“Hey guys!” a woman called as she approached the clearing. “Guys, it’s Linzy. We found her down by the water. I… I think she’s dead.”
Jane clasped a hand to her own mouth to stop her gasp from escaping. Sure enough, the woman and a man were carrying another woman into the clearing. She was soaked to the skin and dreadfully pale, but Jane recognized her shabby clothes and long hair at once. Linzy was the woman she’d met the day before, who’d seemed so oblivious and happy whilst riding her high. Now, she was limp and pale where her friends laid her down on the ground.
“Oh…” said one of the assembled stoners. “Um… So what do we do?”
They were detached from the moment, struggling to get their brains back into gear at the sign of a crisis. Jane was about to turn and ask Hart what they should do, but the tall, striking ranger was already moving past her. As he went, he took hold of her hand firmly and guided her through the final branches into the clearing.
“Everything all right here?” Hart asked the people. “Does this woman need help?”
Some of the gathering scattered at once, grabbing at their joints or hastily trying to blow away the smoke. They sloped off towards the path that would lead them back to the main park, leaving only the original pair who had carried Linzy to the group. Jane noticed that they seemed fairly sober, though shock had rendered them pretty useless.
“She…” the woman stammered. “I don’t know. We just found her down there.”
Hart dropped to his knees and put his ear to Linzy’s chest. Jane watched for a long, tense moment. Her phone was buzzing in her pocket again, but this time she let it go. She might need to call an ambulance at any moment. There were more important things right now than work.
“Well?” Jane pressed. “Is she…”
“No,” Hart said after a moment’s thought. “She’s breathing, but she’s struggling. Her heartbeat is very slow. I think it must be hypothermia. If she got herself soaked and passed out, it can be mighty cold up here at night. Call back to the lodge for a car. We need to get her warm.”
It was fascinating to see Hart work. Despite the terror of the situation, he was methodical and organized. Once Jane had made the call, he told her to put Linzy into the recovering position, and he covered her over with his shirt. Jane took her coat off and put it over the poor woman’s legs, watching as Hart coerced her shocked friends into donating parts of their clothing to keep her warm too. Soon, Hart and Jane were crouching either side of the suffering woman, feeling her temperature and waiting for one of the Best boys to arrive with the Land Rover.
“See, this is why I hate drugs,” Jane seethed, growing frantic. “They dull your judgement, and accidents happens. I like to be alert. On top of things.”
“I had noticed,” Hart observed gently. “You really run the show. That phone call earlier was a masterclass in dealing with people.”
Jane had forgotten that he could hear and understand what she was saying. Work had been far from her mind whilst she’d been taking care of Linzy, but now the piled-up messages were worrying her again. She’d have so much to take care of later, when this was over.
“Well, that’s my life,” Jane explained. “On call all the time.”
“And you’re happy with that?” Hart asked.
Jane gave a proud little shrug. “I’m the most successful woman under thirty in my field,” she replied.
“Yeah, but are you happy?” Hart said again.
Jane looked up into his eyes, the gold rings sparkling at her. He really, genuinely wanted to know if she was happy. Having only known her two days, Hart cared how she felt. The deep concern was written all over his handsome face, the same concern he’d had for saving Linzy from hypothermia. She found that she couldn’t meet his gaze, or his question any more. Success had always been her first goal, and she’d assumed that marriage and love and all that ever-after stuff would somehow fit in later on. Now, she wasn’t so sure that things were going to follow the plan.
The rumble of the Land Rover echoed on the nearby path, and Jane looked down at Linzy with a sigh. The woman was starting to twitch, signs of life returning to her at last.
“Gee, this hot chocolate is amazing,” Linzy mused.
She was brighter than Jane had ever seen her. Once the cold embrace of the great outdoors had finally left her body, Linzy resumed the appearance of a normal human being. Her cheeks were flushed pink where she sat beside the roaring fire of the lodge and, though Jane thought it was far too hot in the room already, the shabbily-dressed woman was glugging away at her scolding chocolate all the same. Hart had little beads of sweat dripping from his hairline where he sat beside her, poking the fire with an iron rod.
“You feeling better?” he asked.
“Much,” Linzy replied. “That was a hell of a comedown. I don’t think I’ll go for that stuff again, even if it was a free sample. I saw all sorts of weird things. Two-headed rabbits. Bears with golden eyes. Crazy stuff.”
“Crazy,” Jane reiterated, and she and Hart shared a knowing look over the woman’s head.
Every time he looked at her, Jane felt a new pang in her chest. Hart’s eyes burned with something bright and hopeful, his face a picture of serenity. Even now, amid the wild heat of the lodge, he was totally unflappable. Jane had to admire that, but she also wondered exactly what it would take for a man like him to really break down.
