Detective Bear (Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (Bear Patrol Book 2) (4 page)

L
ola came back
from the forest holding a pail of the first huckleberries of the season. She had taken to harvesting wild food for her own sustenance because the camp so often lacked anything other than military rations and wild game.

The men in the campout compound were more than happy to go hunting, but if she wanted to eat anything other than meat and flour three meals a day, she had to go and find it herself.

The pipeline up and down the mountain was so crowded with transporting crystal there was little space for anything else. Justin did keep a store of things like sugar and coffee, but most of those things he kept for himself and his closest advisers. Lola was not among them.

Justin didn't trust her at all and he never had. Part of it was because she was a woman, and in his personal philosophy, women were not built for leadership. Something about how women were put on earth to be cared for and protected by men. He had some pretty strange ideas, which she wouldn't really have cared about if not for the fact that he was keeping her prisoner in his psycho land.

She emerged from the woods, popping a huckleberry into her mouth. When she looked at the tree line across the compound, she saw a man emerging from a lookout. It must have been a new guy because she didn't recognize him at all.

When he turned and stepped into the bright sunlight, Lola had to take a step back. There was something about him that absolutely glowed in her eyes. She wanted to reach out and touch the light. Where had he come from? How could any man who supported Justin seem so delicious? She looked away and continued past the guard tower where the man stood.

He caught up to her and spoke. She was so lost in anxiety that she hadn't heard what he said. She turned to face him, fear and longing mingling in her heart.

"What?" she gasped.

"I asked where the latrine is?" he said with an uncomfortable look on his face.

The man had a dark beard and dark hair with shining brown eyes that invited her deep into his soul. He rubbed the back of his neck as if he were embarrassed by his question.

"The latrines are across the compound behind the tents," she said, pointing in the direction of the latrines.

"Thank you," he muttered. "What's your name?"

"I'm Lola Lockheart," she said challengingly. "I'm Justin Lockheart’s stepsister."

"I heard he had a woman in the camp," the man said. "But I had no idea that she was so beautiful."

His skin flushed behind his tan, and he looked like he had just put his foot in his mouth. Lola rolled her eyes and started to walk away.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," she warned. “And if you want to keep your head attached to your body, I suggest you don't speak to me again."

"Sorry," he muttered. "I just needed to know where the latrines are and I noticed that you are really pretty and… Never mind. Thanks for the help."

"Don't mention it. Seriously, don't mention it," she said, walking towards her tent.

She'd spent the last twelve hours mixing drugs and another hour harvesting huckleberries. She was ready for some rest. But instead she found Chris sitting on her cot looking at her irritably.

"What are you doing in my tent, Chris?" she said, sitting in the one other folding chair she had next to her table.

She’d known Chris since elementary school, and he was one of the few people Justin ever let talk to her. Lola suspected Justin would eventually give her to Chris as a prize for his loyalty.

She set the bucket on the table and started eating the huckleberries. Chris rose from her cot and dipped his dirty hand into her bucket, taking a huge portion of what she’d harvested. She looked up at him with a shocked expression, her mouth hanging open.

"What?" he asked. "We share everything here."

"Then why haven't I had any coffee in the last six months?" she asked.

"You can take that up with Justin," he said.

"What are you doing in here, Chris? This is my private place. Justin wouldn’t like you in here.”

“Justin is suspicious of you. I would hate to see something happen to you if he questions your loyalty. I’ve always seen you as a friend.”

“That’s great, Chris,” she said, hiding her sarcasm. “I see you as a friend too.”

“Justin told me you had a cell phone," Chris said, folding his arms.

"Just because I had a cell phone, doesn't mean that I'm not loyal to Justin. It just means I’m bored out of my mind. I haven't been off this mountain in a year. I'm sick of it. So I had a cell phone? It doesn't mean anything," she said.

"He said you signed up for Mate.com. That shifter/human dating website," Chris said. "Is that true?"

"I was just messing around. I told you; I'm bored."

"How can you be bored with so much to do?"

