I nodded once to let him know I understood and then we sat in silence as minutes ticked by on the wall clock over the door.
Outside, a wolf howled and the man beside me straightened the slightest bit in his chair. Another noise from outside, one that caught my mother’s attention. She walked over to the window and squinted toward the trees, then turned to Steve and demanded to know what had made the odd barking sound.
A moment later, all hell broke loose.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dane
Once we arrived at the lake Leia directed us to, finding the nearly abandoned bed and breakfast took less than no effort. It was so easy to find that we ended up having to drive a few miles past it just to be sure Clint could plausibly pull off the stranded motorist schtick to gain entry.
“What do you think about turning around and pulling off?” Clark’s voice came from the back seat. “There’s good coverage for us to disappear into up ahead and the shoulder is wide enough here to leave the car without blocking the road and risking someone calling the LEOs.”
There was a brief chorus of agreements and Clint eased the car to a stop, allowing me, Colt, Clark, and Colby to slip out of the car and fade into the thicket. We fell in behind Colby like a line of ducklings and followed him until he stopped at a group of sapling trees growing so close together that they made a perfect blind.
We’d plotted our rescue on the ride up the mountain, basing it on the pictures Colby printed off the vacation rental site, so once we were out of sight, we stripped out of our clothes and stashed them under the leaves. It wouldn’t hide them from a shifter’s enhanced sense of smell, but as far as we knew, we were only dealing with humans, so it would do.
From there we shifted one at a time, the others standing guard during the brief moment that we were mid-shift and vulnerable until all vestiges of humanity were gone and we were left with two bears and two immense wolves, one a dark reddish-brown and one nearly solid white with only the tips of his fur carrying a trace of black.
The wolves departed together first, fading into the trees and silently disappearing from sight. Clark and I parted ways, him veering to the West while I cut through to the East. Unlike the wolves, bears were a common sight in the area and as long as no one was able to peg Clark as a Grizzly instead of one of the bears native to the Rocky Mountains, there was no real reason for us to hide our approach. Disguise it, yes, since it would probably alarm the kidnappers if they saw even one bear making a beeline for the house but as long as we moved slowly and seemed more interested in foraging, I was confident we’d be fine.
Besides, even without my bad leg, bears are too large and too loud to pussyfoot around silently like the wolves could.
Predictably, I was the last one to arrive. As I ambled up the trail that led from the lake to the old three-story house, I saw that both of the wolves were in position, Colby leaning against the trunks of some mature Aspen trees that blended with his fur perfectly and Colt taking advantage of the multi-colored fall leaves on the ground, stretching out on his belly with his head resting on his paws and his eyes trained on a window looking into the house.
Clark was nowhere to be seen but had an unusual ability to bend both time and perception, making him seemingly invisible when the need arose.
All indications were that we were ready to go.
I stopped a few dozen feet from the house, making a show of flipping a log, even swiping a pawful of grubs from the wood and bringing them to my mouth in case anyone was watching. Slowly rising to my hind legs, I dragged my front paws down the bark of a conveniently located spruce tree, scarring the bark as I turned my head to the window Colt was fixated on. Inside, I could see both Shelly and Clint tied to chairs. A scrawny man held a revolver in a shaky, limp grip while an older woman stared at something on the table before her, ignoring them all.
I hesitated. We knew there were two kidnappers from Leia’s vision but she’d been certain that they were both men. A vague movement over by the Aspen trees caught my eye and I saw that Colby was now staring at me. When he was sure he had my attention, he lifted his left front paw and lightly scratched the ground in front of him.
One. Two. Three.
He tilted his head toward the window and scratched the ground again.
One. Two. Three.
Colby had confirmed a third kidnapper. I dropped back to all fours, making my way around to the back of the house to root around in the garden outside the only other door. A startled gasp that said someone spotted me through the window was followed by a metallic click when they rushed to lock the door.
A howl wafted through the air, completely out of place in the light of day and we began our countdown. My ears twitched and my bear grunted in amusement when the voices that had been remarking on us a moment before began to argue in frightened animation about whether it was a dog or somethingelse.The bear was right to be amused at the thought that the kidnappers had absolutely no idea just how right theelsewas. Or about the fact that they had personally forced theelseinto their safe haven at gunpoint where it relaxed in a chair just waiting to spring into action as soon as our distraction presented the cover.
Three faint yaps came next, a five-second pause between them. I waited five seconds after the final sound and made my approach.
The building was ancient, probably an old farmhouse that had been restored sometime in the hundred or so years since it had been built. The wooden door presented absolutely no challenge as my bear tore it easily from the hinges and tossed it aside to land in the garden he’d been digging up just minutes before.
The scrawny man stared, frozen in fear as I advanced on him and I had a brief moment of amusement when he rantowardthe much, much scarier threat tied to a chair in the eat-in kitchen.
The terrified shriek that pierced the air a few seconds later alerted us that everything was playing out exactly as planned.
I followed behind him, slowed slightly by having to angle my bulky body to fit through the doorways and found Shelly leaning against the wall, gingerly rubbing his wrists to get the blood flowing in his extremities. His eyes were wet and shiny when he saw me but he was determined to tough it out, sending me a mock glare before greeting me with snark-filled words.
“Well, it took you fucking long enough.”
The bear’s ears twitched in confusion and that was all it took for my Omega to fly across the kitchen and wrap his arms around my neck. Unable to speak in my animal form, all I could do was nuzzle him affectionately while keeping a critical eye on the melee unwrapping around me and, once the kidnappers were all subdued, heave a sigh of relief.
After all, I had to agree. It had taken me entirely too long, I just wasn’t sure if we were talking about the same thing.
