by Lexi Blake
Laura had a grin on her face that would have made the Cheshire Cat proud. “Guess your brand of charm doesn’t work here in Bliss.”
She placed her arm through Wolf’s and walked off after Cam and Mel.
The cell in Rafe’s pocket buzzed. He was grateful for the distraction. He looked down at the number. His chief. Joe’s voice cracked over the line.
“You ma…okay?”
Yeah, well it was far too much to ask for good cell reception. “Joe, I can’t hear you.”
“Wha…can’t…where?”
“You’re cutting out.” He raised his voice, somehow hoping that louder would be better.
“On his…Bliss. New information.”
“What information?” He was screaming now, frustration taking over. Was it on the case? Was it about Laura? His hand tightened on the worse-than-useless phone.
There was a click and a buzzing sound as the call disconnected.
Someone slapped him on the back. Rafe turned and saw a man with a cowboy hat on his head. He was dressed in khakis, and there was a gold badge on his chest.
“You know yelling at it doesn’t fix things. If you want to yell at someone, yell at the Farley twins. They had the brilliant idea to turn our nearest cell tower into a SETI receiver. I have no idea how those boys managed to screw it up so badly, but it doesn’t work anymore. The phone company says they’re working on it, but because we’re small, I don’t think we’re a priority. We’re all scrambling,” the man said. The badge on his chest proclaimed him to be the sheriff of the town. “We’ve had to make do. Now, if you want good reception, there’s this hill right outside the Harper Stables. You tend to have to stand on one leg, and it’s best if you take a friend with you because the really good spot is about four feet off the ledge, but as long as someone holds on, you should be all right.”
The sheriff tipped his hat and started to walk off. He didn’t look back as he said his final words of wisdom. “And watch out for bears! And Max Harper. He can be worse than a bear. If you see him coming, I would shoot first and ask questions never.”
Yeah, Rafe fucking hated this place.
* * * *
“Are you planning to tell me why we’re lying to federal agents, or have you had an abrupt change of heart? Because if the latter is true, then we have to talk about the way you proposed. A guy needs some romance with his marriage proposal. And you didn’t get down on one knee.”
Normally, Laura would have laughed at Wolf’s teasing. Instead, she found herself frowning his way. She shouldn’t be pissed at him, but he was the only one around. “If you could please play along, it will only be a couple of hours. I assure you, once they tell me what they need to say, they’ll be right back on a plane to DC. Those two are very career oriented. They don’t belong in Bliss.”
Wolf helped her step up the curb as they walked toward the parking lot beside Stella’s. Holly had driven Laura into town, but she’d decided to let Wolf drive her home, all the better to keep up her little deception. She couldn’t feel too bad about it. After all, Rafe and Cam had deceived her. At least she hadn’t slept with them before she lied to them.
Wolf walked her toward his dually. The massive black truck was a lot like Wolf, enormous, powerful, and surprisingly comfortable on the inside. He opened the door and handed her up.
“I’m surprised you didn’t listen to them.” Wolf stood outside her door. The height of the seat allowed her to look straight into his calculating, dark eyes. “If what you say is true, then one conversation could clear everything up and send those boys on their way. Makes me wonder why you put them off.”
Bastard. He shut the door and walked around the truck. She didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to stew. She wanted to rail. Why had she decided to let Wolf drive her? If she was with Holly, she could simply sit and fume. Holly would fume with her. Wolf was far too busy psychoanalyzing her.
Wolf hopped into the driver’s seat and started the truck to purring. “No answer for that?”
“Is one required?” She hadn’t meant to sound that icy, had she?
He turned to her, one eyebrow climbing up his handsome face. “No, but some courtesy would be nice.”
And she finally figured Wolf Meyer out. He’d always reminded her of someone, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. That arched brow and the demand for courtesy did it. Stefan Talbot. Oh, yeah, Wolf Meyer was a Dom. He’d mentioned that his brother was in the lifestyle, but he’d conveniently left out his own interest in BDSM. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m afraid they threw me for a loop.” She allowed her lips to quirk up a bit. “Will you forgive me if I call you Sir?”
