Framing Felipe, page 12
The mutations? Everyone kept pussyfooting around that subject. Just what had
happened to these women? Eric didn’t know Felipe didn’t know, and Felipe wasn’t ready to
admit it. He wanted to pry—use Eric as his Sarah encyclopedia—but that seemed like
cheating in a way. Sarah was a woman who needed to be opened up petal by petal, so he’d
broach the subject with her when the time was right.
FRAMING FELIPE – 76 – Holley Trent
“Let me go with you,” Eric said.
Felipe startled. He hadn’t expected to hear such a proposition. If anything, he expected
Eric to chew him out about his association with Sarah. Then again, the night was young, so
perhaps that was still forthcoming.
“Come with me?”
“You know you were thinking it. You’re going to run off to deal with it, and if I’ve
learned anything at all from the Shrews, I’ve learned you should never go anywhere
without having someone at your back if you can help it.”
“And you want to watch my back?”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? I’m itching for some action. I’m holed up in
this lodge day in and day out. I could do with a bit of danger in my life.”
Felipe shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “I refuse to take
responsibility for any harm you come to.”
“That’s what you’re worried about? Don’t. I’m a grown-‐ass man. I was all-‐state
wrestling champion in my weight class back in high school.”
Is this guy kidding me? Felipe eyed him from head to foot. Eric wasn’t a big guy by any
stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t scrawny, either. “How are your reflexes?”
“I could catch a fly in the palm of my hand.”
“I am sure that’s a very useful trick in the real world.” He sighed. “But get your keys
anyway.”
Eric pumped his fist and jogged past Felipe. He froze in the doorway and pointed at his
guest, his eyes narrowed. “Do me a favor and don’t tell Astrid about this. She’ll kick my ass.”
Felipe closed his eyes, rubbed them, and groaned.
Sarah awoke in the dark with a start and reached for her gun. With her fingers
wrapped around the handle, she stilled. Listening. The room was too quiet. The only sounds
were the loud cranks of the ice machine down the hall and the dogwood braches scraping
against the window in the wind. She blew out a breath and sat up, squinting at the alarm
clock. Three a.m.
FRAMING FELIPE – 77 – Holley Trent
She stretched her arms over her head, letting her tight muscles unclench as she
scanned the room. Instinct told her that bold Felipe should have been on the bed beside
her, but he wasn’t. That side of the bed was still made with the sheets tightly tucked and the
pillows unmolested.
“Damn him.”
She tossed the sheets back and crawled to the other edge, thinking perhaps he’d slept
on the floor near the window.
Nothing there but carpet.
“Fuck.”
Now on her feet, she hurried to her pile of clothes near the bureau, but tripped over
Felipe’s backpack. She stopped her fall by slamming her arm against the dresser top.
If his backpack was still there, he couldn’t have gone far. He wouldn’t have left behind
everything he owned that had value. Maybe he’d gone out to get a drink?
At three a.m.? No way.
She slipped her jeans on and reached for her phone.
Dana answered on the second ring.
“What are you doing up?” Sarah asked.
“We’re on shifts. Not trying to agitate you or anything, but we’re on code orange here.
Gut feel says someone’s trying to get the drop on us. I don’t know if it’s the bears or
someone else. What’s up? You should be resting.”
“I should be, but I had a natural wake-‐up and found Felipe missing. His bag’s here,
though. I’m putting on my shoes now and I’m going to go check the building. Maybe he’s
just watching television or something.”
“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have called me.”
“Honestly, I have no idea why I called you. Must be psychic Shrew shit.”
Sarah padded out into the hallway, shut the door quietly, and headed down the
staircase into the great room. Save for a couple of lamps, the room was dim. Vacant. There
was no one on the sofas. No one in the nooks.
“I wonder if it has anything to do with that news report from earlier,” Dana said.
Sarah paused with her hand on the kitchen door. “What news report?”
“I think it was the seven o’clock broadcast.”
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“I must have fallen asleep around seven. Felipe went out to get rid of our dishes.”
“Oh. Jacques was on the news with Fabian.”
The kitchen was dark. Sarah swore an oath under her breath and tracked to the rear
door. She looked out the window and confirmed that Eric’s big beast of a truck was missing.
