Alpha's Captive 04 - Haven (6 page)

“Are we there?” Harper asked, leaning forward against her seatbelt as she strained in the darkness.

“Getting close,” he said, pulling off onto the shoulder, then farther, into the high weeds along the road. He pushed the car farther and farther off the side of the road, small branches scratching at the sides of the car, until it came to rest against a thicket that it couldn’t push through.

“Give me the SD card.”
Harper’s voice was flat.

He looked over at her as he killed the engine.
She had her hand out. She wiggled her fingers, looking at him even though she probably couldn’t make out anything in the darkness, with the trees crowding close overhead.

If she had the SD card, he wasn’t going anywhere without her.
But if she was coming along, it only made sense for her to carry it. He was going to be shifting, and unless he devised a kind of collar for him to carry it with, he couldn’t easily hang onto it. Plus, no one would expect her to be holding the goods. Even Mortensen might think that she was a victim, still, since those who knew otherwise hadn’t survived.

But if he gave her the SD card, there was no sneaking off in the darkness.
No doing the right thing. The noble thing.

Levi handed her the coin purse with the SD card inside.
He’d never been very good at noble.

Harper let out a little breath then, one he hadn’t realized that she’d been holding.
Tension ran out of her shoulders.

“Right, then,” she said, and she shoved the coin purse in her front pocket and punched the button on her
seatbelt buckle.

Wordlessly, Levi got out of the car.
Harper tried her door, but the underbrush pressed up against it kept it from opening, so she scooted over the center console and out Levi’s, hauling her purse with her. Five of the beers were gone now, and so was the plastic container of stew, so the purse lay almost flat against her body, even with the tablet and the new reader inside.

If they had time, they should probably wipe the car down.
Levi itched to leave it behind, covered in evidence. But if they won, Beane and Mortensen could sort everything out between them, scrub them from all the databases, once he had the data in hand. And if they lost, well, they wouldn’t be in a position to care.

“So how are we going to do this?”
Harper asked.

“I’m going a
s a wolf,” he said. “I can move quietly in the dark in any form, but you—”

Harper
nodded. “Right. I’ve got to ride. And then when we’re on the other side?”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said.

“Okay,” she agreed, shifting her purse so that the strap crossed her body. “Get to it, then.”

Levi stripped quickly and handed over his clothes, new shoes and all, before shifting.
Harper pulled on his motorcycle jacket, zipping it up over her hoodie, and jammed the rest of his clothing into her purse.

“
Let’s go,” she said, and she half-swung, half-scrambled onto his back.

She settled easily against his shoulder
s, and as he moved, he felt her body adjust in response.

I
t was a strange kind of feeling, to have her on his back, her thighs lightly tense around his body. To his wolf-form she was not appealing in the same, blatantly sexual way that she was when he was in his human form. But the smell of her reached deep into his wolf’s brain, and only one word came back: Mate. Mate, mate, mate….

Dammit.
He needed to keep his head clear now, and that was definitely not the way to do it.

Pine needles soft under his feet, h
e quickened his pace to a jog. Harper’s weight was well-balanced over his shoulders as she leaned forward to help him dodge between the trees, following his slightest movement. The darkness was thick around them, but the light that filtered through the canopy above was enough to guide a werewolf’s steps.

He smelled the police as he
approached, the tang of human sweat and boredom above the harsh, chemical scent of car exhaust. And he smelled their dogs, too, standing alongside their masters, working up and down the line of stopped cars.

Clever,
Levi decided. If they had an object that belonged to him or to Harper, they’d be able to pick them out of a car no matter what disguise they tried. But the cops were not nearly clever enough because the dogs were eager and obedient but very far from smart. They were focused on the cars that their masters ordered them to search. They would pay no attention at all to Levi, moving a hundred yards beyond in the darkness. They were simply too well trained.

As he neared the
checkpoint itself, he could hear the officers—their idle chatter, the orders they issued to the dogs, even the instructions they gave to each motorist.

“Good evening, sir.
Thank you for stopping.”

“What’s going on?
DUI checkpoint?”

“No, sir.
There’s a dangerous suspect in the area, and we think he’s headed this way. He’s already hijacked two cars and kidnapped a young woman. For your own safety, could we please search your car?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Thank you, sir. It will only take a minute.”

