Between a Bear and a Hard Place(25)

And, apparently, a fifty pound sack of grain-free dog food.

*

Dawn was just breaking as Claire lifted her eyelids and looked up to the pale blue sky. Remnants of night were still clinging; the moon was still visible, if pale. The stars pricked the sky, but only barely.

She yawned, rolled over to her side and immediately noticed someone was missing.

“Where’s Fury?” she asked Stone, who was tending a fire already. He was squatting near it with his hands on the rocks ringing the pit. Even in the pale dawn, his bronze skin shown against the light from the fire. Claire, despite her best effort, couldn’t force herself to look away.

“He’s... bringing something,” Stone answered, cryptically.

Claire looked at him sideways and furrowed her brow. “Are you trying to be confusing?”

“No.”

A jingling sound from the fringe of woods around the small clearing where they’d settled the previous night. Claire’s ears perked up and she felt a little tingle creep down her back. “He didn’t. Did he?”

Stone arched an eyebrow as a very excited bark preceded a very winded-looking Fury.

Cleo charged straight at Claire, knocked her over, and gave her a massive tongue bath. Fury was laughing, despite the red face and heavy breathing. “That dog of yours is... uh, well, she sure is something.” He flopped the giant bag of food on the ground, and handed a duffel bag to Claire.

“What’s this?” she asked, already opening the zipper. “Wow! Thank you! Were you able to get in and get my stuff without any problem? And how the hell did you get her back here without her running off?”

Cleo shambled over to Fury and licked his fingers before sitting down on his feet. “You won’t believe this,” he said, “but I just told her what to do, and she did it. But we gotta get going. I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed before we cut off from civilization for a while.”

Claire grabbed Fury’s hand, and squeezed it. “Thank you,” she said. “I mean it – you... I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“I said I would,” he said with a grin. “And we bears do what we say, even if it’s sort of crazy. But come on, we need to get as much distance between ourselves and that building as we possibly can.”

She grabbed his hand and held him fast, refusing to let go. “I mean it,” Claire said. “I owe you. I owe you big.”

“Well,” Fury had another of those damn grins that made her knees go weak. “Don’t worry about it. For you? Getting your dog is the least of what I’d do.”

Without another word, he squeezed her hand, kissed her on the side of the neck, and wandered off to gather up the dog food. Cleo followed him, licking at his hand as Claire looked on, smiling.

*

“Okay,” Claire said, breathing slightly heavier than she was willing to admit and having slightly more trouble than she was ready to accept trying to keep up on the hike through the forest. There was only a tiny wheeze tapering from each breath, so that was good at least. “Here’s the deal.”

She sat down and Cleo lapped at her fingers, just as happy as ever. She smiled down at the bowling ball-headed pitbull and scratched her smiling friend behind the ears.

Maybe there’s no point in hiding it anymore. Both these guys keep looking at me and keep going slower, so it isn’t like they don’t know.

“We need to move,” Stone insisted, though he slowed to a halt. Fury went ahead a little further, to the edge of a clearing, before he climbed partway up a tree and looked around.

“All clear,” he called back. “We can rest if she needs to rest.”

“I do not need to rest,” Claire called back, red-faced and very obviously needing to rest. She pushed herself to her feet anyway, willing her body to keep going.

Fury slid backwards, turning a somersault and landing deftly on his feet. As he came back into earshot, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said, “All right, that sounds good. Let’s keep going then. I figure we can get another ten miles before dark and—”

Before that other day with Eckert, Claire had never struck another human being. But right then, she claimed her second victim. She hauled back and planted an elbow right smack dab in the middle of Fury’s muscled stomach. He grunted, laughing, and then started to wheeze as the air swiftly exited his body, leaving a painful vacuum behind.

“Damn!” he sputtered, still laughing through the pain. “If you kill me, whose going to go get your dog?”

Stone held his face still, frowning deeply, but when Claire elbowed the other bear in the side, not even Stone could keep his composure. “I will,” he said. “Small price to pay to be rid of your terrible jokes.”