“Shit.” She pounded the security code into the keypad and shouldered the door open. “Eric’s
truck is gone. I’m going to run up to the house and see if he’s there.”
“Honey, don’t bother.”
Sarah stopped mid-‐stride. “Why not?”
“Astrid just radioed up from the gate. Felipe and Eric are here with our missing cats.”
The ramifications flicked through Sarah’s mind like frames from an old movie reel. “Are
they, now?” she said, voice dry as she stepped back into the kitchen and shut the door,
resetting the intruder alarm.
“Yeah, they’re coming up the drive. I need to go wake Patrick and call Billy. You stay
put.”
“What? I will not just sit here and twiddle my thumbs while—”
“I mean it, Sarah. You stay there. We’ll deal. You go back to bed and I’ll send Felipe to
you.”
“Well, don’t do me any favors.”
Dana had already hung up.
“Fuck!”
When Felipe returned to the lodge, he hoped to find Sarah still asleep. He padded into
the room at five a.m. and heeled off his shoes near the bathroom. He hardly made a sound
as he tracked across the foyer carpet toward the dresser.
Something rustled on the bed, and he figured it was Sarah rolling over or pulling the
sheets. No such luck.
Sarah sat with her back against the headboard, arms crossed over her chest, eyes wide
open, and casting him a withering glower. She drummed her fingertips along the sides of
her biceps and ground her teeth. That was evident even in the dim light.
FRAMING FELIPE – 79 – Holley Trent
“Hola,” he said lamely.
She scoffed. “Why don’t you go hola yourself, and far away from me, while you’re at it?”
Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and the top foot bobbed angrily.
He couldn’t know for certain why she was angry, but he was smart enough to know it
didn’t matter. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, and tried not to let the sight of her
smooth, brown legs in the dark distract him from the apology she apparently sought.
“Where were you?”
He suspected she already knew, but if that was the game they were playing, he’d join
the fun. At the bedside, he watched her angry expression shift to a milder one of annoyance
as he unbuttoned his pants and let them fall to the floor. Five a.m. or not, he hadn’t gotten
any sleep. He planned to catch a few winks before breakfast, which Eric promised would be
far better than cold cereal.
He slipped beneath the sheets and fluffed the pillows before responding.
Judging by the hard set of her jaw, Sarah’s patience was wearing thin. “Why don’t you
get under the covers? You look cold in my shirt.”
Her response was a long blink, which may have actually been an eye-‐roll.
He settled on his right side and propped his head up on his fist, locking his gaze on her
face. “When I took the dishes into the kitchen, there was a news report—”
“I already know that part.”
“Okay. Spare me some words, then. How far forward shall I jump?”
“How about you fast-‐forward to the part where you thought it would be okay to go
swash-‐buckling without me?”
Swash-buckling? The confusion must have been marked on his face, because she said,
“Astrid is going to kick your ass from here to Kentucky for taking her brother out.”
“Ah.” Felipe suppressed a laugh and shook his head. “No, no, no. He took me out. He
volunteered. And, yes, Astrid was angry. When we left, she was still yelling at him. I am
certain when she gets it out of her system, she’ll turn her angst next to me. No worries,
though, Eric can hold his own in a scuffle.”
“I’m aware of that, but why was there a scuffle?”
“Can we talk about this in the morning?” He clasped his free hand over his yawning
mouth.
FRAMING FELIPE – 80 – Holley Trent
“It is morning.”
“So it is, but how about let us wait until a civilized hour. I’ve already been…what is the
word? De—”
“Debriefed?”
“Yes. Debriefed. I’ve already been debriefed twice. Once by Dana and then by Patrick.”
She sighed, pushed down the covers, and stretched her legs beneath the sheets. Once
she’d squirmed down low enough that her chin met the blanket, she said, “Don’t worry
about it. If Dana knows, there’s nothing further to say.”
“What is this about? You’re not my bodyguard. You’re off the case, yes? Right now,
we’re here because you’re supposed to be getting some sleep, and I’m here because I said I
would stick around and help. And that is what I did.” He raked hair out of his eyes and blew
out a breath. “Although we may have made some things worse in the process.”
