Page 2 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

CHAPTER 2

Somewhere a mosquito was buzzing. Jack raised a hand and tried to swat it away.

The mosquito’s high-pitched drone shifted register and became a woman’s voice. “Hey, mister, I don’t know who you are, but I think we’re in a lot of trouble.”

No shit, Jack thought, if this headache is anything to go by.

“Hey, can you hear me? I’m talking to you, sleepyhead.” This last was punctuated with a firm shove at his shoulder.

Jack grunted and tried to open his eyes, “tried” being the operative word. They appeared to be gummed shut. His mouth tasted like something had died in it.

That must have been some party, he thought blearily.

Party ... party ... why did that ring a very big, very wrong bell?

Oh.

Jack’s eyes snapped open and he started to push himself up to his knees. A spike of blinding pain stabbed him in the temple, and at the same time, there was a sharp scuffling to his right as someone scrambled away, and a fast wrenching pain in his right wrist gave the pain in his head some competition.

“Ow!” said a startled female voice.

Jack, now on hands and knees, did a quick tactical assessment of the situation, as well as he could manage with his head feeling like it was about to split apart. He was naked and completely unarmed. Everything was fuzzy. He blinked and shook his head, causing the damp ground underneath him to heave like the deck of a ship. It didn’t help with the fuzziness, though.

I’m not wearing my glasses .

He seemed to be in the woods. It was dark. Night.

No enemies that he could see or smell, at least none close enough that he was aware of them.

On the other hand, it was dark, his vision was fuzzy, and he had his hands full trying not to throw up or fall face-first in the dirt.

“What’s going on?” he asked thickly.

“We’re handcuffed together,” the woman said. “I mean, you probably noticed that, but I thought you might know why ...?” Her voice trailed off on a hopeful question.

Jack turned and looked at her for the first time. At ... all of her. Oh. He wrenched his eyes up to her face.

They were close enough together, just a few feet apart, that he could see her well enough even in the dim light and without his glasses to tell it was a very pretty face: small and heart-shaped, with olive skin and large eyes and a wide, full mouth.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“ No ,” she said emphatically. “I’m naked and freezing, I feel like I’m coming off a week-long bender, and I’m handcuffed to a total stranger in the middle of the woods. A stranger with knife scars . Would you be okay at that point?”

“Probably not,” Jack had to admit.

As memories filtered back into his drug-fogged brain, dropping puzzle pieces into place about where they were and what they were doing here, his level of tension ramped up steadily. He recognized this woman, although it took a moment for him to remember from where. She was Fallon’s secretary. He’d read her dossier, and had subsequently seen her at the party. His last sight of her, in fact, had been her limp body getting manhandled by one of Fallon’s pride sisters into a cargo container, at which point things got extremely fuzzy and had not, he assumed, gone well.

“Do you know why we’re here?” she asked.

“Shhh!”

Looking alarmed, she closed her mouth.

Jack cocked his head to the side, listening to the small sounds of the night. Every little rustle in the dark woods made his alertness spike. However, as seconds ticked by and nothing attacked them, he began to slowly come down from his adrenaline high.

He had, without realizing it, gone into the four-legged stance from which he could most easily assume his bear shape. However, there was nothing to attack—so far—and therefore nothing to gain by letting the bear come out. In fact, glancing down at his cuffed wrist, he wondered if it was even possible to take bear form right now. He had an uncomfortable feeling the answer was “no,” at least not if he enjoyed having two functional hands.

Besides, they’d been unconscious for .... well, he had no idea how long, really. Was it even the same night?

We have to move. Get out of here.

But they also needed to get themselves together and let the drugs continue clearing out of their systems. The only asset they had right now was their brains, so the fewer stupid mistakes they made, the better their odds of survival. Just charging blindly into the woods was the sort of thing that got people killed.

Also, he needed the trust and help of this woman he seemed to be handcuffed to, if they were both going to get out of this alive. Right now all he was doing was scaring her.

He went from his battle-crouch to a more comfortable sitting position. The woman stared at him with wide eyes: striking eyes, brown flecked with gold, glittering in the twilight semidarkness under the trees. She was kneeling with her right arm over her breasts. Her left was down on the ground next to his, because she only had a few inches of chain on the handcuffs that separated them.

“Are we in danger?” she whispered.