“So Linzy, do you think you can tell us where to find the guys who sold you the drugs?” Hart asked gently. “You understand, I have to move them along. It’s park policy.”
“Oh,” Linzy said, shrinking against her mug of cocoa. “Well, I don’t want to get nobody into trouble. Those guys were pretty tough-looking types.”
“No trouble,” Jane said, her face totally neutral. “Like Hart said, we just need to move them along. No police, no statement from you. Just a location, then you can go back to enjoying your trip in Fairhaven.”
She didn’t believe a word of her own lies, but Linzy did. Jane had had to lie on command for years in her profession, convincing angry clients that their deadlines had been met, telling haughty models how popular they were, when they were actually on the verge of career death. Her face was a picture of confidence, the way she’d trained it to be over the years, and Linzy nodded with every word.
“Well, the one guy approached me down at the swimming center,” she began to reveal, “the one down by the campground.”
Hart nodded. “I know it,” he replied. “This guy, who was he?”
“Carter,” Linzy added, her voice growing in confidence. “You can’t miss him, he has a huge scar running right across his face, and a badly broken nose. He was nice, though, sweet talking type, you know? And he took me down a hillside off the back of the campground to show me the farm. It’s…”
Linzy paused, and Jane knew this was the pivotal moment, the thing she did not want to give away. She reached out, taking Linzy’s boiling hot hands in her grip.
“It’s okay,” she soothed, “you can say where the place is.”
“Well,” the woman began again quietly. “I can’t exactly. It’s covered over with lots of bushes. You don’t even see it ‘til you’re right beside it in the trees. And it goes underground a little, where it’s cooler for the plants I guess. They siphon water off the swimming lake in little pipelines.”
“How many plants would you say they’re growing?” Hart pressed.
“A couple hundred at least,” Linzy replied. “It was pretty impressive. I’ve never been able to grow one, let alone… Well, anyway.”
She sipped at her chocolate again. Hart rose from his seat and gave Jane a little tilt of his head. She got up too, dusting down her outfit.
“Thank you for helping us, Linzy,” she said.
“No, thank you for finding me,” the woman replied. “I mean, God only knows what would have happened to me otherwise, right?”
“Right,” Hart said, smiling reassuringly. “Would you excuse us just a moment?”
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He began to make for the door, Jane beside him, but as they both reached the exit to the baking hot room, Linzy called after them suddenly.
“I should tell you,” she admitted, looking down at the ground, “this Carter guy had at least eight others with him when I went down to the farm. And… they had guns. All of them.”
Jane felt a lump leap into her throat.
“Thanks, that’s helpful,” Hart answered calmly.
And with that he led Jane out of the door. They raced for the cool, fresh air of early evening, gasping deep breaths off the veranda at the back of the lodge. Jane took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her face, trying not to spoil her makeup as she mopped up a little sweat. Hart had much more of an animal approach to the problem, peeling off his shirt and wiping his face and hair with that instead.
He was a glorious sight once again, and up close Jane watched his muscles ripple all over his torso. In the fading light, he skin seemed to gleam like freshly-smelted gold, still red from the fire. Hart caught her looking, and he grinned. The grin threw Jane off a little, and she frowned at him despite the tingles creeping into her body.
“You are going to call the cops, right?” she asked him. “Only, Linzy just told you that there are nine armed men dealing drugs in the park, and you still look cool as a cucumber.”
“Cool as a cucumber?” Hart challenged. “Who even says that anymore? Damn it Jane, you’re so cute.”
It was the first time he had really given her an outright compliment, though their glances and smiles at one another had said much before. She tried not to smile, not to be sucked into his complacency, because this was serious stuff.
“Answer me, Hart,” she demanded.
He turned, resting his hands on her biceps. It was only in the firmness of his grip that she realized how much she was shaking.
“This isn’t your problem now, Jane,” he assured her. “You’ve helped so much with getting the information, but now it’s up to me and the boys. I’ll rally them tomorrow, and we’ll sort Carter and his Boys in the Wood out ourselves. It’s how we do things in the clan.”
“But guns, Hart,” Jane pressed. “I know you shifter types are tough and all, but you’re not going to stand there and tell me that guns aren’t going to hurt you, are you?”
Hart’s smile faltered in his eyes, though his face remained a perfectly handsome façade. Jane didn’t need an answer. She could see now that his laid back attitude was, in fact, a wall. A wall that he wasn’t going to let her get past.
“You know what?” she said bitterly. “Do what you want. It’s your park. I’ve got work to do anyway.”
