It didn’t take long for Selene to arrive, slipping in and quickly grabbing a robe that Morgan offered. She brushed her hair back with a steady hand, but Bram could see the hesitation in her gaze. She didn’t want him out there any more than he wanted her involved.
“Did you find him?” Morgan asked.
“Yes, and he saw me.” She turned and faced Bram. “He’s camped close by, about three miles.”
Bram didn’t even flinch when he heard thunder in the distance.
“Fine, then the first step is done. Selene you stay here,” Bram commanded. She shook her head. “I can’t. Bram, he’s not alone.”
“Great. How many?” Morgan said.
Both men jumped when a cell phone rang. Bram hesitated seeing it wasn’t the hospital, but answered after the third ring, a chilled feeling filling his soul.
“Oh, thank God!” sobbed Rebecca. He bit back his anger; she’d intruded one time too many in his life.
“What?” he snarled, his pent up energy growing.
There was a loud shocked cry then suddenly a male voice came across the phone. “Good. I’m glad she was right, it will make this easier.” It was a deep voice, no one he recognized. “You have something I want.”
“Who is this?” he demanded.
“That isn’t important. I want to trade.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know her!” Bram said, gritting his teeth. He flinched when Rebecca screamed in the background.
“You were saying?” came the evil taunt.
“What do you want?” Bram asked, forcing a calm he didn’t feel.
“A trade. This woman for the wolf,” came the deep voice. Bram heard no background noises, no indications of where he was. “She was here. Send her back and I will give up the princess.”
“She’s not here,” he lied. His heart tripped over the man’s acknowledgement. He did know the truth.
“You have thirty minutes.” And the phone went dead.
“He has Rebecca,” Bram said hollowly, disconnecting the signal.
Morgan growled low. “Why would he hold a captive?”
“He wants to trade,” Bram replied. Morgan hissed a breath. “He’s out of luck,” Bram stressed. He strode to pick up the rifle. “What direction is the trail, Selene? We need to pick it up before the rain hits.”
“I’m coming with you.” Her voice and expression were emotionless.
“Selene,” Morgan insisted, but she changed without bothering to answer and headed for the door. She looked once over her shoulder, directly at Bram and he knew what she was going to do. He cursed roundly. “Do your thing, Morgan. We’re on,” he said as he headed out the door following her pale coat as she streaked for the trees.
Bram followed her quickly, her light color his only beacon in the dimness of the trees. Cloud cover obliterated any hope of moonlight. Morgan followed close at his heels. How had the poacher gotten to Rebecca? She was supposed to have gone home two days ago. How did he even know? Who was this man?
Thirty minutes later his phone rang again. He muffled the sound then answered calmly.
“You have one chance to save this one,” the man on the other end warned him. Bram had stopped and saw that both Selene and Morgan were listening. “What do you want?”
Bram asked him.
“Come to the crushed embankment. She will know. You will find this one after I have the wolf.”
The line went dead again.
“Damn!” he cursed softly. He repeated it for their benefit. Morgan sneezed. It sounded vaguely like a curse. “Yeah, me too, pal. He’s not going to get what he thinks he is.” He thought for a minute.
“He doesn’t know we’ve left yet!” he crowed softly. “How close is the rain?”
Morgan dropped a paw over his nose. “That’s not good.” Bram murmured. “But then again… I have a new plan.” He knelt on the ground and drew it out. The two wolves looked at each other then at him. Bram looked directly at Selene. She was going to be bait. Again. They needed time and drawing the man away from his own plan was the only thing they had in their favor.
“Please, please be careful,” he begged her.
She moved forward and raised a paw, resting it over his heart, and then like a flash of the growing lightning, she was gone.
“Can you get the trail again?” Morgan dropped his nose and started off, looking over his shoulder to keep track of Bram. The darkness was heavy as the storm began to move in. The moisture was building and he knew they had less than fifteen minutes before the rain was going to hit. They had to be close enough to get to Rebecca then get back to Selene. The whole time he ran to keep pace with Morgan, he silently prayed to keep Selene safe.
