FROST SECURITY: Richard

by Glenna Sinclair

  As she was getting Eli and Wallach into the back, my phone buzzed from a received text message. It was Frank, letting me know the wrecker was on its way to get Jessica’s car and he was having it towed to the office for safe keeping. By the time I’d finished typing out a “thank you” in reply, Jess was in the Jeep with the door closed.

  I stripped my sidearm off, put it in the center console, and we were off. All I had to do was make one more stop, this time for gas, and we’d be headed for the safe house.

  With Frank here, and soon Matthew and Jake, I just hoped we could get the situation under control. Otherwise, we’d been spending more than just a few days at the cabin.

  I wasn’t sure what worried me most about this situation: that we had an outlaw biker gang hot on our trail, or that I was kind of looking forward to a few days alone with Jessica?

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Jessica

  We stopped at Sheila’s house on the way out to the cabin. I left him back in the Jeep as I went up and knocked on the front door, both pups on their leads, food in hand. She answered a moment later.

  “Thank you so much for doing this on such short notice,” I said as I passed over Eli and Wallach’s leashes to her, along with the dog food and everything else she might need.

  “Girl, I’m just happy you’re okay!”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine. Just taking Frost Security up on their recommendation, you know.”

  “What? Sorry, I just saw your car out on the highway near your place, with the tow-truck grabbing it while I was on my way here to meet you. What happened?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I paused, licked my lips, tried to think of the best way to phrase this next part. “Remember how Richard was worried things would escalate, and how he wanted to move me up to the safe house in case something happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, things escalated, something happened. A big black pickup tried to run me off the road, but ended up just putting a hole in my oil pan. Car’s screwed for right now, but I’m safe.”

  “Thank God,” she said again. Her tone changed abruptly, though, to a decidedly more lascivious one. “Wait, so you’re going to a safe house?” she asked. “With Richard? Alone?”

  “Oh, shut up, Sheila,” I groaned.

  “Where’s it at, huh? Up in the woods somewhere? Huh, huh?”

  “Sheila,” I hissed. “It’s not like that.”

  “Nice, secluded spot somewhere north of town, where no one can hear either of you scream all night long?”

  I laughed at her innuendo. “You know it’s not like that. He’s a professional, Sheila, and that’s why I hired him.”

  “Oh, I know how guys are, girl. Especially when they’re in front of a roaring fireplace on a cool evening, with the nearest neighbor miles away. All that professionalism goes right out the window, baby.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I groaned. “You’re making this into something else entirely, and you know it.”

  My phone rang as Sheila replied. I took it from my back pocket and glanced at the screen, saw that it was Karen calling. I was tempted to pick up the phone, just to tell her I was fine, but didn’t want to have to start spinning another web of lies. And, with Karen, I’d have to with as big of a gossip as she was.

  “This is all we need for the dogs, right?” Sheila asked. “I just want to make sure I don’t need to swing out and grab anything before any of the shops close, or go by your place.” Sheila was the only person I’d exchanged spare keys with, other than the landlord of course, and she dog sat for me on the few occasions I had to travel out of Enchanted Rock on business, or pleasure. It was the same for me and her houseplants. Admittedly, I did a lot more watering for her than she did dog sitting for me, but I didn’t mind.

  “Nope, you should be good.”

  She went to say something, but stopped mid-word as her phone began to ring. She rolled her eyes and showed me the phone’s screen. Karen Ray.

  I winced a little.“Wait, hold on. Sheila, I need you to lie to Karen about what happened. She came by the house last night while Richard was there, and I lied and said he was a friend.”

  “You lied to her?” she asked, her interest intensifying. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I groaned. “I just did. She probably saw my car and wants to know what happened. Tell her I’m fine, that I hit a rock in the road or something, okay? That you talked to me a little while ago.”

  She laughed. “She’s just going to call you back.”

  Crap, she was right. I bit my thumb nail, chewed away at it. “Well, I think I’ll be out of reception. Just, whatever you do, don’t tell her what’s going on.”

  My best friend giggled again. “I still don’t see why you don’t tell her yourself. She’s going to figure it out eventually.”

  “Oh,” I said, sighing, “I know. Just, I don’t want all of the Rock to find out before I come back to town.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sheila relented. “I’ll call her back when I’m finished. What do you want me to tell her why you’re missing?”

  “Um,” I thought, “tell her I’m on an unexpected trip, with my friend Richard. That’s kind of true.” I sighed. “Isn’t it?”

  “Your devious wish,” she said, chuckling, “is my command, mistress.”

  “Oh, shut up.” I bit my thumb again. “One other thing. Can you put a sign in my window, a nice printed one saying that I’ll be back on Monday? That should give me enough time to get this all figured out.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “absolutely. I can do that. What else?”

  I checked off a mental list of all the things that still needed to be done, things I may have missed. I came up empty, though. “I think that’s it,” I said finally. “If I can think of anything else-”

  “You’ll be out of area,” she finished with a laugh, “and you won’t be able to call me anyways.”

  I laughed. “Yeah,” I said, “I guess so.”

  “You know,” Sheila said, “I do want to say one thing before you go, to just level with you real quick.”