His cheekbones stained a slight red. “Gave myself away, did I? Well, I always knew you would be hesitant about that part of my life. It was never going to work, was it?”
He pulled out onto the road.
“Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not my cup of tea.”
“But I’m guessing ménage isn’t out of the question.”
Now she was the one blushing. “And you go there, why? Most normal people would ask which one I’d been involved with.”
“I’m not normal, and both of those men want you. They both wanted to murder me. You don’t get that possessive about a woman unless you’ve had her—or you’re completely insane. Given where we are, it could be either option.”
“It was a fling.” She heard the hollowness in her voice. Damn it. She’d been good at hiding her emotions once. Now they were hanging out all over the place.
“Do you honestly believe that?” Wolf asked as he turned toward the valley where a small cluster of cabins lay. “I don’t know if we were listening to the same conversation. I heard that they’d been looking for you. The big guy quit his precious job in order to spend all of his time trying to hunt you down. The other guy practically ate you up with his eyes. They didn’t seem to be disengaged agents doing a job.”
She wasn’t falling for their crap again. She wasn’t sure why they were here, but it didn’t matter. If anything, it was guilt that caused them to search for her. They’d felt guilty when she’d been kidnapped. She could still remember waking up after surgery to the sounds of the two of them fighting about who was at fault. Cam had blamed Rafe for selling her out. Rafe had pointed out that Cam hadn’t believed her profile either. It had been a nasty way to wake up.
And then the doctor had told her the bad news.
“When a member of one of the teams gets injured or dies, do you feel bad about it?”
Wolf’s face shut down, his jaw forming a hard line. He kept his eyes on the road in front of him. “Of course. Your team is your family.”
“Well, consider the BAU my team.”
“If that’s the way you want to play it, who am I to stop you?”
Wolf was quiet the rest of the drive. He turned down the dirt road that led to her cabin. Holly’s cabin was beside Laura’s. Callie and her husbands lived close, but Laura always felt like she was the only person in the world when she shut the door to her cabin. It was her sanctuary.
As she got out of the truck, a wave of guilt rolled over her. Wolf was a nice man, and she was using him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t want them to think I’d been pining for them.”
She hadn’t. She didn’t think about them every day anymore. She’d gotten used to her life here in Bliss. She didn’t need them coming in here and disrupting everything. She was over them.
Liar.
Wolf smiled at her. “It’s all right. I knew it wouldn’t work out deep down. I find you incredibly attractive, and women around these parts can be a little…interesting. I would move on and ask Holly out, but I hear she’s taken, even if the interested parties are unavailable or so whacked out they can’t talk around the girl.”
It was an apt description of Holly’s plight. Wolf pulled the truck into her driveway and stopped.
Laura slid out of her seat. “Well, I thank you anywa
y. I’ll tell them the truth tonight.”
“Don’t. I enjoy subterfuge as much as the next guy. Let ’em sweat.” Wolf winked at her. “I’ll be back to pick you up for the dinner. It’ll be fun to see what your friend is like after a couple of hours of Mel.”
Wolf pulled back out, and she was left alone.
She tried not to think about what he’d said. After a long time staring at the river, she walked into her cabin to get dressed.
Chapter Six
Cam pulled the SUV into the parking lot, gravel crunching under the wheels. Lights sparkled in the distance like fireflies, and the hum of music could be heard even through the heavy doors. Cam squinted, trying to make out the individual forms swaying in the distance. The fairgrounds were lit with a mixture of twinkle lights and the full moon shining down. He craned his neck to look through the windshield.
Damn. The stars didn’t look like that in the city. They were like jewels in the sky here in Bliss.
“Are you ready to go?” Rafe’s voice seemed caught in his throat. He’d been quiet for hours, sitting in the booth of the diner while Cam talked to the insane dude.
