The Bobcat's Tate (22 page)

Me
gan lashed out with her right foot, kicking the gun from his hand, and lashed out again, tripping him as he lunged for the gun. She kicked madly at him as he lay on the ground, catching him in the jaw and wrenching a howl of agonized rage from his throat.

“Schuyler, run!” she screamed, as Bernard scrambled to his feet
. Her hands were almost free.

In the distance, she heard the baying of wolves
. Furious wolves. The baying rapidly drew closer.

Bernard jumped on her, knocking her to the ground, and shifted into coyote form. His eyes were balls of red fire, and saliva dripped from his jaws.

Schuyler, in cub form, flew through the air and bit Bernard on his flank. Bernard swung around wildly, sending Schuyler flying into the bushes, where she landed with a thud and scrambled upright. She threw her head back and howled, a call to her pack, a desperate cry for help.

Answering howls sounded in the bushes, but Bernard launched himself at Megan again
. She’d managed to get up on her knees, but he knocked her down onto the dirt, and his jaws were snapping at her throat, and howls filled the air, and…chaos.

He fell off her. It looked as if the air was filled with gray fur.
Massive, flying beasts, all jaws and teeth and wild eyes.  The cavalry had arrived.

Megan
rolled away, finally ripped through the remaining shreds of copper wire, and shifted to wolf form. She heard screams, wet, bubbling screams. Her brother and Loch and deputies from the station had all shifted, and they were a boiling pile of fur. She couldn’t see Bernard underneath the pile, but she could hear his agonized death wails.

Staggering, she looked around wildly for Schuyler
. Schuyler was standing in the bushes, shivering hard, eyes wild, tongue lolling.

She jerked her head at Schuyler, and they dashed away, out of the clearing
.

Once they were back by the roadside where Bernard had abandoned his car, they found highway patrol cars and
more deputies pulling up. Both girls shifted back into human form and accepted oversized blankets from the deputies, which they wrapped around themselves as they waited for Tate and Loch to come out of the woods.

Schuyler’s lip was split and bleeding. Megan could feel her own mouth throbbing, and her legs were scraped and oozing blood
. She and Schuyler were filthy and muddy, but they were alive. It was an amazing miracle. They were alive.

Megan was weak with relief, her heart pounding a million miles a minute
.

A deputy handed them both cold bottles of water, and they sucked at them greedily, until the bottles were empty
.

“How the heck did you do that?” Megan marveled
to her sister. “How did you get loose from the copper wire?”

“I told you I can do magic tricks like Houdini. I’ve been practicing escape tricks for months now. I have the other kids tie me up with clothesline and then I get out of it
.” Schulyer stuck her tongue out at her. “Dummy.”

Good old Schuyler, always a brat, even under the most desperate circumstances.

For once, Megan didn’t mind.

* * *

Tate felt as if a million-ton weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Earlier, when he and Loch had heard Schuyler’s howls, he’d feared they’d be too late. He’d surely broken land speed records tearing through the woods, and the sight of Megan and Schuyler under attack from that coyote…he took a deep breath to calm himself.

They were at the hospital, in a curtained
-off room in the E.R. Megan sat patiently on her bed as a nurse practitioner dabbed salve on her stinging wrists where they’d been bound with the copper wire. Schulyer sat less patiently next to her, receiving the same treatment from a doctor, and yelping in protest.

At Megan’s pleading, he’d allowed Frank to come to the hospital room with him,
although he deliberately placed himself between the two of them and shot Frank hostile, warning looks.

“I feel like this is partly my fault,”
Tate said.

“So I’m not in trouble?” Megan asked hopefully.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Tate said. “You snuck around behind my back, you got involved with a man without my approval, and that is why you ended up being kidnapped by a serial killer. And your sister got caught up in it, too.”

Megan wilted visibly. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

The nurse and doctor had finished, and they left the room, leaving Tate glowering at Megan. He was relieved and furious at the same time.

“Do you understand that I actually care about your welfare, and I might occasionally know what I’m talking about?”

“You didn’t when it came to Frank,” Megan said heatedly.

“Tell him,” Frank urged her.

“Tell me what?” Tate asked, alarm rippling through him. “Oh, my God. Are you expecting cubs?” He’d kill Frank. He’d kill him right there in the emergency room.

“No
,” Megan said, looking horrified.

“Then what?”

Megan glowered. “I know you aren’t going to believe me, but…Frank and I are fated mates.”

The words hit him like thunderbolts. No
. This couldn’t be true. Megan, a fated mate of a Sinclair?

“Even though we’re fated mates, you told me to bre
ak it off with him, so I tried,” she said, her face crumpling in misery as she spoke. “I thought maybe you’d approve of Hamilton. He’s older, a successful businessman…well, that’s what I thought he was, anyway. So I was sneaking off to meet him, and trying really hard to make myself fall in love with him, but it didn’t work.”

“But…but…” Tate groaned, running his hands through his hair. He glanced over at Frank.
“Frank’s a major player,” he argued.

“I was until I met Megan,” Frank admitted. “I haven’t looked at another girl since I met her, and I never will again
. Even if I couldn’t be with her, I would never touch another woman. It’s Megan or no one.”

Megan was positively simpering now, glowing
. Schuyler made a gagging motion, sticking her fingers in her mouth as if she was making herself barf.

“He’s such a jerk,
his own family won’t speak to him,” Tate protested. “Think about it, Megan. He’s been rejected by the Sinclairs, the biggest jerks in all of Florida.”

“No, idiot,
you
think about it,” Megan said angrily. “He doesn’t get along with them because, unlike his father, he’s
not
a douchebag. Schuyler, you did not hear that word.. Frank, tell him what you and your dad were fighting about.”

