Page 29 of Protecting the White Bear

She shrugged. “If you think you’re going to kill me, what does it matter if I know?”

“He’s my cousin.”

“So you know what he’s involved in. Drop your weapon, and I won’t charge you with obstruction.” And more. She suspected he wouldn’t comply.

“How come you got his truck?”

“I told you. He needed gas.”

“Come on. You’re going to take me out there, and we’re going to make sure he’s not handcuffed in the back seat of the truck or the camper.”

She couldn’t let him go out to the truck. If she didn’t disarm him, he could shoot Andy and her. She hoped that at least Andy would make it out safely.

The guy started to rack his shotgun, and she shot him in the arm. She hated to do it in case she put him in a life-threatening situation, but she felt she didn’t have any other choice. He cried out but aimed his shotgun at her. She dove out of his sight and landed behind a sofa in the lobby. The blast was loud as the round slammed into the back of the faux leather couch with a thunk.

Before she could rise and shoot him again, hopefully fully incapacitating him this time, a large, beautiful polar bear ran into the lobby. Whenever she saw Andy in action, she thought how striking he was. When Andy scrambled over the counter, the man looked like he would die of fright. He cried out in distress, and Andy knocked him out.

They heard the truck back up and take off, and Monica raced outside. Eloise was at the wheel, tearing down the road towardthe cabin. Had she seen Andy shift? Had she heard the shots fired? Would she make it as drunk as she’d sounded? Unless that had all been an act, just like the kidnapping had been.

What about Andy’s clothes? She ran outside and found them where Eloise had run over them with the truck. Monica carried them into the lobby. Security cameras were installed in the lobby, so she entered the restroom and placed his clothes there.

She would have to erase some of the video anyway. Not of her shooting the man or of him shooting at her, but just of a polar bear attacking him.

“Eloise took off with our truck.” Not that it was their truck. Monica tried the landline to call for help. The phone line was dead. “Not working.”

Andy licked her hand and then headed into the men’s restroom. She began binding the man’s wounds while Andy dressed and returned to take care of the security videos, which had been her next plan. She liked that he thought along the same lines as she did.

She searched for a wallet and learned from his ID that he was Harvey Marquart. “He’s Wendell Marquart’s cousin, who owns the truck we had confiscated.”

“Great,” Andy said from the office.

“Do you think Eloise knows where to go?”

“She won’t make it to the cabin on the amount of gas she has. Driving as fast as she did out of here and with the unwieldy height of the truck, I would say before long, she’ll lose control of the truck and end up in the ditch in a snowbank.”

Monica found Harvey’s keys. “Okay, I’ve got his keys.” She put a No Vacancy light on for the motel and then put a sign in the window saying: Closed.

“I hope no one had plans to stay here,” Andy said as she joined him in the office, and she watched him delete the last footage of the polar bear attacking Harvey.

“You shifted inside the camper.”

“Yeah. I figured no one would see me from any motel room if anyone was there. Eloise wouldn’t have either. But there’s only one vehicle out there.”

“The Yukon that we’re going to take to White Bear.” She poked the key fob, and the Yukon’s lights flashed on and off. “Hopefully, it will have more gas than the truck.”

“And it will get much better gas mileage than the truck with the camper on top.”

One thing was puzzling her, though. “If you stripped out of your clothes inside the camper…”

“I dropped them at the end of the camper, and I left the door open so I could run back out there, climb in, shift, and dress. When she tore off, my clothes fell out. Thankfully. Though she went backward instead of forward. I was afraid she was really out of it. The door looked like it shut on its own.”

“That’s how she drove over your clothes then.”

“Yeah.”

They both tried their satellite and cell phones but had no luck.

Because they had to get Harvey medical treatment, and he was involved in trying to kill her, they needed to incarcerate him. She bandaged his wound, then put a pair of cuffs on Harvey, and they dragged him out to the Yukon. When they got him inside, they secured him in the back.

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