Chance Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 6) (2 page)

Emily frowned and sat back in the creaking chair beside Dad’s kitchen table. She had the receiver on full volume so she could listen to the monsters talking, but they didn’t sound like Dad and Uncle Victor said they would. They didn’t talk like growly demons. Well, at least one of the males and the female didn’t, but that made sense because the female was human. A pregnant human.

She broke out into a cold, clammy sweat at that realization. Another werewolf baby, and the males hoped it was a female pup. This pack was growing out of control. That much, Uncle Victor had been right about.

Still…

The males had been caring toward the female.

Of course, they were. Emily drew her knees to her chest and glared at the receiver. That naïve human female was pregnant with the next generation of monsters. Of course, they would make sure she was okay.

But…

It had seemed like more than that. Like they actually cared for her well-being. One of them, Chance, she would guess from Uncle Victor’s intel, was going into town just to get the female, Kate, the food she craved, like a doting friend instead of a controlling monster, like Dad had said he was.

He’d said werewolves were possessive over their breeders, protective to the death to keep their claims safe. She got that. Animals needed to procreate, and these human women were nothing more than vessels for monsters in need of spreading their seed. But one of them had been growling when she’d been sick, and Kate had told him it was okay he made the evil sound because he didn’t like seeing her hurt.

This wasn’t the way Uncle Victor said it would be for her first encounter with these creatures.

No.
She couldn’t feel sympathy. Couldn’t and wouldn’t.

They had hunted her father like a pack and murdered him, and now Emanuel Vega had disappeared into an unmarked grave somewhere. Or maybe they even ate him to get rid of the evidence. Her stomach curdled as though she’d drank a gallon of expired milk. Some of them were man-eaters. The McCalls certainly were, and the alpha of the Galena pack was Lincoln McCall.

Tears burned her eyes. She hated herself for wavering in her quest to avenge her father. He would be so disappointed if he saw her sitting here having a moment of sympathy for the soulless murderers. They weren’t right, weren’t natural. Dad knew it, Uncle Victor knew it, and it was important that she held onto that belief, too.

If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to do this, and she needed her wits firing on all pistons to hunt the pack by herself.

The flowers in the middle of the table were dead, just like Dad. A year just sitting in this dark, abandoned cabin, withering, not being watered or cared for, while Emily had been confined to Hell Hunter training in Anchorage with Uncle Victor.

She stood suddenly and threw a vase full of dead flowers at the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces. Kneeling down, she dropped her head between her knees and linked her fingers behind her head. “Remember the mission,” she whispered, squeezing a traitorous tear out of her eye. “They aren’t people. They’re animals. Avenge him.”

Feeling steadier, she let off a long breath and stood. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she grabbed the keys to the ATV and left Dad’s cabin. She’d taken over the payments on this place, but her money would run out soon. That was okay, as long as she got the job done before she lost this house. Then she could go back to the city feeling accomplished for making Alaska, and the world, a safer place.

She tossed the woods to her right a withering look. The next property over was Lincoln McCall’s land, and the next after that was Dalton Dawson’s land. She was surrounded by werewolves here, but not for long.

Starting today, she would work her way into the Galena pack and destroy them.

She revved the ATV engine, then headed for town. It was ten miles of muddy roads, and the four-wheeler wasn’t ideal for the long drive, but Chance might recognize her dad’s truck, so the two-year-old, cherry-red, jacked-up F-150 wasn’t a viable means of transportation anymore. It would draw too much attention. It was a ride only a doctor could afford out here, and the doctor in town had been murdered by monsters.

She took a mud splat to the face and hated everything. Uncle Victor said that kind of fury was good. He said the more she gave into it, the easier it would be to see the evil in this world. He’d told her it was only rage and hatred that would allow her to see the pack as it really was. Under their human disguise, they were tufts of black smoke and smelled of hellfire because that’s where they’d originated. Hell.

And now Kate was pregnant with a little demon baby. Congratu-fuckin-lations.

Emily’s hands shook with the mass of emotion overcoming her as she pulled into a parking spot near the grocery store. From here, she could see the gas station down the street, so she settled in, pulled a chocolate chip granola bar from her jacket pocket, and ate it slowly, waiting for Chance to fall into the first sticky strand of her web.

“Miss, it’s freezing out here,” a tall, gray-haired man said, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets.

Indeed it was, and now her fingers weren’t just shaking from nerves and anger. A relentless shivering had taken her and wouldn’t ease.

She gave him an empty fuck-off smile and took another bite of granola.

“I’m Hardware Jack.” The man arched his bushy silver eyebrows and waited.

Grrr to small towns.

With a sigh, she held out her hand and shook his. “Emily V—” She gave a vacant smile and corrected herself. “Emily Chastain.” The last thing she needed was for her real last name to make it around town. Likely everyone knew her father personally. After all, he had been the only town doctor at the medical center.

Hardware Jack frowned, as if he’d caught the slip, but shook her hand readily enough. “I have a heater inside the hardware store if you are waiting on someone.”

“Thanks, but polite decline.”

He hesitated another moment, as if waiting for her to recount her entire life story of why she was here, but she wasn’t interested in making friends. However… “Do you know Lincoln McCall?”

“Oh yes, ma’am, I do. He’s good people.”

She declined to snort her disagreement. Neither “good” nor “people” adequately described a werewolf. Bad demon, more like.

“Are you wanting him for a job?”

“Yes,” she answered, thinking fast. “What kind of work is he good at?”

“Construction and handy-man work. That young buck can fix just about anything. And he makes sure to order everything locally to support the small businesses here instead of going direct through his friends, the Silvers, to have supplies delivered. Oh, he could cut out the middle man and save himself money, but he likes to help out where he can. They all do.”