"I'll tell you a little secret, Chris. Believe it or not, cooking crystal was never my dream as a little girl."

"You never were very ambitious," Chris said, moving to the tent flap.

Lola didn't want to counter his logic by informing him that not wanting to be a drug dealer was not the same as not being ambitious. But she didn't bother. Chris was so far up Justin's butt that she didn't think he could ever come out.

His one saving grace was that he wasn't quite the psychopath her stepbrother happened to be. Not that Justin wasn't trying to change that.

G
auge didn't know
what had gotten into him. One of the first things they’d told him was that he couldn't talk to Lola, but he had walked up to her and talked to her anyway. And of all the things he could've said, he asked her where the latrine was. What was he thinking?

He realized he wasn't thinking. It was his bear who was doing the thinking, and he couldn't let it happen again. Ever since he’d been matched with Lola on Mate.com, he hadn't been able to get her out of his mind. Then he came to find her at the compound, in the middle of his undercover investigation.

This was the worst possible scenario. Every moment that they were in close proximity drove his bear just a little more crazy. Gauge rubbed his face. He couldn’t deal with distractions like these. When he was in the middle of an investigation, he always kept his head down and his eyes on the prize. The only thing that mattered was closing the case. But now the only thing that truly mattered was Lola, his mate.

Gauge had signed up for Mate.com as a joke around the same time the rest of the Bear Patrol had signed up. But after a while with no matches most of the guys had just forgotten about it, including Gauge.

When he had gotten permission from Rollo to go undercover, he made sure to erase himself completely from all social media and all references across the internet. The one thing he didn't completely remove was his questionnaire information on Mate.com. He did, however, remove his picture and profile information from the site.

At the back of his mind, he knew that if he kept his account open on Mate.com, his mate could eventually find him. And that is exactly what happened. Fate had intervened and the two of them were matched, despite everything that stood in their way.

They weren't even allowed to have electronics at the compound so he had no idea how Lola could have possibly even gotten online. Yet they’d been matched, and now here they were both here.

He went back to his sentry post, his bear roaring and grumbling in his mind. Gauge couldn't stand the noise. He was usually a reserved person, which came in handy in his line of work. He had to stay in the shadows, undercover.

His bear was making it impossible to think clearly. He had to stay cool around Justin Lockheart's gang. If he revealed his shifter nature, he would be dead.

Ordinarily, a shifter could withstand one or two bullet wounds if they didn't hit anything too important. But there's no way he could withstand the firepower Lockheart's men were packing.

If anyone found out he was a shifter, he was done for. Now, he also feared for Lola’s safety. When he'd spoken to her, he could smell the fear rolling off of her body like a thick black cloud. It smelled of sorrow and loneliness and desperation. Like the scent of wet cigarette ashes. He needed to help her get away from here. But until he could, he had to stay away from her for her own safety.

He sat in his sentry post and looked out at the broad expanse of forest below him. This location was so remote that it probably didn't get any visitors for years at a time. Not even cross-country hikers or hunters would make it up to these treacherous climbs.

Justin was extraordinarily paranoid, but he had a reason to be. His operation was corrupting the entire population of Fate Mountain and all of the towns surrounding it. He had to know that the authorities of Fate Mountain were doing absolutely everything in their power to stop him.

Gauge still couldn't understand the man's endgame. Clearly Justin Lockheart had a screw loose. How was addicting the humans of his hometown going to help him rise up against the shifter oppressors he hated so much? He would only have a bunch of strung out zombies who barely had the physical health left to continue shooting up and smoking their destructive drugs. They certainly wouldn't be able to take out shifters like the Bear Patrol.

But it wasn't Gauge's job to understand the mind of a madman. It was his job to gather information and send the alarm when he believed it was the right time for the Bear Patrol to move in. He’d done the research and investigation up until this point. Now, he’d nearly achieved his goal of bringing down Lockheart's gang. He had to bide his time and wait. But most importantly, he needed to stay away from Lola Lockheart.

