Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(17)

Touching the mug to his lips, he sipped gently at the tea, then took a longer, deeper swallow. The warmth spreading through his belly relaxed the tension, but did nothing to banish the thoughts of her.

And when Ryan was planning a heist, the last thing he needed in the entire world was to be pining over a woman. He shook his head, disappointed at himself yet again, for falling out of touch with himself. Get it together. I haven't slipped this badly since that last job. Then again, I guess that's why it was the last job.

Grocery stores, cattle rustling, he could have done that sort of stuff with his eyes closed, one foot cut off and one hand super glued to the side of his head. Okay, to be fair, the cattle rustling incident didn't go how he'd planned, but he had meant to let himself get caught. Or at least seen.

Then again, he'd also intended on actually stealing that cow and not being paratrooper-dropped by an airborne bat. A gorgeous, curvy, lithe, airborne bat.

He sighed at himself and pushed the memories of Jamie aside again, with a great deal of conscious effort. "Okay," he said aloud, which he hoped would help steel his nerves. "Okay, down to business."

Ryan's dark brown eyes scanned the ledger intently, hoping to see numbers he knew he wouldn't. He'd planned every last, minute detail of this winter flawlessly. Each of the fifteen families and twelve individuals who were under his care had specific needs, and he had planned for all of them.

The panda couple was going to need approximately four hundred pounds of bamboo each to get through the season, but that was already on order; supposed to be coming from a place in Georgia within the week. And then the koalas down the road, Cora and Marmite, were spry enough to grow most of what they needed, although Ryan intended to have some extra stock just in case.

Terry, the crotchety old raccoon, he was no problem since he and the family of mountain goats who lived beside him would eat just about anything.

But that's where it all stopped being so easy. The thing about dietary planning for shifters is that unlike humans, most of them have fairly serious issues with digesting things they aren't supposed to digest. Ryan had heard about a meat-eating rabbit a few months back, but that certainly wasn't the norm. Digestive distress aside, without the right things to eat, shifters, especially ones this old and this frail, weren't going to last.

The rabbits need the vegetables, so do the turtles. He tapped his pen on the ledger's paper. And Lora's not eating right anyway, so she'll probably need yogurt and all other sorts of stuff if she's going to make it. And they'll need some protein. He shook his head. And the possums, where the hell am I even going to buy that many freeze dried bugs? I'd clean out every PetSmart within a hundred miles.

With that thought, his hand froze.

He needed money. Lots of it, and fast. There was no other way to buy what he - what they needed. If he had an entire year to plan, he might've been able to grow more, preserve more, but now? Aside from money, what he needed was time. If he could go back three months and start planning sooner, start buying sooner, he'd still be pressed for time, but it would be easier.

"But that son of a bitch Danniken," Ryan balled his fists, digging his nails into his palms. "He's not going to give these people anything. And even if he decides to, it'll be too late. The muskrats are already starting to dig in and shore up. I need to do this, and I need to do it now."

He'd held off for as long as he could, more out of a sense of self-preservation than anything else. He meant to raise alarms with the half-assed grocery store burglary, if nothing else, so that he could have some kind of platform, even if it was a small one, on a public access news channel that no one ever watched.

If he could tell anyone about all these forgotten shifters, then maybe, just maybe, he could win some hearts. And, hell, if he didn't get caught, he could steal a whole shit-ton of food.

But I screwed around too long. Got too distracted by Jamie. Lost three days I didn't have. Now I'm running out of time. Politics isn't going to work, asking for help isn't going to work. I guess I've got to get back in the game, just one last time. If I can squeeze by this year, I can start earlier on the next. I can grow enough to get by without—

Ryan's fingers had started to unconsciously spin the pen back and forth across the knuckles without him even noticing what he was doing. "Sleight of hand," he said with a grin. "Second nature."

He spread the fingers of his hand out wide, and before his very eyes, the pen vanished, only to reappear in his pocket. A second later, with the flick of his left wrist, it was back on his knuckles, and he was spinning it like nothing had happened.

"Parlor tricks ain't gonna feed this family," his uncle, who had silently entered the room seconds before, said, breaking Ryan's focus. "Unless you're Criss Angel, anyway."

The big bear snickered, but his uncle's face was tight and drawn. "It's bad out there," he said. "Real bad. Lottie and Sam, they don't have food - hell, they don't have oil for their furnace." He pronounced oil in a way that it rhymed with earl. "We can chop wood all day long, but without a pipe line and a refinery, I'm not sure how you're going to get oil for 'em to use."

Sam and Lottie were a pair of mongoose, close in age to Boston and his wife, but in far worse health. He needed oxygen, but refused, instead wearing some sort of odd contraption he'd made himself, to "keep his nose open," as he put it. Lottie was just frail with age, nothing more or less.