“Like what?” Now she turned on her left side and propped her head up, too. The
annoyance had leeched from her face and all that remained was concern.
Clearly, he wouldn’t be getting any sleep until he quelled her curiosity, but he didn’t
mind so much as long as she stayed that close to him. She was so near, he could feel the
heat from her body beneath the covers.
He cleared his throat and averted his gaze from the low dip of the shirt at the top of her
cleavage. “Eric snuck onto the premises to scout out Fabian, because I can not get close. Eric
recognized the sound of a baying were-‐cat, and found a pair locked in one of the campers.
Jacques had forced them to shift. That’s what he does. Makes them all learn to shift on
command so they can pretend to be real animals in the shows. The crowd loves it when the
so-‐called animals go wild.”
“Forced shifting. Damn. It’s hell on the cells. Patrick avoids it as much as he can. Most of
the cats won’t even shift in a fight against the bears unless they run out of options.” Her
forehead furrowed and lips slightly parted while she thought.
Lovely.
Her intelligence did it for him nearly as much as her looks. This was a woman who
should have belonged to someone. What was wrong with American men? Felipe was more
than happy to be the brave volunteer tasked with pinning her down, but recognized she
FRAMING FELIPE – 81 – Holley Trent
might not take kindly to the idea. He was a man who had absolutely nothing to his name.
Nothing to offer. He wasn’t even sure he had a valid passport.
He drew in a breath and cleared his throat again. “Yes, Patrick explained that. Anyhow,
I was standing near the fence waiting for some news from Eric, and that’s when I heard the
bears.”
“The bears? Real bears?”
“No, querida. When I heard them, I told Eric to run, thinking it might have been some
Visas doing security in their beast forms, but he signaled for me to be quiet. He walked to
another camper and pointed to it, then hid in the dark until one of the circus hands went in
with a box of supplies. When the circus hand was distracted with the bears, Eric let the cats
out. They didn’t seem to understand what was going on…”
“Hence the scuffle.”
“Sí.”
A swath of her black hair fell over her eyes, and Felipe reached in, tentatively, and
brushed it back from her face. When she didn’t draw away, he let his fingers linger there,
looping around a length of her hair.
“Some of the staff ran out to see what the trouble was, so I had to run in. I don’t know if
they saw me before I went invisible. I had to make sure Eric saw me before I phased so we
didn’t get in each other’s way.”
“So, after the cats recognized Eric, you all ran?”
“Yes. I didn’t have time to search further for Fabian. Jacques will catch wind of my
presence there. I suspect because of that the circus will move soon, and not using its
planned itinerary.”
“Maybe that means before they pull up stakes, we should run in with guns blazing and
rescue any other folks who need it.”
Felipe shook his head and laid it against the pillow. The sun would rise soon. He
wanted to be well on the way to slumber-‐land before all that yellow light poured into the
room. “Once Jacques secures the next location, they pack up and move fast. May be already
gone.”
“But if they leave, it’ll be harder for you to track your brother. I’m good, but if people
are intentionally obfuscating their tracks, it takes me twice as long to catch a lead. Confuses
FRAMING FELIPE – 82 – Holley Trent
even the best psychics. I’d have to rely on the old-‐fashioned methods which can sometimes
yield results too late.”
“I’m not worried yet. After all, what good is a famous two-‐man acrobatic team if one of
the men is absent? Even if they leave, Jacques will want me to catch up.”
“You do realize you’re talking about walking into a trap, right?”
He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath before answering. “Querida, my
entire life has been one dangerous trap after another. What’s one more?”
“Don’t go out without me again,” she said. It seemed more a request than an order.
Whether it was because she didn’t want to be left out or that she maybe cared a bit about
him, he couldn’t say. But, when he draped his arm over her waist and pulled her a little
closer, she didn’t swat him away.
Didn’t say a word.
FRAMING FELIPE – 83 – Holley Trent
CHAPTER NINE
When Sarah opened her eyes again, this time that unsettling feeling wasn’t riding her.
Everything felt as it should. She tested her limbs and found them entwined with Felipe’s,
who lay in a near-‐plank position on his belly, his left arm still pinning her waist.
With some effort, she turned her body and studied the alarm clock.
