A Change To Bear (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters) by A.E. Grace Read Free Book Online Page A

you?”
    “Me?”
    “Yeah, you. Where are you from?”
    “Oh, I’m from everywhere. A citizen of the world, you could say.”
    Terry wanted to groan. “Cool,” she said through a forced smile. A large family at the front of her queue all went through at once, and she was glad to move forward enough to make conversation awkward, and therefore to put an end to it.
    “Well, enjoy your travels, citizen,” she said, putting on a serious face.
    “Like you know it.” He clicked two fingers together.
    She shook her head, and looked up the other side of her line to see where Liam was. He was still nowhere in sight, and she wondered – no she hoped – that he hadn’t just bailed. He didn’t really seem like the type, but it’s not like she knew him.
    Oh well, she thought. Another one gets away. It’s not as if she hadn’t watched them come and go as they lost interest before, or as her job kept her schedule packed with work time, and totally devoid of free time.
    Her queue began to move quickly, and the radio attached the guard’s hip at the front of her line went haywire with overlapping shouting voices. He rushed out, and the lone officer left at the desk began to let people through with more haste. Terry looked behind her, and saw two guards shutting the doors to the border crossing building, firing off Mandarin at each other that she couldn’t understand, but she could certainly tell from their tone that something wrong was going on.
    “This way, please,” she heard, and she turned around to see that the five or so people in front of her had been let through surprisingly quickly. The skinny tall man was already at the neighboring desk. She stepped up and gave the officer her passport. He gestured for her to turn around, to get a look at her backpack, and she turned to her side, beginning to take it off.
    “No need,” the officer said. “Okay. Go.” Two quick stamps on her passport, one on the visa, and she was through. She had officially left China, and in a hurry, too.
    “Is something going on?” she asked the officer, but with nobody left in his line, he was already getting up off his chair. Ignoring her, he darted outside, speaking frantically into his radio. “Great,” Terry said to herself, following him out of the building and back into the sunlight. She hadn’t noticed that the building was air-conditioned – it certainly hadn’t felt that way on the inside, but now that she was outside again, the heat was close and clammy.
    “Over here.”
    Terry turned and saw Liam standing with his hands in his pockets. “How did you get through so fast?”
    “I was in the line next to you,” he said. “You didn’t see me? I walked right past you when they started letting us through quickly.”
    “No.”
    “Oh. I saw you.”
    “Do you know what’s going on? They’ve closed the crossing. I saw them shutting the doors.”
    “Not sure. They’re all over there now,” he said, and he pointed. She turned and followed his finger, and she saw a gap where the crisscrossing mesh didn’t distort her view of the shrubbery behind it. There was a pretty big hole.
    “See that?”
    “Wow. Somebody cut through?”
    “Who knows? Could be. It looks rusty as hell to me. Probably would be pretty easy. You could do it with a pocket knife with enough dedication.”
    “Yeah, but why? If they came back out onto this path, they’d just have another border check at the other end in Vietnam.”
    “It’s probably the other way around,” Liam said. She noticed that he had stepped beside her. “Someone got through Vietnam’s end, but couldn’t get through this end, and so somehow managed to cut a hole in the fence and sneak in without being seen.”
    “In broad daylight?”
    “It’s pretty dark over there. Lots of shade from the trees. Plus, the guard tower is over there, right?” He gestured with his head. “I’d bet he can’t really see where the hole is. It’s not high enough that his line of vision