by Terry Spear
“Okay, fine. It was just on the agenda,” Kate said. “We’ll wait until we get home. But you’re getting so good at this, I figured you were ready to go up against a male opponent.”
“Only if he didn’t know martial arts,” Lexi said.
Ryder smiled, but then called someone. “Edward, we’re taking the southernmost trail, which is about a two-hour hike… Yeah, we’ll be okay.”
“Oh, and I was thinking we could plant Don’s camera equipment in the thugs’ cabin somewhere they wouldn’t find it, and your men could call the police about these guys causing trouble, and then the cops could find it and hand it over to Don.” Lexi couldn’t just leave it out in the weather and chance someone random finding it and not handing it over to the rangers, but she did want to give the equipment back to him.
“That’s a great idea.” Ryder sounded proud of her for wanting to do that. He got on his phone and sent a text message.
She’d only wanted to keep Don from discovering what she was doing and reporting on it. Since they’d found the message, she had no need to keep his equipment any longer.
They’d been hiking for about an hour, talking about everything under the sun, from what their favorite foods were to their favorite dream vacations, all while watching for black bears and Tremaine’s men when they heard someone running to catch up to them. Since the person wasn’t trying to be stealthy, Lexi didn’t think he could be a threat, but they all had their guns out just in case. Then they saw it was Don, huffing and puffing as he closed the distance between them. He appeared to be in good physical shape, but between running, and carrying a camera and a camera bag, he was short of breath.
“What are you doing out here?” Lexi couldn’t help but be annoyed.
“Now Tremaine’s men are after me.” Don joined them as if they had invited him to hike with them.
“I doubt it,” Lexi said.
“Yeah, for real. The bastard’s got two men watching my room at the hotel. I slipped out through the laundry room to make my escape. They never knew I’d gotten away.” Don smiled, proud of himself.
“Those are more of our men.” Ryder got on his phone right away. “Hey, if our men realize they’ve lost Don, he’s here hiking with us… Yeah, okay. Talk later.” Ryder put his phone away. “Hell, Don.” Ryder gave him a scowly look, but Lexi swore Ryder was fighting a smile.
The men hadn’t been there to provide protection for Don as much as they were trying to stop him from harassing Lexi further and discovering what her true purpose was here. So he’d bested some of Rafe’s men at the game.
“Protecting me?” Don frowned. “I don’t need any protection.”
“Sure you do. We’ll help chase the wolves away,” Ryder said.
Now Lexi was fighting a smile.
“I knew you didn’t believe me,” Don said.
“What are you doing here?” Lexi asked again. “Go home or find another celeb to target for a story. You won’t need any protection from wolves, bears, or Tremaine’s men then.”
“I know there’s a story here. That’s why Tremaine’s men are here. And I want the exclusive,” Don said, keeping up with them.
No one said a word. Lexi knew it was because they didn’t want anything they discussed being picked up in a tabloid, even if it was just about their favorite hikes.
“Aren’t we supposed to talk to scare off the wild beasts of prey?” Don asked.
“Talk all you want. We’ll listen,” Lexi said. Not.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a couple of guys staking out my room at the hotel for my protection? What if I’d called the cops on them? Or what if I’d hurt one of them? I know martial arts, you know.”
“Do you have a gun?” Ryder asked.
Lexi suspected Don didn’t.
Don didn’t say anything for several heartbeats as they continued to hike along the trail.
“They have guns,” Ryder added for Don’s benefit.
“Hell, you weren’t trying to protect me,” Don finally said. “You were trying to keep me from learning Lexi’s secret.”
Lexi had to admit the guy was smart. She turned and stopped to face Don down. “We are hiking on a vacation. Just the four of us. Nothing. More. You already know why Tremaine’s men are here. I don’t have to spell it out for you. And I won’t. We thought it might be a good idea to have our own men watch your back since we were the ones who asked you to harass them. But, hey, if you don’t want our protection? Fine. I don’t want you harassing me while we’re just trying to enjoy our vacation.”
