Chasing Her Tail (7 page)

There was no way for her to see who was at the front door from this angle, but the car made her think that it wasn’t Mr. Lee who was ringing the doorbell for the second time.

34

Title

Jehovah’s Witnesses, perhaps? Her stomach twisted even as the hopeful idea popped into her head. It was bad when she was hoping for someone trying to convert her; when Jehovah’s Witnesses would be the better option. But she knew, just
knew
, that the person at the door was connected with her transformation into a dog.

There was a noise at the door. Bridget tried to quiet her breathing in order to hear the small sounds coming from her front entrance. She slipped closer to the opening into the hall, keeping her body pressed against the wall and out of sight. There were faint clicking noises and then a dull thump as her deadbolt released.

A tiny squeak escaped from Bridget before she clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle any other sounds. Someone had just picked her lock. The realization slapped her across the face. This was no neighbor, no door-to-door salesperson, no one harmless. This was someone who had just picked her
fucking
lock!

There was still the problem of her nakedness. She really, really did not want to face down a burglar with everything on display. When she heard the small groan of hinges as the door swung open, Bridget made a decision. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on changing—smooth skin to hairy, two legs to four, tail where there was none—and her body began to shift.

Bones slid out of place, pulled by muscles moving independently of Bridget’s conscious command. As freaked out as this made her, it was also exhilarating. There was no sickness or fever or pain that accompanied the change anymore. It just felt natural, as if her body already knew exactly what to do, easing into the shape of a dog with an efficiency like the whirring gears in a clock.

Now she could smell that there were two of them, both strangers. Bridget slipped along the wall until she could circle behind the dining room table and chairs, moving fast and using the table’s wide pedestal base to block her from the men’s view if they happened to glance through the doorway.

She made it into the kitchen without being seen. Bridget figured it would only give her an extra minute or so, since the men would be checking each room as they went through the house. Keeping an ear on the burglars, she tried to think of a plan.

All of her escape routes—front and back doors—were through the hallway. Even if the men went upstairs before checking the kitchen, she couldn’t open a closed door, due to her current no-opposable-thumbs state. Her windows were all shut and latched.

Bridget concentrated on listening to the men. They were moving down the hall, pausing at each doorway—dining room, living room on the opposite side, closet under the stairs. Rolling back on her paws so that her nails didn’t click against the kitchen tile, she slipped back into the dining room. Hugging the wall, she moved around the perimeter of the room until she was next to the opening into the hall.

Neither man had said a word, not even in a whisper, since they’d stepped into the house. Bridget could only hear their even, hushed footfalls as they made their way to the back door at the end of the hall where the crumpled tarp lay. She heard the rustle of 35

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the tarp being moved but she didn’t dare poke her head around the corner, in case one or both of the men happened to glance in her direction.

After a pause, their footsteps headed back toward the front door and her hiding spot. The men’s scents grew stronger, thickening the air in her nostrils and coating the back of her throat. Bridget fought to hold back a gagging cough, wishing this super-powered nose could be turned off and on at will.

To her relief, she heard the second stair give its habitual squeak under one of the men’s feet. A few seconds later, the step protested again under the second man’s weight. Their smell lightened slightly, although the stink of the two men still hung in the air.

Bridget didn’t move until she heard the tread of feet on the floor above. Poking her head into the hallway, she saw that there was a clear path to the front door. Lowering her body until her belly almost brushed the floor, she slunk toward the door, half her attention on the empty staircase so she’d be ready to run if one of the men appeared.

A murmur from upstairs caught her attention and slowed her dash for the door.

Bridget hesitated, torn between the animal need to escape and human curiosity. Telling herself that she would be safe enough if she stayed between the men and the front door, she crept halfway up the stairs, just far enough to make out the quiet conversation between the two intruders.

“…isn’t here,” one of the men was saying.

“No movement around the car either or the doc would’ve called,” the other responded, his voice higher and more nasally than the first man’s.