Some of the drivers refused, but it hardly mattered.
All the police needed was for a driver to roll the window down long enough for the dogs to get a good sniff in and around the car. Then they’d let the vehicle go and move on to the next one.

Levi
angled down toward the checkpoint as he drew close, knowing that the dogs’ attention was too focused on the cars to care about him in the underbrush. He could see the cops now, along with their cruisers, which formed a funnel across the road just wide enough for one car going either direction. Thirty yards behind the police cruisers were four more vehicles, and if Levi were human, he would have laughed.

Motorcycles.
Just in case he and Harper managed to make it to the front of the line in their car and to burst through the checkpoint, there were four dualies, waiting to pursue. The bikes could keep pace with any street car on the road and most things off it, keeping them in sight until the slower, clumsier cruisers caught up.

The cops had been at this for hours, and they were all gathered at the chokepoint, some searching, some chatting,
all looking bored. There was no one standing guard over the motorcycles. Why would there be? They were for chasing after a runaway car, and the uncleared cars were all on the other side of the checkpoint.

Levi
crept closer to the motorcycles even as Harper’s legs tightened around him. She leaned forward toward his ear, her hands deep in the fur of his ruff.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, soft enough that even the dogs couldn’t hear.

He couldn’t answer, so he bobbed his head.

But she pulled on the skin of his neck, whispering, “What’s wrong with you? I don’t care what you think. I’m coming with you, you big idiot, so you can give up on getting rid of me.”

Just inside the line of trees a dozen feet from the nearest motorcycle, Levi stopped.

Harper didn’t move. He tried nodding his head and twitching the skin over his shoulders, but she just sat, silent and patient. Finally, when she didn’t take the hint, he sat down, and she slid off his back with a muffled squawk.

And as she did so, h
e shifted, and her grasping hands reaching to grab his fur met skin instead. His ribcage expanded, the muscles rearranging themselves across his body as his skeleton stretched. Levi shrugged his shoulders a couple of times, getting used to his human skin.

Then he grinned at Harper.
“Still up for a spin on a bike?”

“A
re you crazy?” Harper whispered—too loudly, because a hundred feet away, one of the dogs swung its head around to look into the trees where they were hiding. She dropped her voice. “The cops are right there, Levi. We can’t steal a motorcycle out from under their noses!”

In the darkness behind the tree line,
Harper could see only his silhouette, but she heard the smile in his voice even though she couldn’t make out his features.

She didn’t trust that smile.

“Hey, I’m not saying we go up and shake their hands,” he said softly back.

Harper wondered if it was possible to shout while whispering.
“No, you’re just saying we should steal their bikes! Because that’s totally not going to attract anyone’s attention.”

She would have continued, but a
car flew by them then and drowned her out, going north to be waved through the checkpoint and deeper into Pennsylvania. And when it was gone, so was Levi.

Harper stood frozen at the edge of the woods, watching Levi standing bare-assed naked at the edge of the highway not
more than thirty yards away from the nearest cops. He grabbed the handlebars of the nearest bike and kicked the stand up, the moonlight catching the chrome and making it shine against the black fiberglass.

Breathing a c
urse, Harper stumbled after him, her heart racing as she kept an eye the up the road. The floodlights there were aimed at the cars at the checkpoint. The cops milled in a bunch, their skin unnaturally pale in the harsh light. They were night-blind, Harper realized, even as shadows danced in front of her eyes when she looked away. They were close enough that she could hear their conversations, but there was no way that they’d be able to see beyond their circle of light.

This just might work.

“Don’t look at the light,” Levi whispered in her ear.

“Yeah, I figured that out the hard way,” she muttered back.
She blinked a few times to clear the last of the dancing images, then surveyed the motorcycle that Levi had chosen.

And
she almost laughed. The keys dangled from the ignition—all the better to set off in fast pursuit, she assumed. It worked just as well for them to make a fast getaway.

Levi
was already turning the heavy dualie around. With the keys in the ignition, the steering lock wasn’t engaged. She put both hands on the back of the seat and pushed to help get it rolling.

There was some kind of commotion at the checkpoint.
Her stomach dropping, Harper risked a look around to see the cops all swarming around a pickup truck. The driver was yelling, his words slurring together as the cops dragged his door open.

