Grayson pointed to his bag. Marcus pulled a towel out of the bag and dried himself off.
“I hope he doesn’t get electrocuted in there,” Marcus said.
“Only if lightning hits the building and he’s touching it.”
The lightning lacerated the darkness in a jagged dance, striking the ground, one bolt striking a nearby tree with a crack. The tree lit up with fire for a moment, then smoke smoldered under the weight of the rain. Sheets of lightning flashed repetitively as if a paranormal entity was turning it on and off in split seconds. The rain was coming down so hard that it was difficult to see out the windshield.
And they were fogging the car with their breath.
Each bolt came down with a force that seemed intent on splitting the world in half.
Marcus ran the towel over his hair. “If our guy gets spooked, we might not even see him leave. Visibility’s shit. I hope we don’t lose our fugitive, should he leave the warehouse and run off.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.” Grayson reached forward, started the engine, and cranked the windshield wipers up to full. They thudded back and forth, barely making a dent in the deluge, but it felt better to be doing something, anything, even if the world outside remained a gray, vibrating abstraction.
He turned the fan on high to defog the windows.
Then they saw a man running through the warehouse's front door. He hesitated in the pouring rain and looked from Grayson’s SUV to Marcus’s.
“He’s going to go for my vehicle,” Marcus said.
The sheets of lightning were still lighting up the dark sky, but the bolts of lightning were further off.
Grayson and Marcus both jumped out of the SUV and headed for the fugitive.
The guy was soaking wet. So were Grayson and Marcus in short order. They tackled him to the ground, flipped him over, and zip-tied his hands.
Grayson removed a knife and gun from the guy’s belt, and Marcus pulled a knife from his boot.
“I’ll take him to jail,” Marcus said. They hauled the fugitive into Marcus’s SUV. “Are you going home to pack some of your things, shower, and change before you return to Kalispell?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll assist you with packing when you want us to help you move the bulk of your things too. Just let us know when you need us,” Marcus said.
“That would be great.”
Then they gave each other wet hugs and went their separate ways, with Marcus heading for the jailhouse and Grayson returning home.
He texted Kendra, but she didn’t respond right away, and he figured she was busy with her case, and he didn’t want to take her attention off it.
He arrived home and looked through his personal items, trying to decide what to take for his first trip. He hadn’t expected to find a grizzly shifter to mate! He would move his clothes, but first he had to take a shower, put on dry ones, and check with Kendra again to make sure she was truly fine.
Kendra and Ivan saw Collier pull his gun from his shorts and begin firing at them, the windshield taking the brunt of the bullets, shattering it, and they both ducked. Thunderstorms had rolled in, and lightning was flashing across the sky, spears of light stabbing the ground off in the distance, thunder following shortly thereafter.
She tried to back out of the driveway, but Collier shot out her front tires, which pissed her off. They were practically new.
“I’m taking him down as a bear,” Ivan said.
“You’ll get shot.”
“We don’t have any choice. He’s advancing on the car, and we don’t have any weapons.” Ivan glanced at her. “Take off your taser, unless you have a raincoat you can wear over it. But then you wouldn’t be able to use it anyway.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of a police officer getting his wet, and he was fortunate not to get shocked badly because of the leather case around it, though he got a jolt from it.” She removed her clothes. “You’re right. We don’t have a choice.”
She opened her vehicle door, and so did Ivan. They got out of her vehicle, staying low, and shifted. Then they ran at the speed of 35 miles per hour, and the fugitive didn’t have a chance to shoot at them, his face panicked, his eyes huge. He turned and ran back to the fence.
Kendra struck him in the back with her powerful paw, and he went down with a thud. Both she and Ivan checked him to make sure he was alive, and then Kendra stood over the fugitive, and Ivan returned to the car, shifted, dressed, and got handcuffs. He found the gun and a knife on the fugitive and removed them.
