Hard As Steele(17)

“I tried to report it to our police chief. They acted like they didn’t believe me, but he’s in on it,” the blonde girl said.

“In on what?”

Her eyes narrowed. “In on whatever weirdness is going on in our town.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Steele argued. “If she was missing all that time, how could he not believe you?”

“It’s a long story. I don’t have time to explain, and for all I know you’re in on it too.” She raked him with an angry glower.

“You think I’m somehow conspiring with your police chief, two states north of here?” Steele demanded, exasperated. “You people need to leave. I need to get Roxanne out of here. I can help her. I know someone who can fix her memory.”

He looked at the wolf shifter. He considered asking him what he was doing consorting with humans, but then, who was Steele to talk?

The redhead ignored him, and said to Roxanne “You’ve got to come with us. He’s lying to you. When you called me, you told me that he was holding you prisoner so he could bring someone here to erase your memory. You told me that he’d taken your cell phone, but you brought an extra one with you just in case. Seriously, we’ve got to go. Where’s the baby?”

“What baby?” Roxanne looked even more confused.

“Your baby.” Katherine’s eyes went wide with alarm. “Your baby. The last time I saw you, in February, you said that you had just realized you were pregnant, and also really far along. You didn’t believe it at first, because you were a virgin, but then you’d been having all those weird flashbacks about your weekend with the werewolf, and you thought they might actually be true? Remember? You went to see the doctor, but he said you never showed.”

Steele felt as if he’d been hit by a thunderbolt. A baby? Roxanne had a child?

“Roxanne. Is this true?” he demanded urgently. “Do we have a baby?”

Roxanne’s eyes went wide and her face went white. She fell to her knees. Steele knelt down next to her.

“Oh my God!” she screamed. She looked around the room wildly. “I remember. I have a baby boy. His name is Flint. We have to find him. Dr. Polaski did it, he helped those men kidnap me. I told him all about my weekend with you, and how I’d seen you turn into a wolf. He injected me with something and the next thing I knew I was in the back of a van, and they took me somewhere underground, and after I had my baby…” she was panting.

“What? After you had him, what?” Steele grabbed her face with both hands. The humans tensed, shifting uneasily and training their guns at his head, but he didn’t care. He had to know.

“I was…we were underground, in an old mine that they’d made into a prison. They kept taking him away from me for blood tests, but they’d always give him back. Then last week, they took him away and wouldn’t give him back to me, so Bertrand…he was a mountain lion shifter…he helped me…” her eyes glazed over. “He did something. I don’t remember what. He killed guards, and we were going to escape, but something happened. Dynamite. Bertrand had gotten ahold of dynamite. He blew up the tunnel behind me, and he was killed, but I got out.”

Steele felt his world tilting on its axis. He had a baby, and it was being held prisoner in a secret laboratory. He was a father, and his baby was in danger.

He couldn’t control himself. Fur rippled under his skin, and then burst through, and he felt himself starting to shift.





Chapter Thirteen




Alarm shot through Katherine as the big man named Steele went furry and sank down to all fours. He was intimidating enough as a human; if he turned into a wolf, forget about it.

“No!” she screamed, and at the same time she shot him with the tranquilizer gun which she’d swiped from her uncle, a large animal vet.

The wolf let out a yelp, fell to the ground, and the fur vanished. His body rippled and contorted, tail disappearing, ears sinking back into his head, and a minute later he’d turned human again. Roxanne had been telling the truth; she really had been with a man who turned into a wolf.

This explained many things, including all the stories she’d heard whispered as a child. Katherine felt a chill run through her; the world was suddenly a much scarier place.

The man lay sprawled in the doorway, half naked. “How long will that last?” she asked Edvin.

“I’ve never been shot with a tranquilizer dart, so I wouldn’t know,” he said.

Funny how he said that. Was he comparing himself to a wolf-man? Katherine was dying to ask him if the rumors were true, but it seemed rude, somehow.

Roxanne was staring at Steele’s sprawled out, unconscious body. “Who is he?” she demanded. “What happened? Katherine…why are we here? We should call 911, he might be hurt.” She peered closer. “He looks like he’s breathing.”