“I only a beer!
Jus’ one beer. This is ’Merica, and it’s not a crime to have a beer!”

“Step out of the car
now,
sir.”

“You have to come out, sir
.”

“It’ll be all right, sir.
We just need to have a talk with you out here.”

“No!
It’s the land of the freeeeee and the hoooome of the braaaaaave.” The drunk man was singing now.

Harper turned
to put her back into pushing the motorcycle, hardly believing their luck.

“Just one moment, sir.”
The cops were sounding impatient They were looking for Levi and Harper, but they couldn’t let a man that drunk pass.

“I have rights, you know.
Free speak. Free speaking. Or something!”

“You can
have all your rights, sir, but we’re going to help you out now, okay?”

“No!”

There was a lot of shouting then, and a noisy scuffle. And suddenly, Levi swore.

“Hold the bike,” he said, and Harper barely had time to shift her grip to the side of the seat before he let go of the motorcycle, letting the weight lean on her.

She watched Levi as he dropped back toward the cops—and her heart almost stopped.

Coming up the road, its head down and swinging side to side, was one of the cops’ German shepherds, its lead dropped in the fracas with the drunk.

And freed of its master, it was coming straight for them.

But Levi was fast.
He grabbed for it, and there was a blur of motion—the dog’s jaws snapping, Levi grabbing, twisting, and then when it was all over, Levi was straddling the dog’s back with its mouth clamped firmly shut in his hand as he kept its body pinned between his legs. It wined faintly, but with its jaws held closed, it couldn’t bark.

“The leash!” he snapped.

Hurriedly, Harper kicked the stand down. She ran over to his side, her hands shaking as she pulled the lead free.

“Unhook it and tie it around the dog’s mouth and head,” Levi ordered.

“You have to be kidding me,” Harper muttered, but she did as his said, wrapping it around the animal’s muzzle and neck as it whined and tried to snap at her fingers.

“Harder.
You’re not going to hurt her, but if she gets loose, she’s sure as hell going to hurt us.”

“Well, all right, then,” she said, pulling the webbing tighter before she tied it.

“Rin!” one of the cops called suddenly from the circle of light. “Hey, Rin!”

“What’s up, Hooper?” another asked.

“It’s Rin. I dropped her lead. Come, Rin!”

The dog wriggled manically in Levi’s grasp, whimpering louder, and Harper fumbled with tying off the
end in a secure knot.

“You have to kidding me, Hooper.
Can’t you ever keep ahold of that dog?”

“Shut up.
She always comes when I call. Rin! Come!”

The whimpering got louder.

“I think I hear her!”

Levi met Harper’s eyes over the dog’s head.

“We’re going to have to run, won’t we?” she whispered.

He nodded as the dog thrashed even more frantically in response to its master’s whisper.

“Ready?” he whispered.

“No. But do it anyway.”

Levi released the dog, and she streaked back to her master.

“What’d you find out there, girl?” the man asked. “Hey—what the hell? What happened to your lead?”

Levi and Harper were already running.
He was faster than she was, so by the time she threw her weight against the back of the motorcycle, he had the kickstand up and was pushing the handlebars.

“Hey, Mercer, Washington, take a look at this.
Someone got hold of Rin’s lead.”

Harper grunted as she slammed against
the back of the motorcycle. The three hundred-plus pounds of machinery moved only reluctantly, and in the clear light of the moon on the road, Harper could see Levi’s muscles bunching with effort.

“What are you talking about?
There’s nobody out there.”

“You think?
Somebody did that. Look at that! She’s got a scent.”

Oh, shit.

They pushed, faster and faster, until she was jogging behind it with her arms braced on the back of the seat. Headlights danced in the trees in front of them—a car was coming from the opposite direction, just around a bend in the road.

“Get on!” Levi
ordered.

Harper scrambled into t
he seat, putting her feet up on the foot pegs and jamming her purse, still looped over her body, between her belly and the front of the motorcycle as she leaned over. There was a helmet hanging from the handlebars. Levi let go of that side so she could pulled it free, and she quickly buckled it on.

“You think that Harris did that?”
Another voice came from behind them.

“Well, it wasn’t Bigfoot.”
The voice was breathless—from running, Harper realized.

Double shit.

“Captain! We’ve got a scent!”

