Tamara
Maxwell Mountain, NC
“You can do this, Tams,” Tamara whispered to herself. She’d survived the last nine years without Creole. Thinking he had died. Tamara massaged the area over her heart to soothe its near rabid pounding. “You got this.”
The Lusty Leopard Bar and Grill was just a bar. Just like dozens of bars in thousands of small cities. The difference was, her childhood best friend owned this one.
Tamara had been casing the restaurant for two weeks now. At just past eleven in the morning on a Monday, she had timed it perfectly. The bar was busy with the pre-lunch crowd, but not so busy she couldn’t ask to see the owner. And not so quiet, if things went sideways, it could get ugly.
That was always the fear, of course. If Tamara had never forgiven herself for that night, maybe Creole hadn’t either. She had let Mr. Elliot touch her. She had cried out for help. She had stood by numbly watching while Creole’s teenage mountain lion killed the bad man. And by telling the judge of Creole’s identity, Tamara pushed him out of the closet.
Tamara gripped her purse with white-knuckled panic. After following multiple online tips regarding shifter sightings, Tamara discovered the hidden village of Silver Fells which sat at the base of Maxwell Mountain. For the last year, she had religiously followed news from the area, hoping for some scrap of information.
And then, while she was still a senior in high school, there had been a fire on one of the line shacks on the Mountain. A group of five shifters were credited with saving almost a dozen kids camping in the area. There had been no mention of their animals. Just a blurry newspaper picture that focused on the children. But there, in one corner, wearing torn sweatpants, had been Creole James.
Until graduation, Tamara hoarded information about Maxwell Mountain like a dragon with gold. The cover story of a full scholarship to college had fallen into place. But somehow, now that she was here, it felt bizarre and surreal.
She had tracked Creole to the Lusty Leopard. And if Creole was in that bar, she wasn’t going to be a coward and run from him.
And if he hated her? Well, even that would answer several questions and possibly set her soul free from the regrets that plagued her.
Tamara shrugged. It didn’t matter. Losing the dream of Creole had a kind of fatalistic nobility to it, she thought wryly. And what could be nobler than tracking down her best friend? Her only friend? And the man she had inadvertently sent to prison for six long months.
Deciding it was now or never, Tamara took a deep breath, squared off her shoulders, and approached the bar with an early- twentieth-century neon sign lit with the name “Lusty Leopard.”
“I don’t think you’d like it in here, miss.” The bouncer wasn’t unkind, but nor was there any give in the huge man. Her humanity stood out sharply against his large muscular build. Some kind of bear shifter, she presumed.
Tamara bit her bottom lip and fought to control her voice. “I’m looking for Creole James,” she said softly. There was no sign of recognition on the bouncer’s face, but Tamara was confident in her intel. Creole owned this bar. She knew it.
“Don’t know anyone named Creole.” The bouncer was implacable.
“Yo, douchebag,” came a voice from the bar. Another bear shifter by the look of him. “She’s talking about the boss.”
The bouncer frowned. “Boss is busy,” he said.
Tamara nodded and closed her eyes. Another dead end.
She held up a small business card with her cell number on it. She rubbed it against her wrists, imparting it with her scent and dropped it in a plastic bag she’d brought with her. “Can you give this to him, please? I’ve been looking for him for a very long time, and I know he’s here.”
With as much grace and dignity she could muster, Tamara turned and walked slowly back to her car. Shifters could sniff out easy prey, and she wanted – no needed – her body language to scream confidence.
Driving away from the Lusty Leopard physically hurt her. On impulse, she stopped off at a 1950s era diner called the Lunchbucket for a cup of coffee.
“You want any pie, honey?” the waitress asked. Wearing a pink polyester waitress uniform with a nametag that said Flo, she was clearly at home and in charge at the diner.
Tamara shook her head. Her belly was in knots. The idea of eating made it tighten. Besides which, she might need to live a long time on her savings. No point in throwing money away on food she couldn’t eat. “No thank you. Just the coffee.” The campgrounds weren’t far from downtown Silver Fells, but she wasn’t ready to go back there.
She sat at the diner through two refills, willing her phone to ring. But of course, it remained stubbornly silent.
It was too soon, Tamara told herself. She’d be lucky if the bouncer gave her card to Creole at all. Resigned to the idea that she’d need to camp another night in the mountains, she paid her bill.
She had enough supplies to last her a few more days before she would need to find work. Impulsively, she asked Flo if her boss was hiring and put in an application.
Feeling as though she had at least accomplished something, Tamara got back into her car and headed back to the campsite. Twenty minutes later, she pulled her car into a spot on the edge and set up camp. The late-August temps were mild compared to what she was used to, but nights were far colder than she’d anticipated.
