Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (8 page)

Toni’s eyes went wide. If he was going to go after the van, after the cats – was he suggesting – did that mean—? She didn’t dare complete the thought. Before she could speak, he turned and ran into the darkness by the side of the road.

“Jack!” Toni strained to look into the shadows. She heard twigs breaking and footfalls muffled by leaf mold, and then nothing.

Toni shivered, adrenaline fading into fear and exhaustion. Whatever thought had half-formed as Jack reassured her was dissolving now.

What was he thinking? No human could keep pace with a speeding van, regardless of speed bumps. And he was joking if he thought he was going to catch up with the vehicle. It must be a mile away by now.

She was on her own.

First things first. Toni forced herself to jog over to the reception hut. It was empty. There were no other cars around, either. She dredged Ellie’s cell number out of her memory and picked up the phone.

There was no dial tone. She realized, dully, that this did not surprise her. Reception empty, a fake animal control van – of course they would cut the phone lines as well. Literally
cut
in this case, she saw as she followed the phone line back toward the wall.

Her cell was still in her pack in the cabin. She had left it there this morning because reception out here was so patchy the phone was useless, but she could drive back toward civilisation until she found a signal.

Maybe she would even catch up with the van on the way.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JACK

Jack ran through the undergrowth, a silent shadow in the night. The road out of the park wound through the outskirts of the forest, but in this form he could take a direct route through the trees. He could hear the roar of the van’s engine ahead, crawling around the winding road.

It had been too long since he last shifted. This trip back to America was meant to be a holiday for his tiger, too, but what with one thing and another he hadn’t had the chance to let it out.

Muscles bunched and stretched under striped fur as Jack leapt past shrubs and low-hanging branches. His strong night-vision meant he avoided the obstacles that would have tripped his human form, and he closed in on his prey.

While his tiger focused on the hunt, Jack’s human mind was spilling over with questions. He knew that Toni was human – or he had assumed she was. Surely his tiger would have recognised a fellow shifter?

But her niece and nephew? Toni had panicked when Karen told her two cats had been picked up by animal control. She had said they were the kids’ pets, but … why had she never mentioned them before? And who brought pet cats on a camping holiday?

As soon as she had heard about the two cats, she had run. The fear Jack smelled rolling off her was the same protective terror she’d had when Karen first told her the kids were missing.

The pieces started to fall into place. Why Toni had been so worried Karen wouldn’t be able to keep the kids under control. The piercing screams from the van that had made her trip over. She hadn’t fallen from surprise, she’d been reacting to the mental punch of the kids’ terror flooding into her mind. He had felt it, too, but had thought the shooting pain was a result of the mate bond, and that he had been feeling Toni hurting as she hit the ground.

Toni knew about shifters. Hell, she might even be a shifter! He hadn’t sensed it in her – but then he hadn’t sensed that the twins were shifters, either.

The realisation fuelled him with elation and he ran faster. He could tell her about himself, talk to her about the mate bond. She would already know about it, if she came from a family of shifters. She would understand. She could probably tell him things about being a shifter that he didn’t know.

He could tell her, and it wouldn’t scare her off.

Yellow light glinted on distant trees, and Jack bared his fangs.

She would understand, but only if he could fix this, and save her niece and nephew. Otherwise he would just be the coward who had spent so long worrying about his
own
secret that he didn’t see what was right under his nose. The great big tough tiger who was so self-involved he didn’t even notice two tiny, helpless housecats.

Who let hunters take cubs from
his
land. From
his
mate.

His family.

He growled low in his throat.
That isn’t going to happen
, he promised.

Jack knew the Silver Forest like the back of his paw. Just in front of him was the only section of road that cut through the rolling foothills rather than curling around them. Low cliffs lined the road on either side for a quarter-mile where dynamite had blown a flat track through the rock. Rather than following the flat ground, Jack loped up the side of the hill, watching the twin beams of the van’s headlights dogleg along the winding road and begin to approach the cut. Crouching on the cliff above the road, he waited, every muscle tensed for action.

