He locked the door and returned to help Elizabeth. He frowned down at her bowl and saw that she’d eaten all her chili and finished her tea. He smiled.
“I told you I could do it.” She paused. “You seem worried.”
“The pack is still tracking the three rogue wolves that have been stalking the livestock. We think they’re lupus garous.”
“So you think they’re with your wolf pack?”
“They might be. But we suspect they aren’t.” He ran his hand over her cheek. “We’ve been keeping track of everyone’s comings and goings in the pack since the second incident of wolf sightings, and everyone seems to be accounted for. They have to be rogue wolves.”
She shook her head. “Has anyone left the pack recently that would want to cause you trouble?” She looked up when he didn’t say anything. “Someone else?”
“Cousins. We had trouble before within our own pack. Our uncle was the sheriff and next in line to lead the pack, but he had murdered some of our pack members and we had to take him down. His four sons left the pack after Uncle Sheridan was killed, and we haven’t heard from them since. We haven’t been able to track down their last whereabouts.”
“Your cousins. I’m sorry. And you’re worried whoever it is might be out there. Somewhere in the storm.”
“Yeah. I found wolf prints—fresh tracks before the blizzard hit. I had hoped I’d find evidence of where they were hiding after they made their strikes before the storm wiped out their tracks.”
“You shouldn’t have been out here by yourself,” she scolded.
He smiled. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m serious. You can’t think you could take on four male wolves.”
“I hoped to talk them out of whatever they’ve been planning. There must be some reason why they’ve been prowling the edges of our territory, and I don’t think it’s good.”
Her lips parted in surprise, then she frowned. “You were trying to protect them—if it was them—weren’t you?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, his gaze steady on hers. Then he finally said, “It might be another pack causing trouble. Someone seeking revenge, perhaps. We’ve had trouble with another pack before. Some red wolf males thought they had some claim to a couple of our red wolf females who originally had come from their pack. Lelandi and Carol.”
“Carol?”
“Yeah… you’re not associated with any red wolf renegades, are you? They were part of the red pack now led by Lelandi’s uncle Hrothgar.”
“I’m not associated with… Lelandi’s pack,” she finally said.
Not with Lelandi’s. She couldn’t be. At least he didn’t think so, because Lelandi didn’t know Elizabeth. “There’s one guy in particular we’re not sure about. We never could tell where his allegiances lay. His name is North.”
Elizabeth stiffened a little. “You told me the ones causing trouble were grays, not reds,” she said.
Studying her, Tom nodded. She had evaded his question. What wasn’t she telling him? She looked weary and he needed to get her into bed. Rest let the body heal faster. Yet he couldn’t give up the notion that she knew something about the red pack, and that made him think of the wolf she’d mentioned the first time she was here. She’d said she needed to meet him on a matter of business, and he had been within driving distance.
“Elizabeth, who were you to meet but he couldn’t see you because of the road conditions?”
Elizabeth heaved a deep breath, as if she were too tired to continue hiding her secrets from him. “North Redding.”
Chapter 18
Tom couldn’t believe that Elizabeth had tried to meet up with North, the rogue wolf who had caused their pack all kinds of trouble in the past.
North was the one who had tried to steal Carol back from Ryan, thinking a red wolf from his pack had more of a claim to her than Ryan, a gray from another pack. That concerned Tom. Would North attempt to claim Elizabeth? Tom didn’t trust him.
“North was supposed to meet with me and hand over proof that my uncle had murdered my parents,” Elizabeth continued.
Tom closed his gaping mouth. “Your uncle murdered your parents?” God, how could she have been dealing with this all alone? The bastard better be dead, Tom thought angrily, but remembered that he couldn’t be. Not from what Elizabeth said earlier—that she thought her uncle might have had something to do with her kidnapping.
“I always suspected he had,” Elizabeth said. “He never hid the animosity he had for his brother, my dad, for taking a coyote as a mate. Both were widowed—my dad and my mother. And they found each other. Why was that so wrong?”
He took hold of her hand and caressed it. “Nothing was wrong with it, Elizabeth. Nothing if they loved each other and were free to do so.”
“They were. I haven’t been able to get in touch with North since first arriving in Silver Town, though. Someone else answered his phone the night I was at Darien and Lelandi’s. I was afraid whoever it was might come after me and”—she shifted her gaze to him—“cause trouble for your pack.”
“I can’t believe you were worried about us,” Tom said, unable to curb his incredulity. She ran away to protect his pack? And for what? To put herself in a world of danger!
“I think… I think my uncle might have learned what North had planned. I’m afraid North might be in trouble, if he’s not already dead.”
“All right, let’s go back over what we know. The chances of you dying on the slopes would be minimal. So why, if the men had been hired by your uncle or half brother, would they push you down the slope?”
“To make me easier to manipulate. They’d keep me out of the B and B by sending me to the hospital so they could steal my stuff from the B and B and lure me to the hotel, then take off with me. But you stayed with me, so that plan didn’t work.”
“So when they came to the tavern afterward, it was like they were taunting you. Telling you that they’d come for you anyway?”
“It was a way for the men to get in Darien’s face—show they weren’t afraid of him and would get to me some other way. But I’m sure they were pissed. They didn’t think a gray wolf pack would help a red wolf-coyote.”
“They had that scenario wrong. Everyone in the pack would take them on. Silva was at our table forever, and one of them looked straight at us. At you. Damn it. I remember being so pissed off I wanted to slug him, if only to get his attention off you.”
She smiled a little at Tom, then grew serious. “One of the men who grabbed me said that I had been with the wrong company.”
“Wrong company being the Silver pack leader and my brother and me.” Tom squeezed her hand. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. The pack won’t. Lelandi’s Uncle Hrothgar won’t stand for having a killer in his pack, either.”
Tears swam in Elizabeth’s eyes. She reached out to Tom for a hug.
He knew she ached, but he pulled her into his arms and held her close. “You’re not alone,” he whispered against her forehead. “Never again.” He separated a little from her. “We’ll work this all out. I have another couple of questions, though. Why did they steal your luggage and ID?”
“They wanted the deed to my parents’ property, the horse farm where I grew up. Pretty valuable piece of real estate, I guess. I was going to sign the deed over to North in exchange for the evidence that would prove my uncle murdered my parents. I had taken it with me on the slopes because I was supposed to meet North at the lodge later.”