Page 65 of Handcuffed to the Bear

“Ha, no, this one’s from Avery, I think,” Cho said. “Using Jack’s phone. Listen:Cho, I took his phone away. He’s supposed to be resting. Don’t make me come up there.”

She began typing busily with her thumbs, then stopped and cleared it with a fast swipe. “Here,” she said. She put the phone in Casey’s hand. “Send a text and let them know you’re okay.”

Casey stared at her, frozen, the phone sitting in her lax fingers. Her wrist, she noticed in passing, was bandaged: a bracelet of gauze where the handcuffs had been.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Make something up.” Cho picked up an insulated mug with a straw in it, and shook it. “Your ice cubes are melted. I’ll go get you fresh ones.” And with that, she was out the door before Casey could say anything.

Some kind of bird, Casey decided. A busy, energetic one, like a sparrow or finch.

She looked down at Cho’s phone. It was enclosed in a custom phone case, bright green with cheerful pink swirls. Cho did not otherwise remind her of Wendy, but there was something Wendy-like about the phone. Wendy would have enjoyed having one like it.

The text window was open. She began to type, laboriously, one letter at a time, too fuzzy to bother with niceties like proper capitalization except when the phone itself helpfully provided it.Hi, this is casey. Jen said i should tell you im okay.Her finger hovered over the send icon, and then she added,Im glad youre okay.

She sent it before she could think better of it.

Cho whisked her way back in with the insulated mug in one hand and an enormous steaming coffee cup in the other. “Here. Ice water. They said you could have as much to drink as you wanted.”

Casey hadn’t realized she was thirsty, but the cold water felt wonderful on her sore throat. Cho positioned the mug’s straw and helped her hold it. She was still terribly weak in a strange, lethargic way.

“You’re going to be starving soon, once the drugs clear out of your system,” Cho said. “That’s a shifter thing. Have you ever had to heal from anything serious? Broken bones, that kind of thing?”

Casey shook her head.

“Well, take it from me: it sucks. For standard-issue humans, I understand, it sucks less in the short term but the sucking lasts a lot longer, so that’s probably a plus. To being us, I mean.”

The phone vibrated in Casey’s hand, making her jump and almost drop it. She looked down and read:Hi Casey! Glad you’re back with us. Jack’s asleep, but do you feel up to visitors for a little while?

She hesitated, then typedOKand sent it before she could change her mind. “Here,” she said, passing the phone back to Cho before any more people could text her on it.

Cho glanced at the exchange and grinned. “If you’re not okay with your room turning into Grand Central Station, I’ll chase ‘em off for you.” She hopped up on the edge of Casey’s bed, tucked her feet under her, and curled her hands around her coffee cup. “Conversely, ifI’mbothering you, I can be outside for awhile.”

Her presence in Casey’s room finally made sense. “You’re guarding me,” she whispered, and pushed herself a little higher in the bed. “Is there ... something to be afraid of?”

Cho caught the insulated mug before it fell and helped Casey get it resettled in the crook of her arm, where she could drink from it without having to work too hard on lifting it. “Sorry to alarm you. We’ve arrested the Fallons—and we got all of them, we think. This is more of a debriefing than anything else. We need to get a statement from you. I just didn’t want to attack you with it as soon as you got out of recovery.”

“Oh.” She considered that, and took a sip from the mug. “I’d like to give a statement, yes.”

“Right now?”

When Casey nodded, Cho set her phone on the bed and switched on a recording app. She stated the date and her name, then said to Casey, “This isn’t going to be admissible in court. It’s more of a guideline for us, knowing what happened to you as we put together the details of the case. Just to warn you, over the next few months you’ll probably end up telling this same story to so many different people you’ll hate everyone who asks you about it. Especially because of any parts that might be terribly personal or painful.”

Bones in a cave ...“I might as well get started then, right?”

She was just telling Cho about Jack knocking Derek down the hill when the door opened and Avery came in, accompanied by a very tall woman with light brown skin and a long white stripe in her dark hair. Avery was walking with a cane, and casually dressed in a T-shirt and jeans.

“Hi, good to see you again,” he said to Casey, and she lost the thread of her story and flustered to a stop. It was a little too uncomfortable remembering exactly how he’dlastseen her.

“We needed to take a break anyway,” Cho said, scooping up her phone. “So far, everything she’s told me agrees with Jack’s account exactly. Not that I’d expect anything else,” she told Casey, with a wink. “Hey, I’m gonna go find the doc so you can get poked a bit and maybe get something to eat, okay?”

“Okay,” Casey agreed. She was, paradoxically, both more tired than when she’d started talking, and less lethargic; it felt like the fogginess was wearing off, and she could sense a deep and vast hunger lurking somewhere around the edges.

Avery dragged up a chair, while the tall woman remained standing. “Hello, Casey,” she said, putting out a hand. She had an unexpectedly soft voice for her height. “I’m Eva Kemp. I was there when we pulled the two of you off the island.”

“Yes, I think I remember. You dived into the water after Jack.” Casey shook her hand. Her grip was strong and brisk. “And, I’m sorry, but I don’t know much of what happened after that. Avery didn’t seem worried about you taking on Roger Fallon by yourself.”

Avery flashed a quick, bright grin, and Agent Kemp smiled. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t be. I’m an orca shifter—a killer whale. Roger never knew what hit him.”

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