Page 4 of Sear
* * *
Rob looked a mess. His handsome features were crisscrossed with scabbed-over scratches and dotted with Band-Aids, and his hazel eyes were vague and unfocused, missing their usual sharp good humor. His long brown hair, normally worn loose and flowing over his shoulders, had been neatly braided, probably by one of the nurses to keep it from tangling.
He appeared to be swathed in bandages under his hospital gown,
He gave them a loopy smile as they entered his room. “Hey, Mom! Hey, Dad!”
Malia wondered what kind of heavy-duty painkillers they’d given him.
“Oh, Rob!” Mom exclaimed, making a sound somewhere between a chuckle and sob. “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” he said instantly. At their incredulous looks, he amended, “I mean, I’m gonna be fine in a few days.”
Malia suppressed her horrified reaction at the sight of his injured arm, encased in a cage of metal strips and bristling with numerous metal pins embedded in his skin. Her brother always hated it when people felt sorry for him.
“Jeez, Robbie, you look like the Terminator now,” she commented.
He laughed weakly. “I feel like one of them attacked me. Getting shot fuckinghurts, M.”
“So I hear,” she said.
“Who did this to you, son?” demanded Dad.
“Dunno. I heard about a stand of ripe huckleberries just off the road and decided to go for an evening walk in my bear shape,” he told them. “I got, like, one mouthful, when this pickup truck comes roaring off the road and drives straight at me. I spotted this dude hanging out the window and aiming a rifle in my direction, so I ran like hell. But they still got me.”
“They were hunting at night, and from a moving vehicle roadside?” Malia asked, anger and incredulity boiling up inside her. The shooters must’ve known that a stand of huckleberry bushes laden with ripe berries would be irresistible to the area’s bears, both the regular kind and shifters. “That’s illegal on at least two counts, even if they had a hunting license and tags. I need to tell Gage about this.”
Gage Tringstad was the local Idaho Department of Fish and Game Conservation Officer, or game warden. He was also a pack member.
“Must’ve been those poachers,” Mom commented, referring to a series of previous incidents in the area.
Rob nodded. “I found a blackberry thicket further in the tree line, shifted back to human and wriggled into it as far as I could. Got myself all scratched to hell, but it was the safest place I could think of. I laid low while those two guys tramped around the woods. Eventually, they got tired of looking for an injured grizzly bear and drove away.
“I was bleeding pretty bad by then, but I managed to make it back to the trailhead where I’d parked my car. I ran into a couple of hikers just packing up to leave. They insisted on driving me here. Everything else is kind of…fuzzy.”
“So, you didn’t recognize them or get their names or find out whether they saw that pickup truck drive by?” Malia asked, her pen poised over her notepad.
He managed a weak huff. “Nah. They told me they were on their way home and didn’t want to get involved.”
“At least they had the decency to bring you here instead of leaving you to bleed to death,” Mom said.
“The guys who shot you—what did they look like?” asked Malia.
Rob shook his head slowly. “I never really saw their faces or caught a good whiff of any of them. The guy hanging out the window looked like a white guy, maybe in his thirties. He was wearing a baseball cap, but the headlights made it hard to see anything except silhouettes. I did smell cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes.”
Malia scribbled furiously. “What about their vehicle?”
Rob frowned. “It was some kind of light color, not sure if it was white or silver. I was too busy running for my life to take a good look.” His tone was edged with defensiveness.
“Getting the hell away from them was the correct priority,” Mom said.
Malia leaned over the hospital bed, and gently laid her hand on her brother’s uninjured arm. “I’m going to find out who did this to you, Robbie, and then they’re going to pay.”
“No way,” Rob declared, the usual heat in his voice now just a lukewarm ghost. “If you think I’m gonna let my little sister protect me, think again.”
‘Little sister,’ my left foot!Malia thought indignantly. Rob had been born a whole ten minutes ahead of her, and he never let her forget it.
“I’mgonna be the one who makes those guys pay for what they did.” He paused. Then his expression twisted in dismay. “Aw crap. I’m gonna have to cancel the band’s wedding reception gig tomorrow, aren’t I?”
