Chapter Three: Gunnar

 

 

The ride from the prison was quiet and tense. Gunnar sat next to the cop, Keegan, looking out the window as warehouses and factories gave way to suburban houses and then woods and small towns.

"We're going out in the country?" he ventured. He was wearing the clothes he'd been wearing when they booked him, a slightly shabby brown suit. Three years since he'd last worn it, the seams strained at his shoulders and it was too loose in the waist. He'd bulked up and lost weight around the middle since he'd last been a free man.

On his lap he held a small bundle of items in a bag. Wallet, some cash, the keys to an apartment and car he no longer possessed, a phone with an expired plan, a few books and magazines he'd had in his cell ... it was literally all he had in the world now. He wondered what had happened to the stuff in his apartment after he was arrested. Probably the landlord had thrown it out.

"It's a little town called Autumn Grove," Keegan said, glancing at him. "Ever heard of it?"

Gunnar shook his head.

"Good," Keegan said, and looked back at the road.

Keegan had put on a pair of sunglasses, and without being able to see his eyes, Gunnar found his expressions hard to read. He suspected Keegan was some sort of shifter, but wasn't sure exactly what made him think that. It was something about the way he moved, the casual animalistic grace, and the way he made Gunnar's bear nervous. Some kind of big cat, Gunnar thought, or maybe even another bear.

Even without being able to read Keegan very well, the distrust came through loud and clear. Gunnar really didn't blame him, especially if he'd known Nils.

Are we going to fight Nils? his bear rumbled. It was enjoying the freedom, but seemed unsure about that. Nils is our brother. We shouldn't fight him.

We're not going to fight him unless we have to, Gunnar told his bear. But if he tries to hurt anyone, we won't have a choice.

His bear was distracted from the argument by the woods outside the car. Are we going there? We can shift there!

For a moment, it was all Gunnar could do to contain the animal inside him. Surrounded by humans, he hadn't been able to shift for the last three years at the prison. The urge to get back in touch with that side of himself was a desperate ache like a hole in his chest.

"You okay?" Keegan said. "Hungry?"

Gunnar's stomach growled. He'd missed lunch at the prison—not that there was much to miss—and they'd been driving for hours. "Little bit," he said.

"We'll eat when we get where we're going." Keegan hesitated; Gunnar could tell he was on the verge of saying something. What he finally said, though, wasn't what Gunnar had expected. "What were you in prison for?"

Gunnar eyed him, suspecting a trap. "You know that already, right? I'm sure you've read my file."

"I know what your file says. I want to know what you say."

Gunnar hesitated for a few long moments. Finally he said, "I wasn't a good kid. I used to get into trouble. It'd be easy to blame it on Nils, because he was my big brother, my role model. But I really don't have anyone except myself to blame. I dropped out of school, got in trouble, got caught doing things like stealing cars. Spent some time in juvie." He took a deep breath. He didn't like talking about this part of his life. But it had happened; he couldn't change it. "I finally hit a point where I could see that if I didn't go straight, I was going to get one strike too many and spend the rest of my life in prison. So I got a job, kept my nose clean, and tried to turn things around. Then ... then Nils showed up three years ago."

It still hurt to talk about it. His brother had come back into his life after having vanished for years, used him as an alibi and stashed stolen goods at his apartment, and then skipped town when things got too hot and left Gunnar to the cops. Whatever they'd once shared as brothers was gone ... or so he'd been telling himself for three long years in prison.

"I told the cops and the judge that the stolen stuff wasn't mine. But I had a record, and I couldn't afford a better lawyer than the public defender, who had a ton of cases and wasn't really that invested in mine. I mean, look at me." Gunnar gestured to himself with one big hand. "I don't look innocent. Apparently the judge didn't think so either. I got ten years."

"That's a lot of time when they don't really have you on anything other than holding stolen property. Because of your record?"

Gunnar shrugged with a lightness he didn't feel. He could lie. But he had a feeling Keegan had checked up on him thoroughly enough to know all of this already. This was a test, all right. It was a test to see how much of the truth he was going to tell.

