by Terry Spear
The agent didn’t move a muscle. Dan was about to pull his gun out he was so mad. He’d only end up in jail and his job as her husband would be terminated. She’d probably be so mad at him, that would be the end of any kind of relationship they might have had. “Let me talk to him. Now,” Dan reiterated. “I flew six and half hours to get here. I’m not leaving until I see her and get to talk to her.”
The man shook his head, but he pulled out his phone and punched in a number. “Sir, the sheriff wants to talk to you. All right. Here he is.”
“What the hell are you doing there?” the man said.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing here? My wife is in there, injured, could be dying for all I know.”
“You’re not supposed to be there. We have protocols and no one, but who I say, is getting in to see her.”
“I’m her husband, goddamnit. And the protocol is that she calls me when she needs me. How the hell do you think I learned she was here? She called me. I’m here. Tell your agent to let me in to see her.” Dan glanced at the agent to see him smiling, but he quickly lost the smile. “Now.”
“Hand the phone to Leipheimer.”
Dan handed the phone to the agent. “Yes, sir. Will do, sir. Yes, sir.” He pocketed his phone. “You have five minutes.”
Dan opened the door to the room, stepped in, and closed the door. His heart sank as he saw Addie with tubes running to her arms, blood dripping into one of them, a saline solution in the other, her face pale as death. He closed the door and crossed the floor to join her, and leaned down to kiss her pale forehead.
“Addie, it’s me, your husband, Dan. I’m here to take care of you. As soon as I can, I’m taking you home with me. No arguing.” He didn’t even know if she could hear him, but he wasn’t leaving her side, if he could help it, until she could speak with him. He pulled a chair next to the bed and reached out and ran his hand over her arm in a gentle caress. “I don’t know if we have what it would take to make it together, but I want you to move in with me. You could work with me, if you’d like, as my deputy sheriff. Or we have a”—he leaned over and whispered next to her ear—“cougar shifter organization that would hire you in a heartbeat to take down rogue cougars. I want you in my life. Not just for missions, but for always. Of course, we would get to know each other better, and we could work it out from there.”
An hour later, he was still talking to her, telling her all the fun they could have in Yuma Town—swimming at Lake Buchanan, even renting a cabin there, rock and mountain climbing, hiking. “And in winter, skiing. Cross-country skiing.” He told her about some of the happenings in Yuma Town, then glanced back at the door, wondering why the agent hadn’t told him to leave already. Maybe his boss told him it might be good for Dan to talk to her, since they’d become close in their teamwork.
Addie hadn’t stirred once, and he knew she had to rest, but he wanted to know exactly how she’d been injured. She’d heal quicker than humans, but if the wound or wounds were severe, it could still take time.
The door opened and a nurse came in. Expecting the intruder to be the agent, Dan frowned at her. “Is the agent still out there?”
“What agent?”
“Let me see some credentials,” he said to the nurse, making her move back to the door so he could check outside the door for the agent. Leipheimer was gone. He wouldn’t have been. Not if he was supposed to be providing protection for Addie. And not when the boss said no one could enter the room without permission. And then for only five minutes. What the hell was going on? “Let me see some ID.”
“What?”
“ID to match your nametag.” One good thing about being a sheriff, he was still armed and prepared to protect Addie at all costs, and he had a sixth sense when something wasn’t right, not to mention the woman smelled of fear. If she was just doing her job, she shouldn’t be giving off the scent.
“It’s in my purse, locked in a drawer at the nurse’s station.” She motioned down the hall.
“Call security.”
“What?”
“Call them. Addie’s supposed to have round-the-clock protection. The agent should never have left.”
“You’re a sheriff,” the nurse said as if that should have counted for something.
“There’s supposed to be an FBI agent outside the door for her protection. Call. Security. Now.”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, and eyeing Dan, she said, “Call Security. We’ve got trouble.”
She was sweating and he was certain the woman wasn’t a nurse, or at least not one who was taking care of Addie. She didn’t call Security herself. He was certain she was letting someone else know Dan was the trouble.
He grabbed her arm and pulled it behind her back, then shoved her against the wall and handcuffed her wrists behind her back.
“You’re making a mistake.” She wasn’t screaming for Security. Dan suspected the pretty blond was in on whatever the plot was to hurt Addie. He checked her pockets and found a hypodermic needle.
“If I inject you with whatever this serum is, what will happen?”
“It’s just pain medication,” she quickly said. “She’s due her next dose.”
“Then you’ll be feeling no pain if I use it on you, right?”
Her eyes widened and she tried frantically to jerk away from him.
“Tell me the truth then.”
“It’s just like I said.”
Two men burst into the room—not security, both armed with guns and silencers. Before the nurse could say a word, Dan jabbed the first of the men, who rushed through the door, in the neck with the hypodermic needle. He grabbed his neck, cried out, and sank to the floor. And that was after only using half of the stuff in the syringe. Dan wrestled the second man to the floor, and in the ensuing struggle to use his gun on Dan, it went off, the round hitting the man in the head, instead.
