Page 22 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

Since moving to Seattle at the age of eighteen, Casey had been on the ocean rarely. She and Wendy had taken the ferry to Bainbridge or other nearby islands a few times, but riding a ferry was more like being on a floating parking garage than on an actual boat.

And, after her experience with the Fallons, she didn’t think she’d ever want to go out on the water again.

But now she was leaning into the wind in a small speedboat, salty sea spray dusting her face as they skipped through the waves. Jack was solid at her back, his big hand laced through hers (right in left, as usual), and Eva Kemp was at the controls. The boat was called the Blackfish , according to the name painted on its prow, along with a silhouette of what Casey had thought was a leaping dolphin when she first saw it.

“Blackfish is another name for the killer whale,” Eva had explained. Taking in Casey’s street clothing—a sweater, jacket, and jeans—she’d thrust a life preserver and a water-resistant windbreaker at her.

Casey had to take off her backpack to put them on. Eva held out a hand for it, but Casey shook her head and held onto it, sliding it awkwardly over the vest when she was done.

The weather was dull and gray when they left the port. It was not winter yet, but autumn was definitely closing in: colors blazed brightly along the shore, and red and yellow leaves gleamed among the pine trees on Whidbey Island.

As they rounded the island’s southern tip, the sun broke through the clouds and the sea turned the color of deep green glass. Casey gasped at the unexpected palette of colors: the brilliant water, the autumn foliage on shore.

Eva cut the engine. The boat slowed, rocking gently as the waves rolled beneath the hull. She looked back at Casey. “Does this look like a good place?”

“I guess one place is as good as another.” Casey swallowed, and slipped off her backpack, unzipping the main compartment to take out the urn the funeral home had given her.

Wendy Lebrun had no will and no close relatives. On her employment paperwork at Lion’s Share, she’d listed Casey as her emergency contact. Once the remains identified as hers were released from the SCB’s forensics office, no one had objected to Casey claiming them.

She wasn’t sure if Wendy would have preferred to be cremated or buried. They had never talked about it. But to Casey, the idea of her free-spirited friend having her final resting place in the sound, among the orcas and the sea birds and the adventure-seeking kayakers who flocked north every summer, seemed like something Wendy would have adored.

She unscrewed the top of the urn and opened the plastic bag inside.

“Goodbye, Wendy,” she said softly. She scattered the ashes over the side until they were all gone, vanishing into the glossy tops of the waves rolling against the boat’s side.

Jack put an arm around her, and Casey leaned into him. It was getting easier to accept comfort from other people—Jack, especially.

It had been two months since they’d nearly died on the island, and Casey felt like she was slowly starting to put her life back together. She’d reluctantly accepted Dr. Lafitte’s therapist recommendation, and was keeping a weekly appointment; she wasn’t really sure if it was helping, but it felt like she was at least doing something to manage her own mental health. She was volunteering three days a week at the clinic, which gave her something to do while she waited on the results of her application to the SCB.

She had intended to keep her own apartment for awhile, but after the first month, since she’d been over at Jack’s every night anyway, she’d capitulated to the inevitable and moved her things over to his place. No sense in draining her ever-shrinking bank account paying for an apartment she didn’t even live in, after all. She did insist on paying her share of Jack’s mortgage, at least until her savings ran out.

She was trying not to think of what she’d do after that, if the SCB turned her down. Get a job, she supposed. With her various secretarial skills, she was fairly well qualified to work in an office somewhere.

But the idea of being an SCB agent had gotten its hooks deep into her brain. She didn’t want to go back to filing paperwork and fetching coffee. Two years of devoting herself mind, body, and soul to a single purpose had apparently affected her more than she’d realized. She wanted a goal, she needed a goal, and if she got turned down by the SCB, well, she’d just try again. She had managed to reinvent herself in two years from a waitress with no secretarial skills to the administrative assistant to the head of the company, after all, and if she had to put in the same amount of effort to get into the SCB, well then, she would do it.

She was already working on it. Jack was teaching her to handle a gun properly—they’d been having regular shooting practice at the SCB range, and she was getting pretty good with her little handgun, if she did say so herself. As her leg healed, she’d begun jogging, and while she couldn’t even remotely come close to keeping up with Jack, she was already doing a (very slow) mile every other day. She’d also started looking into gyms where she might learn some sort of martial arts.

“Doing okay?” Jack asked her softly, bringing her back to reality.

“Yeah. I’m all right.” She wiped her eyes, and was mildly surprised to find them dry. “I’m just glad we stopped those bastards from being able to hurt anyone else. I think Wendy would be proud.”

“Yeah.” Jack squeezed her. “I think so.”

“Hey, guys.” Eva pointed. “Look out there.”

