“My…” She paused, then her mouth snapped shut. He watched her trying to reorder the world, maybe search for a trap, but she finally put her face in her hands and groaned. “I can’t do this. I can’t. My bounty. The bounty you’re here to collect by turning me in.”
“The bounty I’m here to collect,” he repeated slowly. What the hell was she talking about?
“I know,” she wailed. Tears broke free and she dashed at her cheeks. “It’s just not fair. Why did you have to be a bounty hunter? I tried to be good in my life, I really tried to help people and it’s not my fault what happened that night. It’s not my fault. I feel terrible that he almost died but I really wasn’t…”
She hiccupped and kept talking, though he couldn’t understand a damn syllable between the tears and high pitch and increasing tempo. Finn edged closer and held his hands out to get her attention. He wanted to wrap himself around her to smother away the fears and regrets. He would fix everything. He would fix everything for her and they would find a happy place to live together forever. “Hold on, Lauren. I need you to take a deep breath. We can figure it all out, I just need you to start from the beginning. I don’t understand what you’re talking about, darlin’.”
Lauren still snuffled and sniffed, wiping at her cheeks, and looked so miserable he couldn’t help himself. Finn eased to sit next to her and put an arm around her shoulders, holding her close. He waited, breathing deep and even in the hopes shewould follow, and waited for her to release some of that fear and tension.
She had a bounty on her, then. Although it could have been a real bounty or something from the smugglers. And for some reason she thought he was there to claim it? He leaned his head back against the wall and half closed his eyes. He only wanted to breathe her in and enjoy being close to her. Maybe exhaustion left her confused, after everything that morning and the day before. They could rest and enjoy the warmth for a little while, before he had to confront reality. Including figuring out who almost died and why Lauren was involved.
LAUREN
It was like an eternity and no time at all had passed after Finn left the cabin to go clean things up, whatever that meant. She didn’t really want to know what it meant. It took all of her strength to stay where he’d put her near the fireplace. She should have gotten up and at least tried to light the kindling or collect snow for water.
But her legs didn’t work and she couldn’t seem to get anything moving in coordination. As soon as a thought settled in her head, something else would occur to her and set everything aflutter again. Loud noises outside kept her huddled in the corner, but she’d just made up her mind to search for the rifle and shotgun to defend herself when the door opened and Finn dragged massive amounts of split logs and sticks inside.
Lauren tried to see what parts of him had been a bear, even though the possibility was ludicrous. No matter what she’d seen, people didn’t turn into bears. It kept her off-balance, but at least Finn didn’t make any sudden moves or shout at her. He was yet another person, different from the man who’d cuddled with her that morning and more different than the man who’d spoken to the guys who tried to kill her on the trail. Who was the real Finn? How would she know which Finn would respond to her if sheasked him a question or woke him up? Would it be the bear or the terrifying man or the man who moved around so efficiently to patch holes and fix the roof, like he’d worked in construction all his life? Or would it be the sweet, soft-spoken man who’d been so considerate and caring?
So she didn’t dare lie or refuse to answer his questions when Finn got close and said he wanted to talk. It had to do with the trouble she’d caused by running off and getting mixed up with those two men, even if he said it had more to do with him turning into a bear. Somehow that felt like the least of her troubles. A bear wouldn’t be taking her in to the sheriff’s office, that she knew for certain. A bounty hunter guy would.
Even though he looked confused when she pointed out the bounty and the guys who’d tried to come in and take his money, she kept talking because she needed him to understand. No one ever really listened to her. They thought they did and they assumed they knew what she’d say, but usually everyone stopped listening after the first few sentences. So she talked faster and they stopped listening even sooner. She shivered, even with the heat of the fire, and Finn moved to sit next to her and pull her against his side.
His lips drifted across her temple and he murmured, “I need you to slow down and help me understand. What bounty are you talking about?”
“Mine,” she said. Maybe he needed to record her admitting it for some reason, or he just wanted to make triple-sure he had the right fugitive. “I skipped bail and I’ve been hiding out and sinceyou’rethe bounty hunter, you should already know this.”
His dark eyebrows rose. Finn’s hand rested warm and gentle on her hip. “Babe, I’m not a bounty hunter.”
Lauren had to lean back to frown at him. “Yes you are. You said it. You said you’d been looking for me, and you found me. That it was luck you found me.”
“Well, itwasluck,” he said. Finn still looked at her like they spoke completely different languages, or maybe they had different conversations in the same language. “And…well, yes, I have been looking for you.”
She shook her head. “See? Then why did you deny it?”
“I wasn’t looking for you because I’m a bounty hunter, I was looking for you because…” His voice trailed off and Finn’s gaze drifted far away.
Lauren’s stomach clenched with nerves. She didn’t dare speak, hardly breathed.
He took a deep breath. “That part is hard to explain. I’ll give it a shot later, but first I want to understand more about this bounty. I’m not a bounty hunter, Lauren, I swear it to you. I had no idea you had a run-in with the law. What are you doing out here, then? Why did you skip bail?”
Her heart sank. He wasn’t a bounty hunter? Which was great news, except it meant she’d outed herself as a criminal to someone as perfect as Finn for no reason. “You’re not going to take me to jail?”
“No,” he said, a hint of a smile barely touching his mouth before it disappeared. “Darlin’, I will definitely not take you to jail. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you out of jail, in fact. So let’s get to the bottom of this.”
Lauren didn’t want to relax against him, but a wind kicked up outside the cabin and worked its way through the cracks between the logs and reminded her of that awful trek back along the trail as she sat on the bear. The bear who sat beside her and reassured her that he wasn’t a bounty hunter and wouldn’t take her to jail. So she leaned in to him and closed her eyes. “You’ll just hate me for it. It’s better if you don’t know.”
“No use running away from something,” Finn said, and from the resigned tone of his voice, he knew it from personalexperience. Lauren didn’t want to know what someone as brave and intimidating as Finn would run from.
She kept her eyes closed as she started to explain, starting with how she’d always studied cryptids and Bigfoot in particular and how it kept her distracted all those awful times when they were evicted and had to move, or when there wasn’t any food and all she read to ignore the stomach cramps. She made friends who were also interested in weird stuff and she drank a little and smoked some weed and found herself starting to go down the same road she’d seen her mother crash along for most of her life. She found the groups where environmentalists and conservationists and cryptozoologists intersected, and made her place among them instead of the astral healers and empaths and survivors of alien abductions. At least it kept her away from the heroin addicts and methheads who’d wanted to be her friend.
Finn listened and didn’t comment or even laugh, which was the only reason that Lauren found the bravery to keep talking. “Some of the group felt like we weren’t doing enough to protect the environment after the politicians reversed a lot of the laws that kept this part of the state off-limits to drilling and fracking and all…that.”
She still didn’t entirely understand the specifics, except that everything the oil companies did was dangerous for living things.
Finn turned his head to rub his chin across the top of her head, grumbling deep in his chest. “That’s been a problem, you’re right.”
She breathed him in, wondering how he smelled so good as a man and yet was pretty wild and ripe as a bear. Lauren gnawed her lower lip before going on, staring across the cabin at the gloomy shadows that concealed the kitchen. “They wanted to make a statement when the oil company set up its headquarters over in Red Springs, just outside the wolf refuge. The oilcompany had all this surveying equipment and big trucks and explosives as they started exploring. I thought… The leader said we were only going in to get the computers out of the trailers, so we could show how corrupt and terrible they are, and to disable the equipment. Like by putting sugar or dirt in the gas tanks, slashing the tires, that sort of things. I didn’t sign up for anything else.”