He remained on Morgan’s tail and sensed as he slowed. He followed suit, crouching low. “Is he still there?” Bram asked, peering through the trees. It was black as ink and he couldn’t see any more than a few feet in front of himself.
Morgan shook his furry head, stepping cautiously. Bram pushed branches out of the way with a careful hand. He could barely see Rebecca huddled and tied up next to a tent. She was wearing the same outfit she had worn on the day of her visit, and she looked absolutely terrified. He circled the encampment walking up behind her when he was satisfied she was alone. He clamped a hand over her mouth. “Shh! It’s me. Don’t make a sound. I’m going to untie you.” She nodded quickly. He fought with her bonds, finally working her hands free. He helped her sit up then told her, “Look, follow him out. He’ll take you to a safe place but he has to come back to help me. We will come back for you. Okay?”
“Are you nuts!” she tried to screech, but her throat was dry, and all that emerged was a hoarse croak.
“Rebecca! There is another woman he’s after! He will kill her! For once, this isn’t about you,” he snarled through a hard jaw. He shook her quickly by the shoulders when her mouth popped open.
“Just do it. The rain is about to hit.” He looked over his shoulder at Morgan. She tried to scream. “It’s a freaking wolf!”
“And he’s going to save you! Now go!” He lifted her to her feet and shoved her toward the tree line. “Be quick Morgan. Please.”
Morgan started off at a lope but stopped and growled. “Damn it! Rebecca go! You’re pissing him off!”
She paled but did as she was told stumbling stiffly after the darker than night shadow in front of her. Bram had to wait five, ten, fifteen minutes, until he thought he would cry with anguished worry. The rain hit when Morgan cleared the trees. Their eyes locked and they turned with one purpose. Morgan’s ears pricked and then even Bram heard it. The lamenting call of a wolf. Bram knew that call from his heart to his very soul.
“Damn it! He’s found her!”
His lungs were hurting with strain, and the rushed trek through the woods and that sound wrenched him deep. Morgan picked up the pace, Bram fighting to keep him in his line of vision. Morgan’s darker coat was a lot harder to keep ahead of him.
He almost stumbled when he heard a shot fired. It had been close. He had no idea how much of his approach was covered by the rain or the thunder. Lord knew he was making enough noise, but he couldn’t help it.
She howled again and she still sounded strong. “Thank heavens! Where is she Morgan? I can’t see shit!”
Morgan stopped a few feet ahead of Bram, scenting the ground and the air and Bram heard the low growl emanating from him. “It’s all right. We’ll get him.” He watched as Morgan dropped his nose then growled. “He’s close? Which way?”
Morgan faced to Bram’s left. “All right, I’m working blind but I’ll see if I can get close.” When Morgan started to slink to the right, Bram stopped. “Hey,” Morgan looked over his shoulder. “Be careful.” Morgan just blinked then started off again.
It took him several minutes of slow, blind walking while a hard, cold rain came down on him. He worked with his ears more than his eyes, fighting for anything that would lead him to them. To her. Three steps, eight steps, ten,
and then he heard him. Cursing. That was a good sign. Something wasn’t going to plan.
He slowed even more, squinting through the dark. He swiped the water from his face angrily as he crouched, listening. The other man was cursing the weather. Did she get away? Then he heard a whimper and his heart slid to his shoes with the weight of an anvil. Bram rolled around a tree and could see him, barely. The other man’s red flannel shirt was plastered to him and was dark as the night. He didn’t look like a mountain man, not even in the dark. His hair was too short, and he was clean shaven. He inched closer, his hand on his rifle aimed at the man standing over the pale wolf on the ground. He slid the safety off with a noiseless motion.