He’d actually learned a lot while talking to Mel. He’d learned that everyone in town loved Laura. Mel had talked about her with great affection. The woman who ran the diner had talked about her, too. Laura had formed real connections in this community, connections she’d never formed in DC. Laura hadn’t known her neighbors in DC. Cam understood. He didn’t particularly want to know the people he shared his rattrap complex with, either. He’d already had more conversation with Mel, the conspiracy kook, than he’d had with anyone in the last year or so. It made him realize how isolated he’d become.
Cam watched as Rafe checked the clip on his Glock. “I feel weird not carrying.”
Rafe shook his head. “They would never have let you on a plane with a firearm.”
Rafe looked around the place, his dark eyes hawk-like.
“What are you looking for?” Cam hadn’t seen anything in this place that worried him. Sure, some of the people seemed weird, but they were harmless. He had to wonder if he’d been out of the game too long. Was he missing something?
“If you found her, de Sade could find her,” Rafe pointed out.
“I doubt that,” Cam assured him. “She’s pretty isolated here. If she hadn’t taken that photo, I wouldn’t have found her. I can’t imagine that de Sade has written a software program that scans the net and identifies missing people through facial recognition.”
Rafe shook his head, a slight nod that let Cam know he disagreed. “That software exists, Cam. I heard recently there’s a group in Dallas working on something similar. You remember Alex McKay? He’s in private security now and one of the men on his team is writing a program like yours.”
“I know all about Adam Miles. We’ve exchanged some emails. But I assure you my program is better than his. I tried several of the ones on the market before I gave up and built my own. What do you think I spent my money on?” It had taken him about a year and a half to design that software. His training in communications had been the reason the Bureau was interested in him in the first place. He’d left his actual programming jobs behind when he joined the BAU. He’d concentrated on keeping the hardware up and the use of communications in the field, but he’d realized that he needed something more than what the market had when he couldn’t find Laura. He’d sold almost everything he had to make the software work, but it had paid off in the end. He’d found her.
And now she was with a former Navy SEAL.
She swayed in Wolf Meyer’s arms in the middle of the small dance floor. Fuck. He hated that man. Cam had spent the afternoon in their tiny motel room using freaking dial-up to come up with everything he could on Wolf Meyer. Of course, it wasn’t much. The Navy kept a lot of things classified, and Wolf Meyer seemed to be one of them. Unless he wanted to hack into the Navy’s classified files and risk bringing the wrath of God down on himself, he had to let the particulars go. He didn’t care that Wolf was a badass who had honorably served his country for years. The asshole was horning in on his woman, and he wasn’t going to sit back and let it happen.
“If you’ll let me borrow your sidearm, I can take care of one of our problems,” he said between clenched teeth.
“You can’t shoot him,” Rafe replied with a disappointed sigh. “I wish we could, but we need to concentrate on what’s important.”
“Protecting Laura.” It was all that mattered.
“Gentlemen, can I help you?”
Cam turned and saw a man in a khaki uniform.
Rafe nodded. “Sheriff Wright.”
Cam held out a hand. Rafe had made contact with local law enforcement. Nathan Wright, according to Rafe, was deeply concerned about the problem.
“Have you done a perimeter sweep?” Rafe asked.
A long, slow smile crossed the sheriff’s face. “I’ve walked around the fairgrounds and said hello to everyone, if that’s what you’re asking. Look, my deputy and I are both on the job tonight. You can relax. This isn’t a tourist event. If someone new shows up, every single person here is going to have questions.”
Small towns could be like that. His hometown hadn’t been easy on newcomers, but they tended to take care of their own. “Have you let the gossips in on what’s going on?”
“Small-town boy?” The sheriff glanced Cam’s way.
“Green Line, Arkansas, population three hundred fifty-two.”
Rafe looked between the two of them. “What does gossip have to do with anything?”
The sheriff shook his head. “Big city?”
