Grizzly Love (15 page)

Indeed, through his shrinking eyesight—damned eyelids getting so heavy—he spotted the bright slash.

One step. Slide to the next. Stumble. Knee to the ground.

A voice trying to penetrate through the white noise roaring in his ears. Eyesight blurring. Torso wavering. Falling, falling…

Follow the rabbit, Jessica Rabbit. Rawr
!

Poor Travis lost the battle with consciousness and plummeted in slow motion toward the rough floor. She just managed to drop to her knees and slap her bag down before his face hit the somewhat gentler canvas. To those who might have criticized her for not trying to catch him? She wasn’t an idiot.

Petite-framed women should never try to stop an unconscious giant of a man from falling where he wanted. Just like lumberjacks didn’t sit in front of toppling trees. She preferred not to die crushed by his weight.

Although his weight pressing against her while conscious—and naked? Totally different thing.

A totally pleasurable thing and pretty much a given if they survived since Travis had extracted a promise to spend a night with her in bed, sans clothing.
Oh sweet heaven.

But first they needed to make it out of this dire situation alive.

I need a plan.
First item on her list, she needed to check where that glimpse of daylight led, hopefully not into enemy hands. Fingers crossed, she really hoped they could use whatever exit she found to escape this mountain.

Once she saw where the crack led, she needed to call for help, which, given Travis had crushed her bag, and the phone was somewhere in it, might have to wait.

As she left him behind, happily snoring, she followed the weaving tunnel a few more yards. She couldn’t believe their ill luck thus far on this mission but, at the same time, wondered at their good luck.

So many times they could have died in just the last hour, and yet, against the odds, they’d survived. Together.

A sign perhaps? She kept looking for reasons to shoo Travis away, and yet fate kept tossing them together.

Even better, when together, things kind of worked out for them. Even the landslide, which some might have considered the last straw, held a silver lining. It halted all attempts at pursuit, led to their evading capture, and given the violence of it, those chasing them probably thought them dead, which they could use to their advantage. How, she didn’t know, but she’d worry about that once she discovered where the hole illuminating the ragged tunnel led.

Their uncanny luck held. As she neared the crevice, her nose twitched, and she frowned.
Is that foliage I smell?
Rare for this area, unless there was a water source.

Pausing just inside the opening out, she listened and scented as best she could. Nothing untoward tickled her gut. Poking her head slowly, she surveyed the scene.

Am I passed out in the desert somewhere, hallucinating?

Surely she’d suffered some kind of trauma because no way did she gaze upon an actual oasis amidst the rocky range they hid in.

She pinched herself. Closed her eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again.

Nothing before her changed.

Waving fronds, green and lush, a pond of water, not big, no more than eight or ten feet across and rock walls surrounding it all. A little pocket of paradise for a dusty, parched, suddenly blinking-back-tears hawk.

At least they wouldn’t die trapped in a mountain.

We might survive.

But her friends might not. She doubted they’d awoken in a virtual paradise.

No time to delay. She needed to get Travis moving, and she needed to call for help. She needed a bunch of things that wouldn’t get done if she spent all her time mooning over shit like her feelings for Travis, her disbelief at everything that befell her, and how pretty this spot was.

Time to shove feelings to the side and get the job done. She’d had lots of practice over the years. At least now she could put it to use.

Before descending to the tempting oasis, she returned to Travis. Passed out cold, he snored, a reassuringly, steady sound. While he did use her bag as a pillow, she still managed to snag the canteen from a side pocket, as well as slip her hand into her carryall. By jostling his head a bit, she wrapped her fingers around the phone.

She prayed as she pulled it out that it survived the abuse it went through in the last while. Kyle had outfitted them well, the sturdy case protecting her cell from the impact of a comatose bear landing on it.

It was then she noted the exit wound in his back, a small hole, with ragged edges, the blood drying. She’d have to clean it and bind it. Rummaging in her bag, she managed to snag an antiseptic wipe still in its packet, but the gauze was wedged tight under his weight. And who knew where her tiny sewing set had gotten to.

