Page 64 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Something moved on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. Through the weight of the blankets, he hadn’t noticed there was a hand resting on him.

Squinting, Jack followed the hand up a jacket-clad arm to Avery’s face. Avery was sitting on the floor next to him, his bad leg stretched out. The helicopter seats had been moved forward to make space for Jack on the floor. There was another pile of blankets next to him, with an IV on a portable stand above it.

“Casey,” he managed to say, more coherently this time.

“She’s doing okay. Better than you, probably. How do you feel?”

“Been better,” Jack whispered. Everything hurt. Even his throat and sinuses, the one part of him that hadn’t hurt before, were a fresh source of pain now that he’d tried to inhale the ocean.

Avery squeezed his shoulder again. “We’re headed home. Since neither of you were on death’s doorstep once we got you warmed up, and we’ve got the fuel for it, we’re going all the way back to Seattle. That way we don’t have to try to explain shifters at a regular hospital.”

“Nice rescue,” Jack whispered. “Good timing.”

“Yeah, we specialize in nick-of-time rescues around here.” But a certain tightness in his voice attested to how close it had actually been.

The other pile of blankets stirred, and a small hand quested out of it. Casey’s cuffs had been removed at last, leaving a ring of scraped, reddened skin around her wrist.

“Jack?” Casey asked hoarsely.

“He’s right over here,” Avery said, raising his voice above the helicopter’s engines.

Casey continued to grope for him, making a distressed noise. Jack moved enough to get his own hand over to hers. His fingers laced through hers, comfortably familiar after all that time they’d spent holding hands on the island. Casey relaxed immediately, squeezing back and then settling down.

Something tense in him relaxed, too. It felt good. It felt right. With Casey’s fingers securely in his, and the light pressure of Avery’s hand to anchor him, Jack closed his eyes and let himself slide away.

CHAPTER17

Casey drifted backfrom a warm place. It was so nice to be warm. Her whole brain seemed to be wrapped cozily in soft, insulating cotton.

As she peeled open her eyelids, she became aware she wasn’t alone. There was a woman with her. Casey squinted blearily at the female silhouette, head bent over a phone as her fingers worked busily. Short hair ...

“Wendy?” she whispered.

The woman’s head came up. “Sorry, hon, I didn’t catch that.”

The voice was a stranger’s. Bitter grief, for a moment, took her words away, and tears sprang to the corners of her eyes.

But the storm of sorrow passed as quickly as it had come, dark clouds blowing through, leaving her strangely empty and tired. She’d lost Wendy a long time ago. She just hadn’t known it for sure. And now she’d found her again, in a way.

I’ll go back to that island and bring you home, Wendy. Or someone will.

The unfamiliar woman smiled at her. Definitely not Wendy. She was Asian, with a light spatter of freckles across her nose and a narrow, pretty face.

“Do you remember me? I introduced myself when you got out of recovery, but you were kind of out of it.”

Casey thought about it. She shook her head.

“I’m Jennifer. Special Agent Jennifer Cho. You can call me Jen, or Cho. I was just texting down to update Jack on your condition.” Her phone vibrated in her hand, and she laughed. “Three guesses who that is, and the first two don’t count.”

“How is he?” she whispered.

“He’ll be all right. He’s a tough old bear. As for you, you’ve had surgery for your leg. Do you remember?”

She thought about it. Memory drifted back, hazy and blurred: waking up in recovery, feeling like she was falling and unable to catch herself. She had been very cold. A nurse had piled blankets on her, and then things went confused again.

“I think so,” she whispered.

Cho scrolled across her phone with a flick of her finger. Everything she did was quick.She’s a shifter, too,Casey thought.Something fast. A falcon, or some kind of cat maybe ...

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