“All of who?”

“Him and his buddies, Dalton and Chance. Any time they’re in town, they spend the money they earn as outdoor guides to put back into Galena. We’re lucky they decided to make this their second home. Real friendly bunch. They’ve helped out some of us who struggled this winter. Chance and Dalton even hunted some caribou and brought the meat back for some of our old folks who can’t hunt too easily anymore. Red meat gets scarce around here, you see. The grocery store runs out and jacks up the prices in dark winter when the Silvers can’t bring deliveries in here on account of the blizzards. Those Dawson boys are good hunters, though, some of the best outdoor guides in the whole world and highly sought after, and this winter, they used their skills to keep some of our older folks from going hungry.”

That niggling guilt was back, as were the questions about everything Uncle Victor had told her in training. Surely, their kind deeds were just a ruse to keep rumors at bay in a town that would come for them with torches and pitch forks if they knew what they really harbored.

“Miss, are you okay? You look flushed. My offer still stands if you want to warm up in the hardware store. It’s early spring in Alaska, sure, but the snow isn’t done for the year, and if you aren’t from around here, you should know, nights get awful cold awful fast.”

The rumble of a truck sounded down the street, and a dark-colored Chevy pulled into the gas station. It was him.

“Uh, I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just fill up with gas and be on my way. Thanks for the chat.” And the ass-load of confusion he’d just dumped onto her. With a stiff wave, Emily backed out of the parking spot and followed the truck into the gas station.

She could do this. The blond man from the picture had slid out of the truck and was pumping gas. When she pulled up at the other side of the pump, she realized there was only one nozzle so she waited there awkwardly as he stood with his broad back to her, leaning against the side of the truck as he held the lever.

She opened her mouth to say something, but he turned toward her abruptly, his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. His eyes were such a cool green, she froze under his attention. Chance Dawson dragged his gaze down the length of her, to her jacket, thighs, hiking boots, then back up, hitting all her curvy spots. Emily’s breath quickened in her chest, and her heart pounded against her sternum, urging her to run.

Chance straightened and canted his head in a very animal-like way. Eyes locked on hers, he said, “Nice wheels.”

Emily looked behind her and then gave him a tremulous smile. “Those said wheels are a little low on air.”

Chance jerked his chin to an air pump. “That machine is a little bastard and takes double the quarters it says, just so you know.”

“Th-thanks,” she stammered. Shit. She had to get ahold of herself and remember how to seduce a man, and fast. “I like your wheels, too.”

“Not mine,” he said as the gas pump lever clicked, telling him the tank was full. “It belongs to my cousin. I don’t have much use for a truck yet. Figured I’d top him off while I was in town for borrowing his ride, though.”

“That’s nice of you,” she gritted out, her head spinning. Why was he acting like a damned saint when he was a devil in disguise?

Chance grunted, apparently uninterested in her compliments, and handed her the pump, careful to keep the tip pointed away from her. But when she reached for it, her hand brushed his, and a shock zinged up her arm. It was painful, as if she’d punched an electric fence.

“Ow!” She dropped the pump and shook out her fingers. “What was that for?”

Chance was staring down at his own hand as if he’d never seen it before, and with troubled eyes, he backed away from her a step. He pulled off his black winter hat, and she noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing a jacket despite the bitter chill in the air. Instead, he wore a gray, skin-tight sweater with a smattering of holes on the shoulder and the top two buttons undone, exposing a rock-hard chest beneath. His hair was mussed from the hat, and her fingers suddenly itched to smooth it out, just to see if the platinum blond crop was as soft as it looked. He was tall, much taller than her, with wide shoulders that tapered into a V-shaped waist, and long, powerful legs clad in low slung jeans. His skin was fair, which gave her an advantage because now his cheeks were coloring red, and she could see she had some sort of effect on him.

Before she could change her mind, she reached forward and pressed her hand onto his chest, right over his heart. It beat in a fast, steady rhythm under her palm.

Chance’s gaze turned intense in an instant. He held her hand there, pressed against him, watching her like a hunter on prey.

Uncle Victor had told her shifters didn’t have hearts, but clearly, he’d been wrong. Or he’d lied.

Feeling like the earth was toppling and splitting under her feet, Emily huffed a frozen breath and pulled her hand away in a rush. “I’m sorry.”

“Who are you?” he asked in a deep timbre that brought chills to her forearms. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to seduce him, not the other way around.

“Emily Chastain,” she whispered. “I’m new here. Just bought a cabin up the road.”

Even pretty monsters could hear lies, so she had to stick as close to the truth as possible.

Chance stepped closer and tugged a strand of her chestnut hair that had been whipping around in the wind. He held it between his fingers for a moment, his eyes unreadable as he stared at it. But as fast as he’d snatched it from the air, he released it and turned, then strode inside the gas station, leaving her unsteady and wondering what the hell had just happened.

As if in a trance, Emily filled the tank of her ATV and then stumbled inside to pay. With one slow blink to the back where Chance was loading his gargantuan hand with a stack of individually-wrapped pickles, she stepped up to the counter. She reached into her back pocket to grab…nothing.

Shit. Frantically, she searched both back pockets, her front pockets, and inside the abundance of zippers of her fitted winter jacket. Double shit. “I-I think I forgot my wallet.” In her rush to get here, her mind clouded with anger, she’d left her pink money pouch on the kitchen table. She was sure of it.

The gas station attendant raised her delicate, dark eyebrows and offered her a bland expression. “Seriously?”

“I’m so sorry,” Emily rushed out. “I live right up the road. Is it okay if I go get it and come right back?”

“No. No free gas. That shit’s hard to come by and like gold around here right now. If you were a townie, I’d trust you, but as it stands, I’ve never seen you before in my life.”