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  Bear in Mind

  By Kate Rudolph

  Bear in Mind © Kate Rudolph 2016.

  Edited by Rearing Horse Editing.

  Cover design by Kate Rudolph.

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical reviews and articles.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature readers.

  Published by Kate Rudolph.

  www.katerudolph.net

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kiev, Ukraine

  Sandra Khee wanted to adjust the ear piece, but after six years of using them, she knew it was better to leave it in place. They always felt two seconds away from falling out, but in over a hundred missions it hadn’t happened once. She hadn’t wanted to come into the building until later, but her keycard wouldn’t work between the hours of midnight and five am. Her superiors had deemed it better to send her in early rather than to try and break in later.

  She massaged her temple once before easing into a utility closet. The fit was tight. Despite her years as a contractor, Sandra had never lost what an ex-boyfriend had generously referred to as her curves. But with her ass wedged between two shelves and her tits pressed tight against the wall, she almost wished she was one of the stick-thin girls who Commander Vovk entertained on his lunch hour. The thought of watching the man eat turned her stomach.

  No, she’d much rather deal with the discomfort of the closet.

  “Are you in?” a high-pitched voice chimed in her ear. Canary was running this mission from the comfort of the office back in Virginia.

  “Yes.” When she’d first joined the Sector, Sandra had added color commentary to all of her replies. Now she knew it was better to keep her answers short and to the point.

  “The security crew is,” the radio glitched for a moment before Canary came back over the line, “At 0350. Hold your position.”

  Radio signals were choppy in the building. It was something to do with communications on the fourth floor. The signal was almost clear where Sandra stood on the ninth floor, though they were still dealing with minor interruptions. Still, the bulk of the message got through on the secure line.

  For Sandra, being this high up was almost peaceful, especially so late at night. The cacophony of the city died down as workers filtered out from the business district and the building was nearly empty, save for a skeleton crew. It was why Sandra loved the night. At least night in emptied spaces. She’d shoot herself or someone else before happily venturing to the clubs and bars of the entertainment districts.

  The music was bad enough, but with the horny, drunken thoughts assailing her from all ends, she felt that she might drown, leaving nothing but an empty shell of a woman.

  That was the risk of using her telepathic powers.

  Sandra was going to enjoy the reprieve while it lasted. Tomorrow she would be on a plane headed back for the States, and the onslaught of stray thoughts would give her a migraine that lasted for days. Maybe if people knew that psychics existed they would learn to practice a little mental discipline. Because she really didn’t give two fucks about who they wanted to screw or what they wanted to eat. She just wanted a little peace and quiet.

  Thirty-five minutes into her wait, Sandra’s leg started to cramp. She tried to wiggle her toes and flex the muscle, but it didn’t help. She bit her lip against the pain and tried to wait it out. A minute later, there was a loud crackle of feedback before her radio went absolutely silent.

  “Canary?” She whispered, “Are you there?”

  No response.

  “Canary, this is Sandra. Come in.”

  No response.

  The radio had crapped out.

  Sandra shook her head, trying to see if she could get a better signal, but there was nothing but silence. As if to cap off this wonderful turn of events, Sandra’s headache intensified. She had to bite her lip to keep from whimpering. When this mission was done, she was staying under the covers for a week and no one was allowed to interrupt her.

  But she wouldn’t dwell—she’d work past the pain and the radio silence and be on her way home before dawn.

  Steady breathing brought the headache under control. At the scheduled time, Sandra got ready to ease out of the utility closet. She opened the door slowly. It didn’t creek, but there was no one around to hear it.

  Ready for the surge of pain, Sandra opened up her senses. The thoughts of everyone within a square mile rushed over her in a suffocating wave. But Sandra sifted through them, ignoring all of the Ukrainian and Russian thoughts, concerns, and inner conversations. If she concentrated, she’d understand the thoughts as if they were spoken in plain English. Luckily that little trick wasn’t automatic.

  Then she picked up on a flicker of a thought, weak and tired now, but not far away.

  All of the sudden, her radio flared back to life with a screech. “Are you there? God, Sandy, come in! Abort! Abort!” Canary was mad with worry and Sandra immediately froze.

  “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’ll be at the rendezvous point in fifteen.” She had no idea why the OP was called off, but it wasn’t her place to question.

  “All rendezvous points have been compromised. Repeat, do not go to the rendezvous or the safe house.”

  What the fuck? “Then where the hell am I supposed to go?” Sandra looked around—she was still alone, but she was out in the open, in a bank of desks used by clerks during the day. If anyone came through the elevator, they’d see her. Sandra crouched down so that she’d at least be blocked from view by a workstation.

  “Keep this line open and stay safe. I’ll have more information for you as I have it.” Canary offered no more, not even when Sandra practically yelled into the line.

  Damn it. This mission had been three months of her life. And now to be called in at the final moment. This wasn’t the first time, but this one stung in particular.

  Orders were orders.