Just the thought of staying away from her sent his bear into hysterics. He palmed his forehead and groaned. He heard a voice below him, shouting up at him.

"What's wrong with you?“ Justin Lockheart's voice called out.

Gauge hurried down the stairs and stood at attention in front of the man who ran the operation.

"Are you backed up?" Justin asked. "Is that why you asked my sister Lola about the latrine?"

"Must been the road rations," Gauge said.

"Since you're the new guy, I'll let it slide, this once," Justin said wrapping his arm around Gauge's shoulder.

He was at least five inches shorter than Gauge but something about his wiry strength fueled by drug addiction and insanity somehow filled him with a kind of dark power. "But if I ever hear about you speaking with my sister again, you'll never be able to take another shit for the rest of your life because your crapper will be broken from the broom handle that I ram up there until you hemorrhage."

Justin said the words with such detachment that the cruel insanity of it was almost lost on Gauge’s ears.

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Gauge said.

Justin slapped him on the back. "Good man. I'm glad we have an understanding.”

L
ola’s
one day off a week was on Monday. Justin at least gave her that much. She always wanted to sleep in, but somehow her body wouldn't allow her to. She got out of bed at six a.m. and washed her face and brushed her hair. Her hair was still clean from the last time she'd washed it, relatively speaking anyway. It would never be as clean as it was a year ago, before Justin had forced her to come live up on the mountain.

They had gone through a hard winter and there’d been a point when she had mild frostbite on her toes. Even then, Justin wouldn't allow her to leave the mountain. He wouldn't allow them to light fires for warmth. They all huddled around tiny electric heaters inside the cave as the snow piled up outside.

Unless they wanted to have the crystal fumes in their face all the time, they had to wear gas masks most of the winter. It had been grueling and horrific, and sometimes she didn't quite know how she had survived.

The fear of another winter was still deep in her bones. The cold, the closeness of the men, everyone's general agitation, and that feeling of constant hunger that gnawed at her belly night and day from lack of food. In winter, even the wild game was sparse. Everything in her refused to believe that she would have to live through that experience again.

She slipped into her boots and walked out the front flap of her tent, carrying her berry picking basket in her hand. Her walks into the forest to gather wild food were some of the only times that Lola felt at peace. As long as she didn't try to escape, no one bothered her when she collected huckleberries, mushrooms, or pine nuts. They watched her, making sure she didn't make a run for it, night and day. As long as she stayed, they left her to her own devices when she wasn't working.

It had been so long since she'd been part of society, since she'd had any friends of her own. Except Chris, who wasn’t really her friend so much as Justin’s.

What would she do if she ever got off this mountain? Where would she go? How would she survive? Without Justin, she had nothing. There was no inheritance or money waiting for her. There was no job. She'd never gone to college and started a career. She’d barely finished high school after her mom died.

There was no hope left. She had no idea how to function in the world, even if she could gather the courage to run away.

She'd been raised on fear, fear of shifters, fear of anyone different. Fear that there was always someone out to get her and that she had to be hypervigilant at all times. Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn't. But that didn't mean Lola had any idea how to function out there.

She remembered a time when she was just a normal girl, before her mother married her stepfather. She remembered having friends and the soccer team and how it felt to be included and involved with her community.

It was everything that she wanted again. If she could only get back to those days. Maybe she could learn to become the woman she was meant to be. Maybe she could heal all of this darkness and find the light that still remained in her soul. That's when she thought of the man she'd been matched with on Mate.com.

Who was he? Why had he asked her to wait for him? She would never know now since Justin had taken her phone away. He’d probably even erased her account. She would never have a chance to find her mate again.

Her mother had told her she had a good heart, and that she was pure and good and kind. Lola's mother was that way too, from what she could remember anyway. Why she'd married a man like Justin's father, Lola still didn't understand.

Justin's father had been a powerful member of the human community. He didn't hold any positions in town, but he did have the ear of a lot of people. He was the leader of an anti-shifter motorcycle gang back then. And was already cooking crystal when Lola's mother married him. Lola didn't think her mother ever knew about his drug activity until right before her death. They were really nothing alike.