Even though the truth could make Keegan turn this car around and take him right back to prison.

"They offered to cut me a deal. Let me go, or at least give me probation, if I turned state's evidence against Nils and helped them catch him."

"You didn't take the deal," Keegan said quietly. "So they threw the book at you."

Gunnar nodded. There was no surprise in Keegan's voice. He'd known all of that already. It really had been a test.

"I know why you're asking me all of this," Gunnar said quietly. "I wouldn't betray my brother three years ago. So what you really want to know is, why did I agree to help you this time? You want to know if I'm just in it for an opportunity to escape."

"The thought did cross my mind," Keegan said, his voice bland.

"Look, if there's one thing I had plenty of time to do in prison, it was think," Gunnar said. "I spent a lot of my life telling myself that blood was more important than anything else. Nils and I ... we're all we have in the world. Our parents died when we were kids. We don't have any other close family. I used to feel like, if I lost my brother, I'd lost everything."

He drew a slow breath to calm himself and his restless bear, and wished he had sunglasses like Keegan's to hide his eyes. Instead he looked out the window.

"But I guess what I figured out in prison is that Nils hasn't felt that way about me for a long time," he said. "And even if he still did ... he's done a lot of bad things. Really bad things. He's killed people. I started feeling like prison was exactly where I deserved to be, for letting him get away with it for so long. I took your deal because I want to make things right."

"Even if it means helping put Nils away for good."

Gunnar nodded.

"Hmm," Keegan said, and didn't say anything else.

He turned off the road and drove through a small downtown. It was late afternoon now, and Gunnar looked out at the little brick buildings with the golden sunlight slanting between them. For some reason his eyes were drawn to a sign reading HIDDEN TREASURES USED BOOKS, with the colorful display of books in the window. He wanted all the knowledge inside those books. He wanted to be the kind of person who was worthy of it.

He turned his head to watch a group of children playing in a small park on the street corner. Two of them were little blond boys who reminded him of himself and Nils at that age. Would his life have turned out better if he'd grown up in a place like this? Or would he just have found some other way to screw it up?

"Something interesting out there?" Keegan asked sharply, and Gunnar shook his head, trying to shake off the echoes of the past at the same time. "Good. The place where I'm taking you ... well, let's just say, there's some trust involved in me taking you here. Mostly it's because I want you where I can keep an eye on you. I thought about putting you up in a motel, but you could skip out easily from there, or get a message out to your brother. This way, someone's going to be watching you every minute. Got it?"

They left town, turning onto a small road that went back into the trees. "You're taking me home with you?" Gunnar asked, disbelieving.

"Actually, I'm taking you to a friend of mine's place. His name is Derek, and he's the one your brother is gunning for. He's a mean fighting machine, and he turns into a big damn alpha grizzly. Don't think you can take him in a fight—and yes, I know you're a polar bear shifter, like Nils."

We're going to fight another bear? his bear asked, perking up.

No! Gunnar thought at it, horrified. Don't you dare! The last thing he needed was to get sent back to prison because his bear, after so long being cooped up inside him, lost control at the first dominant bear it came into contact with.

"His family's there," Keegan said. "Mate and kids. My mate too, and make no mistake, if you harm one hair on any of their heads, you won't be able to run far enough or fast enough. Derek and I will hunt you down and tear you apart."

"I won't." Gunnar tried to infuse the words with every ounce of honest sincerity he possessed. "I swear to you, I'd rather die than let harm come to anyone else because of my brother."

"Lucky for you, my animal lets me know when people are lying." Keegan's voice was close to a growl. "That's the only reason why you've made it this far."

He turned off the road onto a gravel driveway that stopped at a gate made of heavy bars of metal. "Stay in the car," Keegan said, still with the growl in his voice. He started to get out, then stopped and held out a hand, palm up. "I saw a phone in the things the guard gave you. Give it to me. You'll get it back when you leave."

"It doesn't even have a service plan," Gunnar pointed out, but he handed it over as requested. Keegan pocketed it and left the driver's door open while he went to the gate.