  Sandra made sure that nothing was out of the ordinary. She wasn’t supposed to be in the building so late, but she could always lie about her purpose. Her radio was little more than an earpiece, and it was invisible to the naked eye. All of the gear that she’d planned to use on the mission was secreted away under her jacket. She looked like a normal secretary with nothing to hide.

  It was what made her the perfect covert operative.

  Sandra left the building, taking the stairs quickly. Not only did she have less chance of being caught by doing so, but this building had been built during the height of Soviet occupation. The elevator had a bad habit of stopping between floors, leaving passengers stuck until maintenance could fix it.

  She proceeded without incident even as she passed the guard on the ground floor. He was so engrossed in his newspaper that he didn’t see her walk by. No, what tripped her up was the man walking in. He was over six-feet-tall and had dark hair pulled back into a low-hanging ponytail. Wire-rimmed glasses covered his eyes, resting on a hook nose. He was pale, almost wraith like in the night.

  But that shouldn’t have bothered her. Sure, he looked a bit sinister, but he wasn’t the only pale man in Kiev who looked like he hoarded secrets. Something was off about him. When he smiled and nodded at her, a shiver raced down her spine, making her want to run.

  He had a whole load of not-good about him.

  But she forced herself to
smile and nod back at him. No reason to arouse suspicion when she was so close to getting out.

  He opened the door to let her out, but before she crossed the threshold, he grabbed her arm, his pale, white hand in sharp relief against her dark coat.

  “Have a nice night.” The word 'nice' was sibilant, almost like a snake’s hiss. Sandra gulped.

  The man let her go without another word and they both went their separate ways.

  As she made her way down the street to the closest bus stop, she stumbled. Unbidden, her senses opened up once more, casting far and wide as the thoughts of everyone in Kiev poured into her, fully translated.

  He’s so hot—Just one more drink—I’ll fuck her so hard—Please don’t hit—Kill them punch him kiss her one drinksomechipswiththatfuckfuckanotherdrink-I’MTRYINGTOSLEEPohnowhathaveIdonemakeitpretzelsaredeliciouswantsomedope.

  Sandra fell to her knees as the voices overwhelmed her. It had never been this strong before and she had no idea why it was happening. She tried to move forward, tried to crawl, but the thoughts in her head were too much. They were like a wall in front of her. All that she could manage was to get against the side of the building and kneel there, trembling.

  There was no one in sight, and yet it was louder than standing in front of the speakers at a rock concert. She slumped over and curled into a ball, twitching as a few particularly loud thoughts punched her consciousness without mercy.

  It was too much.

  She needed quiet.

  She needed to shut off her powers.

  She needed out.

  “Canary,” she managed to gasp. “Help.” But she had no idea if she said the words or if they were lost in the deluge of thoughts.

  Sandra saw a bright flash of light up in the sky, but before she could try to puzzle out what it was, her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out on the street.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Montana, USA - Six Months Later

  Sandra was in heaven. She’d moved into her new house a little more than two weeks ago, and in that time there’d only been one thing in her mind.

  Blessed silence.

  Six months earlier she had woken up in a Ukrainian hospital with ripped clothes and no ID. A couple of Lithuanian tourists had spotted her and gotten help for her after she’d lost consciousness. A few weeks after that, a man from the Sector’s HR division had come to see her after she was settled back into her apartment in Maryland. After explaining that she’d lost contact with her team due to an unrelated bombing that night, he’d delivered his final remarks. He’d given her a large check and thanked her for her service.

  She’d been fired.

  But six years as a highly paid contractor meant that she had enough of a nest egg to do what she’d wanted to do for quite some time. She’d put in her notice that she would not be renewing her lease for her apartment, and had then gone looking for land. A nice realtor out of Missoula, Montana had seen to her needs and now she had thirty-three acres of land to call her own. The house could do with a bit of work, though.

  Well, the house could do with a bit of actual house.

  The price of the land had been so good, and the pictures had been so beautiful, that Sandra had neglected to take in the full picture. Yes, there was a very beautiful, three-thousand square foot farmhouse on the property. In the picture of the listing it gleamed white in the daylight. And, yes, she did have a nice master bedroom, working bathroom, and kitchen.

  She’d just made one mistake.

  She’d thought that the house and the living space were one and the same.

  When she’d arrived, she learned that she’d thought wrong. The house was nicely painted, but the previous owners had gutted it before abandoning the property. It would take months to make it livable. It was covered in mold, and rodents had made a home in the second floor bathroom.

  Sandra could not abide rodents.

  What she was left with was a dwelling that had been recovered from storage. It had survived the winter and the rats. There was only one problem.

  She could touch both walls by stretching her arms out, and it wasn’t even difficult. Apparently, the previous owners had been tiny-house enthusiasts. For some reason, they’d left their project behind when they left. But their abandonment was Sandra’s saving grace. It was a roof over her head. A tiny-roof, but a roof nonetheless. The kitchen was less versatile than most college dorms, and Sandra had been living off of trail mix and granola bars for days. Her stomach growled, and she was already feeling a little dizzy. She needed nutrients. If she couldn’t get real food today, she was going to the nearest restaurant and ordering enough food to last the week.