Her mother had succumbed to Justin's father's charm. And she had lost her life for it. Lola was convinced that her mother's death was not an accident. But she could never prove it.

Justin was so much like his father he might as well be a clone of the man. In fact, Justin was worse. Part of her believed that it was Justin who had actually killed her mother. Perhaps it was at her stepfather's command, but she somehow knew that it was Justin who pulled the trigger.

She walked further into the forest, her dark thoughts swirling in her mind. She couldn't push them away, even in the beauty of the wood. The tall evergreen trees and the animals who lived in the wood were her only comfort. She loved the quiet peaceful sounds of the birds chirping in the boughs overhead and the squirrels chattering with their pine nuts and acorns.

She looked at a soft blanket of pine needles and wistfully thought of lying down and allowing herself to be absorbed back into the earth. What was there to live for anymore? She was damned no matter what she did. She could stay with Justin and remain a hostage or she could leave and be an uneducated, homeless ex-criminal. No matter what she did, there was no salvation.

She knelt on the ground, her empty pail in hand as she slowly spread herself out over the pine needles. She looked up into the sky, the blue expanse rose through the green canopy of the forest. It was so bright and open. It was as if she could be anything in the face of that magnificence.

She closed her eyes, feeling her body merge with the cool damp ground below her. She wanted to let herself go, to be absorbed into the planet. She wanted to be absolved from all that she had done and contributed to. She wanted to forget her fear and cowardice. She just wanted to be whole again.

"Are you okay?" a male voice said above her.

She snapped her eyes open and saw the new guy blocking out her view of the sky. She scrambled to her feet, fearing the worst for both of them.

"What are you doing here? I told you, you're not allowed to talk to me."

"I saw you walk off into the forest. When you laid down on the ground, I got worried. I'm sorry. I should leave you alone."

Lola felt some kind of attachment to him that she never would have expected. She’d never felt anything like that with any of Justin's other henchmen.

She reached out to him and caught his arm before he walked away. It felt solid and strong, not the arm of a man who took drugs habitually. He turned back to her, his brown eyes blazing with inner truth and goodness. She looked up into his face, seeing only pure intentions.

She let go of his arm, not knowing what had gotten into her. She folded her arms over her chest and glanced down at the ground, breaking her eye contact with the new guy.

"What's your name anyway?" she asked him.

"You can call me Cody," he said.

She looked up at him again. She didn't know how she knew it, but something about the way he'd said his name told her that it wasn't really who he was. Maybe it was a middle name or a nickname for something. That's what she told herself. He was one of Justin's men and therefore someone she had to stay away from.

She couldn’t ignore the magnetic draw she felt toward him. It was as if all she wanted to do was fall in his arms and weep out all her sorrows. She somehow knew he could absorb them. Maybe even help her.

It was an irresistible feeling; one she could barely contain. He looked at her again, those soulful eyes gazing into hers with so much concern and empathy it made her heart weep for everything she had been missing.

"Cody," she breathed. "There's something about you."

"You probably hear this all the time, but…you are irresistible."

His words came out as if he was trying to hold them back with every bit of strength in his being.

"I better go,” she said.

Instead of running away, she took a step toward him and leaned up into his arms, wrapping her arms around his waist. Cody wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. Before either of them could think, their lips were touching. His warm, sweet breath blew against her lips, ever so gently as she pushed harder against him.

She needed to feel him. She needed his strength to carry her through. This one moment. This one kiss. All of her lust and longing erupted within her. The passion between them broke free like a river that had been dammed for thousands of years. She groaned, flicking her tongue between his lips.

He met her passion with his own, returning her kiss and taking it to new depths. Their tongues danced and their breaths mingled.

It was as if the stars had come out in the daytime, bursting around them like fireworks. This was everything. This was it. She would give her life to feel this for just one more moment. And she did.

But then she pushed away.

"That can never happen again," she said. She ran away from him so fast, she completely forgot her huckleberry bucket.