Big Bear Mountain - The Complete Series (16 page)

L
eft with no choice,
Jack shifted back to his human form. He’d made a huge tactical error. There
had
been four of them, after all. He should have trusted his gut. His jaw clenched
as he ground his teeth in frustration, standing there in full uniform but no
weapon. That was how it worked. He could shift to and from his bear fully clothed,
but anything large and metal, like a gun wouldn’t shift with him. That was all
part of the shifting magic. Or curse. Nobody had ever given him the rulebook on
that.

He’d heard of
other shifter clans, but he was a lone wolf and would never have fitted in.
That’s why he chose army life. The army gave him all the family and structure
he needed.

Right now, though,
he wished he wasn’t so alone. He also wished he was a better tactician. His old
CO used to say he was a great instinctive fighter but not the most tactical guy
he’d ever trained. Now look where that had got him. At the wrong end of one of
the most powerful shotguns in the world, his girl still held prisoner and no
weapon.

You’re a
genius, Raven. A real tactical genius.

S
lowly, Cassie began
to wake up. She’d had the weirdest dream. Kidnappers. Shotguns. Bear shifters.
A total nightmare. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and opened her eyes.

Kidnapper.

Shotgun.

Raven in human
form.
What other form would he be in, you idiot
.

She blinked hard a
couple of times to clear her vision. To make all the nonsense go away. Then she
opened her eyes again.

Nothing had
changed. It wasn’t a nightmare, at least not one she could wake up from.

 Raven put his arm
around her, the warmth of his touch comforting her immeasurably. It felt good
to have him so close. Even though she could look after herself, he made her
feel safe. She had missed his touch. More than she realized. He seemed to be
genuinely concerned for her welfare and had risked taking a bullet for her.
That didn’t strike her as something a guy who just wanted to chase a bit of ass
would do. He really cared.

The two remaining
goons and their boss were in a heated discussion on the other side of the room,
but the dark, deadly aperture of the shotgun barrel was still trained on them.
The smooth and professional gunman still had his finger on the trigger. Safety
off.

Nervously, Cassie
scooted closer to Jack, drawing strength from him. She nervously fingered the
chain around her neck, as she always did when she was anxious.

“Tell me I was
seeing things,” she said. Her voice wavered. She knew what she had seen and was
grasping at straws by hoping he’d tell her something different.

“I wish I could
say something other than the truth, but you know what you saw. I can’t even try
to lie to you.”

Her fingers tugged
at the key on the end of the chain. She bit her bottom lip as she tried to come
to terms with it, not daring to speak for fear of making it ‘real’.

“What’s that?”
Jack asked, his narrowed eyes trained on the necklace that she was twirling and
tugging, like a nervous tic.

“Nothing.” She
pulled the key from her shirt to show him. “Just some old key my grandma gave
me when I was little. She just called it ‘the key’ but never told me what it
was for. She said I’d find out when the time came. It’s one of the few things I
have of hers, so I wear it as a kind of good luck charm.” She forced a nervous
laugh. “It’s not working, is it?”

“Put it back. Hide
it. I think I know what it is and why it’s so valuable to these clowns,” he
said urgently in a hushed tone.

“But, how do you
—”

“Not now.” he
whispered. “Just trust me. OK?”

She nodded. She
did trust him. There was something about him that engendered trust. She felt
that he knew what he was doing. He had an assured air about him. She’d been a
PI for long enough to be able to read people. Jack had the bearing of a guy who
had done a lot of stuff she’d probably never know all the details of. Dangerous
stuff. He was the real deal and she was certain beyond doubt that he’d protect
her. No matter what.

A gleam of trust
shone from her eyes as she nodded in agreement. Raven was pleased to have her
confidence. He knew that was the start of something, something that he could
build on in the future. But to have any chance of a future, they had to get out
of this mess. Alive.

T
he menacing shotgun
barrel was aimed directly at Raven’s head. It was so close that Jack could
almost feel the coldness of the steel against his skin.

“Here’s how we’re
going to do this, princess … I’m going to ask you some questions and each time
you lie or I even think you’re lying, I’m gonna blow off  one of your
boyfriends limbs with this.” He raised the weapon to Cassie’s face so she got
to see the large black opening of the barrel. She couldn’t even imagine the
destruction such a blast could unleash.

“And you,” he
pointed the barrel back to Jack’s head, “if you so much as think about doing
your shifter shit, I’ll blow your head off.” Jack had no doubt he meant it.

The gunman turned
his attention back to Cassie. The gun remained trained on Raven’s head.

“Where’s the key?”

Her eyes darted to
Jack. With a barely perceptible shake of his head he signaled her. He had a
plan. At least she hoped he did.

“Back at the
cabin.” She met the gunman’s eyes with her own and held an icy stare.
Unwavering in the hope he’d not see through her deceit.

“We searched the
cabin.” To emphasize his resolve to carry out his threat, he racked a shell
into the chamber —
schlock-schlock
and pointed the shotgun to Jack’s leg
and pressed the tip of the barrel hard against his thigh. “Looks like someone’s
about to lose a leg —”

“It’s not in the
cabin,” she blurted without hesitation or breaking eye contact. “It’s in my
car, the old Cutlass. Glove compartment. Go see for yourself.”

“You,” he turned
to Boil Face, “go search her car.” Boil Face, eager to get away from the bear
shifter and his maniacal, shotgun wielding boss made a beeline through the
splintered opening made by Jack’s dramatic entrance.

Cassie saw Jack
nod slightly confirming she had made the right call.
One down
, he
mouthed silently to her. The odds were more even but there was still the
monstrous Benelli M4 to consider. In close confines, a weapon like that didn’t
even need to be aimed. Just point and shoot in the general direction of your
enemy and it was lights out for anyone within the deadly spread pattern.