Yes . “Not at the moment,” he said.

“That’s not comforting.”

Casey, Jack thought. Casey McClaren. That was her name. His partner Avery would probably have memorized her entire folder; he’d be able to call up everything from her birthdate to her previous job history. Avery had one of those steel-trap brains that snagged onto details and never let go. Jack’s skill set was geared more towards observational awareness—noticing booby traps, anticipating someone else’s movements in a fight.

Jack wondered how long he’d been out. If it was still the same night, his partner might not even know he’d gone missing yet. The one bright spot in this whole clusterfuck was that Avery was out there somewhere, and would be looking for him as soon as it became obvious something had gone wrong.

“You are a very dangerous-looking person,” Casey said.

“I know,” he said. “I can’t help it.”

“Well, it’s a little alarming for strangers who might wake up next to you unexpectedly.” She shifted a little, the curve of one breast peeking out from behind her arm. “Who are you?”

Jack had been working around other shifters long enough that he was more or less inured to the embarrassment of being naked around people he didn’t know. Most of the shifters he knew were equally blasé about it, at least in the company of fellow shifters. The fact that it clearly bothered her was interesting. He knew she was a shifter from her file—most of Fallon’s employees were—but she evidently had not spent much time around her own kind, or else was unusually shy.

He relocated his eyes firmly on her face in the hopes of making her less nervous.

“I’m Jack Ross,” he said, and tried out a smile. “Special Agent Jack Ross.”

Her eyebrows went up—dark thick brows, making her large eyes look even bigger. “Special Agent? FBI?”

“Something like the FBI,” he said. “You?”

She held out her right hand, reluctantly freeing the arm that had been trying hopelessly to conceal her breasts and their dark nipples. “I’m Casey.”

I know, he could have said, but didn’t. He took her hand in his. It was a strong hand, but small, and devoid of calluses like the ones on his own fingers from handling knives and guns. Casey was an office worker, not a fighter.

Jack couldn’t remember her animal type off the top of his head, but it was most likely some sort of cat; lions tended to get along best with similar predators, and it was unlikely any of Fallon’s higher-level employees would be non-felines. Which meant she’d be comfortable in the woods and used to being out at night. She would also have some experience at moving quietly. They were going to need that.

Most likely her shifted form was a small cat, a margay or a bobcat. That would fit the profile of Fallon’s other known victims perfectly—a small, pretty shifter without any particular combat skills. They wouldn’t want someone who might seriously hurt one of them, any more than cats went after mice who weighed twenty pounds and had fangs.

Hopefully we’ll have a few surprises in store for them.

“It’s nice to meet you, Casey,” he said. “Do you think you can stand up?”

“I guess so,” Casey said. She didn’t look happy at the idea. “I’m not an expert, but when you’re lost, aren’t you supposed to stay where you are until someone finds you?”

“We’re not lost,” he said. “We were put here deliberately.”

Casey’s eyes narrowed. “You do know what’s going on, don’t you?”

“Some of it,” he admitted. “And I’ll tell you while we walk, but right now we need to get moving.”

As he spoke, he started to get up. The cuff yanked on his wrist, and he went back to his knees, just in time to pull Casey down as she started getting up.

They stared at each other for a minute. “Okay,” Jack said. “Guess we have to coordinate this. One, two ... three.”

They got up together. Casey was astonishingly short; he hadn’t realized on the ground just how short she was. She couldn’t be over five-two or five-three. Jack, on the other hand, was six five in his bare feet. This was going to make it even more awkward to move in sync, which they had no choice but to do until they found a way to get the cuffs off.

“Okay, I’m up,” Casey said. She wrapped her right arm defiantly over her breasts again. “Now will you tell me what happened to us?”

“While we walk,” Jack said.

She hesitated. For an instant she opened her mouth as if she meant to say something, then closed it again.

“Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, I swear. There are going to be people coming after us, and we need to get moving.”

He expected more questions, but instead, after a quick widening of her extraordinary eyes, she nodded and settled into step with him when he started walking.

It took them a few moments to get the rhythm of it. Casey had to hold her arm up and forward so she wasn’t jerked off balance with every step he took. On top of that, they were both barefoot. The forest floor was a prickly minefield of brambles, sharp sticks, and pine cones.