He had to time this right. He would only have one chance. One chance to save the children, and win Toni’s trust.

The sound of the car engines grew louder. The driver was fighting a losing battle with the many speed-bumps that pockmarked the road. Jack had had them installed when he purchased the park, to reduce the danger of traffic accidents from drivers racing along the quiet road at high speeds. That decision was now proving a good one.

Jack watched as the van bumped over another obstacle and landed with a suspension-mauling screech.

Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten—

Jack leapt, landing with a squeal of claws on metal on the van’s hood. A pale face stared at him in shock from the driver’s seat. He just had time to note the driver wasn’t de Jager before the man hit the brakes and sent the van spinning toward the side of the road.

Jack jumped aside as the vehicle ploughed through the barrier and into the cliff. Without waiting to see what happened to the driver he ran up to the doors at the back of the van. There was no need to shift to open them – human fingers might be able to work the locking mechanism but a tiger’s claws could simply tear it off. The doors rattled open and Jack lifted his front legs on to the van floor to look inside.

Two heavy-duty wire carry-cages, the sort rangers used to trap feral animals in, were strapped to the back wall. Inside each was a small, chocolate-brown cat. They both froze in place, staring at him with wide blue eyes. The one on the left hissed at him, then backed to the far corner of its cage.

<
Lexi – Felix – don’t be afraid
> he said, hoping his tone would have more sway with them than his giant teeth. <
Toni sent me, I … you can’t hear me, can you?
>

He paused, listening. The two cats
smelled
like shifters, but he couldn’t hear a peep of mindspeak from either of them. He had heard them scream earlier, so he knew they could talk.

No,
he remembered.
I heard them scream
once
, when they were being carried into the van. After that, nothing, even though I’ve been tracking them close enough to hear any calls
.

He could hear something, though – a strange, low buzzing. It filled the interior of the van like a mist. His whiskers twitched. Was there something in the van that shrouded shifter mindspeak?

If so, the situation was worse than he had thought. This wasn’t just an opportunistic kidnapping. These people had come here planning to take on shifters.

Jack jumped up into the van. The itching, buzzing sensation that had made his whiskers twitch rose to cover his whole body. Well, if he couldn’t talk to the kids, he would have to let his actions speak for him.

<
Sorry about this, kids
> he said anyway, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him. <
I know it looks like I’m trying to eat you, but trust me…
>

He reached out and grasped the closer of the two cages, inserting his claws between the door and latch and twisting. The steel gave under his grasp and the door popped open. A chocolate-brown bolt of lightning shot under his paw and out of the van. He turned to the second cage. This one held the cat that had hissed at him. It was still skulking in the back of the cage, eyeing him warily.

He eased his claws under the latch of the second cage, the same as he had the first, trying to make his movements as slow and un-threatening as possible. Since he was essentially flexing six-inch-long talons through the bars of the cage, he wasn’t sure how effective that was. The hinges were just beginning to give when he heard a sharp
pop
and a stinging sensation down his side.

He wrenched the door the rest of the way off and spun around, growling. The driver was standing ten feet away, aiming a handgun directly at him. Jack’s first instinct was to jump on his attacker, but then he remembered the scrap of brown fur still trapped behind him. He knew his tiger could probably take a few bullets, but he couldn’t risk the driver’s shot going wide and hitting either of the children.

Jack backed farther into the van’s crawlspace, making sure his body filled the space between the shooter and the second small cat. He snarled, baring his teeth, and the man’s hands shook, the barrel of the gun waving erratically from side to side.

Now that he could get a clear look at the driver, Jack confirmed it wasn’t de Jager. Which meant the man wasn’t working alone.

The driver’s mouth moved, as though he was trying to speak but couldn’t force the words out. He gulped audibly, then managed to shout: “Stay in the van! Stay there, and nobody needs to get hurt!”

He took one hand off the gun and fumbled in his back pocket.

