“They took Maria, Heath,” she whimpered.
“We’ll find her,” he said in a raspy voice.
“Just rest,” the EMT said to Heath.
“He’ll be fine soon,” said another EMT to Rosa. “With some fluid and bandages he’ll be on his feet in no time. He’s a shifter, ma’am. Don’t worry. We’ll get him fixed right up.”
The ambulance drove down a bumpy dirt road and out onto the highway. They were back in Fate Mountain village in about thirty minutes. The EMTs opened the backdoors of the ambulance and pulled Heath’s gurney out. They wheeled the gurney into the hospital, through the sliding glass doors, and Maria followed them. The EMTs then parked Heath in a private room. The doctors came in and began removing the bullets still lodged in Heath’s body. Maria could hardly watch the horror and finally had to leave the room.
She stood outside, unable to think or speak or feel.
“How’s our boy?” Rosa heard a familiar voice say.
Rollo walked toward her down the hallway with a cup of coffee in his hand. He handed the warm liquid to Rosa and she cradled it in both hands, drawing strength from the warmth.
“They say he’ll be fine,” Rosa said. “But I’m really worried.”
“He is a shifter. He took a lot of bullets, but he’ll be all right,” Rollo assured her.
“I wish I had your certainty,” Rosa said. “They took Maria. Someone bought her,” Rosa growled.
“That’s why I came down here,” Rollo said. “I need your help Rosa. There’s no telling how far your sister’s buyer has been able to travel. We have no way of tracking him down. I wouldn’t ask you to leave your mate at a time like this, but we need your help finding Maria.”
“What about Heath?”
“He’ll be fine in a few hours.”
“We don’t have a few hours to wait,” Rosa said.
“Do you have any feelings about where the buyer might have taken her?”
“I can’t feel anything. I’m too worried. All I feel is panic.”
“Maybe it would be better for you to stay with Heath until he’s well. Then you can calm down a bit and focus on finding your sister.”
“I can’t stop thinking about what that maniac could be doing to her.” Rosa said. “He said he wanted to break her.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat the danger your sister is in, Rosa. But your sixth sense isn’t going to work if you are too panicked to use it.”
“We’re finished in here,” a nurse said from the doorway of Heath’s hospital room.
Rosa strode into the room and Rollo followed her. They stood on opposite sides of the bed, looking down at the bandaged Cadet Bear who had taken out the entire gang single-handedly.
“You’re a real hero,” Rollo said.
“I didn’t get there in time,” Heath protested.
“It’s not your fault,” Rosa said, a tear dripping down her face.
She wiped it away, sniffing. Rosa threaded her fingers through Heath’s hand and squeeze gently.
“You have any leads on the girl?” Heath asked Rollo.
“Not yet,” Rollo said. “That’s why I came down here to speak with Rosa.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Rosa said.
“She needs to relax or we won’t get anywhere,” Rollo said. “That’s why I advised her to wait with you until you are well enough to leave the hospital.”
“I’m well enough to leave now,” he said, sitting up in bed. He cringed from the pain of the bullet wounds in his side and gripped his abdomen.
“No,” Rosa said. “You are not well enough to leave the hospital.”
“Nonsense. Let’s go find your sister,” Heath said with a wince.
“If you’re sure,” Rollo said.
Rollo went out to the car and came back a few minutes later with a change of clothes for Heath. Rosa and Rollo left the room while Heath changed. He limped out of the hospital room a few minutes later, wearing Rollo’s clothes. The three of them walked out to the parking lot and got in Rollo’s SUV.
“The Bear Patrol is meeting down at the station,” Rollo said. “Let’s start by getting together down there.”
“Where are the rest of the girls,” Rosa asked.
“Their families have all been contacted, but they need a good night sleep, a shower and a place to rest. We booked them hotel rooms, and we have security watching over them outside. Our main concern now is finding Maria.”
“What about the men who took them? What have they said?”
“A couple of them needed medical attention, but they’ve all been booked and jailed.”
“Can’t you get any of them to tell you where Maria is?”
“None of them are talking, but we aren’t done with them yet.”
They made it to the police station and everyone piled out of the car. Heath limped badly and Rosa helped steady him as he walked into the station. In Rollo’s office, the Bear Patrol was waiting for the rest of them to arrive.
“Why can’t you get these guys to tell you where Maria is?” Rosa asked.
“They seem to be protecting someone. Probably their ringleader,” said Deputy Knox.
“You believe they’re taking orders from someone else?” Rollo asked.
“I think it’s someone far more dangerous than any of these men. We promised them a lighter sentence if they either told us where she was or sold out the other man. But nobody took the plea bargain. That tells me that they’re afraid of something much bigger than what we see here.”
“We have to find Maria,” Rosa said.
“Rosa is right,” Rollo said. “Our main concern is finding the girl now. Later we will find out who is behind this kidnapping ring.”
Rosa was terrified that she had failed her sister and failed her family. Now the Bear Patrol was talking about some big crime ring, this was beyond anything she had even imagined before.
