License to Shift (18 page)

M
ark was in Tonya's squad car and speeding north within two minutes of hearing Julie's voice. Tonya sat beside him, coordinating with local law enforcement while Becca and Carl followed. Even with sirens and lights, it would take too damn long to get up there, but at least he could hear Julie's voice as she talked to Alan.

Jesus. They had Alan, too, and no one had even known.

Only one good thing came out of the drive. By the time they were within thirty miles of their destination, Mark's grizzly stretched, yawned, and came back to life with an audible growl. He didn't know if it was the adrenaline or just time for the drug to wear off. Either way, he was beyond grateful to have his normal body and brain back. Even if his grizzly hated being cooped up in a damned car with the siren piercing his ears. Meanwhile, Tonya shot him a dangerous look.

“You're back,” she said.

He nodded.

“You're not going grizzly once we get there. Last thing we need is to put you down, too, because you can't shift back.”

“I can't shift at all,” he growled at her. That's why he'd convinced Carl to give him a pistol before they'd left. Without his grizzly, all he could do was glare really hard at people. Or punch them into the next county because even without grizzly strength, he was still a big guy. That would be satisfying, but it wouldn't be much help against a shotgun or their tranquilizer darts.

“Medical's on the way. Ambulance and a doc, all shifters.” Her voice cracked a bit, but otherwise her gaze was on her gun as she slammed the clip back in.

“Good.” He didn't want to think about what the bastards had done to Julie. He hadn't been able to tell from her screaming. Just that it had been awful and mercifully fast. Probably something medical, which terrified him even more. Because what the hell had they done to Alan that he needed a bond to stabilize?

“Can't you go any faster?” Tonya asked.

Not without killing innocent bystanders or wrecking the car. He didn't have his grizzly reflexes, and he was pushing the boundary of what he could do. And in the background, all he could hear was Julie pleading with Alan to stay calm. To hold on.

Her every word settled into his chest making it harder to breathe. The need to protect her was pounding behind his eyes, pulsing his vision and making him insane. Plus his mind still spun with horrible scenarios. What if he didn't get there in time? What if she died and she never knew how much he loved her? What if she thought she was alone?

Sweat made his hands slick. He glared at the dashboard GPS. Thirteen minutes to destination. Jesus, all the things that could happen to her in thirteen fucking minutes.
Hold on!
He didn't know if he was talking to himself or her, but the words kept forming on his lips.
Hold on! Hold on!

Then Tonya killed the sirens and suddenly the traffic thickened around him. Mark growled in fury, but Tonya was equally keyed up.

“We have to be quiet!” she snarled. “We can't risk them killing the hostages.”

He didn't have the focus to respond. He was busy spinning around a corner. Ten minutes to destination.

Hold on!

The wheels spun again as he turned into vacation cabin suburbia. Large cabins around a lake, and every one filled with families. And then suddenly he saw a local PD car parked directly ahead.

He slammed on the brakes and was out of the car before the engine fully died down. Tonya carried the laptop that was still broadcasting Julie. He wanted to storm the place now, but Tonya shoved him backward with a curse.

“Wait! We're doing this smart,” she snarled. He nodded, though it was a lie. No way was he waiting on anything. But he stayed in place long enough to get introduced to the cops and to hear the details of the plan. Search warrant obtained, and thanks to Google Maps and GPS, they knew exactly where she was—in some sort of backyard structure—but they still needed to keep the innocents out of the way. And not everyone had gotten here yet.

Enough. Mark started moving out, except he couldn't escape Carl. Damn it. He hadn't even noticed the man arriving, but his alpha knew exactly what Mark intended and he held out a restraining arm.

Mark whipped. “Get the fuck—”

“Shut up and listen. I'm going with you, but we're doing it as men, got that?” He paused long enough to smile and wave nice and friendly at the cops. They didn't have jurisdiction here, not even Tonya, so it behooved everyone to play nice with the locals.

“I can't shift,” Mark snapped, but even as he said the words, he wondered if it were true. His senses were perking up. He could smell the trees and the acrid scent of adrenaline wafting off everyone here.

“Get on a vest, then,” Carl said. He hadn't put one on. A closer look showed him that Carl had on his tear-away stripper pants and a tee so thin it was nearly see through. That meant he was fully prepared to go grizzly and rip through his clothes if needed. By comparison, Mark was in what he'd been wearing at the hospital: dirty khakis and a hospital scrub for a shirt.