Are we going to fight him? Gunnar's bear wanted to know. I'd really like to fight him.

No, we aren't going to fight him. We aren't going to fight anyone. Settle down and be quiet.

He leaned forward and watched Keegan open the gate. It wasn't just a matter of unlocking it. Keegan punched a code into a key pad mounted on the steel pole beside the gate—Gunnar recognized it as an alarm system, and tried to stop the juvenile-delinquent part of himself from figuring out how hard it would be to turn off. There was also a wire wound around the top of the pole and gate that Keegan unhooked and left dangling while he swung it open.

As Keegan got back into the car, Gunnar said, "Don't normally see this kind of security on a farm."

"Yeah, well, most farms don't expect to be attacked by an escaped killer who turns into a giant polar bear, either." Keegan drove through the gate and left Gunnar in the car again while he went back to close the gate and re-arm the alarm pad.

This, at least, gave Gunnar some time to look around. Bathed in late-afternoon sunlight, the farm had a dreamy quality. It looked like something out of a movie, Gunnar thought, the sort of movie where little kids with braids and fluffy golden retrievers would be running through the grass in slow motion.

The main farmhouse was a big, rambling structure surrounded by a sweeping expanse of lawn. There was a wooden pole fence circling a barn and pasture. No slow-motion golden retrievers, but Gunnar saw a cat sunning itself on the top bar of the fence, and a small black-and-white pony browsing in the pasture. Some chickens pecked around in a wire-enclosed run beside the barn.

It was beautiful and peaceful and very much not a place for a guy who'd just spent three years in prison.

Gunnar's throat tightened. All through the drive, he'd thought the hardest part of all of this was going to be dealing with his brother. But this was the first time he'd felt panicked. For an instant he just wanted to tell Keegan to turn around and drive him back to prison.

I can't do this. I can't sit around with this nice farm family and pretend I'm like them. I'm not like them. I may not have done what I was sent to prison for, but I was a teenage car thief. I'm not a good person. I don't belong here—

"Hey!" Keegan said, leaning into the driver's side. "You can get out of the car now. Unless you want to sit out here all evening, but if you do that, then I have to do that, and I'll miss out on Gaby's amazing home cooking."

Gunnar got himself under control and made sure his bear was firmly under control. "Coming," he said stiffly, and got out.

They walked past several other vehicles parked outside the house: a sleek black Mustang, a minivan, and a little hatchback with some dings and rust spots. Interesting bunch of cars, Gunnar thought. He wondered if it was an equally interesting mix of people inside the house.

As they climbed the steps to the old-fashioned wooden porch, the door burst open and a woman ran out. She was visibly pregnant and had light brown skin and bouncing dark-brown curls, and that was all Gunnar had a chance to see before she flung her arms around Keegan and planted an enthusiastic kiss on him.

Keegan kissed her back just as enthusiastically. Gunnar couldn't believe the change in him; he'd thought the guy had a stick up his butt a mile long, but for this woman, Keegan's stiff cop face dropped away, revealing a grinning lovesick fool underneath.

The kiss broke and the woman's knees visibly wobbled. Keegan steadied her with an arm around her pregnancy-swollen waist. "Wow," she murmured, and then whacked him in the shoulder with the back of her hand. "You're late—" She stopped, noticing Gunnar on the lower step. "Oh ... hi. This is ...?" She looked blankly at Keegan.

"Ghost's brother Gunnar," Keegan said. "I need to talk to Derek before we go in the house. Is he inside?"

"Yeah, he's with Gaby in the kitchen." She turned to Gunnar with no sign of fear, and held out a hand. "Hi, I'm Tessa."

Gunnar started to reach for her hand, but Keegan put an arm around her, pulling her back.

"Hey!" Tessa protested.

"Don't go getting friendly with him," Keegan said. "He's here because we need him and because I want him where I can see him. It's strictly business."