But it was possible, although they had to plant their feet carefully. The ground sloped, so Jack pointed them uphill, trying to find deer paths and other openings in the undergrowth so they wouldn’t get their feet and legs torn up so badly. He was hoping to come out on a ridgetop or something similar, a high point where he could get a feel for the lay of the land.

Security takes priority. An old memory: the U.S. Army’s survival manual. Find a safe place and assess your situation.

If they just stayed here in the woods, they’d die. But it was possible, he hoped, to come up with a means of evading their pursuers until his team could find him. And they would be coming for him. Avery and the rest would never leave him behind.

So, in the meantime, it was his responsibility to keep himself, and the civilian he was now responsible for, out of danger until his team could get to him. They couldn’t outrun a transformed lion shifter, let alone fight off the whole pride. So they had to throw them off the trail. There was little point in trying hard to hide their tracks unless they could conceal their scent trail as well, because the lions would almost certainly be hunting them by smell. Their best chance was a waterway of some kind, but he hadn’t seen any sign yet of creeks or streams?—

There was a sharp tug on the handcuffs. Casey had started to fall behind, only to be jerked ahead at his next step. Jack’s momentum pulled her forward in a skipping stumble before he could stop. Casey gasped in pain and hopped on one foot for a minute.

“You okay?” Jack asked. He tried to rein in his longer stride so she didn’t have to hustle to keep up. This was going to be very weird. He was used to having teammates, but not a teammate who couldn’t get more than a few feet from him—especially a civilian, untrained in evasion and survival, who would probably do little more than slow him down.

“Ow. Stubbed my toe on something. I’m not used to walking barefoot in the woods at night.”

“Are you hurt badly? Let me see your foot.”

“It’s not that bad—Agent Ross!” Her voice rose in a squeak when he went down to his knees, carefully keeping his handcuff arm raised, to inspect her foot.

Belatedly, he realized that this had put him right on face level with the mound of curls between her legs. With his senses as tuned in as possible, in case his weak human nose could detect anything on the night wind, he couldn’t help smelling her rich female musk.

Jack flushed and dropped his gaze hastily to her feet. Being all right with other people’s nudity was one thing; sticking his face in her crotch was something else entirely. Business, business. I’m only down here for important things. Pretend she’s got pants on.

Really ugly pants.

“When you’re on the move, taking care of your feet is your number one priority,” he said, and was relieved his voice came out steady. “Even a little scratch can get infected. A thorn can leave you lame. Which foot?”

“Left,” she said, and gave a little gasp when Jack grasped her foot.

“I’m going to pick it up and check it over; is that okay?”

“Fine,” she said, still sounding a trifle breathless, and leaned on a tree.

Jack ran his thumb firmly over the ball of her foot and heel, and tested the toes by pressing on the ball of each one. It was still too dark to see well—his vision was all right at close range; it was at longer distances that his nearsightedness became an issue—but she didn’t flinch or cry out. He noticed in passing that there was some kind of tattoo on her ankle, a little flower nestled into the hollow beneath her ankle bone.

“Seems to be okay. We can go slower. I probably should slow down myself. My feet aren’t any more armored than yours.” At least not in this form.

He managed to get up without embarrassing himself or touching anything he shouldn’t. He watched her for their first couple of steps, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on her lower legs and trying not to notice the flexing of her buttocks. She didn’t seem to be limping.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said. Her face was pensive, heavy brows drawn together in a frown. “Confused. Will you tell me who’s after us now?”

He’d really hoped he’d have more time to earn her trust before he had to bring her world crashing down. Or at least a more graceful way to lead into it. But there was nothing to be gained by lying to her. She deserved to know what she was up against, and she seemed to be able to keep her head in a crisis.

“Roger Fallon,” Jack said. “Lion shifter Roger Fallon and his pride. They brought us here to hunt us.”

Casey gazed at him. She hardly even seemed to react. Shock, Jack thought. Or—something else? She didn’t even seem surprised. Then he realized it had just taken her awhile to get far enough past her initial astonishment to react, when her mouth opened and her eyes went wide.

“ What ? No, that’s impossible. Why ?”

“That’s what I was trying to find out,” Jack said. “Shifters have been going missing in the Seattle area for a while now. It looks like Fallon and his pride have been abducting people and playing The Most Dangerous Game somewhere in the north woods up here.”

