Bear Trapped (Bear Creek Grizzlies #5)

18. Lauren

LAUREN

I t was like an eternity and no time at all had passed after Finn left the cabin to go clean things up, whatever that meant. She didn’t really want to know what it meant. It took all of her strength to stay where he’d put her near the fireplace. She should have gotten up and at least tried to light the kindling or collect snow for water.

But her legs didn’t work and she couldn’t seem to get anything moving in coordination. As soon as a thought settled in her head, something else would occur to her and set everything aflutter again. Loud noises outside kept her huddled in the corner, but she’d just made up her mind to search for the rifle and shotgun to defend herself when the door opened and Finn dragged massive amounts of split logs and sticks inside.

Lauren tried to see what parts of him had been a bear, even though the possibility was ludicrous. No matter what she’d seen, people didn’t turn into bears. It kept her off-balance, but at least Finn didn’t make any sudden moves or shout at her. He was yet another person, different from the man who’d cuddled with her that morning and more different than the man who’d spoken to the guys who tried to kill her on the trail. Who was the real Finn? How would she know which Finn would respond to her if she asked him a question or woke him up? Would it be the bear or the terrifying man or the man who moved around so efficiently to patch holes and fix the roof, like he’d worked in construction all his life? Or would it be the sweet, soft-spoken man who’d been so considerate and caring?

So she didn’t dare lie or refuse to answer his questions when Finn got close and said he wanted to talk. It had to do with the trouble she’d caused by running off and getting mixed up with those two men, even if he said it had more to do with him turning into a bear. Somehow that felt like the least of her troubles. A bear wouldn’t be taking her in to the sheriff’s office, that she knew for certain. A bounty hunter guy would.

Even though he looked confused when she pointed out the bounty and the guys who’d tried to come in and take his money, she kept talking because she needed him to understand. No one ever really listened to her. They thought they did and they assumed they knew what she’d say, but usually everyone stopped listening after the first few sentences. So she talked faster and they stopped listening even sooner. She shivered, even with the heat of the fire, and Finn moved to sit next to her and pull her against his side.

His lips drifted across her temple and he murmured, “I need you to slow down and help me understand. What bounty are you talking about?”

“Mine,” she said. Maybe he needed to record her admitting it for some reason, or he just wanted to make triple-sure he had the right fugitive. “I skipped bail and I’ve been hiding out and since you’re the bounty hunter, you should already know this.”

His dark eyebrows rose. Finn’s hand rested warm and gentle on her hip. “Babe, I’m not a bounty hunter.”

Lauren had to lean back to frown at him. “Yes you are. You said it. You said you’d been looking for me, and you found me. That it was luck you found me.”

“Well, it was luck,” he said. Finn still looked at her like they spoke completely different languages, or maybe they had different conversations in the same language. “And…well, yes, I have been looking for you.”

She shook her head. “See? Then why did you deny it?”

“I wasn’t looking for you because I’m a bounty hunter, I was looking for you because…” His voice trailed off and Finn’s gaze drifted far away.

Lauren’s stomach clenched with nerves. She didn’t dare speak, hardly breathed.

He took a deep breath. “That part is hard to explain. I’ll give it a shot later, but first I want to understand more about this bounty. I’m not a bounty hunter, Lauren, I swear it to you. I had no idea you had a run-in with the law. What are you doing out here, then? Why did you skip bail?”

Her heart sank. He wasn’t a bounty hunter? Which was great news, except it meant she’d outed herself as a criminal to someone as perfect as Finn for no reason. “You’re not going to take me to jail?”

“No,” he said, a hint of a smile barely touching his mouth before it disappeared. “Darlin’, I will definitely not take you to jail. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you out of jail, in fact. So let’s get to the bottom of this.”

Lauren didn’t want to relax against him, but a wind kicked up outside the cabin and worked its way through the cracks between the logs and reminded her of that awful trek back along the trail as she sat on the bear. The bear who sat beside her and reassured her that he wasn’t a bounty hunter and wouldn’t take her to jail. So she leaned in to him and closed her eyes. “You’ll just hate me for it. It’s better if you don’t know.”

“No use running away from something,” Finn said, and from the resigned tone of his voice, he knew it from personal experience. Lauren didn’t want to know what someone as brave and intimidating as Finn would run from.

She kept her eyes closed as she started to explain, starting with how she’d always studied cryptids and Bigfoot in particular and how it kept her distracted all those awful times when they were evicted and had to move, or when there wasn’t any food and all she read to ignore the stomach cramps. She made friends who were also interested in weird stuff and she drank a little and smoked some weed and found herself starting to go down the same road she’d seen her mother crash along for most of her life. She found the groups where environmentalists and conservationists and cryptozoologists intersected, and made her place among them instead of the astral healers and empaths and survivors of alien abductions. At least it kept her away from the heroin addicts and methheads who’d wanted to be her friend.

