Chapter Sixteen: Derek

 

 

Derek started to get up to continue the fight, then froze at the sight of the rifle pointing at him.

Blood streamed down Ghost's naked, human body from dozens of bite marks and claw gouges, but he aimed the rifle at Derek with ruthlessly steady hands.

"Doesn't matter if you're a bear or a human at this distance," Ghost growled. "A bullet to the head will stop you just the same."

Derek shifted too. His head spun with the change from bear to man, but it was easier to think and plan in his human shape, and he really needed that right now. He gauged the distance between himself and Ghost, but it was no good; he didn't think he could make it without getting shot.

"Nothing to say for yourself?" Ghost demanded.

"Just that it didn't have to be like this." Derek wiped blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. Come on, Keegan, get here already. What's taking you so long? "We were both just doing our jobs. It never had to be personal. And for me, it never would've been, if you hadn't gone after my mate."

"Always the self-righteous bastard, weren't you? Taking you out as a bear would've been satisfying, but I'm glad I got to look into your eyes before I—"

The sound of a gunshot drowned out his words.

But it wasn't the deafening crash of the rifle. Instead it was the sharp report of a pistol.

Ghost jerked.

Gaby stood less than twenty feet behind him, Derek's Glock gripped in both of her shaking hands.

Derek didn't think Gaby had managed to hit Ghost anywhere vital. He wasn't collapsing; instead he started to turn around.

And Derek leaped forward, shifting as he went.

He slammed Ghost to the ground and whacked him hard in the head with one big paw. Shifting human again, he slugged Ghost hard in the jaw and then smacked his head on the ground until he stopped struggling.

"Gaby, quick!" Derek called. Gaby blinked, snapping out of her temporary paralysis. "We need something to tie him up, something strong. Chains or a really heavy rope. Check the outbuildings."

Gaby nodded and took off running. Derek kept most of his weight on Ghost. When his captive started to stir, he slugged him again.

Gaby came running back. "I found this. Will it work?"

It was a steel winch cable on a spool. "Perfect," Derek said grimly. "Hold one end for me."

He didn't have anything to cut the cable with, but that would probably work okay. He wound it around Ghost's wrists and feet, and knotted it tightly around his body, until Ghost was trussed as securely as Derek could make him.

When he stood up, his leg nearly collapsed under him. It felt like he'd twisted an ankle, probably when he fell, but with the adrenaline coursing through his body, he hadn't even noticed.

"Bring the guns," he told Gaby.

She picked up the rifle and carried it awkwardly while Derek, limping, dragged Ghost around to the front of the cabin. The support posts for the porch were the most secure thing Derek could think of to tie him to. He knotted the winch cable tightly around two of the posts, leaving Ghost slumped between them, wound in several yards of cable.

"Will that hold him?" Gaby asked anxiously.

"It better. He's not strong enough to break a steel cable—trust me, I should know—so if he tries to shift like that, he'll cut his hands off. That ought to hold him until the police get here."

Gaby nodded. Her lips trembled, and her face was ashen. "Is it ... over?"

"It's over. It's over, honey."

Derek gathered her into his arms, pulling her against him. She threw her arms around him, heedless of the dirt and blood. She was trembling all over.

"You did good," Derek said into her hair.

"I shot him," she gasped. "I shot a man, oh God, I shot a man."

"You didn't kill him." He'd seen the bullet wound when he was tying up Ghost. She'd winged him across the shoulder blade. "You just grazed him. He'll be healed by tomorrow. But you distracted him. Kept him from killing me. Gaby, you saved my life."

Gaby buried her face in his shoulder. "I don't know why I'm such a mess about this," she said, slightly muffled. "I wasn't scared at all while it was going on. And then it just hit me. I don't know why."

"That's how it goes sometimes. I've been there. And I've seen big, strong, combat-trained guys who didn't behave as well as you did under pressure." He kissed the top of her head. "Did I say you did good? I should have said you did amazing."

Gaby laughed shakily. "So, uh ... where are your clothes? Did you rip out of them like the Hulk?"

