Yet, that didn’t explain what she’d been thinking of when she was sitting in his truck with a faraway look, like she was not really there. Just like when he’d be deeply contemplating a case and Rosalind would interrupt his meditation with a question. He suspected Carol was telling the truth, that she’d had a vision and that she truly had other psychic abilities.
“Keep thinking she doesn’t have psychic connections, and I’ll have to mate her,” Jake said.
Ryan glanced at him. He looked damn serious. “Then why the hell don’t you?”
“Annoyingly, she’s got a thing for you.”
Ryan almost smiled.
“In this premonition of hers… she didn’t tell you that someone might steal her away?”
Glancing up from a footprint, Ryan gave him a look of exasperation. “Are you going to help me search for these guys or just talk your fool head off?”
“Did she?”
“No. She said her visions are too vague. That she didn’t know what this one meant.”
“Trouble. Every time she’s had a vision, it’s been trouble.” Jake sniffed the air. “This way.”
“Always?”
“Since I’ve known her, yeah. So she’ll always be a handful, I suspect.”
Which supported Ryan’s opinion that Carol needed someone uniquely qualified in her life. Someone who could deal with the dangerous situations she found herself in. She wasn’t a police officer or trained in military tactics. Yet if she envisioned a crime being committed and she tried to stop it, or if the perp learned she knew about his or her commission of a crime, she could put herself in a world of jeopardy. Beyond that, she needed to learn how to control shifting. From what she had admitted to him, she needed someone to help her through the transition.
Ryan paused to examine scattered leaves. “They ran through here.” He quickened his pace. “She needs an alpha, Jake.” But not just any alpha.
“Yeah, I know. So that means you, me, or Tom, unless we let her go to another pack.”
“But Tom thinks he’ll find his dream mate.”
“Yeah, and who the hell told Carol that?” Jake frowned at Ryan, in protective brother mode.
Ryan hid a scowl. “She needed to know the truth. She was harboring some notion that Tom might be interested in her.”
“Oh.”
Ryan glanced at Jake. “And you, too.”
“But she practically melted in your arms during the dance. And the way she kissed you…” Jake shook his head. “Guess that means I’ll have to call you out.”
“Call me out?”
“Yeah, see who wins the little lady.”
Ryan chuckled under his breath. “I’m sure she’d love that. Probably decide to mate with Mervin instead and give the rest of us up.”
“About what you said to Nurse Matthew. Do you really think he was in trouble in his previous pack?” Jake asked.
Ryan smiled a little. “Only as far as he fought with his pack leader’s brother over a woman a number of times. That didn’t set well with either the pack leader or his second-in-command.”
Jake looked surprised.
“I investigated everyone—those in your pack and those who were joining—just as a courtesy to Darien, in the event anything was important.”
“Did you tell Darien?”
“No need to. The woman chose Matthew’s competition. He came here to lick his wounds. Figure that’s why he hadn’t hit on Carol yet. Probably still feels something for the woman who didn’t choose him.”
“But you made it sound like he had something to hide.”
Ryan sniffed the air. “His own failure.” He suddenly stopped and pointed at the path the three reds had taken this time. “There. This way.”
“Darien said to take them any way we had to. If they fight us, so be it.”
Ryan nodded. If he’d gotten hold of the man who’d stolen Carol away before, the man would have been dead—no argument.
He and Jake quickly stripped off their clothes and shape-shifted. The showdown would be between two grays and three reds, if Ryan had any say about it. Then he bolted through the woods in hot pursuit as Jake skirted around the trees a few yards away.
At least this way, the reds they were hunting would be far away from Carol, and he figured she’d be safe, no matter who was watching over her.
For over an hour, they pursued the reds, who were surprisingly speedy. Expecting their next move, the three separated and Jake chased one, while Ryan targeted another. Even if they took only two of them to task, it would show the grays’ strength and possibly stop the reds from trying anything further.
That’s when Ryan discovered a campsite, tents, a smoldering fire, and tuna cans and cracker wrappers littering the ground. What caught his eye next was that the man he’d been chasing was no longer running as a wolf. Half dressed in a pair of jeans, hairy chest naked, boots unlaced, his face covered in a scruffy red beard and amber eyes narrowed, he pointed a gun at Ryan while he hovered near a pickup, his getaway vehicle.
Shit. Split-second decision time: lunge at the armed man, or make a hasty turn, try to avoid getting shot in the back of the head, and run in the direction of Silver Town. Tucking tail was not Ryan’s way.
Before he could leap, he heard the sound of gunfire. The bullet ricocheted off a tree and grazed Ryan’s left foreleg before he reached the bastard. Panicked, the guy fired again twice without aiming. And Ryan darted behind a Douglas fir.
The bullets struck the tree next to him with a whap… whap! When Ryan came around the tree to take the man down, the red dove into the pickup, slammed the door, charged up the engine, and tore off with the truck leaving a trail of dust in its wake.
Hell. Ryan’s foreleg burned even though the bullet wound was superficial, as far as he could tell. He licked the injury, knowing that his wolf saliva could reduce some kinds of bacterial infection and that studies had shown that it could actually aid cell regeneration because of saliva’s epidermal growth factors.
He howled for Jake, letting him know he had lost his prey and was headed in, but then Ryan caught the whiff of the other man who’d split off from the three and took off after him. Taking care of the flesh wound could wait.
Jake howled to Ryan in response. A chorus of other wolves let him know where they were and that they’d gotten the message. If the reds weren’t already scared shitless, the sound of all the grays in the woods probably would do the trick.
Unable to keep up the faster pace he’d used getting there, Ryan finally slowed to a trot for a good long while, his leg bleeding some and the wound still burning, while searching for clues of the third man.
Jake soon joined him, sniffed his foreleg, and trotted beside him. Ryan couldn’t help but envy Darien and his two brothers. Ryan’s sister meant everything in the world to him, but having someone who acted like a brother to watch his back when they were on the warpath was a unique experience. And welcome.
From the looks of it, Jake must have lost his prey also, though.
While Ryan continued to look for clues of the other man, Jake seemed more concerned about Ryan’s health, glancing back in the direction of the hospital, circling as though he wanted to return. Maybe because Ryan kept limping, although he was trying hard not to. Unable to locate the red, Ryan finally gave up and motioned with his head toward town. Looking relieved, Jake dipped his head once in agreement. The two took off for their stash of clothes.
When they reached them and then shape-shifted, Ryan fumbled with his shirt. Jake looked like he was about to offer to help him, but Ryan finally managed. “What happened to your guy?”
“You were wounded.”