Girls all over the country were at risk of being sold into some twisted sex slavery. She felt responsible for them all. But she couldn’t do anything. The intuition that had led her to Fate Mountain and had led her to the camp, now seemed to be silent.
“Could you give me a description of the man who bought your sister?” Damien asked.
“Maybe. It was really dark inside the mobile home.”
“Give me whatever description you can. I’ll enter it into the computer and see what we can come up with.”
Rosa and Heath followed Damien into his office. She and Heath sat on a constable couch while Damien sat behind his desk at his computer. She gave him as much descriptive information as she could about the man who’d taken Maria.
Damien asked Rosa questions to fill in the blanks, drawing out as much of her memory as possible. Finally, he entered the last of the information into his computer and waited for the software to process.
“It’s going to take a little while. I’ll have more information for you as soon as it’s done processing. But I can tell you that it’s going to take at least until morning to do the search. Why don’t you two go home and get some rest. I promise to call you as soon as I know anything.”
“I guess that’s our only option,” Rosa said to Heath.
“I’ll be in much better shape after a nap,” he said.
Damien drove them home in his private car. Once they were home, they collapsed in bed with exhaustion. No matter how tired Rosa felt, she was still too amped up and beside herself to rest. It took several hours of staring at the ceiling for her to finally even nod off.
In the morning she woke up to the smell of bacon and coffee coming from the kitchen. She scrambled out of bed and hurried into the kitchen to find Heath cooking breakfast in his underwear.
The bandages he’d been wearing the night before were all gone. The wounds were replaced with ruddy red marks. She walked over to him and ran her hand over the places where there had been bullet holes mere hours before. They were almost healed, only the discoloration that was left indicated there had been wounds there at all.
“I can’t believe how fast you heal,” she said.
“That’s one of the perks of being a shifter. Part of the reason the military wanted us to enlist so bad.”
“Well it certainly saved your life,” Rosa said gratefully.
If he hadn’t been a shifter, he would surely be dead now. Rosa would be eternally grateful that her mate was able to heal so fast. She didn’t know what she would do without him.
“I made you breakfast,” Heath said. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll dish you up something to eat.”
Rosa slid onto the stool pushed up against the counter and Heath gave her a plate full of breakfast foods. He’d made scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and bacon, along with toast and coffee.
She hadn’t thought that she was hungry until she took the first bite and realized she was starving. She shoveled the food into her mouth, barely stopping to breathe. Heath just looked at her with a goofy expression on his face.
“I love a woman who likes to eat,” he said.
He ate his own food quickly and waited for Rosa while she showered and dressed. When she was done she found Heath dressed and ready to go outside in the living room. Just then, the phone rang.
11
Heath picked up his phone and answered.
“What do you have for me, Damien?” he asked.
“Come down to the station,” Damien said. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”
Heath and Rosa went outside and got in Heath’s car. During the drive across town to the police station, Rosa tried to make sense of everything that was happening. Her mate, who was a shifter, had been shot half a dozen times yesterday and now was perfectly fine and driving a car.
She had known that shifters had the ability to heal, but the truth was beyond anything her human imagination had conjured up. Then Rosa had to remind herself that she had used her own sixth sense to find her sister in the first place. Just as they were pulling up to the police station, Rosa began to feel as if her connection to Maria was opening up again.
“I feel like I know where Maria is,” Rosa said.
“Good. We’ll see what Damien has to say,” Heath said.
Once they made it into Damien’s office, he looked up at them from his desk.
“Tell me you got some sleep last night,” Heath said to Damien.
“Don’t worry about me, I got plenty of rest. I had my computer inform me the minute the processor came up with search results. What I found is that the man who purchased Maria is most likely living on a secluded piece of land on the coast. If this is our guy that is. What do you think Rosa?” Damien asked, inviting her over to look at his screen.
Rosa moved around the desk and blinked at the computer screen in front of her. There was a grainy headshot of a man who looked exactly like the guy who had taken her sister from the mobile home the night before
“That’s the guy. That’s him,” Rosa said.
“Let’s go find the bastard,” Heath said.
“I’ve already informed Rollo and the rest of the Bear Patrol. We’re going to meet up with the law enforcement on the coast to make the arrest.”
They all piled into patrol cars and started the long drive from Fate Mountain to the coast. Heath and Rosa rode in the back of Rollo’s SUV with Damien who rode in the front passenger seat. As they made it into Portland, they got news from the Coastal Police Department that there was no one in the home of the man who was suspected to have taken Maria.
“He could be anywhere,” Damien said.
“This is exactly why we needed Rosa to come with us,” Rollo said.
“After everything I’ve been through, I can’t tell you how good it feels to be involved like this.”
By the time they made it to the coast, Rosa’s feelings of agitation grew. Rollo pulled up in front of the man’s property, but Rosa knew that Maria wasn’t in the house.
“What do you think?” Heath asked her.
“I don’t know, but I know she’s close.”
Heath helped her out of the car, hoping that she would be able to come up with something.
“We’re going to start searching the area,” Rollo said.
“I’ll come with you,” Rosa said.
“Don’t leave Heath’s side this time,” Rollo advised her.