Katherine grabbed Roxanne’s arm. “He was holding you prisoner. He’ll be fine. We need to get out of here,” Katherine said, despair washing over her as they rushed to her car.

Roxanne climbed in the front seat, Edvin climbed in the back, and Katherine scrambled into the driver’s seat. They quickly pulled out of Steele’s driveway and sped away.

Katherine was starting to get really worried. She thought that she’d swoop in, rescue Roxanne, and everything would be fine, but clearly her memory problems had gotten much worse. Before, she’d be fine for weeks on end and then forget an entire day or two. Now, she seemed to be forgetting some things and remembering others every few minutes.

What could Katherine do to get her help? She was afraid of what would happen if she called the authorities. She already knew she didn’t trust the police chief in Lonesome Pine, so who could she call? Not the sheriff of Timber Valley – according to what Roxanne had told her when she’d called the day before, that was the man they’d just shot with a tranquilizer dart and left lying in the doorway.

Was there no law enforcement she could trust, anywhere?

“What are we doing?” Roxanne asked.

“I need to call my father,” Katherine said. “We’ve got no other choice.”

Her father answered, sounding annoyed. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. I stopped by your house and you weren’t there. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“It’s going to be really hard to explain this to you without you thinking that I’m completely crazy,” Katherine said. “I want you to try to keep an open mind about this. Roxanne is with me, and also, werewolves are real.”

“Oh, everyone knows that. Are you talking about the Gund family?” her father said. “It’s been kind of an open secret among the older people here in town for generations now. What does this have to do with Chief Fennell? How does Roxanne fit into all of this?”

Katherine glanced in her rearview mirror.

“Are you a werewolf?” she demanded of Edvin.

He shrugged. “If you mean can I turn into a wolf when I want to, then yes. Our family doesn’t normally talk about it with outsiders, but since you already saw that man back there turn into a wolf, I guess the cat’s out of the bag. So to speak.”

“Who are you talking to?” her father asked.

“Edvin Gund. I asked him to come with me because I didn’t know who else to ask, and you never took me seriously when Roxanne disappeared. I was afraid you’d go to Chief Fennell if I told you I’d heard from her again.”

“Tell him I say hello.”

“You knew the Gund family were really werewolves, and you never told me?” Katherine squawked indignantly. “I totally thought that grandma made all that up to keep me from going into the woods by myself!”

“Only some of them are werewolves,” her father said, as if that made everything okay.

Freaking werewolves! She’d grown up living only a few miles away from werewolves, and nobody felt the need to share that information with her? Nobody but her grandmother, who barely had half of her marbles?

“Anyway, the feeling around town was that it’s really their business, and if the word got out, they’d be in danger,” her father continued. “Unfortunately, I think that’s turned out to be true. The Gund family came to me a couple of years ago when Axel disappeared, and they said that they believed that Chief Fennell had something to do with it. I’ve been trying to look into it, and a few of the city council members have too, but so far we haven’t been able to come up with any solid proof. You still haven’t answered me. Where are you, and what’s going on?”

“I’m in Colorado, but we’re headed back your way now. Edvin and I drove to Colorado to pick up Roxanne, because a couple days ago, out of the blue, she called me and told me that she had found that man she’d spent a weekend with, and he was a werewolf, and she was at his house and…oh, God, it’s so complicated. She may have been held prisoner ever since last February. Her and her baby.”

“Roxanne’s baby?” her father said, sounding bewildered. “You’ve completely lost me now.”

“It’s just way too complicated, I need to tell you in person. Here’s what you need to know right now. Dr. Polaski is a kidnapper. Remember how Roxanne went to see Dr. Polaski back in February, but he claimed she never showed up? She went to see him because she had realized she was pregnant. She was actually almost ready to have her baby – and the father is the werewolf that she spent the weekend with, after the car accident. So Dr. Polaski kidnapped her, and he conspired with Chief Fennell to keep it secret. And I’ve been following Chief Fennell into the woods and I’ve seen him meet with a bunch of military looking guys out there, several times.”