Page 20 of A Bear's Nemesis

Chapter Six

Quinn

Quinn triedto look dignified getting into the back of her parents’ fourteen-passenger church van, but it was hard. In fact, she was finding dignity increasingly hard at the moment: she felt completely ridiculous back in that judge’s chambers, admitting that her wrist was basically fine and that she didn’t mind seeing two people kiss.

Then, to top it all off, she’d had to go apologize to the sexy lawyer and his incredibly hot mate. They’d seemed more amused than anything, and while that wasn’t precisely the reaction she’d been hoping for, it was better than disdain.

Not that Quinn knew what reaction she had been hoping for.

As she’d approached, every warning she’d ever heard about shifters had rung through her head — that they would kidnap her away and keep her as a sex slave, that looking into a shifter’s eyes meant you belonged to that shifter forever.

Hell, on the playground in elementary school, a kid had once told her that touching a shifter made you into one. It was obviously untrue, but she couldn’t help but think about it as the lawyer held out his hand.

And then, there was whatever the hell was happening to her, some potent combination of anxiety and, well, lust. They were easily two of the hottest men she’d ever met, and she replayed their kiss in her mind a dozen times a day.

Besides the hotness, they also seemed... nice, almost. Warm and welcoming in a way that her parents weren’t and would never be.

As soon as Quinn plopped into the bucket seat two rows behind her parents, she put her earbuds into her ears and hit play on her iPod. She already knew that the entire way home, the conversation between her parents was going to be nonstop abuse of Julius and Hudson, and she wasn’t sure she could handle it.

For a couple minutes, she stared out the window, watching the beautiful scenery of Cascadia drift by the van window. Even though they were just driving down the highway, everything there was beautiful: the tall, strong evergreen trees, the rock mountains peeking above the forest, the clear blue sky that went on forever.

The playlist she’d been listening to ended, and there was silence in her earbuds. Quinn looked down to play something else.

She was scrolling through her music when she heard her mother murmur something about a rifle.

Her thumb on the iPod’s dial stopped. Quinn wasn’t sure what made her hear that single word, but there it was, hanging in the air, and she froze completely.

“That seems like overkill,” her father’s voice said. Even without seeing him, she could tell he was frowning.

“Well, apparently Jacob couldn’t hit the side of a barn from ten feet away,” her mother snapped, a little too loudly.

Without meaning to, Quinn’s eyes snapped to the front seat. They met her father’s in the rearview mirror.

She thought her heart might beat out of her chest, but she nodded her head in time to an imaginary song, letting her gaze drift away. Acting like she was listening to music and that she hadn’t heard a thing that her parents were saying.

Jacob, she thought. I know that name. Why does it sound so familiar?

“The new guy is much better than Jacob,” her father said. The van wiggled a little on the road as Quinn stared out the window, straining her ears.

I know that name, I know I do, she thought.

“If we’d just used him in the first place, that mangy lawyer and his thug of a mate wouldn’t have been smirking at us in judges’ chambers this morning,” her father went on.

Julius and Hudson? Quinn thought.

Then it clicked.

She knew the name Jacob because he’d been all over the Granite Valley news for the past day.

He was the shooter. And he’d been aiming for Julius.

Quinn wanted to pass out, throw up, or both. She felt lightheaded, and had to remind herself to breathe, and to look as calm as she could. If she freaked out now, she was certain that her parents would lock her in their room or worse — but if she played it cool and pretended she couldn’t hear them, maybe she could help them.

“Save the ‘I told you so’s,’ all right?” her mother said. “I’ll tell him we can try to get the tools he wants, but the new court date is the day after tomorrow, so he might have to deal with something handheld.”

“More likely to get caught,” her father said.

Chills ran up and down Quinn’s spine, but she tried to stay as calm as she could.

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