Don looked glum.
Lexi wanted to roll her eyes. What? Did he feel he’d become her friend, and now she was angry with him? He wasn’t her friend. Friends didn’t share secrets with the world. “All right. Hike with us if you want. But if someone starts shooting at us, we can’t guarantee your safety.” She turned and started hiking again, and the others picked up their pace.
Except for Don, who seemed to be considering whether to go with them or not, and then he hurried to catch up to them. “I don’t have any protection if I return through the woods to my vehicle. I’ll stick with you guys. I thought the other guys were Tremaine’s men and I had to get the word to you.”
“You don’t have Ryder’s phone number?” Lexi glanced back at Don, knowing damn well he did since they’d talked on the phone at her cabin.
“Uh, yeah, I guess I do.”
A shot rang out and hit a branch near Ryder with a thwack. All of them rushed off the trail and crouched down among the ferns. Ryder called it in. “Shots were just fired at us. We’re an hour along the trail.”
Don was sweating like crazy, and Lexi thought he didn’t look happy about being in danger like this, despite saying he was good for it. She wasn’t happy about it either. Why would Tremaine’s men be shooting at them now? She suspected they figured that she was trying to meet her dad. Why else would she stay here, pretending they were having a vacation, bringing in more guns to ensure she was safe?
“I know you think I should just give up my vacation and return home, but I’m not going to do it, Kate. I haven’t had a vacation in a year,” Lexi said loud enough for the thugs to hear.
Ryder glanced at her. She didn’t believe she’d convince the thugs she was here for just a vacation, but she had to make up the story anyway, just in case. But then she worried. What if her father had arrived early and they were shooting at him?
Not wanting Don to hear what she had to say, she whispered to Ryder, “What if they’re after someone else?”
“I wondered,” he whispered back.
“Can’t we go after them?” she entreated.
“No. We have to safeguard you and Don.”
She hated not going to her father’s aid, if he was out here on his own. But she understood Ryder’s concern. Suddenly, someone made a mad dash in their direction, and she was certain it had to be one of the thugs. Rafe’s people wouldn’t make a move like that, crashing through the underbrush as if a wild boar was out to gore him.
Don was wild-eyed and looked like he wanted to run, but Lexi grabbed his arm and shook her head slightly, telling him to stay put. They were well hidden in the ferns, and then the man appeared, his head turned back to watch who was following him. Ryder jumped up, lunged forward, and slugged the guy in the head. The thug, dressed in camo and carrying a rifle, dropped to the ground, out cold, and Ryder quickly put a plastic tie around the man’s wrists. Lexi needed to be able to knock out someone like that who was out to do her harm.
Ryder got a text and responded to it. Then he returned to where Lexi and the others were. “A couple of men are coming for this guy. They picked up two others, and they’ll turn them over to the police.”
“Just how many bodyguards do you have?” Don asked Lexi.
“More than enough to escort you back to your car,” Ryder said.
&nbs
p; Unlike the thug Ryder took down, the two men who approached them were cautious and quiet, and if the wolves didn’t have such excellent hearing, they wouldn’t have known they were approaching.
“Hey, Edward,” Ryder said to one of the men. “We got the other one, and from the smell of his gun, he’s the one who fired the shot. Can you escort Don back to his car too?”
“Yeah, sure thing.” Edward and the other man who worked with him got the thug to his feet, confiscated his gun, and motioned with their heads to Don to come with them.
Don glanced at Lexi as if he was waiting for her to tell him he could stay with them, and she motioned to the other guys. “Go on. If we run into any more trouble, I don’t want to worry about your safety too.”
“Hell, if Ryder hadn’t taken down that guy so quickly, I fully intended to protect you.” Don brushed off his clothes. “Gotta be Special Forces.” Then he said to Ryder, “Right?”
Ryder said, “Keep yourself out of trouble. We don’t want to be the ones reading about you in the tabloids.”
Don snorted. “That would be the day.”
Lexi thought Ryder was right.