  “Yeah?” I asked as I reached down and scratched behind Wallach’s ears. “What’s up?”

  “You’re taking this really well. The turtle-”

  “Tortoise,” I corrected.

  “The tortoise, the bikers, the truck. All this. I’m kind of surprised.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at the Jeep, at Richard on the phone with the other personnel of his security office. Just seeing him like that, with his proud bearing, his defined muscles, that strong, square jaw, and the way his eyes took in his surroundings even while doing something as simple as speaking on the phone . . . it just filled me with a sense of safety. Like I knew, despite what had happened earlier on the highway, he’d protect me to his dying breath. And that, somehow, made this okay. It made the whole experience a spot of a bad weather in the entirety of my life, instead of the totality of my existence that it could have become.

  “Yeah, girl,” I admitted to Sheila. “Believe me, I’m surprised too.”

  “Well, be careful out there,” she said.

  “I will,” I promised before we both hugged and I turned to leave.

  Both Eli and Wallach whined pathetically as I left, tearing my heart in two. I didn’t want to leave them, but Richard had convinced me this was just easier.

  “Ready?” he asked as I climbed back into the Jeep..

  I nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  We hit the road. As we pulled out the Rock and headed north, further into the mountains, I found myself looking forward to the next few days. I mean, I didn’t necessarily want to be in hiding from a murderous bunch of psychos who’d been stalking me for the last couple weeks and leaving threatening messages on my voicemail. But, and this was a really big but, if I had to be in hiding anyways, a cabin retreat with Richard, alone, high up in the Rockies was almost like a mini vacation.

  If I looked at it that way, this almost approached acceptable.

 
An hour so outside the Rock, just as we were passing an old trading post style gas station, and turning to head off towards the safe house, my phone began to ring. I pulled it out, looked at the number I didn’t recognize.

  “Another call?” Richard asked.

  I nodded, sighed. “Another call.”

  “Answer it,” he said.

  I groaned, but still hit picked up the call and pressed the phone to my ear. “Jessica Long,” I groaned.

  “Take the deal, Jessica,” said the modulated voice. “Get out of the Rock. Take the deal.” Something about the voice this time seemed off, though. Like, maybe, they were using a different program to filter it?

  “Know what?” I asked. “Screw you.” I hung up the phone, pressing the button furiously, and tossed it back in my purse.

  I was sick of this. And more than ready for it to be over.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Richard

  We followed the curves of the road after we left the highway, going further and further into the woods with every twist and turn.

  “This place is really out here, isn’t it?” Jessica asked, peering out the passenger side window at all the pine and spruce and fir and aspen.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “No reception on the phone, even. We have to keep an old school radio up here for winter as a just in case kind of thing.”

  “Wild animals?”

  “Oh yeah. Around hunting season this place gets pretty loud with the number of hunters coming up for the elk and deer. Other than that, though, it’s quiet.”

  “Wolves?” she asked. “I heard something about them introducing wolves to the area.”

  Uncomfortable with how close to hope that question was, I shifted in my seat as we made another bend and continued our ascent. “Not really,” I lied. How could I tell her the truth?

  After that, we lapsed into a friendly silence as we finished the drive. There wasn't anything disconcerting about the quiet as we just soaked in the forest like two old friends. The land here has a majesty to it, a presence that impresses on you how tiny of a speck you are in the universe. Even down in Enchanted Rock, with the mountains surrounding and dwarfing everything, a person could forget this fact. Here, though, as we slowly trucked deeper into the woods, you were eloquently reminded of that.

  The mountain valley stretched out behind us, and the mountains towered around us. Pines stretched as far as the eye could see, split only a tiny silver sliver of highway as it cut its way through the valley. This was as close to wild country as you got, and it sang to my soul in a way that no other place ever had.

  Soon after, we pulled up at the safe house, a three bedroom cabin Peter and I had purchased on the cheap from one of our early clients when we set up Frost Security. The woman hadn’t wanted the hassle of renovating, and we knew we’d need a safe place for the pack. Besides, where would we put any clients we picked up along the way, like Jessica, that might be in need? With the help of YouTube, and some blogs, we spent our weekends fixing the place up and getting it livable again.

  Yes, even shifters use YouTube.

  Frank’s silver Mustang sat parked in front, and the screen door hung open.

  “This is it, huh?” Jessica asked, smiling as she looked around the little homestead.

  “Not like it?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied, “not that. It’s just, well, this is even more real all of a sudden. I’m going to be in a safe house for the next three days, at least.”

  I nodded. “At least you’ll have company, though. Right?”

  She smiled a little as she opened the passenger door. “I guess there’s that.”

  We piled out of the Jeep as Frank came up out onto the porch. I slung my rucksack go-bag over my shoulder and we headed up to meet him.

  “Made good time, buddy,” Frank said as we stomped up onto the porch and I held open the screen door for Jess to head past me. “And the Genny’s already going, too.”

  She walked inside and did a quick look around, nodded approvingly.