Finn listened and didn’t comment or even laugh, which was the only reason that Lauren found the bravery to keep talking. “Some of the group felt like we weren’t doing enough to protect the environment after the politicians reversed a lot of the laws that kept this part of the state off-limits to drilling and fracking and all…that.”

She still didn’t entirely understand the specifics, except that everything the oil companies did was dangerous for living things.

Finn turned his head to rub his chin across the top of her head, grumbling deep in his chest. “That’s been a problem, you’re right.”

She breathed him in, wondering how he smelled so good as a man and yet was pretty wild and ripe as a bear. Lauren gnawed her lower lip before going on, staring across the cabin at the gloomy shadows that concealed the kitchen. “They wanted to make a statement when the oil company set up its headquarters over in Red Springs, just outside the wolf refuge. The oil company had all this surveying equipment and big trucks and explosives as they started exploring. I thought… The leader said we were only going in to get the computers out of the trailers, so we could show how corrupt and terrible they are, and to disable the equipment. Like by putting sugar or dirt in the gas tanks, slashing the tires, that sort of things. I didn’t sign up for anything else.”

The nerves and tension that made her queasy as they snuck through the chain link fence around the equipment returned, even in the quiet of the cabin with Finn right next to her, and Lauren shivered again. The sinking feeling in her stomach had only increased as the group split up and she and Ginger poured sugar into the gas tanks of the trucks and earth-movers they could reach. The group leaders insisted there wasn’t anyone on the property at night, and that they’d disabled the security cameras before anyone else showed up. She’d been stupid to trust them. So stupid.

Finn nuzzled behind her ear, pulling her closer to link both arms around her. “A little protesting can be good.”

It only made her feel worse, that he tried to make her feel better about what terrible decisions she’d made. “Some of them had brought Molotov cocktails or something, and started booby trapping the mining explosives and the big equipment. I didn’t know it until the security guards showed up and started yelling at everyone, using spotlights to try and disorient us. Ginger and I ran, but then the explosions started and it just… There was so much smoke. We got separated. Someone started screaming and I think there were gunshots, then…”

He abruptly pulled her into his lap and kept her tight to his chest. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

She wanted to stop, but once she’d started… the words came from somewhere else and tumbled out, one after another. But at least she curled into him for comfort and knew that what happened was in the past, even if she still dealt with the fallout. “I went back for Ginger when I couldn’t find her. She’d fallen and broken her ankle after the explosions happened, and I had to help her get away. We managed to get into the forest, but by then all the lights were on and cops were everywhere and they were able to identify me and Ginger. So the cops charged us with destruction of property and attempted murder and a bunch of other stuff.”

Finn took a deep breath. “Someone was injured?”

Her heart cracked even more. She hated to think about any of it, but most of all about the poor security guard. “He was trying to put out the fire from the Molotov cocktail when River and Salem set off the explosives, and it really hurt him. He’s in a wheelchair forever, they told me.”

“And those two—River and Salem—were not caught or identified.”

“No.” Lauren felt like she breathe again. There. She’d told him. He could judge her and run away, or turn her in, or maybe stick around and help her figure out what to do next.

“You didn’t turn them in to save yourself? Why didn’t your friend confirm your story, that you weren’t anywhere near the explosion?”

All reasonable questions, and things she’d debated with herself every night while she sat in jail and hoped that she’d wake up from the nightmare. “I didn’t turn them in. The leader, Aspen, insisted that she’d get me a good lawyer if the movement was able to continue fundraising and doing what they did out in the open, which they couldn’t do if anyone knew they were responsible for the explosions and the man’s death.”

“I’m guessing they didn’t get you a good lawyer.”

“No.” Lauren didn’t even struggle with the disappointment and betrayal anymore. She’d sat with it for so long that it was just as familiar as the inside of the cabin. She really couldn’t trust anyone. Maybe she owed Aspen and River and Salem a thank you for reminding her what her mother spent so long teaching her. No one would look out for you but yourself. Everyone was out for themselves, and didn’t care who got hurt in the process. “I had a public defender. I met with him for about thirty minutes. He didn’t remember my name. It wasn’t his fault,” she added hurriedly, when Finn started to growl. “He was really busy and had a ton of people he had to see and it wasn’t like he had any reason to remember me.”

Finn squeezed her and kissed her forehead. “It was his job to remember you and to defend you, and he didn’t do it. We’ll fix that.”

Lauren eyed him dubiously. She was pretty sure she’d already been charged and all the pretrial stuff had all been taken care of. They’d put in a plea deal but she didn’t know if the lawyer accepted it or not. She hadn’t wanted to say she was guilty, and since there hadn’t been any other options, she’d run.