“Oh,” Edward added as he and the others began walking back down the trail, “others are up here watching your back. Just in case. You shouldn’t have any more trouble. The guy that shot at you was aiming for Don, according to his buddies. He figured if they didn’t take him out, they’d be in all the tabloids.”
Lexi appreciated Ryder for not asking if she wanted to continue with the hike as if she was too rattled to go on. “Do you think the other guy was really shooting at Don?”
“Yeah, I do,” Ryder said.
“Maybe Don will heed our warning next time,” Lexi said, climbing to the top of the cliff to see the waterfall.
“I doubt it,” Kate said. “That guy can’t stay away from causing or finding trouble.”
Without any further issues, they finished their hike and returned to the cabin. They washed up and began making dinner—spaghetti and meatballs, garlic toast, and salad, while Ryder served glasses of wine and they discussed the movie they’d seen earlier. “I loved how the aliens turned out to be the good guys.” Kate sprinkled garlic salt on the buttered bread before she put it in the oven.
“Yeah, they reminded me of us. We’re the good guys, but I suspect if anyone learned about us, they’d think we were the aliens.” Lexi added mushrooms and tomatoes to the salad.
“Speaking of wolves, you promised a story about the bad guy who was after you that ended up dead,” Ryder said.
“Uh, yeah, nice bedtime story. Are you sure you want to hear it?” Lexi set the bowl of salad on the table.
“Yes!” everyone said.
“Bloodthirsty wolves.” Lexi meant it in a loving way. She set her wineglass on the table. “Okay, so as soon as my dad was put in the Witness Protection Program, I was on my own, by my choice.
“Tremaine sent a hit man to my house, and he managed to disable my alarms and intended to torture me to learn where my father was in hiding. I had no idea where my father was, and I wasn’t going to let the hitman get the drop on me. Thankfully, with our wolf hearing, I heard him moving as quietly as he could toward my bedroom. It was two in the morning, and I stripped off my nightshirt and shifted. I waited for him to open the door to my bedroom.”
Kate put the garlic bread on a platter and set it on the table. “I was not her bodyguard at the time, or I would have stopped him before he reached her door.”
“Right. I hadn’t looked into getting a bodyguard at the time. I knew the risk, but I was so busy with my business, all I thought of was getting a personal assistant, and that was something I had planned to do within the next couple of weeks. So it wasn’t Kate’s fault.”
Mike served up the spaghetti and meatballs, and Ryder brought over the bottle of wine.
“He wouldn’t have gotten past me either.” Ryder took his seat at the table.
Mike did too. “Me either.”
Lexi sighed. “Well, you weren’t there.” She forked up some of her spaghetti. “The hit man came into the room. I attacked and killed him. I was angry that he’d disabled my security system and broken into my home, furious he was planning to torture me—I found his torture kit at the front door where he’d let himself in—and livid that he’d forced me to kill him. I’m all about helping others out in a crisis. Not killing someone. Once I shifted back, I was sort of in shock, upset over everything, not sure what to do. I’d only just met Rafe when he’d invited me to one of his socials, glad to meet another billionaire wolf and take me into the fold. Now I had to call him and tell him I’d murdered a man?”
“You did it in self-defense.” Kate slipped another piece of garlic bread onto her plate.
“Knowing that didn’t make me feel any better. Of course Rafe was furious that the hit man got into my home in the first place and that I didn’t have an army of bodyguards at my disposal.”
“That sounds like Rafe,” Ryder said. “He’s a big fan of having bodyguards.”
“I really didn’t think they’d come after me. Rafe gave me a list of names of wolves he trusted who could be my personal protection, but I wanted someone who could be my personal assistant too.”
“Me,” Kate said. “Only I would do.”
Lexi smiled at her. “You were perfect for the job. So Rafe had his men clean up the place, put up new and better security devices, and while that was going on, he took me out on the yacht to help me get over the trauma.”
“Did it help?” Ryder asked.
“I got seasick.”
They all laughed.