Bowing to necessity, he grabbed the vest Becca held out for him. He hated the weight and restriction, but he couldn't help Julie if he got shot. Then Tonya joined them, keeping her voice low as she jerked her chin toward the pair of local cops. “These guys don't know shit about shifters. They're going to freak if Alan's anything like the guys who attacked Julie's cabin. So go in, go fast, and get him out. Shifter ambulance and doc are already here, up that way around the bend.” She pointed up the lane.

Mark nodded and headed out with Carl while Tonya and Becca distracted the cops. It wasn't the smartest way to handle this, but sometimes that's what happened when combining normal with the paranormal. Mark didn't care so long as it got him to Julie right away.

They slipped into the trees. There wasn't much coverage, but it would do for now. As far as he could tell, the bastards were relying on anonymity rather than real defenses. That was good, but he stayed on the alert and tried to keep his gun hand steady. He wasn't the best with a pistol, and he was twitchy from not being able to hear Julie's voice anymore. He hadn't realized how much reassurance he'd taken from her steady words. She was alive. She wasn't being attacked. But now that he couldn't hear her, he wanted to rip every building apart until he found her. Instead, he stuck to the shadows as he recruited all his senses.

Senses that were getting crisper by the second. About fucking time.

And then Julie started screaming.

A
lan was convulsing. Grand mal seizures that contorted his body and bent the bars of his cage. And there was absolutely nothing Julie could do about it but scream. Scream for bloody murder because no one was here to help him, and she was stuck in a damned cage.

They'd gone to dinner, damn it. Dinner! While Alan's body contorted and she was trapped, trapped, trapped! So she screamed out her desperation and prayed that someone would hear.

If only the bonding had worked. She certainly stank enough for whatever pheromones to permeate the space. Her body temperature had spiked, sweat and stink had made her light-headed, and maybe for a few moments there she had felt something. Fury, emptiness. Connection? She didn't know, and for the first time in her life she
hated
. She despised Evil Einstein to a degree she'd never believed she was capable. While she spoke soothing words to Alan, she stewed in fantasies of ripping them apart. Of dancing while their lifeblood poured into the ground from painful, gut-wrenching wounds.

And then Alan had started to convulse and she had nothing in her but her screams.

The door burst open and a large form entered, gun drawn and eyes narrowed. Her subconscious recognized him long before her brain got the message. Her scream choked off into a sob of relief even as her eyes outlined a large body with unkempt hair, as if he'd been pulling at it in worry.

Mark.

He was at her cage a moment later, grabbing the lock, even as he turned to see Alan. It was a pause between seizures, and like the other two times, Julie prayed that it would be the end. That he'd breathe easier and rest. But just like before, four seconds ticked by in quiet before the convulsions began on the fifth.

“Help him!” she cried.

Carl leapt into the room in that moment, gun also drawn but he went straight to Alan's cage. Then he tossed his weapon to Mark before shifting into full grizzly. There was a quick shimmer and then a huge grizzly with a silver streak down his back crowded everything else in the room. A single swipe of his paw shredded Alan's cage. Another took out Julie's lock. She started to scramble out, but her legs were startlingly weak. Not a problem, though, as Mark hauled her out, wrapping her firmly in one arm while the other snapped open the buckles on his vest.

As soon as he was able, he hauled her to his mouth in a quick kiss. She wrapped herself around him, sobbing out her terror even as he set her apart from him.

“Put this on!” he ordered as he shoved his vest at her. She didn't want to take it and leave him exposed, but he didn't give her any choice. He dropped the thing in her hand and turned to get a grip on Alan. It's not like Carl could do it in his grizzly form.

Except that there was little room to maneuver in this tiny space. Julie had to climb on top of her ruined cage and pull on the vest simply to get it out of her hands. Then—thank God—Alan's seizure stopped. His body collapsed into a boneless heap, and he didn't seem to breathe. Julie held her breath even as she buckled on the vest, counting the seconds and praying. But Mark wasn't wasting a second. He started hauling the large man out of the cage the moment he could get a secure grip.

And then they ran out of time.

The little shit minion came in first with his ball cap askew and his mouth pulled into a wide grin. If she hadn't been looking at just the right way, she wouldn't have seen what he did. One second he was running in, popping the buckle on his too big denim shorts. The next second he was leaping out of them as he shifted into a beige cougar wearing a band tee. His ball cap flew off, and his shorts dropped to the ground, but what Julie saw most was the long sharp points of his claws.

