“It worked!”
“Awesome,” she said, squirming on the cold floor. “Do you think you can do your legs too?”
He had his feet out in a couple of tries. This made both of them realize that he had no way to free her.
“Hold on for just a minute,” Luke said.
He got up and walked to the door. For a moment he simply stood with his eyes half closed. Inga recognized the look of a shifter communicating with their inner animal, maybe not in words, but becoming aware of its presence.
Then Luke walked forward and ran into the door with an audible thump.
“Ow,” he muttered, rubbing his nose. “I really thought that’d work.”
“Luke—”
“No, wait. Let me try again.”
From her perspective, nothing was different. Luke closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, walked forward—and vanished into the door.
Inga lurched up to her knees in shock, nearly losing the raincoat wrapped around her.
“Luke!” she called softly.
From out in the hall, she heard a startled exclamation and a loud thud. There was some silence and soft rattling, while she listened anxiously. Then a key clicked in the lock. Inga scrambled to her feet, unwilling to meet whatever was coming lying down, and trying to ignore the lingering throbbing in her head from the drug.
The door opened and Luke stood there, grinning, with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Piece of cake. I’m gonna drag this guy in there so no one sees him, and then I’ll get those off you.”
He heaved the unconscious guard into the room, then quickly removed Inga’s cuffs and transferred one of the sets of shackles to the guard, clipping him to a cargo tie-down.
“Do you want to put on this guy’s clothes?”
Inga made a face and shook her head. “This is all right.” Now that she had her arms free, she put on the raincoat properly. It was chilly against her skin, and considerably too big, but that was all right; it hung to her mid-thighs and functioned as a sort of short dress. “We’ll probably have to shift again to swim for it.”
“That’s not the only problem.” Luke cracked the door open and glanced out into the hallway, then looked back at her. “There are hostages here. It looks like Brockton and his men took over the ship and imprisoned the researchers who would normally be working on it. How many people are normally on this ship?”
“Uh, about a dozen, I guess? Maybe a dozen and a half? There would be the scientists, some grad students or interns, and the crew running the ship.”
Luke cursed softly. “That’s not good. I only saw four.”
“In all likelihood, the crew would be manning their stations in weather like this.” The rolling of the deck was still pronounced underfoot, but it had the steady cadence of somewhere close to shore, not the wild swells of the open ocean. “Of course, it’s possible they brought their own crew. As for the researchers—I don’t know. I really hope they’re all right. Were you able to talk to them? Did they look okay?”
“They didn’t look hurt, just tired and stressed. I couldn’t talk to them because I was a bear at the time.”
“Oh.” Once again, she wished she hadn’t missed so much while she was out. “You can shift, then?”
“No, this was when I was on the ship earlier as a ghost bear.”
“Right,” Inga muttered. She took a breath and pulled the raincoat more tightly around her body. Her bare feet were starting to ache from contact with the cold floor. Maybe she should’ve dealt with the ick and worn the guard’s clothes after all. Speaking of which, he was starting to stir and groan. “Wherever we go, we better get out of here before that guy wakes up.”
Luke leaned out into the hallway, then swiftly ducked back inside. “Damn. Someone’s coming down the stairs.” He looked around the narrow confines of the small room. “Think there’s enough space for you to shift in here?”
As much fun as the idea of confronting their guards as a bear would be, Inga shook her head. “Not safely. I could try it if I have to.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Luke’s voice dropped to a whisper and he stepped to the side.
An instant later, the door swung open, and the man on the other side got as far as “Where the hell—” before Luke slammed the butt of the rifle into his face. A moment later, a second prisoner was shackled with the first. To make things extrainconvenient for them, Luke threaded the shackles between both their arms so they were effectively pretzeled together.