Derek couldn't help laughing. "No, I planned ahead. They're in the woods. I can tell you where, if you'll get them for me. Cable or no cable, we probably shouldn't leave this guy unattended."

He sat on the porch with the rifle across his knees while Gaby retrieved his clothes from the woods and then went into the house to look for first-aid supplies. When she came out, she was laughing, with a slightly hysterical edge to it. "Keegan's cabin is a total wreck. I bet he's never having you over again."

"Hey, we can always blame this jerk." Derek pointed at Ghost with the muzzle of the rifle.

"Turn around so I can patch you up." Gaby started swabbing at his lacerations with a warm, wet cloth. "Aren't you going to need a hospital for all of this? Antibiotics and things?"

"I'll be fine. You saw how fast the other bite healed. But I'd like to get as much of this as possible covered up before the cops get here, in case Keegan brought regular human cops as well as shifter ones. I don't want any awkward questions."

"So it's a big secret, right?" Gaby asked, dipping the cloth in the red-swirled water. "The shifter thing."

"As much of a secret as we can make it." Derek tried not to wince. He was enjoying his mate's ministrations, but now that the adrenaline from the fight was wearing off, he felt every scrape, bite, and bruise. "Shifters like Keegan—cops, doctors, government officials—try to make sure that the real facts of a situation like this don't get into the reports. That way, ordinary shifters with families can go on living their lives."

"So it's not like some kind of organized conspiracy, like a government cover-up."

Derek shook his head. "Not really. It's more just that shifters work together to make sure the human world doesn't find out about us. Individual humans, sure. A lot of us have human friends, allies ..."

"Mates," she whispered, kissing him lightly.

"Yeah," he murmured into her warm, soft lips.

She let him go and went back to swabbing at his injuries. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me. It's going to be hard to keep it from my family, but—"

"Actually, you don't have to. Your mom knows. She saw me shift while I was rescuing her earlier."

"Oh." Her eyes went briefly wide. "Er, how did she take it?"

"Fine. The only questions she asked me had to do with making sure I was going to be a good mate for you."

"Of course she did." Gaby sighed, but her smile was very fond. "I'm sure she'll have plenty of questions later on, just to warn you."

"It's a price I'll have to pay." He smiled before turning serious. "We probably should wait a couple of years before telling Sandy, to make sure he's old enough to understand about keeping the secret."

"Yeah, we still haven't broken the news to him about Santa Claus. Probably better to hold off a little while on revealing that the Easter Bunny might be a guy who turns into a bunny."

"If he is, I've never met him."

Gaby laughed softly and bent her head over his arm, gently disinfecting a parallel series of claw marks across his forearm.

Derek looked down at the dark, tousled top of her head. It still felt so unreal, not just to have found his mate, but also an entire family to go along with her. He never would have expected to feel so welcomed by a group of humans.

Even after they knew what he was.

His sharp ears caught a sound. "What?" Gaby asked, looking up quickly when she felt him tense.

"Engines. Sounds like cars coming up the road. Let me get my shirt on. You can go dispose of that stuff."

Gaby dropped the cloth into the red-tinted water. "If there are regular cops, aren't they going to wonder why Ghost is stark naked and looks like he got mauled by a bear, too?"

"Good point. Bring a blanket while you're at it."

He'd just gotten finished putting on his shirt and throwing a blanket over Ghost's huddled form when a state trooper vehicle pulled into the yard. Keegan was out almost before the wheels stopped turning.

"Late to the party, as always," Derek called, straightening up stiffly.

"What'd you do to my cabin, man?" Keegan demanded, looking up at the ruined cupola. "This is friendship?"

"Hey, we got you a present to make up for it."

Keegan lifted the corner of the blanket and flashed a quick grin. "He's alive?"

"Still kicking. He's either genuinely unconscious or faking it." Derek nudged him with a toe. "Anyway, I guess I don't have to tell you to be careful with this guy."

"Don't worry, we've got reinforced cuffs in the car." Keegan jerked his head toward the troopers who were getting equipment out of the back. "They're friends of mine. They know about us. And how are you doing, ma'am?"