“You going to call him?” The way the lower-voiced intruder said “him” made Bridget’s ears prick up. Literally.

“Fuck no! That’s your job.” The second man’s voice went even higher. “He’s going to be pissed.”

There was a huff of humorless laughter from the first man. “No shit, Sherlock.”

After an extended pause, his voice came again. “Yeah, she’s not here.”

When the nasally man stayed quiet, Bridget guessed the other man was on his cell phone.

“Don’t blame us,” he told the person on the other end of the call. “We’re not the ones who fucked up with the tranq gun. She was back here earlier though—there’s a tarp at the back door like she used it for cover after changing outside somewhere. That, and there’s food out. Looks like she was eating and had to leave in a hurry.”

There was another pause, a shorter one this time.

“Nope, no word from the doc,” the gruff man told whatever “he” they’d been referring to earlier. “Want us to grab anything before we leave?” Another pause ticked by. “Got it. See you in twenty.”

36

Title

After a rustle of fabric—probably the phone going into his pocket—the first man spoke again. “He wants us to bring her laptop and see if she left any sort of purse here.

They didn’t find anything at the E.R.”

Purse?
Bridget racked her brain. Where did she last have it? She knew that she’d snatched it up before she took off out of the hospital but couldn’t remember what had happened to it in the meantime. She’d lost it somewhere during her first change into a dog, she was sure. Her thoughts were interrupted when the nasally man spoke.

“Why does he want these freaks anyway?”

“Dunno,” the other man responded. “’Cause they’re rare, I guess. Having things that no one else does gets him all excited.”

The higher-voiced man snorted. “Waste of money, if you ask me. Know how many hookers you could get for what he’s paying all of us to find this teacher chick? Hot hookers too.”

“You and your hooker dreams,” his companion scoffed.

The tread of feet approached the stairs, jerking Bridget into action. Twisting around, she ran down the steps. She’d been worried that she was going to have to change back into a naked woman to open the front door and risk exposing herself to anyone passing by, but the men had left the front door almost closed but not latched. Slipping her nose into the gap between door and frame, she swung the door wide with a twist of her head. The screen door was easy, since the latch opened by pushing in. Lunging up onto her hind legs, Bridget landed with one of her paws depressing the latch and the door swung open so suddenly that she lost her balance and tumbled awkwardly onto the front doormat.

Twisting around, she regained her feet and took off down her front walk. A car had pulled up behind the sedan, and Bridget headed for the gap between the vehicles. As she reached the sidewalk, the scent and sight caught her at the same time and she skidded to a halt.

Micah?

He rounded the front of his car and Bridget turned and ran, tearing down the sidewalk. She heard Micah’s feet pounding behind her and she sped up, turning sharply to the right and shooting beneath the lower board of a fence. Her back burned where it had rubbed the edge of the wood but Bridget ignored it and ran through the yard, snaking beneath a hedge and into the next yard.

She let instinct take over, allowing her body to do what it knew it could do in this form—over, under, around—running so fast that everything blurred into horizontal stripes. While she ran, the image of Micah taunted her. Bridget struggled to think, to come up with a way to explain his presence—a way that didn’t include Micah being involved with the men who had broken into her house. Was Micah Foster the “he” the two men had been discussing, the mysterious boss on the other end of the phone call?

Her heart hurt. Bridget told herself that it was from fear and exertion, but she knew the truth. As silly as it was, she’d been hoping Micah wasn’t behind her newly acquired 37

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skill of turning into a dog or the men who where chasing her. As much as she tried to deny it, as much as she wished it wasn’t true, she knew that Micah Foster, hot uncle of the sweetest boy ever, was involved in this up to his eyeballs. For some stupid reason, this broke her heart.

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Title

Micah chased the dog for half a block before the animal disappeared underneath a fence. It was Bridget—he was sure of it. Although his sense of smell wasn’t as acute while in human form, he’d seen the awareness in her eyes, the comprehension when she’d spotted him.

