Alpha Bear Detective: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (13 page)

"...Yeah," said Danny ruefully, "I guess I see your point there."

"But now I don't know what to do." Levi stared at the ground. "The only lead I have is the license plate."

"So let's call it in." Danny pulled out his phone.

"And hope that the lieutenant isn't alerted the second we do."

"Risk we gotta take." Danny dialed.

*              *              *

It took a solid hour to work one of her hand out of the ropes.

Sutherland had tied them tight, and Maria's wrists weren't as slender as she might have preferred in this situation. She had to twist and yank and stretch out the rope, slowly, bit by bit. It hurt a lot and it felt like it took an eternity.

When she finally got her hand free, her wrist was a burned and bleeding mess. "Worth it," she muttered, scrabbling in her cleavage for her pocketknife. Thank God she'd packed it—she wouldn't have to unpick the stretched and strained knots blind with one hand.

Cutting through the ropes without slicing up any of her fingers was a bit of a trick, but she managed it, and immediately bent down to get her feet free. Flexing her tingling extremities, she stood up cautiously.

No one immediately burst through the door to shout at her for escaping, so she figured that the room wasn't under any kind of surveillance. Great.

She checked her watch. 10:32 PM. She wondered what sort of night guard there was on this place. Could she sneak out? If so, how would she get away? They were in the middle of freaking nowhere and she didn't know anything about what was nearby. There were cars, but she didn't know how to hotwire a car or anything like that.

If she'd been confident that she wouldn't be chased, she would've just tried to find a window or door and sneak out, but the place was probably alarmed, and if she was caught, she didn't think she'd get a second chance. They'd make sure she wasn't getting away again.

So she needed a different plan.

There was a crack under the door. Maria lay flat down on the floor and peered under it. All she could see was the faint hallway illumination. She hadn't heard anyone moving around for at least half an hour or so, so there wasn't a guard pacing around out there.

There was no guarantee that he wasn't just leaning against a wall or sitting on the stairs, of course, but what else was she going to do?

She tried the door. It opened.

She was surprised at first, but in retrospect it wasn't that surprising—how many doors were there in a house that locked you
in
? They would've had to have a custom cell made, and she guessed Lisle hadn't gotten around to renovating that dramatically yet.

She eased herself out into the hallway. No guards. There was, however, a little glowing keypad by the front door. She'd been right about the security system, then, and given Lisle’s money, she bet it was as high-tech as they came. Leaving through a door or crawling out the window was straight out.

Lisle's office was at the end of the hall. Unable to resist the temptation, she tried the door. Locked, of course.

If only she knew how to pick locks. There must be all sorts of evidence in there.

But that wasn't her goal. Her goal was—

—Levi.

She'd been thinking in terms of getting herself out, but that wasn't happening, was it? She couldn't do it. But she knew who could.

Assuming he was all right.

No. She had to trust that he was okay. He'd promised that he'd keep her safe, and despite all of the experience that told her that the only person who was entitled to take care of Maria was
Maria
, she trusted him to do that.

She didn't know why. They'd had sex once. They'd had a few conversations. What was it about this man that just stabbed through to the core of her like this? What did he have that resonated so strongly with her very being? Why did she
know
that he was coming for her?

She couldn't say. But she knew.

She turned to the other doors along the hallway. Which ones would be safest to try? She didn't want to open some insane paranoid militia-man's bedroom door and get herself shot.

Maybe the one closest to the front door. This place looked like a fancy mansion of some kind, so perhaps...

She eased the door open, and knew immediately that she was right. It opened into a big, echoing space—it was too dark to see anything clearly, but when she stepped inside, she almost immediately bumped against a spindly chair. Yes, it was a parlor or something like it.

Now, she had to depend on Lisle being the sort of pretentious asshole she thought he was...she felt around carefully in the darkness. She didn't dare turn on a light, so it took forever.

Spindly chair, spindly chair, curvy loveseat...end table!

Empty end table. She kept going. Curvy armchair, spindly chair, long open space...couch. And another end table.

This one had a phone on it.

It was old-fashioned and clearly ornate, from what she could feel. The sort of phone that was more of a decorative piece than an actual useful object, these days.

But when she picked it up, she heard a dial tone.

Now came the moment of truth. Did she actually remember Levi's number, from when she'd seen it on his card and dialed it earlier today? Or did she just think she did? Surely the numbers couldn't have burned themselves into her memory this quickly, but when she closed her eyes she could see them in front of her on the card as clear as day.

The phone had a dialing ring instead of a keypad. With shaking fingers, she dialed.

It rang once, twice..."Hello?"

"Levi!" Maria whispered. She wanted to shout in joy.

"
Maria
? How did you call me?
Where are you
?"

"I'm at Lisle's compound. Mansion. Something. I can give you directions."

"Do it." His voice was implacable. Something inside Maria's chest relaxed. He was all right, and he was already on his way.

Carefully, she described the route that they'd taken out of the city, the highway and then the back roads. "And then after about ten minutes there's a dirt track off to the left, which turns into a paved driveway once it's out of sight of the road. At the end of the driveway is the mansion."

"I'll be there as soon as I can." Levi's voice softened. "I love you, Maria. I'm coming for you."

He hung up, leaving her standing there in the dark with her mouth open, astonished.

Then the lights came on.

She shrieked involuntarily, and spun around to see Sutherland standing in the doorway, another man behind him. They both had guns.

