Page 25

25

ORSON

O rson wasn’t entirely sure his plan would work, but he knew he had to try. Humans hurtling out of a truck into a ditch full of rocks at top speed would have been incredibly stupid…but as a bear?

Despite her brave words, he could tell that Alex thought they were done for, and Orson couldn’t lose her now. Shifter strength and healing ability might save him from a fatal crash, but surviving without her would destroy him.

His thick fur coat and substantial layer of fat did a lot less to protect him than he hoped. They tumbled end over end down the ditch as the truck barreled on without them, rolled over, and crashed with a shriek of steel and roar of shattering glass.

Orson’s only goal was to shield Alex. He cradled her in his arms as they tumbled, tucking her close and absorbing every hit. He met every impact with his shoulder, more invested in keeping Alex safe than in using his limbs to stop their downward progress. He could take a beating and did, concentrating on keeping his claws from scratching her fragile form or letting her slip from his grasp.

The bottom of the ditch was full of rainwater, and it ran around them as they finally came to a stop.

Orson peeled his aching arms away when the world stopped tumbling around him, desperate to see if his precious burden had been harmed.

“Shit,” Alex said breathlessly, lying on his furry belly. “Are you hurt? Orson?”

Orson realized that he was lying still, not sure what was broken, and shifted. “I’m okay.” She was much heavier when he was human, and she scrambled back off of him in alarm.

“Orson, oh my God. That was insane. Did you break anything?” She knelt beside him, running her hands gently along his sides.

Orson sat up with effort, wheezing. “Maybe a rib. I’m not sure. It should be fine soon. Shifters heal faster than humans.” he tested this limbs. An ankle might be sprained, and his elbow was on fire. His clothing was torn in places, and absolutely filthy. “Dammit, I don’t think I’m even going to get any manly scars out of this. But what about you? Are you okay?”

Alex laughed weakly and kissed his forehead. She was shaking, and Orson wrapped her arms around her before he realized he was, too. They trembled together in shock and relief. The rain had slowed to the barest cool drizzle.

“We should get some more clothes on before we get hypothermia,” she said, drawing away. “Do you think the truck will explode?”

“That only happens in movies,” Orson scoffed. “And I’m more worried about mosquitoes.” As the rain let up, the hungry insects moved in on the arms that his T-shirt left bare.

“Let’s get our rain gear,” Alex said practically. She stood up and nearly fell over again. “Oh, ouch. That’s probably sprained.”

Orson surged to his feet to try to catch her. They ended up supporting each other and limping awkwardly to the truck, each of them with one good ankle.

The truck was not on fire, and what was left of the engine made creaking noises as it cooled. The sight was sobering; it was a crushed, crumpled wreck of a vehicle. No one inside could have survived. Not even shifter strength would have saved him.

Orson would have been a lot more maudlin if he wasn’t being sucked dry by voracious mosquitoes and drenched. “Raincoat, please!”

He had to shift into a bear and rip a door off to get into the back seat. A semi roared by, heading up the hill as he crouched behind the vehicle as a bear.

“They didn’t stop?” Orson waited until they were around the next curve to shift back into human form.

“Have you ever tried to stop a semi going up a grade like that and get it started again?” Alex asked, reaching around him for her luggage. “They probably radioed for emergency help. That’s the best they could be expected to do.”

Orson found his rain gear and pulled it on. If the mosquitoes south of the mountains had been bad, they were a million times worse here, finding every crack and cranny in his clothing with buzzing persistence. This could have been a very romantic moment; Orson would have loved to lie Alex down and work their shock out in the way that hot-blooded people have been reacting to moments of stress since the caveman days, but he was too busy slapping himself.

“What do you think happened?” Alex asked gravely.

She found her own raincoat in the wreckage and strode away to poke through the remains of the survival equipment thrown from the back of the truck; the shovel was sticking out of the slope like a javelin, the spade completely buried.

“The brakes failed,” Orson guessed, coming to her side.

“Modern trucks are supposed to have built-in brake failure precautions.” Orson didn’t think she was mad at him, but her shock was starting to turn to fury and her voice was hard. “Someone sabotaged us.”

A series of memories clicked into place in Orson’s head. “There was a guy at the Midnight Sun Festival. He ran into me and looked afraid when he recognized me. And what was weird was that I smelled him later, back in Coldfoot. He was leaving the lobby, and he’d been around the truck.”

“A guy in a ballcap, stocky, nondescript?” Alex asked sharply. “I saw him crouched beside the truck in Fairbanks, but I thought I scared him off before he could do anything.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Orson agreed. “He dropped a tool of some kind. Like a long awl or punch, with a needle-like tip.”

“Something you could puncture a brake line with,” Alex surmised. “It might cause a slow leak that wouldn’t turn into a problem for a long while down the road.”

She was so sexy when she was solving crimes. Orson was almost ready to risk mosquitoes to find a soft bit of moss to make love in, but Alex was all business. “Someone knew exactly where we were going to be and where the worst conditions would be.”

Outrage overwhelmed Orson’s libido. “Someone tried to kill us?”

“It might not have killed us,” Alex said reluctantly. “But it would have stranded us off the road and looked like an accident…”

“And then?”

The sound of the truck cooling suddenly changed, creaking ominously, and Orson had just enough time to dive to cover Alex as it went up in a fireball.