Turning back, Micah tried to formulate a plan. He couldn’t talk to her and explain what was happening if he couldn’t even catch her. He’d have to find a safe place to change and then track her by scent. Micah scowled. Nothing could ever be easy.

Glancing toward her house, Micah frowned. She’d left the front door open. Even before she’d spotted him, Bridget had obviously been running away from something.

Foreboding prickled the skin over his shoulder blades as he moved up her front walk, his steps slow and measured, his eyes sweeping the lawn, the windows, even her neighbors’ homes.

He climbed the steps of the porch and reached toward the screen-door handle when he heard them—male voices, two of them at least. Micah swung around, flattening his body against the siding next to the front door.

“No purse in there either,” one of the men was saying. Goose bumps rose on the back of Micah’s neck and he pressed back a growl. He knew that voice. That was Ricky True, one of Bart Carlson’s thugs. Bart was a billionaire, famous for his money and also for his interest in the paranormal. It was rumored that he was a collector of objects and even people, although Micah had just dismissed that last part as an urban legend. Now though, listening to Ricky True rummaging around Bridget’s house made suspicion flare in Micah’s gut.

“At least we found the laptop. That should make him happy—as happy as he ever gets, at least.” This voice belonged to another one of Carlson’s employees, a man named Nevin Greenleigh. Micah jerked involuntarily against the siding. Ricky was a not-too-bright petty criminal but Nevin was a whole other can of worms. Murderous, soulless, sadistic worms.

Micah debated pulling open the screen door, going inside and knocking the men’s heads together to get some information but decided against it. Those two low-level thugs wouldn’t be able to tell him much and it would tip off Bart Carlson that Micah knew what was going on. He grimaced. Not that he really
did
know what was going on.

Despite the fact that he wouldn’t get any information from the men, Micah was still tempted to pound their faces in just for scaring Bridget and going through her things.

He forced himself to step off the side of the porch. Micah circled the house and ducked into the backyard, trying to avoid any exposure to the windows at the rear of the house.

Using the trees and shrubs for cover, he slipped through Bridget’s backyard and into 39

Katie Allen

the neighbor’s. Cutting between the two houses, he emerged in the front yard and walked down the neighbor’s driveway as if he owned it.

Micah made it to the street, pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted. Circling around his car as he yanked out his keys, he unlocked the vehicle and climbed in, quickly locking the doors behind him. Micah started the car, putting it into gear almost before the engine turned over. With a great effort of will, he managed to avoid looking at Bridget’s house one last time as he pulled away.

Circling the block, he found a good place to park in front of a neighbor’s house.

Evergreens crowded the yard and branches protruded over the curb, hiding him from the house as well as creating some disguising shadows. Yanking his cell phone off his belt, he unlocked the screen and hit a button. Tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, Micah waited what seemed like forever for an answer.

“What’s up?”

Micah blew out a relieved breath. “Joey. You need to pick up Sam. Now.”

“What?” Joey’s voice rose a little in surprise. “The tour’s not over until December.”

“I don’t care. Get your ass back here, pick up the kid and disappear.” Micah tried to keep his tone even, although the explanations were wasting time he could be using to track Bridget.

“I’m on the other side of the country, for fuck’s sake. We talked about this. The road isn’t a good place for a—”

Micah’s palm hit the steering wheel. “And this is not the fucking time to argue! Bart Carlson’s sniffing around a new dog—a woman that your
son
changed, by the way—

and I want Sam out of reach.”

There was a shocked silence and Micah was flooded with equal parts impatience and guilt. That was no way to tell Joey about his son’s inexplicable breaking of the rule, the one law that was sacrosanct in their family—never,
ever
bite a human.

“Sam
bit
someone?” Joey finally choked out.

“Yeah.” Blowing out a hard breath, Micah rubbed a hand over his head. “I’ll give you the full story later. Right now, you need to come home, pick up Sam and get him out of Carlson’s reach. How soon can you get here?”