But Finn took another deep breath. “What about your friend? Did she skip bail, too, or do we need to get her out?”

“Her parents are rich,” Lauren said. “They got her a really good lawyer, so she got community service and had to write an apology to the oil company and the security guard.”

“And it didn’t occur to her to help you with her fancy lawyer?”

She loved him getting so offended on her behalf. “She asked but her parents didn’t want to help. Didn’t want her innocence to be called into question if anyone found out they helped me as well. I guess it didn’t look good to have their daughter associating with trailer trash who believed in Bigfoot.”

His frown deepened. “Don’t call yourself that.”

“It’s okay,” Lauren said, laughing. “I am trailer trash. Sometimes we didn’t even have the trailer and lived in the car, but I guess ‘car trash’ doesn’t have the same kind of ring, you know? Ginger tried to help, and after I skipped bail, she brought me food and supplies and everything, and helped me hide. She got me close to here to lay low in the forest for a while, and she was working on buying me a passport so I can get into Canada.”

It sounded more absurd when she said it aloud, but Lauren couldn’t take it back. It was the only set of choices she had left that didn’t leave her walking into jail without a fight. Or living in a busted-up cabin for years on end without running water and having to chop firewood every hour of every day, until deforestation gave away her location.

Finn didn’t speak for so long that Lauren figured he’d either fallen asleep or struggled to keep from laughing at her, so she didn’t push. He kept rubbing his chin against her head, though, until her hair got all snarled and she knew it would take hours to comb out the knots. She didn’t mind.

But something else bothered her. She absently touched his chest, tracing the outline of the words on his T-shirt. “Those guys this morning… Weren’t they bounty hunters?”

He hesitated and her heart sank. If they weren’t bounty hunters, who the hell were they? They’d wanted to kill her, and probably him. What possible reason did they have for being out in this part of the forest? It was private property, and they definitely didn’t look like the thru-hikers that occasionally popped up on the trails.

Finn leaned to feed more wood into the fire, buying himself time before he said anything. Lauren braced for a hell of a lie. When he heaved a sigh and went back to nuzzling behind her ear, she tensed. His smooth, calm voice worked like the fancy laughing gas the one time she’d been to the dentist for a cavity, and she relaxed with every word he said. Even though what he said should have scared the bejesus out of her.

“They’re drug smugglers,” Finn said. “They’ve been using this part of the state to run meth in from the Dakotas and Montana. No one has been able to find the routes they’ve been using or the particular groups who are helping them along the way. So I was hired to find them.”

She frowned and ran her fingers down his forearm, noticing the array of tattoos had a variety of knives and crests and foreign languages. It made sense, maybe. He definitely looked like he was a cop or at least a soldier at some point. “Why did they hire you?”

“I used to work with cops a lot,” he said after a long pause. Lauren heard a lot of history in that pause, and filed it away for later to dig into. “One of them hired me to do some basic looking around, since he knows I have an affinity for the woods, and I agreed.”

An affinity for the woods. Sure. That was one way to put it. Lauren craned her neck back to look him in the eyes. “Because you’re a bear. You turn into a bear. That’s why you like being out here. Right? Because you’re a bear.”

It felt like if she said it enough times, she might actually be able to believe it. It was entirely possible she’d fallen and hit her head and this was just a really detailed hallucination. It seemed more likely than a man turning into a bear. Even if she’d sat on his back and felt his fur between her fingers and seen him turn inside-out twice.

Finn nodded gravely, no hint of teasing in his eyes. “Yes. I can change my shape, Lauren. I come from a family of bears, and I live with a bunch now. A whole crew of us on the other side of the park, at a place called the Lodge. We run tours for folks all through the park and into this part of the forest—hunting, fishing, hiking, rock climbing, skiing, that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” she said. What else was there to say? Maybe she’d eaten some of those strange red-purple berries at the edge of the field where she’d set up her Bigfoot cameras and she was tripping out of the freakin’ universe. Why wouldn’t a bunch of bears lead camping trips through the woods? Maybe they held picnics, too.

He took a deep breath and moved her to the mattress so she could see him better, and lay on his side to watch her without looming over her. Lauren appreciated it, although it wasn’t like it really mattered: he could catch her before she reached the door even if she tied him to the fireplace and got a running head start. Finn’s touched her ankle, a warm, reassuring weight. “I’m sure you’ve got questions. Is there anything you want to ask me?”

Her heart beat faster. Boy, did he not even realize what he’d offered. Lauren swallowed the knot in her throat, then blurted out, “Why are you still here?”

His eyebrows rose and the silence stretched. Lauren held her breath. Probably not the best question to ask him right off the bat, but at least she would get an answer sooner rather than later.