Inside the closed garage, Carly opened the car’s back door, looked inside, and put her hands on her hips. Tiger liked when she stood that way—the stance emphasized the curve of her waist and her sweet backside.
“If we put him in there, someone will see him, won’t they?” she asked Connor.
“I’m thinking they will,” Connor said.
Carly heaved a sigh and clicked the remote on her key chain, and her trunk popped open.
Connor rolled the inert Walker into the trunk. Carly reached for the lid. “I’m really sorry,” she said to Walker before she and Connor slammed the lid shut.
Only then did Tiger let himself retreat to Carly’s bedroom, fetch his clothes, and carry them back with him to the garage. He also brought Carly’s purse from the living room. Having lived for months in the same house with Liam and his mate, Kim, Tiger had learned that these large bags were full of things females considered essential. They fussed when they didn’t have them.
Carly gave Tiger a wide smile he’d treasure for a long time. “Why, thank you, Tiger. What a sweetheart you are.”
“Hey,” Connor said as Tiger pulled on his clothes. “I have to wrap a guy in duct tape and stuff him into your trunk after Tiger knocks him out, and he’s the sweetheart?”
“You’re sweet too, Connor.” Carly dropped a kiss onto Connor’s cheek.
Tiger’s growl stifled itself. If Carly had done that to any other Shifter, he’d have had said Shifter on the floor. But Connor was a cub. Not a threat. Cubs were never threats.
Carly gestured Tiger toward the backseat. “Get in.”
Connor held out his hand. “You’re not coming. You stay here, out of trouble.”
Carly said, “No,” at the same time Tiger did. Connor looked at them both in exasperation.
“You are not driving my car around with Walker wrapped up in the trunk,” Carly said. “Besides, I need it to go to work tomorrow—today. Apparently, I still have a job.”
“I’ll bring it back,” Connor began, but Tiger ended the discussion by getting himself into the front seat of the car.
“She comes,” he said. “We protect her.”
Carly smiled in triumph and slid into the driver’s seat. “Besides,” she said, “You have to ride Sean’s motorcycle back.”
“All right,” Connor said, looking weary. He shut the door for Carly. “But Liam’s going to shit himself, I’m thinking.”
“How did you get to my house anyway?” Carly asked Tiger as she hit the control to open the garage door. “I don’t see a car outside, or another motorcycle. Connor didn’t sneak out and get you while I was asleep, did he?”
“I walked.”
Carly blinked at him. “You what?”
“Walked.”
“Walked,” she repeated. “From Shiftertown.”
Tiger shrugged. “Hitched a ride a couple of times. Connor told Liam where you lived when he called. I heard.”
Connor had been moving toward Sean’s motorcycle, still in Carly’s garage, but he swung around and leaned to look through the car’s window at Tiger. “Wait a minute. Does Liam even know you’re gone?”
“No one saw me,” Tiger said.
“Oh, shite.” Connor thumped his forehead to the window frame. “Goddess, Tiger, you’re going to get me into so much trouble.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carly waited until Connor was ready on Sean’s motorcycle before she started the car. She backed out, thankful that it was still too early for even her hardiest neighbors.
She drove sedately, trying not to attract attention, following Connor as she pulled out onto the main streets.
“Where are we going?” she asked Tiger.
“Shiftertown,” Tiger said. “Best place.”
Carly drove on with misgivings. She wasn’t exactly afraid to go to Shiftertown, but she didn’t like to think what all those Shifters would do with someone from the Shifter Bureau tied up with duct tape and delivered to them.
She supposed she could drive her car straight to a police station and let Connor and Tiger suck it up, but the thought of Connor’s worry over Walker, Tiger, and her changed her mind. Connor was in over his head and scared. Carly didn’t have the heart to give him to the police to question and maybe arrest on top of everything else.
And she remembered what Connor said they might do to Tiger—Take him, quarantine him, execute him, maybe. Carly didn’t want that to happen either.
Tiger stared straight ahead as Carly drove, the streetlights creating bands of light that moved across his face. What he was thinking, she couldn’t guess, and Tiger didn’t offer to share his thoughts. He was mysterious, even more so than the other Shifters she’d met today, and none of them had stirred her desires simply by touching her.
Carly glanced at him as she drove, and sometimes she’d catch him looking back at her, his eyes enigmatic but holding heat.
Shiftertown lay behind the old airport, in houses no one had wanted even before the airport had closed down and moved to where the Bergstrom Air Force Base used to be. When Shifters needed a place to live, the Shifter Bureau and the city had designated the area exclusively for them.
Shifters had moved to the Austin Shiftertown from all corners of the globe, because most countries didn’t want Shifters living in them at all. Obviously the Morrisseys had come from Ireland. But Tiger? Carly couldn’t place his accent. American but neutral. Not from Texas or anywhere in the South anyway.
The sun was just coming up as Carly drove into Shiftertown. She expected to find slums, but after she passed a few derelict stores, a boarded-up gas station, and an empty field, she found old bungalows, neatly painted with equally neat yards, bathed in early-morning sunlight. Some houses were placed one behind the other, with driveways that served both houses.
She followed Connor to a two-story bungalow that looked little different from the one next door to it. The two houses shared a driveway, which was nothing more than two strips of concrete. A small white pickup, another nice Harley, and a smaller car were parked in this driveway. Connor halted the motorcycle next to the other one, and Carly pulled over at the curb and stopped the car.
Tiger was out before she could emerge, and Connor scrambled off the bike, heading to the trunk. Tiger grabbed Carly’s wrist as she was about to push the remote to pop the latch.
“No,” he said in a stern voice. “He’s almost free.”
“What? How on earth could you possibly know that?”
“Smell is different. Connor, get Liam.”
Tiger put himself between Carly and the trunk as Connor ran for the house, but Tiger made no move to dig inside and stop Walker from breaking loose.
“You know, you could just knock him out again,” Carly said.
Tiger shook his head. “If I touch him again, I’ll kill him. Liam will want him to stay alive.”
Carly stopped, the odd phrasing striking her. “What do you want?”
Tiger looked down at her, his eyes becoming fixed. She read confusion in them, puzzlement. “I don’t know,” he said.
His perplexity touched her. Tiger knew his instincts, and was fighting them, but he was obeying orders, not thinking the problem through for himself.
Carly took his hand and squeezed it. “We’ll figure this out.”
Tiger went even more still, his gaze riveted to her. It was unnerving, being pinned by the yellow stare, but at the same time, Carly wanted to hold on to him even harder.
She spied movement behind Tiger and took several rapid paces back. “Too late. He’s out.”