  The place was rustic, to put it politely. A comfortable couch, a small table for eating, a couple comfortable chairs, and a giant rug to tie it all together. A flat screen television was mounted on one wall, but I couldn’t recall the last time it had been turned on. Sure, we had a satellite dish out back and everything, but it still saw little use. Builtin bookshelves covered the interior wall of the room, and we’d stocked it with a combination of the classics, old history books, and newer titles. Everything from Kipling to Joyce to King to Rowling. Most people forgot to bring anything to read when they were afraid for their lives, and, besides, Peter would rather thumb through a book than play cards or watch TV. Of course, we had cards, and dominoes, and a dozen other board games. Long nights in the dead of winter were better with a little entertainment.

  The full kitchen opened into the living room, with a little island for food prep sitting on the border between the two. During the winter, you wanted the heat from the oven to help with the rest of the house. Hell, on some summer nights up here it was still a good idea.

  On the same wall as the bookshelves, a door led into a hallway that snaked around back to the front, connecting the three bedrooms and one bath.

  “Didn’t have much choice,” Jessica admitted as she dropped her bag on the couch and had a little stretch from her hour and a half or so in the car, riding her shirt up a little in front so we could see her midriff. “Richard said we needed to get out of there.”

  My pack-mate looked away as she stretched, shifted his eyes to mine. Something in his eyes told me he wanted to look just as much as me, but knew it would be wrong. “Normal week’s worth of provisions in the kitchen. Meat enough, fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs. May have to thaw some of the meat, but shouldn’t have to come down from the mountain for a while. Y’all be right as rain, I figure.”

  Jessica’s eyes went wide. “A week? A whole week?”

  I raised a hand before Frank could. “It’s just a precaution. I don’t expect anymore than a few days, at most. But we do a week at a time to minimize trips back and forth.”

  Frank nodded, agreeing with me, and continued. “Canned veggies enough to wait out Armageddon, and beans, rice, pasta, whatever’s needed stocked as well. Anything else?”

  “Fuel?”

  He nodded. “Got enough. Need to catch up on the wood, though. Know how Peter gets if there’s not a whole chord before winter. You should probably chop some, given a chance and some boredom.”

  “Well, there’s nothing else to do up here, is there?”

  “Hiking in the woods,” Jessica offered.

  I nodded. “Trails are tough, but you might like them. Mostly uphill.”

  “Alright,” Frank said finally, “I’m heading back down. Radio’s working if there’s anything y’all need, okay?”

  “Why not just call?” Jessica asked.

  “Cell’s don’t reach,” I replied. “Not unless you have a satellite phone, that is. Out here we’re about as off the grid as you’re going to get.”

  She nodded. “Got it.”

  Frank turned to leave, but stopped in his tracks and looked back to me. “Head out with me to the car, buddy?”

  I thought it was odd, but shrugged and went along with him anyways. I stopped at the screen door and turned back to Jessica. “Pick out whichever room you want, I’ll take one of the others. I’m not choosy.”

  “Sure,” she replied and grabbed her bag, headed down the hallway to the bedrooms.

  I joined Frank on the porch and stepped down, headed out to his old Mustang with him.

  He stopped next to his car, leaned back against it. “Found the one, huh buddy? Found your mate?”

  I was immediately taken aback by his words, all the sense knocked from my head. “My mate?” I sputtered. “What? Excuse me?”

  He laughed dryly, shook his head. “Frost not say anything about it? Assuming he knew since he was in town to take the client.”

  I rounded back to my
original question, leaned in closer, more intently. “My mate?”

  I wasn’t raised by shifters, not really. My father was one, but he’d left his pack because they wouldn’t let him be with a non-shifter. Said it was immoral, that it contaminated the bloodline. I wasn’t old enough to understand when he died in the car accident, and he never told me to my face. Instead, my mother gave me a letter when I came of age, telling me about my lineage. It didn’t have much else in it, other than that I was a shifter, and there were others like me in the world. Mom told me he wanted me to be my own man, not bound up in the old world’s ideas of what I should be.

  Frank clapped me on the shoulder, leaned in close and looked me in the eye. “Your mate. The person you’re meant to be with. You can smell her, can’t you?”

  I nodded, my eyes intently returning his gaze.

  He squeezed my shoulder, gave me a rare smile. “My uncles always said it had been the most unique smell in the whole world for them, that they’d never been able to get it out of their minds, or noses. Ain’t shit else like it, buddy, and I’m glad you found her.”

  This was probably only the third or fourth time I’d heard Frank discuss his past before the military, or his job after the service as a private bodyguard in South America. Most soldiers, they came back from the war not willing to discuss anything that happened over there. Frank, though, Frank was different in that regard. He was an open book on most things except for his childhood.

  “How could you tell? I mean, about me?”

  “You,” he said, chuckling. “There was just something different about you when I got back from Denver, then I saw what it was on the side of the road. Know how we all changed after the service, how we can all spot other guys that have seen combat? It’s like that.”

  I shook my head. “This is just unbelievable. People don’t, we don’t mate like that. People don’t-”

  “We ain’t people, Richard,” Frank said, cutting me off. “Shifter blood, remember? Turn into a fucking wolf at night, and only silver can kill us. Remember? Think we’re the same as humans? Think the same rules apply? That’s just crazy to think that. You’re a wolf, not a man.”