"I'm okay," Gaby said. "What about my mom and my son? Have you seen them?"

"They're in town, with a car full of state troopers to stand guard. At this point I can probably tell them to stand down. It doesn't look like Ghost is working with anyone anymore."

"You said he was working for one of the local crime families." Derek put an arm around Gaby, pulling her closer to him. "Any chance they might send someone else after her?"

Keegan shook his head. "Unlikely. Ghost's very public revenge crusade is exactly the kind of publicity they don't want. At this point, they're very happy to cut all ties with him. We've got the other perp from the armed robbery in custody, and it looks like things are going to end there."

"I can go home?" Gaby asked hesitantly.

Keegan smiled at her. "Yeah. You can go home."

Derek sat back down on the porch steps, Gaby at his side, and watched as the troopers cuffed Ghost hand and foot, before cutting him out of the winch cable with a pair of wire cutters Keegan produced from somewhere around the cabin.

"The phone's not working either," Gaby told Keegan. "I think Ghost sabotaged it somehow. What's his real name, by the way?"

"Still working on finding that out. Don't worry, we'll have a name to charge him under soon enough."

Gaby rested her head on Derek's shoulder.

"Holding up okay?" he murmured to her, once Keegan and the troopers were no longer in earshot.

"Tired," she said, and gave a sudden, soft laugh. "And thinking about how we ran away from our apartment building and left dinner on the table. There's going to be a mess to clean up when we get back. Um ... there is an apartment to go back to, right?"

Keegan returned just in time to overhear this. "Your apartment building's fine. Well, mostly fine. There's some smoke damage on the first floor, but you should be able to move right back in."

"If you want to," Derek told Gaby quietly.

She looked up at him, eyes wide and bright. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking your place isn't very big, and neither is mine. When your lease is up, I think maybe we should look for somewhere with a little more space. Enough bedrooms nobody has to share."

"Unless somebody wants to," she said teasingly, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. "Do you think we might be able to find a place with a yard for Sandy to play in?"

"I think that sounds perfect."

Gaby laced her fingers through his. With her warm, soft weight pressed against him, he felt her giggle again. He knew what she was feeling; relaxing tension often turned into giddy relief, when even the tiniest things seemed unendurably funny.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked her quietly.

"I was just thinking that, with Ghost caught, I guess teaching you to run the espresso machine was completely pointless. You'll never have to draw another shot of coffee, unless you just want to."

"Only if we open our own coffee shop."

He expected her to laugh, but instead she was quiet in a thoughtful kind of way.

"Is running a coffee shop something you want to do?" he asked after a moment.

"Is that weird? You know, I've thought about it. I would like to own my own business someday. I'd always thought it was something I never could do ... startup costs and property rental in the city would've killed me. I had to be practical for Sandy and my mom's sake. But ..." She hesitated, working her thumb in slow sweeps across the back of his hand. "Ever since we've been out here, I've been thinking about how many of the things I used to think were impossible actually could be possible if we thought about moving somewhere with lower property costs. I bet I could open a café in a little town like this for a fraction of what it'd cost in the city. Of course, there'd also be a smaller customer base. It would never be a wild success." She looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I'm rambling. And anyway ... I don't think you'd want to live in a small town, would you? I didn't think I would. Except, the longer we've been out here, the more I like it."

"I'm actually more comfortable in rural places," Derek admitted. "It's the bear in me. I've mostly stayed in the city because ... actually, you know, I'm not really sure why. Inertia, I guess. It's easier to find work there, but it's not like I couldn't get a job somewhere more rural. The kind of thing I do, I could do just about anywhere."

Her laugh—God, he was starting to love that laugh—came out on a huffed sigh of relief. "I'm so glad it's not just me. I guess I just bonded with this little town as soon as I set foot in it. There hasn't really been time to think, and I know this isn't a good time to be making decisions about our future, but ..."

"No need to make any decisions right away," Derek told her gently. "Especially not 'til all this is sorted out. We have time."

"Yes." She gripped her fingers tightly around his hand, interwoven with his. "All the time in the world."