Jack was about to take advantage of his momentary distraction when a dark shadow dashed out from under the van and launched itself at the man’s face. Tiny claws lashed out and drew four lines of blood across his forehead.

Jack tensed. The driver was off-kilter now, but it wouldn’t take him long to grab the small cat and hurt it. He had to move now.

He leapt, knocking the gun from their attacker’s hand with one heavy paw and pushing him to the ground. The little brown cat fled back under the van. Jack thought he heard a quiet <
Yeah!
> in the back of his mind.

Whatever had masked their mindspeak before wasn’t permanent, then.

He lowered his snout to the fallen driver’s face and snarled.

<
Scram.
>

Maybe the man couldn’t hear the words, but he definitely got the message. Jack watched him run down the road toward the motorway until he disappeared.

He had left his gun and phone behind, and a pungent smell of fear. Jack carefully sniffed the gun. It was loaded, and the safety was off. Trying to move it without using fingers was going to be a bad idea.

Jack stepped away and winced. The man had shot him in the side. The wound stung when he moved, but he couldn’t tell if that was bad or not. He tried to twist to look at the bullet wound and hissed in pain.

A soft meow caught his attention. The two cats were huddled together under the van, wide eyes staring at him, ears and tails flicking suspiciously.

<
You remember me, don’t you?
> he asked. <
I’m Jack. Toni’s … friend. You met me yesterday.
>

<
I was a bit taller then, though
> he finished lamely.

The two cats were completely identical. Small and sleek, with short chocolate-brown fur and shiny blue eyes. He felt an itching sensation at the back of his mind, like someone was talking about him behind his back, and realized that was almost right – except the kids were talking about him right in front of him. They were just aiming their mindspeak so precisely that he couldn’t eavesdrop in.

Jack blinked, fighting back a sudden wave of loneliness. Was this something his parents would have taught him how to do, if they had lived longer?

His side ached. He shook his head to dislodge the melancholic thoughts.

<
Lexi, Felix, you have to come with me. Toni is waiting for us back at the campground – she’ll be going crazy worrying about you by now.
>

<
Nuh-uh
> piped up a tiny voice. <
She’s—>

Suddenly a blinking light on the ground caught Jack’s eye. The driver’s phone was lying face-down on the tarmac.

Jack reached out with one paw and then realized just how pointless that would be. He searched inside himself, found his human form, and felt his body begin to shift. His spine and legs twisted, pulling him from all fours onto two feet. The calloused pads of his paws shrunk and stretched into fingers and he shivered as his thick fur receded and the cool night air swept over his bare skin.

Fingers. Good. He snatched up the phone and turned it over. The screen was cracked from top to bottom, but the display was still working. A new text was flashing across the screen.

Ignoring the sound of snickering behind him – if the kids were giggling over seeing his butt they surely couldn’t be too traumatised by the kidnapping – he started to swipe the message open, then paused. The roar of a car engine was growing louder. Coming closer.

Jack tensed, concentrating with all his senses. If the driver had alerted backup—

It’s her.

Relief washed over Jack as his shifter senses told him Toni was the one behind the wheel. He couldn’t have explained how he knew it was her. She was too far away to see, hear or smell, but he knew without a doubt that the car racing up the road contained her, and only her. The shifter part of his mind was sure of it.

The human part of his mind remembered to jump to the side of the road before the car came haring around the bend.

Brakes screeched as Toni forced the speeding car to a stop just past the crashed van. She leapt out of the car, eyes wide. “Jack – where are—”

Jack watched as her gaze went slightly unfocused, and he realized the twins were mindspeaking with her. Her expression went from fear, to relief, to shock. “You’re both okay, though, right? Come here and let me look at you.”

The two small cats darted out from under the van and smooched around her legs. Toni picked them up one at a time and hugged them tight. Jack could just make out tears welling in her eyes before she blinked them back, mumbling reassuring nothings to the children.

Was she a cat shifter, like them? He couldn’t wait to find out. To talk to her properly, honestly, not hiding anything any longer.

He was also starting to feel the cold.