“Back away from the wolf!” Bram shouted as he lifted the rifle. The man stood and turned to him, apparently unable to find Bram in the rain and darkness. The rain was slowing but it was still enough to cause a sheet of murkiness between them.
“Who’s there?” the other man yelled.
“I’ve come for the wolf,” Bram said. “Step back.”
“She’s mine!” the other man yelled lowly. “I’ve hunted this one for two years.”
Bram swallowed. How long had he known? “Why? Wolves are endangered!” he snarled. “You are breaking the law, poaching on protected land.”
The other man actually snorted. “So what? I am the law. And she’s going to make my ass rich!”
There was a flash of lightning overhead and he blinked, blinded by the flash. A fork of power hit somewhere close by. The stench of ozone burned his nostrils for a long second. He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. There was a glint of a pistol in the rain and lightning. As the report ricocheted through his ears, he felt ripping pain as he tumbled backward. Morgan landed squarely on the man’s back knocking him down with a devastating growl and the fierce strength of unrelenting jaws. There was a snap of bone then silence as the man stilled beneath the wolf’s weight.
Bram felt the rain on his face as he lay in the soaked leaves and couldn’t remember how he got there.
“Hey, doc. You okay?” Morgan was asking him, slapping his cheek.
His eyes opened and blinked. “Hurts.” Morgan immediately began to look him over.
“Where? Can you move anything?” Morgan ran his hands down Bram’s arms.
“Selene? Where is she?” he gasped. God did he hurt.
“She’ll be fine. He stunned her. Where did he hit you?” Morgan asked again, an impatient question.
Bram lifted his hand, his arm felt all right. Then he took a breath, and his last thought was that he was going to die before he blacked out.
TWELVE
“Come on, Bram. Pull through,” Selene whispered as she finished gauzing the wound to stop the bleeding. “I owe you this one.”
He was laying in her bed, once again put to service as an operating table. An ambulance was on the way, called as soon as they’d walked into her home. The bullet had gone deep, a .38 at close range, but by some miracle, hadn’t hit anything important, lodging beneath his lungs and ribcage. She took a shaky breath, wishing not for the first time that she could give him her gift to heal. She rested a hand on his chest, willing him to live, to be whole.
She was fighting off the shakes that her ordeal had brought on her, refusing to acknowledge how close things had gotten. How close Bram had come to dying, how close she had come to being caught. She sucked in needed oxygen to find some thread of balanced sanity. One catastrophe at a time. Morgan had explained after Bram had passed out he had worked to make her stable enough to help get Bram home. Nothing else mattered. Not the other woman, not the dead man. Nothing. He had to live. She blinked the tears away, kneeling at the bedside with him.
“Selene, the Chief is here. They found Markson,” Morgan said from over her shoulder. “I’ll stay with him.” She nodded carefully. She still ached and was filthy from the elbows up. Bram needed to be taken to the hospital.
She took a steadying breath as Morgan drifted a finger down her cheek. “Don’t worry. You know what to tell them. Rebecca is still hysterical. Something about a wolf,” he said with a caustic rise of his lip, the understanding immediate between them.
She nodded. She just hoped she had the capacity to talk in the next three minutes as she left her room. She looked at the wall of her family immediately finding a store of strength in seeing them all together. Someone had put her back up on the wall. She knew it could have only been Bram. She didn’t even blink an eye seeing five strangers in her home, a secluded home that until that night no one had known of. Now half of Bend knew where she lived. She took another steadying breath. One thing at a time.
“Chief?” she said, getting his attention.
He caught her gaze then quickly dropped it, a guilty air about him. “Doctor Aiza. I am truly sorry that this happened,” Chief Swarenson began. “You have no idea how badly my department, or myself, feels for not taking Doctor Benedetti’s warnings seriously,” he added very quietly. “No one ever saw the reports Markson was taking. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he shredded them. There was nothing in the computers, either.”