Dabbing at his wound, she did her best to squint in the meager illumination and assess the damage. By all indications, it was already healing. The bleeding had stopped, and it showed no signs of inflammation, yet. Further perusal would have to wait until she had better light and access to the entry point, neither of which would happen until Travis woke and moved his sweet, naked ass outside.

Speaking of outside, she should take care of other pressing items while she could. Canteen and phone in hand, she headed back for the water source, her pace quickening as she realized she was losing light and fast.

Good in some respects because it would make any attempts to search for them difficult, but bad as well because she had to get water and place a phone call before heading back to Travis, hopefully without getting lost in the dark.

Dropping to her knees by the pond, she first opened the canteen and drank deeply, the last few tepid mouthfuls removing the dust from her tongue. Receptacle empty, she leaned out and dipped it in the water, the rising bubbles her sign to watch. When the bubbles stopped, she immediately screwed it tight and tucked it under one arm. She really should have boiled it first, but given she didn’t have a pot and didn’t want to start a fire for fear of drawing the wrong kind of attention, she had to hope her shifter resistance to microbes would protect her.

Strolling back to the cave, she withdrew the phone from her pocket and tapped it to wake it. The signal wasn’t great.

As a matter of fact it sucked, the mocking bar waving in and out.

Shit. She cursed as she eyed the rocky walls that loomed around and, in some cases, partially over the courtyard style space.

I need to get higher and hope I get a better bead on a signal.

But she’d do so from the rocky wall where the cave was because it sported a ledge about a dozen feet up, perfect for perching.

In this tight space, shifting to fly out might prove tricky. Her wings needed room to fan, room sadly lacking here.

Leaving the canteen just within the crevice, she stuffed the phone down her shorts and began to rock climb, something she had little experience with given she usually flew to whatever mountaintops she wanted to visit.

The tips of her fingers gripped the rough rock, abrading her gloveless fingertips. Her sandals couldn’t get purchase, so she toed them off, letting her bare feet curl around the protrusions that provided foot holds.

Nimbly, and thanking the fact she kept her upper body toned, she climbed the wall until she reached the slight ledge. Sitting on it, legs dangling, she yanked out the phone and peered at its display.

One weak bar. Not much, but at least it didn’t disappear on her.

Hopefully it would do. Who to call? Reid? Kyle? The military so she could rat out the sarge and his traitor team?

She vetoed the last. This was clan business. Shifter stuff. Outsiders, in this case humans, did not belong. Nor would they understand what had to be done.

Given the direness, she first called her alpha. The phone rang, two rings, three, a fourth, and she was about to hang up when it was answered with a staticky, “Who is this?”

She almost closed her eyes and sighed in relief hearing Reid’s voice. Stupid really because he was thousands of miles away. But, knowing the domineering Kodiak, if there was a way to get them out of this mess, he’d move mountains and oceans to do it. “It’s me, Jess.”

“Jess? Where are you? What’s happened? I can’t r—”—a burst of white noise drowned his word—“on their phone.”

She guessed at his question and did her best to reply concisely before they lost contact. “We’re in the mountains. A few hours from base camp. We were betrayed. All but me and Travis were taken prisoner.”

“Fuck!” No amount of static could muffle his exclamation. Reid wasn’t one to couch his words.

“We need help. I don’t know what to do.” Which galled. “I don’t know where they were taken, but as soon as Travis wakes, we’ll see if we can find a trail.”

“No!” Reid barked the word. “Stay wh—”—squealing and popping erased the next bit—“get to—”

The phone died just as the last sliver of sunlight dipped below the rocky peak. It plunged her in shadow, enough that the lit electronic display and missing signal bar mocked her.

“No. No. No!” She chanted the word, yet no matter how much she waved the phone around, cursed at it, or shook it, she couldn’t get it to cooperate.

She’d managed one phone call, barely, and now had to hope it was enough, but she wasn’t an idiot.

What could her alpha do from Kodiak Point? No one could get here in time. No one would come to save them. She and Travis were on their own.

Actually, given he slept, the copious amount of drugs making him useless, she was alone.

In the dark.

