Page 57 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Speaking of helicopters, though ... His small ears pricked. Was that just the thumping of the generator up ahead, or a more distant engine noise?

Maybe help was on its way, after all.

Or maybe it was a commercial flight somewhere along the coast.

Come on, Avery. I’m counting on you.

But, if the cavalry was coming, it wasn’t here yet. They still had to find a way to hang on a little longer.

And Casey was literally in the lion’s den. He had to get her out.

The sharp report of a gunshot froze his heart in midbeat. Echoes rolled back and forth from the mountainside to the sea. Dying. Dying. Gone.

Casey!

* * *

Casey had never had a gun pointed at her before. She hadn’t realized how utterly chilling it would be when the black, round mouth of the barrel rose to aim at her face, especially with Mara’s ice-cold eyes behind it.

She shifted almost without meaning to, and was suddenly naked and human, straddling the peak of the roof with her knees. “Wait,” she said, raising her hands. “Please. Let’s talk.”

“Reconsidering, are you?” Roger asked. His oily grin slid back into view. “Too bad. The offer’s run out.”

They reallywereplaying with her. Lions were just big cats, after all, and cats had a habit of toying with their dinner.

“Just say the word, brother,” Mara said, the rifle steady in her hands. “It’ll be my pleasure to shoot the little bitch.”

The male lion with the wasp-swollen face backed up her statement with a low, rumbling growl.

“Not up there,” Roger said. “Don’t be absurd. It’ll be too much work to get her body down and wash the blood off everything, and you might hole the roof if you aren’t careful.”

Mara gestured with the rifle. “You heard him. Climb down.”

“So you can shoot me? Are youhigh?” Casey demanded.

The report of the rifle shocked her. It was deafeningly loud. Her whole body went frozen and still, and for a long terrible instant she thought she’d been hit and just didn’t know it yet. She fully expected to look down at her chest and see a red flower blooming there, right before the blood stopped flowing to her brain and darkness closed in.

Instead, her skin was smooth and unmarked. The rifle had swung up, just a little to the left, and Mara had shot over her shoulder.

“While I take my brother’s point about damaging the roof,” Mara said tightly, racking out the spent bullet casing and then aiming once again between Casey’s eyes, “I am entirely willing to take on the burden of removing your body and cleaning up after it. In fact, I would consider it a worthwhile compensation for the pleasure of shooting you, if you don’t come down right now.”

Casey sucked in a breath. It felt like the first time she’d inhaled in years. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, don’t shoot. I’m coming down now.”

She considered sliding off the roof on the opposite side and sprinting to the next cabin—but, no, the other Fallon brother was still down there in lion form. In fact, he was looking up at her now, fangs bared and his one unswollen eye fixed on her in bitter enmity. Her chances were probably better with Mara and the gun.

She’d just rested her bare toes on the top of the woodshed roof when Roger’s eyes went suddenly wide. “Mara, shoot him, now!” he snapped, the last word emerging garbled as he shifted in mid-sentence.

“Him?” Mara repeated, startled, and then swung around to find an enraged grizzly bear charging her.

He was on her before she had time to fire. She pulled the trigger anyway, the bullet burying itself uselessly in dirt, and then went down under Jack’s bulk, shifting as she fell.

Roaring, Roger lunged to his sister’s aid. Mara was in deep trouble this time. Jack had her by the throat, shaking her great tawny body like a chew toy.

Casey had problems of her own. Rather than being distracted by the bear and lion fight, Rory went after her instead. He reared up on his back legs and planted his huge front paws on the woodshed roof. Casey gasped and scrambled back up, inches ahead of snapping lion teeth.

Rory shifted to a naked man with his arms stretched to grip the edge of the roof. In human form, he looked even worse, his face hideously distorted with its swelling.

“Nice look on you,” Casey couldn’t help saying, as she clung to the roof peak.

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