  Missoula itself was nearly seventy-five miles away, but there was a smaller town twenty miles in the other direction. Most of her things were in a storage shed there. And there they would stay until she had a proper house that could fit both a couch and a side table while still letting her walk on the floor.

  Despite the housing situation, Sandra was happy. Happier than she could ever remembering being. The Sector had used her skills since she was twenty, recruited her out of her junior year of college, and she had thought it was the best thing ever. But constantly using her psychic power for six years straight had made it stronger and more sensitive. Before the Sector, she could barely read the thoughts of a person twenty feet away. Now she could decipher a mind thinking in a foreign language a mile out.

  She was better at blocking now, too, but it wasn’t perfect. When she was near people, the best she could hope for was the mental equivalent of white noise. Stray thoughts would occasionally flit against her mind, and it took her a minute to figure out if they were her own.

  That was what made Montana perfect for her. The land was cheap and plentiful, and there was no one for miles. The real estate agent had explained that her property butted up against a state park on one end and a massive private property on the other. She didn’t need to worry about seeing anyone when she didn’t want to. Her nearest neighbor was more than three miles away.

  She could see mountains in the distance and trees surrounded her. She couldn’t be happier.

  Get over here, you damned fish.

  Fish?

  The thought didn’t strike her as out of place at first, but then Sandra realized it wasn’t her own. She shook her head. Ever since that night six months ago, her powers had been a bit spotty. She’d suddenly lose control of her shields, or she’d experience sudden spikes, hearing thoughts from people miles and miles away.

  Even so, she should have been far away enough that she didn’t hear things that clearly. Typically speaking, she only confused thoughts for her own when she was in the same room with the thinker.

  You’re not getting away that—damn it!

  Sandra felt a blast of cold water. That was new. Her powers were purely thought based. She might hear that someone was cold, but she never felt it.

  Until now. It was like that thought – that feeling was being projected.

  She took off running towards the stream that ran behind the house. It was nearly a half-mile away, and she was already a few hundred feet from the tiny-house when she realized that she'd left her cell phone inside. It gave her pause. If someone had fallen in the stream in this pre-winter chill, they’d need help from the paramedics. But if she wasted time getting her phone, they might drown.

  She left it. Saving the person, if he needed to be saved, had to come first.

  The path to the stream was clear, no branches or roots tripped her up. Sandra sprinted, and she made it in three minutes.

  She stood on the pebble-strewn bank, looking out at the rushing water. There was no one in sight and when she cast out her senses, and she didn’t hear any thoughts. That was bad. Either the stream had swept the person out of her range, or that person wasn’t thinking anymore.

  Sandra got a little closer to the water. It was chilly out and she didn’t want to get wet, but she’d dive in if she had to.

  A splash a little downs
tream got her hopes up and Sandra got closer, hoping it was a weird power fluctuation keeping her from hearing the man’s thoughts.

  But as she drew closer, she saw a fur covered limb, ending with wickedly sharp claws, scratching its way onto the shore. This was no man.

  It was a freaking grizzly bear.

  He crawled out of the water, the hulking mass of him, his brown fur soaked. Still not noticing her, he shook himself off like a dog. Sandra was close enough that some of the water landed on her.

  She shrieked a tiny 'eep' and took a step back.

  The bear saw her and tilted his head to the side.

  Sandra’s heart pounded. She took a step back and tripped on a rock, falling back and shooting her hands out to catch her. She yelped in pain this time as she landed wrong. Stupid, stupid! She thought to herself, knowing for sure that this time those thoughts were her own. She knew how to fall correctly, and she needed her wits about her.

  But that run had taken something out of her and her dizziness from earlier was catching up. She couldn’t pass out. She wasn’t the passing out type. That night in the Ukraine was the first time she’d ever lost consciousness like that, and she wasn’t looking to recreate the experience, especially in front of a bear.

  The creature in question lumbered over and Sandra drew her legs in close. She really didn’t want to die. And being mauled by a grizzly bear her first week in the state somehow seemed too ironic to be permitted.

  Crap, what’s she doing here. Is she alright? She heard the thoughts loud and clear, but they could only be coming from the bear. Sandra only heard human thoughts. Period. Animals didn’t think like people. So she shouldn’t be understanding a wild grizzly bear.

  And yet it seemed she did.

  She’s going to panic.

  Going to? She was already panicking. Her breaths came in faster and faster as the bear drew closer. And when he got within inches of her, she gave up. Let the bear eat her.

  She slumped down, her eyes rolling up as she fainted for the second time in her life.

  Sandra didn’t stay out for long. It was like her body just needed a few moments to recalibrate. But when she came to, it was to the feel of damp fur against her shirt and jeans as the bear carried - carried! - her away. She didn’t even think that bears could walk upright.