So was it any wonder she screamed when a voice said, “What’s up, Doc?”

Startling the woman he adored while she was perched on a sliver of rock overhead probably wasn’t the brightest thing Travis had ever done. The result, however, where he caught her as she tumbled from said perch, right into his arms? Awesome.

Her bright eyes, barely discernible in the encroaching darkness, regarded him with a mix of annoyance and relief.

“You’re awake.”

“I am. And good thing, too, or you might have gone splat.”

“I was perfectly fine until you startled me.”

“Just wondering what you were doing and letting you know I was awake.”

“I think you’ve made that clear. Would you mind putting me down now?”

He hugged her closer instead. “But I like you where you are.” Where she belonged.

“Where we are is in danger and on our own.”

Oh yeah. For a moment, in his pleasure at holding her, he’d kind of forgotten the whole ambush, avalanche, lives-in-danger thing.

She quickly brought him up to speed, and by the end of it all, he had only one thing to say. “Bummer.”

“Bummer? That’s it?”

He shrugged as he carried her down to the water, only setting her down—reluctantly—so he could lean over and cup some of the tepid liquid to drink. “What else should I say?”

“How about let’s go after them? Or, come on, Jess, let’s climb out and go for help?”

“One. Not only do we have no idea where they’ve gone, they had vehicles. No scent trail means we can’t follow. Add in the fact we’ve got no wheels or anything remotely capable of traveling any distance fast means we have no chance in hell at catching them. Two, it is pitch-black. While I am a great climber, and a known daredevil, even I know it’s a huge risk to attempt to climb out of here in unknown territory at night. We have no idea what to expect when we reach the top, and no way of seeing it.” Wisdom, from him? Damn straight. Rock climbing in the dark often resulted in broken arms or concussions. Seeing as how she handled his medical file, she should trust his judgment in this.

But his doc had more of a daredevil streak than he gave her credit for. “Maybe you can’t get out, but I bet I could climb high enough that, if I transformed, I’d get enough space and height to launch myself. Get us an aerial view.”

“Or get shot down because they’ve got night vision goggles and high-powered rifles.” Him, the voice of reason? Surely the sands in this hot land would freeze.

“Since when are you the rational one?” She stood over him, hands on her hips, frowning.

Rolling onto his back, hands pillowing his head, he shot her a grin. “Just because I get hurt a lot doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use my head. Unlike Kyle and Boris, I like to think mine is more useful than as just a hat rack.” Speaking of racks, he still couldn’t believe his buds hadn’t appreciated the novelty antlered coat rack he got them each last year for Christmas.

“Why don’t you seem worried? I mean we’re stuck in a strange land, betrayed by our own side, our friends captured, with no idea how we’re going to get out of here…”

He reached up and grabbed at her hand, tugging her until she sat beside him. “I’m worried. I’m just not giving in to it. Bad stuff happens.” Like dads not coming home when they were supposed to. “You got to deal with it. Look past the negative parts.”

“Past it to what?”

“Focus on something else.”

“Such as?”

For one, the fact they were alone, for the first time, in a dangerous, and yet in a sense idyllic, paradise. “We’re stuck here for the night. You. Me. And the stars.” Which glittered overhead in a jeweled display that, while different from home, also provided a comfortable measure of familiarity.

“What are you suggesting?”

She would make him spell it out. “It’s getting cold. I have no clothes, and neither of us thought to bring a blanket. However, if there’s one thing we’ve both learned, being from Alaska, is how to stay warm. We’re going to have to
snuggle
.” And yes, his lips curved in a teasing grin.

“Travis! Now is not the time for…um…snuggling.”

Nice to know she grasped his innuendo, but it sucked she rejected the idea. Perhaps with a little persuasion… “Not the time or is it? Think of it. We have no idea what tomorrow might bring. Hell, we can’t even predict the next hour. I, for one, don’t want to regret or wonder what could have been.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t lie to me. Not now. Not after what we’ve gone through.” The darkness and the situation gave him the courage to say the words he’d held tight to his chest the past few years. “I care for you, Jess. Actually, that’s not true, I love you.”