Julie screamed, unable to give any more warning than that. The problem was that grizzly Carl was facing into the shed and there was no room to maneuver around. Which meant the cat landed on Carl's back and dug in.

Carl roared and reared up, forcing everyone else to flatten backward—Julie against the wall and Mark, with Alan in his arms, scrambled onto the table that had held the research books. The damned cat clung to Carl's back, and Julie smelled blood, but Carl wasn't fighting in a blind rage. He was backing up, slamming the creature against the table and wall as he headed toward the door. Except the other henchman was in the door now, though he, too, pulled back at the sight of bear and cat battling in this small space. And behind him stood Evil Einstein with his mouth ajar.

“Julie!” Mark cried. “Grab the gun!” He had shifted Alan so that the man hung limply over his shoulder and was doing his best to step forward toward the door without interfering with the Carl–cat battle. Julie spied a pistol sticking out of the waistband of his khakis and fumbled forward to grab it. Now wasn't the time to tell him she sucked as a marksman. But she at least knew the basics. Not that it was easy holding the weapon steady as she thumbed off the safety.

Bang! Bang!

At first she'd thought she'd accidentally fired, but it hadn't been her gun. It was Stoic Minion as he elbowed aside Evil Einstein while firing his pistol. One shot must have hit Carl because the grizzly roared in pain and redoubled his efforts to throw the cat off his back. The other went wide, making a hole in the side of the shed much too close to Mark's head.

The sight triggered all the furious hate that had been boiling inside her. These bastards needed to die. Carl and Mark were busy, and so it was up to her. She had a gun, and the bad guys were within a few feet of her. But there were many pounds of roaring, twisting, slamming grizzly–cougar in between her and them.

Which is when she saw her moment. Carl slammed his back hard against the wood table, the microscope and vials shattering from the impact. His head arched back and she feared he'd just cut himself in two when she realized that had been the point. The cougar on his neck had slipped lower, down to his hips while his claws ripped long, bloody streaks in the grizzly's fur. It was the cat who broke, not the bear. And as the creature whimpered and fell, nothing was between her and Stoic Minion but the open door.

Time for Julie to run outside shooting.

Stoic Minion had his gun up, but he was aiming at Carl whose front was now exposed. Julie did two things at once. She ran forward and started shooting. No aim, just a rapid pulling of the trigger with the muzzle aimed ahead of her.

Bam bam bam!

The gun bucked wildly in her hand, but she watched with gleeful satisfaction as Stoic Minion jerked and the hand carrying his pistol went wide. Red sprouted on his chest, but she barely registered it. She was rushing outside and seeing Evil Einstein running for his life toward the trees.

She took off after him with no clear plan. She just knew that he was the one with the medical knowledge. He knew what shit he'd injected into them. Any hope of saving Alan would require him alive. Though she had no problem with maiming the guy.

“Julie! Stay with the cops!”

Julie slowed down at Mark's voice, not because of what he said but to wait for him. He was slower, burdened as he was with Alan, and it was her job to protect him as much as she could. He and Carl made it to her side quickly, and she pointed into the woods.

“Einstein went that way. We need him!”

Grizzly Carl took off. God, bears were fast. Mark was running but with Alan still whipped over his shoulder, he was a good deal slower.

“Stay with the cops!” Mark snapped as he kept running, but not in the same direction as Carl.

Cops? What cops? Oh shit, those cops bursting through the house with their guns drawn.
She recognized Tonya but the other two looked scary as hell. She threw her hands up in the air, but she didn't stop running. Every part of her wanted away from that damned shed.

“Stop! Police!” one of them bellowed, and he was aiming at Mark.

Oh fuck!
“No!” she screamed, stumbling as she tried to block their view of him. Oh God. All she could see were the muzzles aimed right at Mark. “He's rescuing us!”

“Don't shoot!” barked Tonya, her voice loud with command. But it didn't seem like the other two were listening. “He's taking Alan to the doc!”

Really? That was good. And why had her knees just given out?

“Where's Carl?” Tonya barked, the tone so forceful that Julie answered even as she fell to the ground.

“That way.” She jerked her hand in the direction of the words. “After Einstein.”

Tonya nodded and ran off, bellowing her command over her shoulder. “Stay here!”

Julie didn't know if the order was for the other cops or for her. Either way, she wasn't going anywhere. Her entire body was shaking.
Where is Mark?
The other cops advanced on her, their eyes scanning everything.

“Don't do it!” one of the cops bellowed.