The nurse was trying to get around them and make her escape, but Dan grabbed her and shoved her down to sit on the floor. “Now tell me who you are and what you did with the agent.”
She just stared at him mutely.
Dan pulled out his phone and called the hospital security, hoping to God he’d get the real hospital security. “I’m in room 405, two men down, a woman pretending to be a nurse in custody. The federal agent protecting his fellow injured agent has gone missing. I’m Sheriff Dan Steinacker of Yuma Town. The injured patient is a federal agent and my wife.” Then he called the FBI headquarters and explained the situation. He wasn’t getting anywhere with anybody. No one knew what office he needed, and no one knew who Addie was.
“Dan,” Addie said, her voice weak.
Dan whipped around and hurried back to the bed. “Addie, your protection has gone missing. These thugs came in here to kill you, the nurse intended to also. Do you have a number to call so that we can get backup? Hospital security is on its way, but what if they’re not legit either?”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, holding onto his hand with a weak grip.
“Good thing I was though, huh?”
She smiled a little, and he saw the same devilish look he’d grown to love. “Help me get out of bed and get dressed.”
Dan frowned at her. She needed to be at the hospital. Maybe in another room, with another agent serving as her guard, but he didn’t want to risk losing her if he tried to move her, depending on the severity of her injuries.
She frowned back at him. “Do it, Dan. That’s an order.”
If the situation wasn’t so serious, he would have smiled at her for giving him orders like she was in charge, when she was so badly injured. He was still frowning as he searched for her clothes, and then finding them in a locker, he paused to stare at her cut up shirt, blood stains all over it.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I can change later.”
“Hell.” Seeing her bloody clothes made her life-threatening situation so much more real. If they’d had more time, he would have pulled off his unifo
rm shirt, and dressed her in his T-shirt, but time was of the essence.
He pulled out her tubes and helped her to dress. The security guards were taking one hell of a long time to reach her room.
“Are you sure you’re going to make it, honey?” he said.
“Yes, just hurry. If I thought it would help, I’d run as a cougar.”
She wasn’t helping and he was hurrying as fast as he could to dress her. No way could she run as a cougar through the hospital.
“Knock her out, permanently, or she’ll send people after us,” Addie said to Dan, motioning with her head to the nurse.
“No,” the woman said. “I was forced to do this.”
“So am I.” Dan grabbed the hypodermic needle. He used the remaining serum on the nurse, and she collapsed to the floor. She had fully intended to use it on Addie, and so he had no regrets. They were still in dire straits and he had to get Addie out of here as quickly as he could.
He lifted Addie in his arms and hurried her out of the room and down the hallway to a fire escape.
Addie was like a ragdoll and he hated to see her so weak. “You can’t carry me all the way down the stairs,” she said.
It reminded him of the last time he’d seen her when she’d sneaked into his house to take refuge for a couple of days.
“I don’t want to take any chances using the elevator, or the stairs closest to your room. Besides, isn’t this why you selected me to be your husband? For my brawn and good looks?” Dan asked.
She smiled weakly and rested her head against his chest.
“I hope I’m not doing you further injury by moving you,” he said, worried sick about her.
“If you hadn’t moved me, I’d be dead.”
“True. I’m taking you home. Somehow, I’m getting you home. I need to call the Bureau and—“
“No.”
He frowned down at her as he entered the stairwell and took the stairs as fast as he could without dropping her or missing a step.
“Someone’s a mole on my team. That’s why I was injured so badly the last time. I only returned to work after six months of hiding, to try and learn who it is. I can’t do this on my own. And I can’t let anyone know I realize it.”
“Two of the people who live in our town are former FBI agents. The Muellers. He’s the bank president now and she’s a loan officer. Between that and the sheriff’s office, and the cougar organization, the Cougar Special Forces Agency, that deals with rogue cougars, we have two U.S Department of Fish and Wildlife Service agents who track down animal traffickers, all well-trained in combat, have licenses to carry, and investigative skills. Let us work together to find out who’s behind this.”
“You can’t. I have to be on the team to learn who is responsible.”
“Like that worked out so well for you this last time.” He couldn’t help how angry he was about her going back to work with someone who could be a traitor, and she never told him what was going on.
He finally reached the lobby of the hospital. “I’ve got a rental car. I’m thinking we should just drive home. It’s a long drive, but we might not be able to get a flight for the two of us right away. I was lucky and got a seat on the trip out here. Some of the flights home can take as long as fourteen hours. With driving, we can stop at another hospital on the way if you need more blood or pain medication.” He carried her outside and was glad it was already getting dark.
“We’ll drive. You’ll have to make arrangements to change your rental car destination though.”
“Agreed.” As soon as he set her on her feet beside the car, he unlocked the car and helped her into the back seat. “I wish I had a blanket and pillow for you.” He sure as hell had never expected rescuing her from a hospital and using the rental car as a getaway.
“Just get us out of here before anyone sees us.”
“Yeah, working on it.” He shut the back door and hurried to get into the driver’s seat, then backed out of the parking lot and drove off. He checked his phone for directions to Yuma Town from Portland. “Eighteen hours.” He made a quick check on flights. “No flights tonight or tomorrow straight to our destination. And the day after that they only have one that has an available fourteen-hour flight for two of us.”
