Free The Fox and her Bear (Mating Call Dating Agency, #2) by Lynn Red

groaning about his ribs, and a voice she vaguely recognized as Tenner’s saying that he had no idea what happened. He said someone who had it out for him pulled a gun, fired, and then Dawson went—
    And that’s where it ended.
    Angie was shaking, trembling, from her head to the tips of her fingers. She came back to reality with Colton gripping her shoulders and shaking her gently. “Ange? You all right? You kinda zonked out. What’s going on? Is anyone dead?”
    She shook her head, still dazed. “No, at least I don’t think so. He didn’t say, he...”
    “That was the guy? That was the bar?”
    “Yeah, but... I don’t know what’s going on past the basics. I need to go and make sure he’s okay. If nothing else, I think I can safely count him as a friend at this point.”
    “Go, go,” Colton urged her. “It doesn’t matter why you want to check on him, but if you’re this shook up, you must be feeling something . I’ve never seen you get all flustered like that before.”
    And it was true. So achingly, horribly true. She was unshakeable, unflinching. Angie was the one who could handle the worst, most horrific emergencies without batting an eye. She always broke down afterwards, but never in the heat of the moment. “I don’t know what’s going on with me, Colt,” Angie said. “There’s something in my stomach twisting up. It’s like an octopus in is there, suckers sticking all over my insides.”
    “That’s... really gross,” he said with a smile. “But I think that might be love.” Angie returned the expression and sniffed hard, then shook her head.
    “Leave it to me,” she said. “I can take the worst situation and make it somehow even more awful.” She laughed, softly. “Hell, I don’t even know where to go.”
    “Well, you’re a dispatcher. You could, you know, use the radio?”
    That got her laughing more. “Yeah, yeah, I suppose I could, huh?”
    She sent out a call to the patrol cars that had just left Tenner’s, and found that Dawson and Tenner had been packed up in the back of an ambulance and sent off to the White Creek General. “Is he okay?” she asked.
    “Aw, I’m sure he’ll be awright,” Harry Davis, tortoise-shifting patrolman, answered, though he didn’t sound as sure as he acted. “He’s a big boy, yanno, big bear. He got him a few good cuts, and a buncha bruises on them ribs, but, you know, he’s awright. Real cut up though, real busted up. He’s strong, but... damn he’s real messed up.” Davis’s voice was a long, drawn out, monotone drone. “That other one, the fat walrus though, he’s tore up plenty bad. Shot a couple’a times. He’ll be awright though, just take longer.”
    Chewing her lip from the nerves gnawing at her guts, Angie nodded and Colton grabbed her shoulder again. “Okay so, WCG?” she used the in-the-know acronym for the hospital. “Did he hurt anyone?”
    Davis let out a long-winded laugh. “I daresay that young man who decided upon the shootin’ won’t be doin’ that no more. Got another call comin’ through, you take care, little girl.”
    The tortoise signed off, leaving Angie with nothing but her nerves and Colton latched onto her shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine,” he said. “Bears will heal, and fast, too.”
    “That’s not really what I’m worried about,” she said. “From the sound of things, he really tore up the guy who got violent. All these things are running through my head. I can’t stop thinking he killed someone, or ended up really tearing someone up. Even if he was just defending himself, that’s still...”
    “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Colton said, staring straight into her eyes. “Listen to me, Ange. You know I’m right. You know I’m telling you the truth, and you know you tend to get excited when you really don’t need to. Am I right or not?”
    “You’re right,” she grumbled looking at her toes, which she wiggled. “I need a mani-pedi.”
    “Go check on your boyfriend,