So confident was
he in his ability to control the room with the M4 that the gunman hadn’t even
bothered to zip tie either Cassie or Jack.

That was his first
mistake.

“You two,” he
waved the gun in their direction, “move over there.” He directed them to a
position he could cover them more easily, but he also put them in a direct line
between himself and the remaining henchman.

That was his
second mistake.

And it would be
his last.

W
ith a tilt of his
head, Jack gestured to the remaining kidnapper, the one with the Austin Powers
teeth. He was all hers. Jack needed to give his full attention to that shotgun
or they’d both die in a fatal hail of lead shot.

Cassie was fine
with her end of the deal but was concerned for Jack. The thought of him taking
a hit like that made her stomach churn and the thought of losing him, although
she hardly knew him, felt unbearable.

“Trust me,” he
said softly but resolutely. His eyes hardened. Raven the special ops soldier,
who’d been lurking below the surface until now, was ready to engage.

In his mind, he
visualized the scatter of the weapon once fired, calculating the increased diameter
of the cone with each foot it travelled from the end of the barrel. It wasn’t
an ideal scenario, but it was all he had to work with and like it or not, their
lives depended on him. Hers in particular.

Silently he
mouthed a countdown for her to sync with.

Three

Two …

I
n an instant, he
shifted into his bear form and stood tall, towering above the gun toting boss.
His gargantuan, fury body seemed to fill what was once an enormous, cavernous
warehouse.

The shotgun turned
slowly, its owner still in shock at the appearance of the menacing creature and
the horrific growl that echoed in the building.

Cassie leapt at an
awestruck and dumbfounded Austin Powers, crash tackling him to the ground with
a hip and shoulder combo before punching him in the jaw and knocking him out
cold.

“Yeah, Baby!” she
shouted triumphantly with her best impression of an English accent. She
couldn’t help herself.

Then she
remembered Jack. The shotgun!

It was like it all
happened in slow motion. Raven didn’t even try to close the gap on the gunman.
He just stood there as the powerful piece of hand held artillery exploded with
a sickening and resonating
boom
, threatening to burst her eardrums.

Jack took the hit
to his shoulder and chest. Even the massive bulk of his bear was pushed back from
the impact of the blast. Then he regained his balance and threw himself at his
assailant with all the might and fury of a wild, protective bear.

Cassie suddenly
realized what he’d done. If he’d made his move before the weapon discharged,
the shot pattern would have been too narrow, too concentrated and it would have
torn an unsurvivable hole right through him. Instead, he’d let the blast
disperse before it hit him, taking the risk that it wouldn’t kill him so that
he could close the gap and take the guy out as he was racking his next shell
into the chamber.

Schlock —

He never got to
finish pumping the round home.

C
assie examined the
bear’s … Jack’s wounds. Through the thick fur, blood welled from the many
pellets that had penetrated his flesh. He lay there, panting, eyes glazed with
shock and pain. She had expected him to change back to his human form after the
fight, but he either couldn’t because of his wounds or the healing process that
seemed to be going on under the skin. Even as she watched, the blood flow
slowed and some of the more shallow wounds had stopped bleeding altogether as
they healed over.

Finally, the bear
slept, allowing the healing process to accelerate for a faster recovery. He
could afford to do that now that they were safe.

Cassie let him
rest and moved over to one side to keep watch while her protector rested and
recovered. Her movement was stopped short by a gun barrel stabbing her in the
ribs.

“Ssssh.” Boil Face
hushed her with a rough prod with the gun. “We don’t want to wake sleeping
beauty, do we?”

“You found that in
the glove compartment, didn’t you?” She looked at her own backup gun he held to
her side.

“Sure did. Thanks
for that. Now I can have your little treasure box all to myself. I never did
like the idea of sharing with the others, being an only child and all, sharing
really doesn’t work for me.”

“Did you bring the
key?” she asked, knowing he couldn’t possibly have it.

“You mean the one
you keep fiddling with around your neck? Those other morons are so stupid. A
little too much chlorine in their gene pool, as my momma used to say. I keep my
mouth shut and my eyes open. I ain’t nobody’s fool.”

Clearly. You
beady eyed little prick
.

“Nice and easy,
now … get up and walk, very slowly, over to the box and open it up with that
sneaky little key of yours.”

She balled her
fists with rage, powerless to do anything with him pointing a gun at her. She
knew it was loaded. No point having a gun if it’s not loaded, her grandma
always used to say.

“Enough with the
tantrums, get over there and don’t try anything stupid. I’ll shoot, you know.”

She saw greed in
his eyes and knew he’d shoot her if she gave him cause to. Reluctantly, she
made her way to the locked box, took the key from around her neck and knelt
down at the front of the box. Boil Face stood behind her, gun aimed at her
head.

Reaching inside
the box, she saw what looked like a bunch of old legal documents. As she
rummaged through them, she felt something familiar beneath them.

“The deeds, give
‘em here,” Boil Face demanded impatiently.

W
hen Samuel Colt
developed the 6 shot Colt “Walker” revolver for Captain Walker and his Texas
Rangers, the gun was so powerful and heavy that Walker remarked “it would take
a Texan to shoot it”. It was the largest and most powerful handgun of its day
and remained so until the .357 Magnum appeared nearly a century later.

Of course, history
wasn’t really of any interest to Boil Face when Cassie spun around, pointed the
hefty, historic and near priceless piece of Samuel Colt iron at him. She cocked
the hammer like grandma had taught her and watched with delight as his
trembling fingers dropped her backup piece to the floor. A girl from Montana
could handle the “Walker” like the best of those Texas
boys
.

Both of them heard
the
thump-thump
of the approaching helicopter rotors at the same time.