Julie's heart leapt to her throat. She wasn't doing anything, but her voice had frozen.

“Put it down now!” the other cop ordered.

Unwillingly, her gaze jerked to the nearest cop. It was only then that she realized he wasn't pointing his gun at her but at the shed. She turned—slowly—to see ball cap kid on the floor of the shed. He was lying on his stomach, a pistol braced on the concrete as he aimed at her.

Oh shit.

“Bitch,” he said. Then she heard the bang of a gun and she face planted. No pain, just suddenly, the world slapped her in the face. Had she been shot? All she knew was that her vision was blurry as she blinked grass from her eyes.

Gunshots pounded against her eardrums. If she'd been able to move, she would have covered her ears. As it was, she just lay facedown and prayed everyone thought she was dead. And in her head, one words echoed over and over in her brain.

Mark. Mark. Mark.

“Are you all right? Miss? Miss!”

A rough hand pulled at her, and she cried out in pain. “Let go!”

She jerked her arm back and then winced as the burn built. Damn it, her arm was on fire. Shit. She'd been shot. A long hot red streak across her upper arm. “Ow!” she said, putting all her anger into that one word. “That bastard shot me!”

She turned to look and then wished she hadn't. Ball cap boy was dead. Really, really dead.

But wherever he was, stoic guy wasn't far behind. “Where's the other one?” she asked, scanning the ground in panic.

“The other one?”

“Yeah.” She took a breath, trying to remember. She'd shot him, right? She couldn't even remember. “The bigger one.” He wasn't anywhere she could see. Then she saw a patch of grass that had slick dark blood on it.
Take that, you bastard.
Though a second later she started to worry.
Where the hell is he?

Meanwhile, the cop who'd grabbed her arm talked into a shoulder mic, something about, female hostage recovered, but she couldn't focus on his words. Her mind was starting to catch up with her, and every part of her was looking for Mark.

Was he okay? He'd taken Alan to the ambulance, but she didn't see them. And she desperately needed to see him just to reassure herself that he was alive. That she was alive. That everything was finally, absolutely okay.

“It's just a graze, but there's an ambulance nearby. Do you think you can walk?” the cop asked.

“I…” She swallowed, forcibly pulling her thoughts together. “I'm fine.” No, she wasn't, but she didn't want him fussing over her. She needed to find Mark.

“You're doing great,” he said with a reassuring smile, as he looked hard at her wound. It wasn't even really bleeding hard. She'd gotten worse that first time she'd Rollerbladed, but damn it stung.

Then he helped her stand and gestured around a large vacation house. Now that she was out of the shed, she was getting a pretty good idea that she was somewhere in Michigan at a summer home around a lake. They walked together with the cop keeping a wary eye out. But once they made it to the front yard, she saw and heard the ambulance driving rapidly down the road.
Away from them.
The cop cursed, but Julie's eyes were on Mark. He'd been watching the vehicle pull away, but as it tore down the road, he turned around.

She knew the moment he spotted her because his body suddenly sagged in relief. She laughed, the sound more sob of relief than humor. He looked exhausted and worried and handsome in his scrub shirt and dirty khakis. Nothing about him was clean or crisp, and yet he'd never appeared more perfect to her.

She called out his name and ran straight for him. If the cop tried to stop her, she didn't notice. And within a second, she was in his arms. He held her tight, lifting her up as he squeezed her, and everything inside her felt
right
. She felt him bury his face in her hair and one of them shuddered in reaction, though she couldn't tell who.

“I knew you'd come,” she said against his shoulder. “I knew it.”

He didn't speak, just squeezed her tighter. At some point the cop interrupted them. He might have been speaking for a while. She didn't know and didn't care. But eventually the words penetrated. Or more specifically, Mark's reaction to the words.

“She's been shot. She needs a doctor.”

Mark tensed and rapidly set her back on her heels. His hands started patting her body while his gaze raked her from head to toe.

“It's a scrape,” she said. “I'll be fine.”

“You're going to the hospital—” he began, but the cop cut him off.

“You're going to stay out of this. If you hadn't run in there half-cocked, this would have been a lot safer. And the assholes wouldn't be halfway to Canada by now.”

Julie watched as Mark visibly controlled his expression. He clearly wanted to rip the guy's head off, but she set a hand on his chest. She felt the heat of him and the uneven stutter of his breath. He wrapped his own hand around hers, and together they both seemed to breathe easier. “You're right,” he finally said. “But she was screaming. I couldn't—” His voice choked off.