Page 6 of Taming Her Bears

“Not much to tell you until the girl talks. I think she was abducted.”

We were returning by the same trail Josh had made in his head-long dash, chuckling at the spots where the grass fell over as he’d rolled in it and scrambled to his feet while in bear form. He stopped laughing to give me a sharp glance. “What makes you say that?”

“Rope burns around her wrists. And she was frightened. I don’t think she gets frightened easily.”

The group was just a few minutes away. Roy and Lee were standing at active attention while the girl vocalized her displeasure of their ignorance. She had found another stick, a gnarled piece of driftwood with a bulb at the end, and was beating it against the ground.

“And I told the police chief there was something strange going on. Girls were disappearing, but he told me—” She thumped the stick and stared at Ray as though it was his fault. “He told me they were just going to Anchorage. They always run away to Anchorage. But the girls were scared.”

Roy nodded his agreement, his freckles standing out against his pale skin. “Lee told me the show girls were scared.”

She wheeled and buttonholed poor Lee, who was too wet behind the ears to know what comes after prom night. “And what did you do about it?”

He hunched his lanky shoulders guiltily, his hair falling in his eyes. “I couldn’t do anything. She told me she didn’t trust anybody that worked on the water.”

She saw me coming out of the corner of her eye and spun around. “That’s it,” she said, drawing me into the conversation. “That’s how he works. He uses a clipper to transport his cargo. That’s why the girls are afraid of the Coast Guard.”

“A clipper?” Josh squeezed in between us and interrupted. “Are you sure it’s a clipper?”

She gave him an irritated look. “Yes, it’s a clipper. I’ve lived on the coast all my life. I know a clipper when I see one.”

Josh brooded. “Let’s have a look at the burned-out area. Maybe we can find some clues.”

The girl held back. “What if the shooter is still there?”

He gave her a look she probably didn’t understand—the look of a predator anticipating his prey. “Believe me,” he growled at her. “We’ll see him before he sees us.” He jiggled his hands inside the pocket of his hoodie. “Maybe you should stay here. The rest of us will go out and survey the area.”

Josh hadn’t been exposed yet to her abuses. She turned on him, the bulbous end of her driftwood stick swinging dangerously close to his chest. “The hell I will! You’re still a suspect in my case.”

“Your case? Your case?” he asked with surprise.

I got between them before she had the chance to make Josh see a few stars and butterflies. “Captain Joshua Banks,” I said, emphasizing the title, “may I present our mystery witness, uh…”

“Captain,” she sniffed, as though finally receiving the recognition she deserved. “Natalia Ivanova, state trooper.”

The way she said her name, the ‘a’s rolling together with the consonants like musical notes, caused my every nerve to become energy spikes running up and down my spine. I think I shall never hear a name quite so beautiful as Natalia Ivanova.

It took every bit of self-discipline to keep myself from drooling, with my tongue hanging out. Ensign Stevenson, I noticed, was not so successful. He wiped repeatedly at the side of his mouth.

“Insolent,” whispered Lee, but he wasn’t doing much better. He used the cuff of his shirt, pretending to cough into it.

After his surprise appearance, Captain Josh was working twice as hard at keeping his animal instincts at bay. He shook her hand and returned her formal salute, even though this was going a bit overboard. The state troopers were not a military unit. “You were on assignment?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she chose to start walking toward the burn site. Since it was nearly a mile away, we automatically fell in line beside her as the sensible thing to do. The hike seemed to put her more at ease.

“I was off-duty. The only thing I had on me was a knife in my boot. I was kidnapped, along with five other girls, maybe more. The cabin wasn’t the center of operations, just a transport point. The abduction point was a fake bikers’ club on Three Fords Road. There could be similar operations set up all through the woods.”

“And their ship is a cutter… as in a Coast Guard cutter?”

“It looked like a Coast Guard cutter, Captain, but it was Denisovich at the helm.”

“Who is Denisovich?”

“A mobster. A thug. A mean and nasty man. He made his first millions trafficking Russian girls to U.S. West Coast nightclubs and other establishments of entertainment. They were under his protection, but he basically owned them. He found them their jobs, their pimps, their documentation. In return, they gave him twenty percent of their income and did everything he asked them to do.”

She halted and looked left and right, as though expecting her enemy to step out of the brush. I sniffed the air. Nothing but the woodland scents and the thin flavor of wafting smoke. We were getting closer. Satisfied we were alone, she continued. “He was busted about a dozen years back. They gave him ten years for human trafficking., but he was out in three and deported back to Russia, where he was supposed to stay. Now he’s back, and his game is more ruthless. He’s catering to a clientele that wants wholesome, naïve country girls. They don’t have to be virgins, just healthy, pretty and innocent. They pay very high prices for first use.”

It was a good thing she didn’t see my response. She didn’t see my eyes turning red with fury; nor did she see my lips curling back or hear the deep rumble in my throat, because Lee shouted at the same time, “The motherfucker! We don’t have enough girls to go around as it is, and this son-of-a-bitch is stealing them? Roy, the Russians are stealing our girls!”

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