"That's still no reason not to be nice." Tessa freed herself gently but firmly, and turned back to Gunnar. "I'm sorry that my husband has no manners. Anyway, I'm Tessa, and—"

The door slammed open for the second time, this time hard enough to bounce off the wall with a tremendous crash. "What the hell, Keegan?" a deep voice roared.

For a moment it was all Gunnar could do to keep his bear under control. The big guy who'd just stomped out onto the porch was pure dominant shifter grizzly from his bristling buzz cut to his size 13 boots. Massive shoulders strained against his T-shirt, and tats sleeved his arms. The bear inside him was so close to the surface that he had to be right on the verge of a shift; Gunnar could see it in his eyes.

"Calm down, Derek," Keegan snapped, holding out a hand to stop him. Derek was taller than Keegan by several inches and had probably fifty pounds of muscle on him. Still, Keegan didn't seem afraid of him in the slightest.

"We agreed we'd get him out of prison," Derek snarled. "Nobody said anything about bringing him to my home, where my family is—"

"And mine!" Keegan snarled back. "You think you're the only one with something at stake here? I brought him here not only because I believe he genuinely wants to help, but also because at the farm, we can watch him; he can't go running off to find a phone and call his brother—"

"So get him a guard! Or an ankle monitor! Don't turn my home into—"

"Are you reacting this way to him," Keegan shot back, "or is it because he looks like his brother? Stop letting your animal think for you. Calm down and consider this like a rational human being and not—"

"My animal is me, and I am him," Derek growled. "And right now he's telling me to rip this guy's throat out before he can take one step toward my mate and cubs."

Gunnar breathed deeply, keeping hold of his bear as it tried to lunge out of him. Getting into a fight wouldn't do him a damn bit of good. Even if he won, he would still have lost, because they would never trust him again.

"Derek, he's right," Tessa said. "You need to calm down."

"Stay out of this, hon," Keegan told her. "Go in the house."

"Excuse me? What kind of alpha-male nonsense is this?"

Keegan didn't take his eyes off Derek. "You're human, Tessa; you haven't seen how shifters can get when their animals are riled up. I don't want you to get hurt."

"You do remember I faced down a dragon, right?" Tessa said, her voice icy.

"You're right," Keegan said, the corner of his mouth twitching. "In that case, do me a favor and, for their sake, keep Gaby and the kids inside until things calm down out here."

"Now that, I'll do." She edged around Derek carefully and vanished into the house.

"Look what he's done to us already." Derek's voice was a low rumble. "We need to show a united front against Ghost, and now we're falling apart. Bringing him here was a mistake, Ben."

"I'm starting to think you're right," Keegan began, then turned his head at the sound of tires crunching in the driveway. "Are we expecting anyone else?" He reached across to his shoulder holster.

"The girls said your sister might show up."

"Damn it," Keegan muttered. His hand still hovered near his gun. "That's just what we need."

Gunnar's bear didn't want him to take his eyes off Derek, in case of a sneak attack, but he turned along with the rest of them to look down the driveway. From here, all he could see was a shadowy figure at the gate, undoing the security system as Keegan had done.

The gate swung open and the new arrival drove through in a little silver Miata convertible. The top was down, and Gunnar got a good look at her as she maneuvered into a parking place in the row of cars.

He would never forget that first look.

She was bathed in the golden light of late afternoon, turning her pale skin to honey and lending a golden sheen to hair like a crown of liquid night. As she got out of her car, he took in the gray cardigan and the glasses, and his initial thought was that she looked like the world's sexiest librarian. Her buttoned-up sweater did little to conceal the luscious curves underneath. He wanted to unwrap her like a gift. He wanted to feel those ample breasts pressed against him, cup his hands under the bountiful curve of her ass ...

His newly arrived librarian goddess looked up at the scene on the porch. Behind her glasses, she frowned in puzzlement, and then her eyes met Gunnar's and—

It was like lightning striking. There was something charged and heated in her eyes. He was aware of the rustle of wings, the slow ripple of silver scales. And behind all that, a shocking conviction that Gunnar and his bear both knew, deep down to their shared core.

This woman was his mate.