A reef of long black backs and glistening dorsal fins broke through the water. Casey had to squint to see them at first, but they were coming closer—weaving playfully around each other, leaping in and out of the water like black-and-white darning needles.

“Are these your pod, Eva?” Casey asked.

“Yep. Suquamish orca shifters.”

One of the orcas jumped all the way out of the water, flipping over and splashing back down in a great cascade of spray. Eva waved. “Show-off,” she said fondly. “There’s another pod swimming with them today. Not shifters, I don’t think—just regular orcas. Us water-mammal shifters, the killer whales and dolphins and seals, stay on friendly terms with our animal cousins.”

The orcas reached the boat. They jostled around it, chirping and whistling. Casey had never realized orcas made any noise at all.

“They’ve been off giving the tourist boats a show,” Eva said, hanging over the side. “No, Ma, I can’t go swimming with you right now. How would these nice folks get back to shore?”

“You can talk to each other when you’re shifted!” Casey exclaimed.

“Certainly we can.” Eva looked back at her. “Want to take your clothes off and go swimming with some orcas?”

Casey looked warily over the edge at the waves rolling against the side of the boat. “Isn’t it a little cold?”

“You think bad guys are going to care if the water’s cold before they push you in? With all these orcas around, you can’t drown. Now would be an excellent time to start learning some deep-water survival skills, Trainee McClaren.”

It took a moment for the import of that casual statement to sink in. Then she gave a yell of sheer delight. “I’m in! They accepted my application!”

Eva nodded, smiling.

Casey flung her arms around Jack’s neck and kissed him. Then she pulled back with a scowl. “Wait. Did you know?”

“Well, I was planning a nice dinner to surprise you with the news.” Jack shot Eva a glare, only partly feigned. “Until someone decided to spill the beans early.”

Casey kissed him again, tasting sea salt on his lips. “That’s okay, I’ll happily take you up on that celebration dinner when we get back to shore.” She leaned closer and nipped at his ear. “And other sorts of celebration activities.”

Jack kissed the side of her jaw and her neck, and curled his hand lightly around her left wrist, making her shiver. “It’s a promise,” he whispered.

“Guys!” Eva protested in a playful tone. She pointed at a pair of curious smaller orcas nosing alongside the boat. “There are children present. Get a room.”

Casey stopped with her fingers on the buckles of her life vest. “I hope their parents don’t mind if I take my clothes off, do they?”

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

She stripped off the vest and windbreaker, sweater and jeans. Taking off her underwear with an audience turned out to be harder than she’d expected. Jack watched appreciatively, and Eva with mild unconcern.

“Okay,” Casey said. The chilly ocean breeze brought the hairs standing up on her arms, and she couldn’t help a nervous little flinch at the idea of someone seeing her out here. Could you get arrested for indecent exposure on a boat? But there was no one nearby. A small flotilla of bright orange and red kayaks, too far off to make out anything except their vivid colors, were the closest signs of human observers. Here and there, a distant house could be glimpsed onshore, but they were too far away to even tell if there were people in the yards.

“Now what? Do I just jump in?”

“Not quite,” Eva said. “What I want you to do is fall over the side—backward, if you can bring yourself to do it—and shift as you go down. You’ll be better insulated against the cold and better able to swim as a lynx. Being able to shift in mid-fall is an excellent skill to develop.”

It was still very strange being able to shift in front of people at all. “What if someone sees me?”

“There’s no one around to see.”

Jack gave her a supportive nod. “Go ahead. You can do it.”

Casey sat on the boat’s gunwale. It was sharply cold under her bare buttocks. She looked down at the water, which suddenly seemed both too close and much too far away. Both her hands clamped onto the side, holding herself in place.

The orcas had moved back so none of them were directly under her, but most of them had jostled over to this side of the boat, watching curiously.

Jack kissed her bare shoulder and then stepped back.

What if I hit my head? she thought. What if I drown? But the orcas were there, waiting to make sure nothing happened to her. And Jack and Eva were on the boat to pull her out, just in case.

It was a very simple leap of faith compared to all the others she’d been making lately. But somehow it seemed like a metaphor for all the recent changes in her life, and the ones she was poised on the verge of making soon.

Close your eyes, fall backward, and trust others to catch you if you don’t stick the landing.

It was never going to be easy. She would always want to do things on her own. But, sometimes, it was okay to lean on others. To let someone else share the burden; to trust Jack’s strong arms to carry her when she couldn’t carry herself.

Slowly Casey peeled first one hand off the gunwale, then the other. Balanced on the edge, she tilted her head back, looking up at the blue, blue sky. She spread out her arms and lifted her feet, and for a moment she balanced there, poised on the edge between sea and sky.

“Look at me, Wendy!” she cried aloud, and she flung herself off the edge.