Page 30 of Bearing North
“They didn’t stop?” Orson waited until they were around the next curve to shift back into human form.
“Have you ever tried to stop a semi going up a grade like that and get it started again?” Alex asked, reaching around him for her luggage. “They probably radioed for emergency help. That’s the best they could be expected to do.”
Orson found his rain gear and pulled it on. If the mosquitoes south of the mountains had been bad, they were a million times worse here, finding every crack and cranny in his clothing with buzzing persistence. This could have been a very romantic moment; Orson would have loved to lie Alex down and work their shock out in the way that hot-blooded people have been reacting to moments of stress since the caveman days, but he was too busy slapping himself.
“What do you think happened?” Alex asked gravely.
She found her own raincoat in the wreckage and strode away to poke through the remains of the survival equipment thrown from the back of the truck; the shovel was sticking out of the slope like a javelin, the spade completely buried.
“The brakes failed,” Orson guessed, coming to her side.
“Modern trucks are supposed to have built-in brake failure precautions.” Orson didn’t think she was mad at him, but her shock was starting to turn to fury and her voice was hard. “Someone sabotaged us.”
A series of memories clicked into place in Orson’s head. “There was a guy at the Midnight Sun Festival. He ran into me and looked afraid when he recognized me. And what was weird was that I smelled him later, back in Coldfoot. He was leaving the lobby, and he’d been around the truck.”
“A guy in a ballcap, stocky, nondescript?” Alex asked sharply. “I saw him crouched beside the truck in Fairbanks, but I thought I scared him off before he could do anything.”
“Yeah, that sounds right,” Orson agreed. “He dropped a tool of some kind. Like a long awl or punch, with a needle-like tip.”
“Something you could puncture a brake line with,” Alex surmised. “It might cause a slow leak that wouldn’t turn into a problem for a long while down the road.”
She was so sexy when she was solving crimes. Orson was almost ready to risk mosquitoes to find a soft bit of moss to make love in, but Alex was all business. “Someone knew exactly where we were going to be and where the worst conditions would be.”
Outrage overwhelmed Orson’s libido. “Someone tried to kill us?”
“Itmightnot have killed us,” Alex said reluctantly. “But it would have stranded us off the road and looked like an accident…”
“And then?”
The sound of the truck cooling suddenly changed, creaking ominously, and Orson had just enough time to dive to cover Alex as it went up in a fireball.
26
ALEX
The second time Orson saved Alex by shifting into a bear was no less shocking and surprising than the first time. His clothing exploded off him as he burst into bear form. The last intact glass in the truck shattered and the whole thing turned into a fiery Roman candle, shrapnel and screaming metal flung in all directions.
If they had been sitting inside or standing closer, Alex shuddered to think what might have happened. She was grateful that the contents of the back of the truck had been thrown clear so she had to go searching for them. She was even more grateful that Orson hadn’t been sheltering in it.
Orson’s furry body was a literal bear hug, his thick arms wrapping around her as flaming truck parts fell around them.
When he finally let go, almost nothing was left of the vehicle. If Alex had any lingering doubts about being targets, they were gone now. Someone at Snafu River—Grizzly Protection Services!—could have done this with the missing detonator. It would look like a simple accident gone terribly wrong…and damn the collateral. Were they after her? Orson? This would have taken care of both of them.
Orson shrank back to his human shape. “I’m not going to get another pair of pants,” he said in dismay, looking at the shattered, burning wreck.
“I thought your clothing magically went with you,” Alex said, hating how shaky her voice sounded.
“It’s like potty training,” Orson said sheepishly. “You learn to do it as a kid, but sometimes shock and stress make you forget. It’s the shifter equivalent of pissing yourself in fear.”
Alex had to laugh despite the gravity of their situation, eyeing his naked form with adrenaline-streaked appreciation. “There’s another pair of rain pants in the emergency kit. I’m invested in protecting some of those parts from mosquitoes.”
She got him decent, though the pants were several sizes too small, and gave him her raincoat since she at least had a long-sleeved T-shirt. She fingered a gash she found in it, sliced by broken glass. “Someone at the security company did this,” she said grimly. “Someone who wanted one or both of us out of the way.”
The protective gleam in Orson’s eyes raised an unexpected heat in her. “I will find them,” he said. “I will find them and make them sorry.”
Their phones had been in the truck, but there was no cell signal here, anyway. Alex wouldn’t be able to contact the office until they got to Deadhorse. She squinted into the rain, turning every irate employee they had over in her head. “I can’t figure out who would do this,” she said, frustrated and betrayed. “I thought that my people weresolid.What would getting us out of the picture gain anyone?”
“Someone you fired? A rival business?” Orson didn’t have suggestions Alex hadn’t already considered.