There were more sounds now—heavy footfalls
hitting the asphalt and coming toward them.

“When the car passes us, start the engine and go,”
Levi said, huffing with the effort of keeping the motorcycle going under her added weight. “Maybe the noise will be hidden in the sound of the car.”

“Got it,” Harper said
, making sure the headlights were off before switching the ignition on, ready to start up the engine.

The car came quickly around the curve, and
she flicked on the headlights, pulled the clutch, and hit the starter. Levi swung up behind Harper, wrapping his arms around her waist, and Harper hit the accelerator before the dualie could tip over under their unbalanced weights.

T
he motorcycle jumped forward into the night. They buzzed past the oncoming car, Harper squinting against the glare of the headlights, and into the night.

“It worked!”
Harper whooped. “It really worked!”

She heard Levi’s voice behind her, close to her ear, but
the wind snatched his words away before it reached her ears, and she didn’t dare to slow down.

She’d celebrated their victory t
oo soon. There were sirens then, loud ones as the cruisers and the motorcycles came screaming after them. She hunched over the handlebars and urged the motorcycle faster along the dark road. The cruisers were no problem, but the motorcycles, on the other hand….

Harper didn’t dare look behind her, not with Levi holding on to her waist
and shivering against her back, but the sirens didn’t seem to be coming any closer. They passed a number of cars going the other way—and went around two heading south, with them. But there was no sign of another roadblock.

The motorcycle
whipped by the inconspicuous Welcome to West Virginia sign, and in another minute, Levi signaled the first turn to her, steering them off the highway and onto a back road that was so narrow that the trees formed a tunnel overhead—and just in time, because a few seconds later, she heard the
whump-whump-whump
of a helicopter in the distance, over the fading wails of the sirens.

Levi squeezed her waist deliberately three times, and she eased off on the gas, the speedometer falling from ninety to sixty to thirty and then twenty.

“Let me drive,” he said then, and she could make out his voice over the rumble of the motor and the sound of the wind in her ears. “Got to get those headlights off.”

“Right,” Harper said, and she pulle
d off the edge of the road and put down the kickstand. Her fingers were stiff with the cold as she pulled her purse over to her hip, digging inside for his clothes.

Levi let go and swung off
, and lurching slightly. He was shivering so hard that it was visible even in the faint light that filtered through the canopy.

“Are you okay?” she asked, passing over his briefs
as the sound of the helicopter got louder. She unbuckled the helmet and pulled it off.

He bent to put the
briefs on stiffly. “I will be as soon as I get some clothes on.”

“Do you think the people we passed will know it’s us?”
She handed him his shirt. “I mean, if someone asked them.”

Levi snorted as he jerked the
tee over his head. “Harper, there was a naked man on the back of the motorcycle. I was pretty hard to miss.”

She frowned as she gave him his pants
, then stripped out of his motorcycle jacket.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said in a cavalier tone that made Harper worry very much about it.
“We lost them on the highway. As long as we get going before somebody passes us here, we should be free and clear.”

“What about the helicopter?” she asked.

“They have a big area to search. And even with infrared, we’ll be harder to see in the trees.” He looked up above them as he pulled on the jacket and zipped it up. “Though I’d be happier if it was daytime.”

“Why?”

“Infrared on a hot asphalt road. Doesn’t work well in the day.” He stood on one foot as he put a sock and a shoe on the other, then reversed.

“Oh,” she said.
The sound of the helicopter was getting softer, just on the edge of hearing now. She held the helmet out to him, wiggling back on the seat to make room for him.

“Thanks.”
He strapped it on, covering his face behind the shield, and all at once, Harper was hit by the thought of how much a stranger he was to her.

It seemed like
she’d known him forever after what they’d been through, but he’d stolen her car not even forty-eight hours ago. Harper shivered.

She could
have been on her way home. By dawn, she could have been lying in her own bed, listening to the shower come on in the bathroom next to her bedroom, which would be followed, as always, by Madisyn and her boyfriend pretending to bicker over breakfast before they went off to work and Harper drifted back off to sleep until it was time for her third shift at the diner….

Instead, she was here, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night,
her hands stiff with the cold that nipped at her nose and cheeks and standing with a far-too-handsome fugitive whose very presence put her in danger.