Well, she guessed this answered her question of whether they had a guard posted at night.

"Maria," said Sutherland. "You shouldn't be out of your chair."

"Screw you." She eyed them. The urge to try to run away was incredibly strong, but that would be stupid. She had to wait for Levi.

"Now, that's not very nice." Sutherland came forward, looking ready for anything.

Don't run.

It was harder to wait and let him come take her arm than it would have been to run away. She never wanted him to touch her again; he made her skin crawl.

But she made herself go with him when he gave her arm a vicious yank, stumbling along after him. The other man brought up the rear.

"You were standing by the phone, Maria," Sutherland said in her ear. "Did you call someone? We heard your voice when we were walking by. Who memorizes phone numbers these days? Which phone number would you have memorized?"

Maria stayed stubbornly silent. She didn't want them to have any time to prepare for Levi coming.

God, she hoped he didn't get shot.
Trust him
, she thought.
He'll know what to do.

"Laura?" Sutherland said. "Did you call your little sparrow? She can't do anything now. Even if she brings in the police, they're not going to believe her. We have them on our side, remember?"

Only one of them, Maria thought stubbornly.

"She'll call them," Sutherland continued, "and they'll go to Lieutenant Moyer, and he'll say, of course, I'll go check it out personally. And he'll come here—that is, if you told her where we are. Do you even know? It was dark when we drove out."

Yes I know, you asshole
. She kept her mouth shut.

"So maybe he'll come here. And if he does, we'll invite him in, and we'll take him to see you. I think he'll have a thing or two to say to you, after you messed up his plan. It was so nice and neat."

"What do you mean?" Maria couldn't help but ask the question. If it was about Levi—

"He's had that animal under his command for two years now," Sutherland said. "He didn't want to take him into his department at all, but he figured, better where he could keep his eye on him, make sure there weren't any bears raging through the streets. Give him enough cases to keep him happy, nothing where violence would be an issue at all. And then give him some big break, something high-profile...and dangerous."

Maria seethed.

"Imagine his surprise when this came up. We brought the plan to him, and he said, wonderful. I'll put my shifter on it. Please feel free to do away with him."

"So why didn't you shoot him in the first place?" Maria said. "He was there at the Capitol building last night."

Sutherland shook his head. "Wasted opportunities. We weren't expecting him to be there, so I didn't know it was him. Unfortunate coincidence. But Moyer arranged for a second chance."

"Which you blew," Maria pointed out.

His fingers dug into her arm and she stifled a gasp. She was going to have bruises there for weeks. "And I haven't thanked you properly for that yet," he said. "But Lisle wants you undamaged for now, particularly if you're going to be making a statement to the press."

Maria wanted to proudly declare that she would
never
make any statement of the kind, but she knew that that would just result in him threatening her again and she was sick of listening to his threats. So she kept her mouth shut.

There was a long pause, and then he yanked her forward again, stalking ahead. Annoyed that he didn't have a chance to go on a long rant about everything they were going to do to her, Maria thought, and almost smiled. Small victories.

Sutherland shoved her back into the room she'd been in, and did a double take at the cut ropes. "How did you do that?" he demanded.

Maria shrugged.

His expression changed. "Guess I'll have to search you for your tool, then."

Her knife was still tucked into her bra. Maria wondered if he would overlook it...then wondered what would happen if he
didn't
overlook it.

And she knew he wouldn't stop looking until he found something. His hands would be
all over her
...

He pulled her in closer. She shoved a hand down her cleavage and pulled out her knife.

He took it. "Nice and warm. Lot going on right there, no wonder you can hide something in it. Maybe I should search you anyway, make sure you don't have anything else living in there."

Please no, please no...

But Sutherland glanced at the doorway where the other guard was and said, "Maybe later."

Lisle must have left orders not to do anything drastic to her unless he gave the okay. Maria let out a silent sigh of relief.

Sutherland tied her to the chair again. The rope pulling tight around her abraded wrist hurt a lot. Her bloody and bruised upper arm hurt a lot. Having her limbs forcibly pulled at awkward angles and tied in place hurt a lot.

She was so tired of hurting.

Sutherland stood up, satisfied. "Now! You tried to escape once, so you're officially a flight risk. That means that I'm going to stay in the room with you for the rest of the night. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

That sounded like the opposite of fun.

"Go report what's happened to Lisle," Sutherland told the silent guard in the doorway. "Then roust someone else to be your patrol partner for the rest of the night. I'll be staying in here."

"Yes, sir," said the guard, and left the room.

Sutherland settled himself down in the room's single other chair, his gun resting casually in his lap. The barrel was pointed toward her, almost as though it was accidental. Maria was pretty sure it wasn't accidental.

"So," said Sutherland. "What should we talk about?"

Maria shut her eyes.

*              *              *

"Levi, man, you're going to get us killed before we get there!"

Levi had the siren running for now; he was going to kill it long before they neared the compound, because sound could travel long distances out in the country and he didn't want there to be any hint at all that they were coming.

But the advantage of the siren was that they could drive as fast as possible.

Danny was clutching the handle above the seat and swearing at regular intervals. "The siren and the lights are going," Levi said reasonably, keeping a careful eye on the road. There were hardly any cars out at this time of night, though, especially away from the city, and what cars there were had pulled over immediately as they blew past. "We're fine."