“You can’t drive eighteen hours straight.”
“True.”
“It will take us longer.”
“We’ll have to stop at a hotel for a few hours. We’ll still get home sooner than if we stayed at some place until we could get a flight out the day after tomorrow.”
“Despite that I feel like shit, I’m healing. Just keep driving until you can’t any longer. Maybe I can take over the driving for a while.”
No way in hell.
“I’m going to sleep.”
“Was it a gunshot wound?”
“Knife. I managed to throw him off balance before he could make it a fatal stab wound.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No. I shot him. In the forehead.”
“Good. Sleep.” Then Dan called Chase. “Hey, buddy, we need your help. ASAP!”
3
Addie couldn’t believe that she’d called Dan to come to her rescue. Her subconscious must have known he was the only one she could trust. And he’d come through for her. She hadn’t remembered doing so. And then to hear his beautiful, but gruff and worried voice next to her hospital bedside? If she’d been conscious enough to respond at the time, she would have given him a heartfelt hug. She’d only vaguely heard him talking about making her a deputy sheriff. Despite the pain medication she was on, she had immediately thought: what if she wanted to be sheriff?
She used his bag for a pillow, after pulling out a soft, blue hoody of Dan’s to wrap around herself as a makeshift blanket, and one of his black T-shirts so she could ditch her bloody shirt, loving his masculine and wild cat smell. Even though she knew they were not out of danger and could be in the thick of it at any time, she luxuriated in the smell of him wrapped around her, thankful to God that he’d come for her in her hour of need.
She heard him talking to his friend Chase, telling him all about the trouble they were in. And Chase telling him he’d make arrangements to send reinforcements at once. In that instant, she wished they hadn’t kept their agreement secret from his friends. And she knew they could be trusted, though she still felt the only way to learn the truth about this dirty business was for her to return to work.
Sometime during the drive, she stirred and found herself wrapped in a real blanket, a soft pillow for her head, Dan’s hoody tucked under her chin and spread out over her chest and waist, and she wondered when and where he’d picked up the blanket and pillow. And how she’d never been conscious enough to notice. The pain medication had to have really knocked her out. Any little sound or movement usually woke her. She took a deep breath of Dan’s scent on the hoody, listened to the SUV’s motor running, the tires rolling along the road, the wind whipping past the vehicle, feeling tired, sore, and soothed, and drifted off again.
When Addie woke the next time, the car was still rumbling along the highway, the windows dark. She wondered how long they’d been driving. Dan was probably dead tired. And she was feeling better.
“How long have we been driving?”
“Six hours. How are you feeling?”
“Much better.” She tried to sit up, but her muscles, where she’d been cut, screamed in agony. “If I don’t move. Are you stopping for the night?” She had planned to drive, but that wasn’t happening.
“In Twin Falls, Idaho. That’s about nine hours from Yuma Town. We’ve got reinforcements coming. They’ll get there about the time we do.”
“Reinforcements?” Then she vaguely remembered Chase and Dan talking before she had drifted off.
“Hell, yeah. Cougars, who will have our back, no questions asked.”
“After everything that’s happened, they can ask away.” She thought he’d already told Chase all about them. Then she recalled he’d only mentioned abo
ut the hospital—the nurse, the two guys who burst into her room, and the missing agent. “I can’t trust the people I work for. If it helps with your people to learn the truth, I’m an open book.”
“Are you from Boston?”
“Yes. And my name is Addie Ann Davidson Steinacker.”
He chuckled. “Damn right. We have a contract that says so. And the hobbies you listed? Cross-country skiing, hiking, running, your favorite color is blue, and you love romantic suspense stories? All true?”
“Yep.”
“It wasn’t part of the cover?”
“Nope.”
“And the physical connection you and I have?”
She chuckled. “I think you know our pheromones wouldn’t be reacting to one another’s if it wasn’t real.”
“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. I want you to move in with me.”
“And be your deputy sheriff?”
“You heard me telling you that in the hospital room?”
“Vaguely. And thinking I might want to be sheriff.”
He chuckled. “We really don’t have elections, but you can get one going. I won’t oppose you, just anything to ensure you stay there with me. Or you can work for Leyton Hill. Or even work with Hal and Tracey as agents who take down animal traffickers. You name it, we have several different kinds of law enforcement types in Yuma Town. And the best part? We’re all cougars and best of friends.”
“Until I get them killed,” Addie said wearily. She would like to settle down, but not until she found the mole and exposed him or her.
“Any of us know, with the kind of work we do, we deal with dangerous suspects a fair amount of the time. It’s always a likelihood. No way are we going to let one of our own do this by herself.”
“I’m not—“
“You’re my wife.”
“Pseudo.” She sighed. “I don’t want to quit my job, not until I learn the truth.”
“Or it gets you killed?” Dan sounded annoyed with her.
“How would you feel if someone was trying to kill you and nearly succeeded a couple of times? Would you just leave it alone, or would you track the culprit down?”