The Coastal Police Department and the Bear Patrol from Fate Mountain all began to spread out over the vast acres of the kidnapper’s land.
“Can you smell anything?” Rosa asked Heath as they walked through the lush coastal underbrush.
“I can’t, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t here. There are a lot of ways to hide a scent.”
“Like how?” Rosa asked.
“If someone is underground or high above the ground. It’s more difficult to make out a scent.”
“Do you think my sister is underground?”
“I don’t know.”
Rosa stopped short all of the sudden and gasped.
“She’s here,” Rosa whispered. “She’s close.”
“There’s nothing anywhere close to here,” Heath said.
“Maybe she is below ground,” Rosa whispered. He picked up his walkie-talkie and brought the mouthpiece to his lips.
“Cadet Bear to Commander Bear. Could the target be below ground?”
“Commander Bear to Cadet Bear. We just found the entrance to some kind of tunnel system,” Rollo said in response.
“We’ll be right there,” Heath said.
Heath looked over at his mate. Her expression was dire.
“Come on, Rosa. It’s going to be okay.”
“He’s had her all night,” Rosa said. “Who knows what he could have done to her in that time.”
“We will find her.”
Heath hurried through the underbrush to Rollo’s location with Rosa right behind him. His mind reeled from all of the information he had learned over the last twenty-four hours. There was a kidnapping ring that had been taking girls all over the west coast and maybe Mexico for who knows how long.
Rosa had somehow made the connection and busted up one of their stops, but until they found the ring leader, it wouldn’t be the end of it.
They joined the rest of the Bear Patrol who were standing around some kind of metal exit hatch.
“What the hell is this?” Deputy Knox said, shining a flashlight into the hole in the ground.
“I don’t know, but it’s time we found out,” Commander Rollo said.
They took turns climbing down the ladder into the tunnel, Heath going last and helping Rosa into the hole before he went down. At the bottom of the shaft, he found the rest of the gang standing in a damp earthen tunnel. Their flashlights shinning on the mud packed walls and rocky ground.
“Do you smell anything now?” Rosa asked them.
“All I smell is earth.” Heath said.
“Same here,” the rest of the bears agreed.
“I think I can sense her,” Rosa said. She walked up to the front of the group and shined a light into the darkness of the tunnel. “This way.”
Heath and Rollo walked up and took the lead in front of her, wanting to protect her from harm. They came to a fork in the tunnel and Rosa pointed toward the right. They followed it further, Heath holding his pistol up in front of him as he shined his flashlight with the other hand.
In the distance, they heard a scream.
“Maria,” Rosa whimpered as she broke through the group to try to run to her sister’s aid.
“Hold on,” Heath said holding her back. “Damien, look after her.”
Damien took Rosa’s hand, holding her back. The rest of the bears ran forward, Rollo and Heath in the lead. In that moment, Heath no longer felt like a cadet. He felt like a leader. He felt like he’d come of age.
They followed the tunnel until they came to a dug out prison cell with bars covering the entrance. They shined their lights inside and found nothing but a pool of dried blood. Revulsion sank in his gut.
“Come on,” he growled to t
he gang.
The bears hurried down the tunnel. Heath could smell the scent of Rosa’s sister heavy on the air. The scent was full of fear and panic, acidic in his mouth. There was another scent as well. It was twisted with perverse sickness. It almost made his stomach turn over.
“Help!” her scream echoed through the tunnel, reverberating through the walls.
The Bears broke into a run, turning a corner, they came to a well-lit chamber. A man in a white lab coat turned to look at him, a giant syringe in his hand.
“Drop it!” Heath commanded, pointing his gun at the man.
Maria was strapped to a gurney, stripped to her bra and panties. Heath could barely see through his rage.
The madman lunged for Maria, but Heath shot twice, hitting him once in the arm and once in the thigh. The man fell, unable to stand again. The Bear Patrol moved in and began arresting the kidnapper while Heath attended to Maria.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. “Did he hurt you?”
“He tried,” Maria said as Heath unstrapped her from the gurney.
He wrapped a thermal blanket around her naked shoulders and lifted the small girl in his arms. She was like a tiny version of his beloved mate. He felt a wash of relief that he’d found her in time. With Maria in his arms, Heath walked through the tunnel to where Damien was waiting with Rosa.
“Look who I found,” Heath said, holding Maria in his arms.
Rosa jumped forward, and Maria slid to the ground. The sisters embraced, crying and shaking in each other’s arms.
“Did he hurt you, Maria? Tell me what he did to you,” Rosa demanded.
“He kept me down here last night. About an hour ago, he took me from that cell and brought me into his surgical room. I don’t know what he was going to do with me.”
“We’ve got the perp under control,” Rollo’s voice came through the walkie-talkie.
“Copy that,” Heath said.
They all climbed out of the tunnel and Maria and Rosa were taken to the nearest hotel to rest and get cleaned up. The perpetrator, whose name was Aaron Flynn was taken into custody while the Bear Patrol searched his house.
“We need to find all the clues we can that could lead us to the ring leader of this operation,” Rollo said to Heath as they stood at the front door of the man’s house, waiting for a search warrant.