have heard her if he hadn’t had a cat’s enhanced hearing.
“In an accident?” he ventured when she didn’t say anything further about it.
She nodded.
“You were driving?” Maybe he should have asked about her driving record before he had let her drive them anywhere.
She frowned at him, her green eyes full of tears.
Ah hell.
“I was ten.”
“Oh.”
She looked back at the ground. “My aunt was already dead, though I thought she had been sleeping, but her head was gashed badly, and bleeding, then it wasn’t. My uncle was badly injured, bleeding on his head too. Neither had been wearing seatbelts, old car, no airbags. I was wearing a seatbelt in the back, so except for the belt bruising me, I was fine. I wanted to stop my uncle’s bleeding, the pain he was suffering from—he kept groaning and asking about my aunt. I lied to him.”
“Hell, Kate. You were only a kid.” He pulled her into his arms and held her gently, aware her back could be hurting, and he didn’t want to add to the pain.
She nodded against his chest. “I tried to stop the bleeding, kept telling him that he was going to make it. But I was crying and could barely see for the tears. The ambulance arrived but it was too late. After that, I knew I never wanted to be in a situation like that again. Where I couldn’t help someone who was injured. If only I could have done something. I started studying all the kids’ books on anatomy or first aid. Took junior first aid classes when I was a little older. I vowed I’d be a doctor someday. My parents thought it was one of those phases kids go through. But I kept at it. I even started reading about a cougar’s anatomy, and how to take care of big cats. I wanted to volunteer to work at a big cat reserve, but they wouldn’t let me. Not until I was eighteen. And then I was right on their doorstep, application in hand.
“Even though I mostly take care of patients in their human form, sometimes because of the injury, they’ll be so out of it, they’ll shift, and I’ll be working on a big cat in his or her place, much to my surprise.”
“I’m sure Yuma Town and the shifters there are glad for it.”
She smiled up at him a little. “I’ve found a home there.”
“You said your parents are writers. Are they still living?”
“Sure. They’re off on jaunts around the world, writing about…the world. Right now, they’re up in Alaska on an aurora borealis and polar bear sightseeing tour. They stop in between trips sometimes and stay with me. They have a house in the mountains in Montana, but they don’t stay there much.”
“Do you feel you made the right choice as far as your profession goes?”
“Yes. All the time.” She chuckled and pulled away from him. “I had young men in the clinic a little while back. One had been bitten in a vicious attack, the perpetrator dead, but then the young man bit his brother so that he would be like him. I had to scold them for chasing the nurses in their cougar forms, getting the hang of being newly turned cougars. Best of all, I love delivering babies to expectant parents.”
Now that was one thing he wasn’t really that interested in. Not in his profession. Rescuing kids? Yeah. But having some of his own? No.
“What about you?”
“Except for when I get shot, yeah, it’s a good job.”
“What made you choose that field of work? Anything special happen that made you believe it was your calling?”
“Nothing noble like yours. I’d just come back from a tour in Afghanistan. My commitment was up. I wasn’t sure what I would do with my life when I left the service. Then a man in a suit approached me in a bar, said he wanted to talk to me in private about a job opportunity, and said they were trying to start up a new special undercover operation to take down career criminal cougars. I was already trained as a Ranger, tons of weapons training, physically fit, military disciplined, clean record. And I had just separated from the service.”
“So you jumped at the chance to take down the bad guys?”
“Hell, no.”
She smiled at that.
“I said I just got out of a high-risk lifestyle, and I wanted something more laid back, my off-duty hours meant grabbing a beer at the local bar, playing pool, and running in the woods as
a cougar.”
“So what did you end up doing?”
“I hadn’t applied for a job yet when I stopped at a burger joint to grab a cheeseburger and three would-be bandits tried to hold up the place. Something just snapped inside. They weren’t cougars, but I guess I was thinking, what if they were? I had the training to take these guys down—and if they were cougars, I had the advantage if the criminals took off in cougar form. So I decided that if the organization was going to get off to a good start, they needed me.”
She chuckled. “Nothing arrogant about you.”
“No. I’m completely down-to-earth, realistic. I broke a chair over one bandit’s head, judo sliced another in the throat before he had time to react, and kicked the other guy in the nuts, sending him to his knees. I got a commendation from the mayor even, though I would have done what I did for the sheer gratification of protecting the folks in the fast food restaurant. When people learned I was a decorated Ranger and just home from Afghanistan with no job, I had offers pouring in to hire the vet—as a security officer at most places. But the man who had approached me in the bar, approached me again. I liked that he was persistent, if nothing else. Seems he was a good judge of character.
“All he said was, ‘I’ll buy you a beer. Nice work.’ He didn’t say anything more, didn’t offer me the job again, just waited to see what I’d say.
“I drank the beer, slowly, just waiting for him to make the offer again. Hell, everyone else had. I wanted to know just how much they really wanted me.”
Smiling, she repeated, “So arrogant.”
Leyton smiled at her. “The guy drank his beer, studying me in the smoky glass at the back of the bottles of booze and said, ‘Ready to come work for us?’ as if I wasn’t planning on doing anything else but that.”