She sighed as she rested beside her small campfire. She was so tired. Bone deep exhausted from this search for Creole. She needed sleep but was afraid of the nightmares that haunted her.
Cree
Cree felt his hands shake as he prepped a keg for his usual Monday night crowd. Had it finally happened? Had he gone insane? He made a mental note to tell Quinn. An angry mountain lion shifter gone mad could cause untold destruction.
He didn’t want to wait for the government to put him down. If he needed to be killed, Cree wanted Quinn to do it. They were family and took care of their own.
Shaking his head, Cree went back to doing the bar back work he relished. He wasn’t as good with people as his bartender Jason was. After prepping the bar, Cree hid in his office the rest of the night, paying bills or searching endlessly for information on Roger Elliot.
As he hauled a case a local microbrew up from the cellar, the tantalizing-but- barely-familiar - scent wafted across the room. Creole shook his head, denial sharp and strong pulsing within him. He knew that scent, but she was dead. He shook his head trying to snap some sanity into his mind.
Cree’s eyes scanned the bar. Nothing moved except the sluggish whir of the ceiling fan. But he knew that sometimes prey hid in plain sight. He was no mindless animal ready to pounce. Instead, he was an experienced warrior.
Tamara was dead. Crushed in a car crash on her birthday, two weeks before Creole’s release date from the shifter minimum security prison he’d been transferred to. As he exited the facility on his eighteenth birthday, his mother and his handler were there. Greeting him with the news that destroyed him.
Fresh pain pulsed through him in time with his heartbeat. He stacked the beer and rubbed the area across his heart. Would this wound be his constant reminder? His relationship with Tamara began while they were children. But their bond went deeper than childhood. It had its roots in fear, protection, and eventually death.
“Soon,” he promised her ghost. “One day, we’ll be united again.” A calmness settled over him at the idea of Quinn finally putting him out of his misery. If he had to live with this heartbreak every hour of every day for the rest of his life, he’d rather be dead, anyway.
Man and cat had howled at the unfairness of it all. Tamara was theirs to protect and love. Losing her opened a wild maw of pain that Creole hadn’t been sure he could ever leave. Wasn’t sure he wanted to leave it. It would be like giving up hope of ever seeing her again when hope was all that sustained him.
“Hey Boss,” said from his post by the door. “Some little human was by looking for you.” He waved the plastic bag in front of him. “She left this. Want me to toss it or…”
Murray never stood a chance as Creole felt his eyes go feral and he grabbed the small bag. “Why didn’t you tell me I had a visitor?” Insanity pulsed in his brain but Cree fought it down. Quinn had adopted him into the Maxwell Mountain pack – a loner mountain lion amidst shifter veterans.
They had an uneasy truce (okay, Cree admitted that was probably due to his own attitude) but the locals liked liquor more than they hated him. When Cree took over the Lusty Leopard, most of them fell in line.
But now, as he stared at the sealed bag in his hands, Cree fought to control his cat. Unlike the veterans in the area, Cree was a natural born shifter. He and his cat were one. A symbiotic relationship that didn’t require any effort at all.
“She was human, Boss. Puny thing, even for one of them.”
Creole opened the plastic bag, and its contents struck him like a body blow. It was redolent with the unique scent of Tamara Brennan. He inhaled, a dying man receiving a last gasp of clean air. It couldn’t be true, but Cree succumbed to insanity. At least there, he could live in a world where someone else had Tam’s scent.
“How long ago?” he asked, glancing at the clock over the bar. Cree was going to find the Tamara-impostor. Briefly, he wondered if it was Tamara’s mother. Cree shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that bitch. Refused to believe Adele could smell so much like her daughter.
“Ten minutes. Twenty max,” Murray said. He nodded to the parking lot across the street. “She left in a little van towards the edge of town.”
Creole nodded and handed the evening’s duties off to his bartender. “I need to go. Call Nate if you need extra help. Not sure when I’ll be back.” He had a human to hunt. To find out why she smelled so much like Tamara.
As he headed towards his motorcycle, Cree noticed the printing on the card. No name, simply a telephone number. He shook his head and took another deep cleansing breath, absorbing her scent into him.
For the first time, doubt crept in Cree’s mind. Could both his mother and handler have lied to him all those years ago? Was this Tams? Or had someone pulled a horrific prank on the freak of nature cougar shifter?
Had his mate found him? Or an imposter who needed to die?
Creole had no qualms about killing the one who smelled like Tamara and then begging Quinn kill him. And if Quinn wouldn’t, Cree was pretty sure he could get one of the bear shifters roused enough to tear his ass to shreds.