“
It started when these kids were picking on a nearsighted wolf at our school, and I put a stop to it,” Frank said. “My dad said it was survival of the fittest for shifters. He wanted me to actually challenge that little runty kid. I told dad the kid wouldn’t survive five seconds, and dad said that was the point.”

Tate felt anger rising inside him, choking him at the thought.
He could picture Quincy saying that, clear as day.

“It went on from there, dad telling me to toughen up all the time, but his version of
being tough is kicking weaker people’s butts just to prove that I can. I wouldn’t do it. I moved out and got a job cooking at a restaurant, and I support myself now.” He looked at Tate with a mixture of defiance and hope. “I joined the army. They’re going to pay for my college education, and I’m going into the restaurant business. I’ll own a restaurant some day. I could support Megan, too.”

“But…you vandalized the wedding
grounds. And my truck I smelled your scent.” This was crazy. What was happening here?

Frank’s gaze dropped to the ground.

“Tell him,” Megan ground out. Frank remained silent.

“That wasn’t Frank,” she said. “That was
his aunt Aurora. She’s angry at our family because she feels like you got her booted off the shifter council, and Loch embarrassed them all when he wouldn’t marry Portia. She used scentsbane to mask her scent. Frank was following her around trying to head her off, which is why you smelled his scent at some of the places that were vandalized. Sometimes she’d manage to slip away from everybody, like when she ruined the flower beds and when she vandalized your truck.”

Tate’s head was reeling
. He knew Megan was telling the truth.

If
she and Frank were fated mates, he couldn’t stand between that. He knew how he felt about Kat. It would kill him if he couldn’t be with her.

“But…” he protested feebly. “You’re too young
.”

“Mom and
Dad were high school sweethearts,” she reminded him. “They married right after they graduated.”

She and Frank stared at him, eyes shining with hope.

Damn. She’d torpedoed his every argument. He had nothing. He let out a long, resigned sigh.

Megan whooped with glee. “Yes! He’ll say yes!”

“Not until you graduate from college,” he told Frank, whose face lit up. “You will court her properly, and you will treat her with respect, and you two can’t marry until you have a college degree in your paw.”

“Yes, sir!”
Frank said eagerly.

Damn it to hell
. The kid was being polite and respectful.

Megan turned to Schuyler
and shoved her. “If I ever tell you to run for your life again, you will run for your life, not stick around like a dumbass.”

“Tate!” Schuyler howled. “She called me a dumbass
. She used bad language. Aren’t you going to ground her? Why are you laughing? Why are you crying?”

Tate was laughing so hard he was crying, tears of relief rolling down his cheeks.
Back to normal. They were all back to normal.

He had Kat, and Megan and Schuyler were safe, and they were back to being the most annoying
pack in all of the state, and he couldn’t be more delighted.

Lainey
paced anxiously front of the boarding house, her head snapping up when she saw Tate’s truck pull in.

As he climbed out, she raced over to him and threw her arms around him. She could tell from the look on his face that Megan and Schuyler were okay, and she let her breath whoosh out in a huge sigh of relief
. She’d spent the morning practically tearing her hair out at the sheriff’s office, feeling sick and furious and desperate, until they’d finally gotten the news that Megan and Schuyler had been located in the woods and were on the way to the hospital.

He hugged her hard, burying his face in her hair before releasing her and stepping back
. “Yes, everyone is fine. Minor injuries.”

“Oh thank God.
Thank the Cypress Woods Witch. Thank everything in the world. What a nightmare,” Lainey said.

“Well, it’s not quite over yet,” he grimaced. “We found out what happened to Portia. Ginger got the family’s permission to go to her house, hand
le her belongings, and communicate with her spirit. It’s pretty sad. Portia had heard that Ginger had brought her tiara to Hoopers. You know how everybody knows everything immediately around here?”

“Shut the front door, I didn’t know that,”
Lainey said. “And I hear that you won’t let Megan marry her fated mate, Frank, until he graduates from college? Good call.”

“My God,” Tate said admiringly
. Lainey was proud of herself; he’d only left the hospital twenty minutes earlier. “You are one of us now.”

“
That explains my newfound mint julep addiction. Carry on.”

“Port
ia broke into the jewelry store, broke into the safe, and put on the tiara. She’d gone around the bend at that point, totally obsessed with Loch. She didn’t know that Bernard was in the store, too. He’d been going there at night when the other employees were gone, stealing all the jewelry in the store and replacing it with fakes. When Portia saw him, he killed her, and dumped her body and the tiara in the swamp. He had to dump the tiara because he knew about Ginger’s ability, knew if she wore the tiara on her wedding day, she’d have visions of what happened to Portia. We also suspect that he killed Meyer Schofield and dumped his body by a riverbed, and then moved it when he realized police had found it.”

“Who was this psycho?”
Lainey shuddered. The man had almost hurt Megan and Schuyler. The thought made her want to claw the man’s face off. Her sharp claws shot from her fingertips, and she stifled a low growl of anger.

“Apparently he was a serial killer and a drifter
. He’d move in with someone, male or female, become their lover, and then after a few months, kill them, drain their bank account, and move to another state. Change his name, change his looks.” Tate’s blue eyes turned dark with anger as he talked.

“
He moved in with Hamilton in his house in L.A. When Mrs. Hooper contacted Hamilton and asked him to come back to Blue Moon Junction to take over the jewelry store, Bernard saw his chance to come here and rob the store blind. He apparently killed Hamilton, used Hamilton’s credit cards to pay for plastic surgery to look more like him, and then came out here using all the knowledge he’d gleaned from Hamilton.”