Finally, she pulled her phone from her pocket, and found over two hundred alerts screaming at her. The company was clearly in meltdown, and that was a situation she knew how to control. If she couldn’t solve the crisis right in front of her, at least she could bury herself in other matters.
Hart’s hand slipped down her arm, snaking along her skin to cover the hand holding her phone. She looked up at him, and he drew her fingers to his lips. She felt the lightest graze where he brushed a kiss against her knuckles, and her whole body tensed at the sensation. Something powerful sparked between them, eyes locked for a long moment.
“I know what I’m doing,” he promised her. “Please, don’t worry for me. You have enough stress in your life without mine too.”
Jane wished, more than anything, that what he’d said wasn’t so horribly true.
She hadn’t meant to get involved again. Jane Walsh was a smart woman, who made smart decisions every day of her life. Frequently, she found herself surrounded by idiots, and she was usually the only one who knew what had to be done. But now, she was the idiot. She was taped to a chair with powerful, sticky duct tape, her chest heaving dangerously sharp breaths. Panic rose in her body like a wild animal, making her flinch and struggle against her bonds. She really hadn’t meant to get mixed up with the Boys in the Wood.
It had started on the same day that Hart was planning to make his raid and find the pot farm, but it was a little earlier in the afternoon. After lunch with Elise and Layla, Jane had gone out for a walk to make a few more calls, and once again found herself a little disoriented on the path. She could hear the sound of voices nearby, and she had managed to locate the swimming lake by following the sound of children’s laughter. Here, she was about ready to relax with an ice cream and for once, turn her phone off for a while.
But that’s when she’d seen Carter, the man with the scar. He was just as Linzy had described him, unmistakable for the huge lump on the bridge of his triangular nose, and the thick, pink line of repaired flesh that ran from beneath his left eye to just above the right-hand corner of his mouth. Jane had spotted him on the very verge of the proceedings, talking to some young teenagers. Carter had been wearing a thick black coat despite the sunny weather, and he showed the teens something inside the flaps with great enthusiasm.
Some kind of transaction was made. Jane watched with horror as the gleeful teens left with a mixture of guilt and excitement on their faces. Then, when she looked back to Carter, she found him watching her across the crowd. His eyes were dark and narrow, and they bored into her even across the distance between them. He knew what she had seen, and he didn’t like it. Jane had felt the first prickles of terror turning her skin to goosebumps then.
In hindsight, it might have been more sensible to stay in the populated lakeside area, where the crowd would protect her. But Jane’s mind had been overcome by fear, and she found herself racing down the path that she hoped would lead her back to the Rangers’ Lodge. She was quite a long way from the area, and she realized the error of her ways as soon as she was alone on the deserted path. Behind her, there were footsteps, and she’d started to run.
Only to run into two more unpleasant looking men at the top of the next ridge.
Now, she was right in the cool heart of the farm, with plants under glowing lights all around her. The smell was fresh and spicy here, but mixed with the foul musk of the men who’d been hiding out since they began their operation. Carter was about the cleanest of the bunch, but that didn’t speak for much. When he grabbed Jane by her cheeks, she could feel the grime and dirt on his hands. She winced at the pain of his grip, and Carter’s scarred face broke into a horrible grin.
“Too suspicious for your own good, miss,” Carter drawled in that typical, post stoned lazy way. “I’m sick of having to hurt nosey little pricks like you.”
“Then don’t,” Jane struggled to say. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
That was a lie, and a well told one, Jane thought. But Carter didn’t seem convinced.
“You don’t think I’ve got eyes everywhere in this park?” he said slowly. “Johnny Boy tells me he’s seen you hanging around with a ranger. So I can’t have you running back to your boyfriend to inform on us, right? Seems to me that you’re going to have to stay here as insurance, to make sure the rangers don’t decide to rat us out.”
Jane cursed inwardly. It was just her luck to have been spotted with Hart, when she’d hardly even begun their relationship. There was something about Carter’s confidence that stumped her though.
“You…” she breathed amid her stunted sobs. “You don’t think those rangers are much of a threat, do you?”
Carter gave a deep, guttural laugh at that notion.
“Those pretty boy posers?” he asked, almost to himself. “You can tell they’ve never seen a real fight just by looking at them. They’re all workout regimes and protein shakes, but no genuine muscle.”
There were three other men in the small, dark space at that moment, and they all chuckled in reply to Carter’s bold assurance. He had no idea that the Best boys were shifters, and that element of surprise was all the hope that Jane had. A buzzing sound alerted her, and her eyes moved to the sight of her phone, which was ringing on a nearby shelf of plant pots. Carter moved towards it, eyeing it malevolently. Then, to Jane’s astonishment, he swiped the
screen and answered the call.
Sam (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 2) Page 33
