Page 51 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Wendy, she thought,if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done.

“Hey ... Jack?” she called softly. “Do we have a plan once we get there?”

There was no response. Casey sat up and looked over at him, concerned. Then the furry hulk heaved, moved, and collapsed down to Jack’s naked human form. He panted for a moment before raising his head.

“Guess we’d better work something out.”

“Do you have any ideas?” she asked, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Trouble is, it’s tricky to work out a plan without having any idea what we’ll find when we get there. Odds are good they left at least one lion behind to hold down the fort. There might be more of them here than we know about.”

Casey looked up the mountainside. It was impossible to believe they’d climbed down that; it looked vertical from here, hanging over them with a scarf of cloud wrapped around its head. “Do you think they’re following us?”

“I’m sure they’re trying. We managed to lose them pretty good on the mountain, I think. That storm would’ve washed out our trail completely—maybe not for something like a bloodhound, but cats aren’t the world’s greatest scent hounds. As I guess you know.”

She shrugged, conceding the point. Her sense of smell was perfectly adequate in her shifted form, but not enough to follow a trail through pouring rain.

“So they’ll have to do a brute-force search of the area,” Jack said. “That gives us a window until they find us again.”

Casey sighed, appreciating the irony. “And what we’re doing with our precious window of freedom is going straight to them.”

“No,” Jack corrected her. “We’re going on the offensive, circling around behind, and taking the fight to them. They won’t expect that.”

“Could we do something else? Hide, maybe?”

A weary gesture took in their ragged appearance. “We’re dying the death of a thousand cuts here. We can keep circling the island, getting worn down, or just taken out in one swoop. Or we can fight on our own terms.” He clenched his jaw and heaved himself to his hands and knees. “And if we want to do that, we better get moving before they catch up. We’ll have to work out a plan on the move.”

Still, he hesitated for a moment, head hanging, while he gathered the energy to shift.

“Jack, wait.” She scrambled to his side and put her hand on his arm. “Can I suggest something? What if I went and scouted ahead?”

He gave her a startled look, jolted out of his exhaustion by surprise. “No. Too dangerous.”

“You yourself said time is important. My shifted form is fast, and I’m not hurt.” Much. “I can go straight down the mountain, get a close look at their compound, and come back to tell you about it.”

“No,” he said again. “We need to stay together. I’m the only one who can go toe to toe in a fight with them—and that’s not chauvinism, it’s just a simple matter of size and physics.”

“But if I can bring back some ... what’s the right word ... intel, we’ll know which way to approach their camp from. We won’t be as likely to be spotted.”

He looked unswayed.

She decided to appeal to his military background, the part of him that clearly enjoyed his bond with Avery and the rest of the SCB. “We’re a team, aren’t we? That means we share the work.”

For no reason she could completely fathom, this made something sharp and startled go across his face. “A team.”

“Yes, Jack, a team. So far you’ve been pulling most of the weight. But this is something I can do. So let me do my part to help.”

Jack chewed his lip. Then he said tightly, “Okay. Fast. In and out. Do you know which way to go?”

“Yes,” she said, and then realized this was not at all true. Shethoughtshe knew—but she didn’t trust her wilderness navigation skills. “But verify it for me.”

Jack pointed down the slope at an angle. “This is the bearing we’ve been on since you pointed the direction out to me from the top. Simple trick for going in a straight line: pick a tree or another landmark in the direction you’re going, line it up with another one farther off, and then a third. When you get to the first one, pick a new third in a line with the other two.”

That would only work if you could tell apart individual trees, which she decided not to mention. She would have to try. “Okay.”

“Do you think you can outrun a lion?”

Honesty was probably best here, as much as she didn’t want to damage his tentative faith in her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can try. And I can go places they can’t.” This thought buoyed her spirits a little. “Yeah, these close-together trees will slow them down more than me, I think.”

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