“Miami.” Cam shared a look with the sheriff. “I’m afraid my partner here is pure city. He was born in Miami and moved to DC. Rafe, in a small town, if you want everyone to know something, you usually only need to call one person. If you let the worst gossip in town know something, an hour later everyone knows.”
“Hell, Callie is way better than that. She had everyone in the know in half that time. Trust me, Zane and I keep certain things very, very quiet around our wife. Don’t worry. Everyone knows to watch out for Laura. Logan and I will keep a close watch on things.” The sheriff tipped his hat and began to walk away. “And you boys mind your manners around Wolf Meyer. I don’t want to have to break up any fights. You don’t need to fight him, you know. There’s two of you and only one of him. That should be enough to take her down.”
Rafe turned on Cam as the sheriff walked toward the gathering. “See, this is why this place irritates me. What the hell did he mean by any of that? It’s like they speak a different language. I don’t get it. Why would he refer to his wife as ‘our’ wife? Do these people get along so amazingly well that they keep in touch after a divorce and become best friends with the ex-husband?”
Cam wasn’t sure about that, either, but there was a much more important problem. “Why does this place bug you so much? We’ve been in way worse places. We’ve been in even smaller towns, and it never upset you.”
Rafe stared at the scene in front of him. Vivacious music floated across the fairgrounds, and Cam could hear the sound of people laughing and talking. The sweet smell of barbecue made his stomach rumble. It was a perfect little world to his mind, but Rafe was frowning the way he did when they walked into crack houses or slums.
“She’s not going to leave with us,” Rafe said after a long pause.
Cam sighed. It came from deep within his body. He’d known that the moment they walked into town. “No, she isn’t. But the point might be moot. She hasn’t shown a lot of interest in us.”
Oh, there had been that moment when he’d locked eyes on her. He would have sworn he’d seen something on her face, some spark that nearly leapt through the window that had separated them. She’d quickly locked it down, and all he’d seen from her since was a mixture of deep sadness and anger.
“I love her,” Rafe said quietly. “I thought that when we walked in, she would fall into my arms. I guess there was a part of m
e that thought she was waiting for us.”
Cam leaned against the SUV. He’d had that dream, too. Somewhere in the back of his head, he’d imagined she was waiting for them to find her. “We should have known better. She went through a lot. My god, she was lying in her hospital bed, and we were fighting over her like dogs fight over a bone.”
“I know. I know we fucked up, but she ran. She walked out and didn’t even let us know she was alive. How could she do it?” Rafe asked, his voice tortured.
“Come on, man. I know you. You ran from Miami as fast as you could. The same way I ran from Arkansas.” Rafe’s parents had been a bit controlling. After they had divorced, he’d been trapped in the war zone. He’d talked about it extensively over the years. And Cam had taken the first scholarship out of his one-stoplight town and never looked back.
“But I call my mom and my dad. I might not like either of them, but I let them know I’m okay. What does that say about the way she feels about us? I thought a good argument would solve this, but now I have to wonder.”
“I’m staying.” Cam was sure of that. He didn’t have anything to go back to anyway. He had a crappy apartment and no friends beyond Rafe. He had a PI license but not a lot of clientele. “Until de Sade is caught, I’m going to stay right here.”
He would find a job, and he would watch over her.
“Are you going to go to her wedding if we’re wrong and she’s truly involved with Meyer?” Rafe asked.
The whole idea made his chest constrict. God, he couldn’t watch Laura walk toward someone else while she wore a white dress, her face shining with love. It would tear him apart. “Yes. I’ll do it. I owe it to her.”
He owed her everything. Guilt weighed on him, stronger now that he could see her again. He couldn’t help but remember that day after they had made love for the first time. He and Rafe had gone out for breakfast to discuss what had happened, and they hadn’t seen her again until the briefing. Laura had looked so fragile as she turned in her first major profile. She’d looked worse than fragile when everyone had turned on her.