Perhaps unconsciously, Casey moved closer to him—so close, in fact, that her arm brushed distractingly against his.

“So you’re saying Roger brings people out in the woods and ... hunts them for sport?” she said. There was a small catch in her voice. “That’s completely insane. I—I don’t believe it.”

“I wish it wasn’t true, but ... do you have another explanation for how we got from Fallon’s party, to waking up handcuffed together naked in the woods?”

“Do people ever survive?” Her voice was tight with fear.

Lying to her wasn’t going to make their situation any less dire. “We haven’t found any yet. Which doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Casey swallowed. “How many?” she asked, her voice tiny. “How many people has he done this to?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’m sorry.”

Casey took a couple of deep breaths and dragged her fist across her eyes. “I’m okay,” she said, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself as well as him. “I’m okay.”

Jack gave her cuffed hand a quick squeeze. “You’re holding up really well.”

She tried to pull away, but succeeded only in jerking the cuff against both their wrists. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed—a watery laugh with an edge of hysteria, but genuine amusement in it too. “This stupid thing,” she said, shaking the cuffs. “As if it’s not bad enough that we’re naked in the woods and someone’s trying to kill us. This is just embarrassing .”

“It gets worse,” Jack admitted. “I think they’re my handcuffs.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she clapped her free hand over her mouth. “Oh God,” she said around her fingers. “I bet that’s going to be hard to explain on your report.”

She looked good when she smiled. Jack smiled back at her. “I swear I’m not a screw-up all the time.”

“Why the handcuffs, though? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“My guess would be to keep us from shifting,” Jack said. Well, me, to be specific. “What kind of shifter are you?”

“Lynx,” she said, and then quickly, “How did you know I’m a shifter?”

Oops. “I read your file.”

“You have a file on me?” Casey asked with a sharp flare of anger in her voice.

“I’m a federal agent, and you’re part of an investigation. We had files on all of Fallon’s employees.”

“Right, you work for the not-FBI.” She relaxed somewhat. “Care to tell me who exactly you do work for, Special Agent Ross? Or is that classified?”

“You can call me Jack. And it’s a small agency that deals with shifter-related crimes, called the SCB. That stands for Shif—for Special Crimes Bureau.” He’d almost said “Shifter Crimes Bureau,” which was the agency’s unofficial in-house name ... but that wasn’t what their paychecks said. “Most people haven’t heard of us, even in the shifter community.”

“There’s an agency just for that?”

“Think about it. Most people don’t know shifters exist, or don’t believe it even if they’ve heard rumors. And a shifter gone rogue can tear right through a crowd of non-shifters who aren’t expecting it.” Like they’re going to tear through us, if they catch us.

“That makes sense,” Casey said. She gave him a little smile. “What kind of shifter are you ? No, wait. Let me guess. Bear?”

“Pretty obvious, I guess.” Jack glanced down at his shoulder tattoo.

“So you can’t shift out of your cuffs?”

He shook his head. “My paws are too big. What about you? Do you think you can slip the cuffs over a paw?”

Now it was her turn to give her head a shake. “Lynx paws are large. Not as big as a bear’s, but bigger than my hand.”

“Damn.”

If he had to be responsible for a civilian while being hunted by lion shifters in the woods, it seemed he could have done worse. She hadn’t panicked and seemed to be doing okay at absorbing the information he was giving her.

“And we have another advantage,” Jack added. “I’m not on my own here. I’m part of a team.”

“Do they know you’re here?” Casey asked, perking up.

“They know I was undercover, and I’ve definitely missed at least a couple of check-ins by now. They’ll be looking for us.” He hoped. It depended at least partly on whether this was the same night or a different one. If he’d been out of touch for a day or two, Avery would be moving heaven and earth to find him by now. If this was the same night ... he glanced up at the sky, trying to gauge the time. Nights were short in the summer this far north. The sky was already brighter than it had been, the trees outlined as dark blurs against the growing light.

Even if it was the same night, he’d definitely missed at least one check-in, probably more. Avery might not have tipped into full-fledged emergency mode yet, but he’d definitely know something was wrong.

“I hope you’re right,” Casey said.

“I trust my partner,” Jack replied. “By now he’ll know that I’ve dropped out of communication. If anyone can find us, Avery can.”