Lexi smiled. “But yeah, it helped me forget as I was heaving my lunch into the toilet. Kate hasn’t been on his yacht yet, but it’s beautiful.”
“You haven’t had any other trouble since then?” Ryder asked.
“I had more trouble after that. When Tremaine couldn’t get ahold of his hit man, he sent two men the next time. Except they didn’t try to get into my home that time, or I would have been alerted. When I reached the road from my long driveway, intending to go into town to grocery shop, a pickup truck hit me from behind and rammed my car into a pine tree. Remember, they didn’t want to kill me. They wanted to learn where my father was. Then they would have killed me.”
“Ohmigod, Lexi. You didn’t tell me how much trouble you’d had all on your own. How did you manage to get yourself out of that one?” Kate asked.
“Luck. Two of my neighbors were headed into town and came upon the wreck. I was afraid the hit men would kill them and still try to get me out of my car, but my doors were jammed, and they couldn’t get to me, so they drove off. Lucky for me. One of my neighbors called in the truck’s license plate number, and the police picked them up and found all kinds of guns and torture tools in the cab. They tied their own nooses. Tremaine had the men murdered while they awaited trial.”
“Good,” Kate said.
“Right. I was really lucky that time. Then Tremaine left me alone. He was having other trouble about then. It was in the news that one of his lieutenants was trying to take over his operation and eliminate him.”
“Too bad that didn’t happen.” Ryder dished up more spaghetti.
“Tremaine still had too tight a hold on things. He got rid of the lieutenant and a couple of the men who sided with him. Tremaine was really busy for a while, but then I noticed men following me. And Rafe told me he was having men watch me, to protect me until I hired someone. I think he was afraid I would object, but he didn’t want me dead. I appreciated him for doing that.”
“Then you hired me, and I protected you.” Kate scarfed up another piece of garlic bread.
Lexi laughed. “Yes, and then I hired you. We haven’t had any trouble until we were here, but I think the men were told to just watch me to see if my father showed up. Then here are Ryder, Don, Mike, and Edward and
his men. Tremaine can’t win for losing.”
“We want to keep it that way,” Ryder said, his tone of voice dark and serious. “How are you feeling about seeing your dad?”
“Anxious.” Lexi sipped some more wine. “What if, despite all the extra muscle here, things get out of hand and my father is put at risk?”
“If you’d been here just with Kate, it could have been worse,” Ryder said.
“What are we going to do about Don?” Lexi didn’t want him to be at risk either.
“Edward’s got some men over at his hotel, and they’re watching to see if he leaves. If he does, they’ll tie him up so he can’t come here and get himself into more trouble,” Ryder said. “We have about three hours to go before it’s time to see your dad. I think we should get some rest. No telling how crazy it’s going to get.”
Lexi agreed, though she knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep.
* * *
Stretched out on the sofa bed, Ryder was trying to rest up before they saw Lexi’s dad, thinking over what Lexi had told him about killing the hit man. He knew what it was like to eliminate someone for self-preservation and how it could continue to haunt him. He was glad she’d at least had Rafe to confide in and that he’d taken her on a cruise to help her deal with it. Ryder wished he’d known her then and had been there to protect her instead. Now that Kate was her bodyguard, it made him wonder if she had ever had to kill anyone.
“Hey,” Mike said, sitting on the edge of the sofa bed, tense like Ryder was. “I’m sure this will all work out tonight.”
Ryder sure the hell hoped so. “Well, we’ll have to make sure it does.”
Chapter 15
It was nearly eleven when Edward called Ryder. “I suspect you’re heading over to the cabin soon. The thugs are sound asleep, courtesy of a tranquilizer. They won’t be waking up until late tomorrow morning. We’ve got a man babysitting them just in case, and the rest of us are set up at different locations to watch for any other sign of trouble. We left Don’s camera and equipment under one of the beds. We’ll report the men to the authorities once we know Lexi has visited her dad and he’s safely away. We’ve been monitoring her dad’s cabin, too, but we haven’t seen any sign of him,” Edward said.