She met his apologetic stare with an equally cool one. “I hope that your department will understand if someone suspects this kind of activity in the future that it will be followed up on. Both myself and Morgan placed complaints over a year ago with your department about the poacher situation.”
“Yes,” he replied, looking extremely uncomfortable in having that pointed out. A lack of reports didn’t make his department innocent in the situation.
“He kidnapped not only Doctor Benedetti’s ex, but attempted to kill him in the process of saving her.” She gave him a superior glacier stare. “When your department neglected to take proper control of the situation.”
He cleared his throat. “Do you happen to know who or what he was actually after?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” She made a disgusted sound in her throat. “He was delusional, as we found out tonight. He said something about how he was going to get rich because of a wolf he had found.”
Chief Swarenson scratched his head. “But there aren’t any wolves out here.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m aware of that fact.” Her gaze shot over the chief’s shoulder as the expected ambulance pulled up. When Jeffrey pushed through the door, she pointed to her bedroom, giving directions as they walked by. She faced the Chief again. “I’m going with them to the hospital. Is there anything else?”
“No, I don’t guess so.” He hung his head, well aware of how badly his department had fouled up. Letting a deputy hunt uncontrolled on protected property, kidnap, attempted murder. Oh, no. They were in it up to their necks, and he knew it.
She bit back the snarl that was perched right beneath the surface. She wanted to shred them all for their incompetence, but she was still running high on adrenaline and anger. It would fade again. She turned as the sound of the EMT’s coming back out reached her. “Jeffrey, give me just a minute. I’m riding in with you.”
He looked at Bram on the stretcher. “Sure, he’s stable. You did nice work.” Then they carried out the man who owned her heart, body and soul to the open doors of the ambulance.
***
Bram blinked, gritty eyes sliding closed wearily, and sighed. He was alive. The last thing he remembered was Morgan telling him Selene was alive and going to be all right. He slowly opened his eyes, very gradually becoming aware of his surroundings. He heard the beep of the heart monitor, felt the inserted I.V. needle in the back of his hand, with the tight medical tape that was uncomfortable. How long had he been in here?
He swiveled his head taking it all in. There were flowers and a few cards propped up across the room. Quite a while if that was any indication. Was he in Bend? Had they sent him somewhere? The room was relatively plain, a single private. He wished his mind wasn’t so fuzzy. He wanted to remember.
He felt a tingle down his neck, felt…something, and rolled his head in the other direction. He found her, watchin
g him, quietly sitting in a chair at his bedside. Beautiful gray eyes soft with love and lips that trembled wildly with restrained emotions.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” he croaked. He swallowed. She gave him some water to sip and he felt considerably better.
“How long?”
“Six days.”
“Why?” He felt his brow draw down.
“You had a real high fever for two days.” She brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Your mother is here. She’s staying at your place. Do you want to see her?”
He shook his head, feeling groggy but fighting it. “Not yet.” He lifted his hand, reaching for hers.
“How are you?” His fingers twined with hers and he felt a surge of warmth.
“A wreck,” she said, smiling through her tears. “But I improved greatly two minutes ago.”
“Morgan?”
“Fine. He’s at home right now. I’ll call him in a bit to tell him you’re back. He’ll be glad.”
He felt his brow draw again. “I don’t remember. Is everything over?”
“Yes, Bram. It’s over,” she whispered. She leaned down to breath a warm caress against his ear.
“He’s dead. You didn’t shoot him,” she said when he clenched his hand over hers. “And Rebecca was rescued by the police.” She dropped her gaze. “I won’t blame you if you get mad, but we had to choose. Her or you. She stayed the night in the rain.”
He chuckled. Rebecca was the last person he was concerned about right at that moment. “I’m not mad.” He lifted his hand to brush against her warm skin, feeling the silken smoothness of it and reveling in just that touch. “I’m not strong enough right now, but you know what’s going to happen when I get out, don’t you?”
A Trust Earned Page 14
