Chapter 4

• She nodded and didn’t have a chance to say any more before the line went quiet. Looking at the phone, she double-checked to make sure he’d hung up. She was alone. She nodded to herself as she stuffed the phone in her pack and put it over her head. She tightened the strap a bit, so it wouldn’t get snagged on anything.
• Checking once more, her heart felt like it was in her throat when she saw both men standing there now looking in the same direction she was, finding somewhere to stay out of sight may prove difficult. Sliding down, she prayed the tree and grass hid her completely. Pulling off her hoodie, then her t-shirt and leggings, she rolled them into a ball. She’d just bought that hoodie and wasn’t impressed she was leaving it behind. As a fox shifter though, she wasn’t large, so she couldn’t cart a wardrobe around with her as big clans could.
• Checking that the pack was zipped up, she blew out a breath and shifted. She’d have to stay low until she put a few more trees between them and her. Looking one last time at her clothes, she turned and took off into the trees, zigzagging between them, making herself hard to track.
• She scented around her, and didn’t pick up any nearby wildlife, that made it easier, she didn’t need any confrontations to add to her not-great day. It took a lot of concentration to keep going and not turn around and look back to see what those men were doing. They had guns and hers was under the seat of the van, so it was a no-brainer that running was the best option this time. She wasn’t sure if she could shoot a living thing, but now wasn’t the time to find out either.
• She went flying past a rotting log and then put on the brakes and slid over the ground. Going back, she scented the log, and the area around it, there were no markings of a wild creature that she could detect. Moving closer, she checked under the log to see an old burrow was there. That year of running in bushes to escape her family had done some good, she knew instinctively where the best locations were for burrows and dens.
• Scanning behind her, she froze, becoming statuesque, and moved only her eyes to see if she had anyone coming up on her. She didn’t see anything, she inhaled slowly, and the scent of rank cologne came to her. No shifter, with a brain, wore anything perfumed. They weren’t just on the wrong side of right; they were lacking normal shifter values and common sense too.
• Putting her belly to the ground, she moved so her head was in the opening of the burrow and inhaled slowly, she couldn’t pick up anything that told her this was some creatures’ home. That was a bonus, the last thing she needed was to pull a Goldilocks and be in someone else’s home when they came back.
• She hated every second of having to do this, but there was no way those two behemoths were intelligent enough to look in a barely visible hole in the ground. Baring her teeth at the thought of doing something like this, she jumped over the log and then relieved herself on the brown grass. Snort that, she thought as she jumped back over it and crouched down to creep into the burrow.
• Her fox was one of the smaller animals in their world, but still bigger than the real ones. There was a moment of feeling stuck as she squeezed her larger body down the tunnel, hopefully, it was a normal den dugout after this, or she was going to be in a bigger mess than she already was.
• Focusing on her breathing, she kept herself calm as she reached the bottom and then turned awkwardly so she was facing out again. The inner part had a faint scent of a real fox, a long-ago abandoned den. She didn’t let herself think of what had caused them to move away and not return, although, with no wildlife scents in the area, that could have been it—no prey to hunt.
• Shuffling, keeping her body scrunched up, she moved back up toward the entrance, so she could at least hear if they were close to her location or not. When she stopped, she had a second of panic feeling like she was buried alive. What if they breezed right by here and she wasn’t found? Get it together. This is what you want. Closing her eyes, trying to slow her breathing. The slower she managed the less she felt like the soil pushing against her. Could be worse, you could be sitting at a luncheon with your mother and all the female mates in the clan discussing new gardens for next year. Yeah, as pep talks went, that did the trick. Good thing she had some girly bits in her and was drawn to those pretty leaves was her next thought, or she would have been standing beside the van when they pulled up.
• She couldn’t hear any movement at all, which made her start to wonder if she’d hear Jesse when they got her to retrieve her. She shifted, so she could feel her pack, assuring herself that she still had it. Had she silenced the ringer? She had no idea. He said they could track it—did that work with her hiding in a burrow under the earth? Be a good tracker, Jesse.