Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed

by Madelaine Montague

  Chapter Six

  Laurie was too mad on the way back to the hotel to think straight or she would’ve been preparing her call list. By the time it occurred to her that she needed one, they’d reached the parking lot. She didn’t think it would’ve occurred to her then except the guys were discussing packing her stuff up. “I have to make some calls before I can check out,” she said abruptly.

  “No calls …,” Lucien began.

  Laurie put on brakes. “Now wait just a damned minute! I got that part about not being able to contact anybody after I go into protective custody, but I need to make some calls before we leave!”

  Lucien’s lips tightened. “I was going to say once we leave here you can’t make any calls so make sure you make all the calls you want to before we go.”

  Relieved, Laurie nodded and led the way inside. Once they got on the elevator, she dug the pen and note pad from her hotel room out of her purse and started jotting down calls to make.

  It wasn’t a long list.

  It was at times like this that she really missed her family. Her and her brother and sister had had a falling out after their mother’s death a few years earlier—because she hated her father for not being there when her mother died and her brother and sister had sided with the absent father.

  She supposed she shouldn’t have been angry with them over what her father had done, but she hated the fact that they made excuses for him when she didn’t feel like he had one that even approached adequate. They’d had three children together! She didn’t care if they had been divorced for years. He should have had the decency to put in an appearance—for his children’s sake if nothing else. She had needed one parent!

  It didn’t help that they all had their own lives/careers, they lived cities apart, and both her brother and her sister were married with families of their own. With their mother gone they never got together as a family anymore. There hadn’t seemed to be a right time or place to make up.

  She considered whether she ought to contact them and let them know what was going on but then discarded it. She didn’t have time to explain everything and they didn’t know anything. What would be the point in worrying them with it now?

  And in the back of her mind she heard the little voice saying if they’d cared about her they would’ve tried to contact her. They wouldn’t have dumped the entire situation on her shoulders. If they hadn’t cared enough to call her they couldn’t be too worried about her.

  Instead, she called her best friend and explained it all to her—and told her to be careful just in case the guy came looking for her or sent someone looking for her. She called her supervisor at work and explained the situation and told her to get in touch with the DA if she had questions. And lastly she called her landlord and told him she planned to come back when she could and not to assume she’d left and dispose of her things. Then she used her bank app to pay her rent in advance and setup her utilities on auto-pay just in case she wasn’t allowed to contact them or make arrangements later.

  She just hoped there was enough in the account to cover the utilities when the bills came due!

  Of course she didn’t suppose it would be any great tragedy if her utilities were shut off for a little while—except for the little problem with the mark on her credit and them taking her damned deposit! She’d arranged for her friend to pick up her cat and keep her until she could get back.

  She was just sorry she hadn’t done that before she left, but she’d thought she would be back shortly and it wasn’t such a long drive that she couldn’t make a round trip as needed to put out more water and cat food.

  And she didn’t like asking people for favors.

  Of course, the damned car was toast now, but then she hadn’t expected that when she’d left.

  That thought prompted her to call the garage. They told her it would be ready in a couple of weeks which she interpreted to mean a month at the very least. She told them she’d check back. An imperious knock at the door encouraged her to wind up the call, but she was still trying to get loose from the man on the phone when she answered the door.

  She felt perfectly blank when she opened it. She’d been expecting Lucien, or maybe one of the other guys. The man standing on the other side was a complete stranger. Several things happened almost simultaneously. The man slammed the palm of his hand against the door she was holding. The blow popped the security latch off as if it had never been there at all and the door slammed open, tearing several of her nails as it was wrenched from her grip and then flung against the wall hard enough she heard the plaster crack.

  Even as the man slammed his hand against the door, however, Laurie heard a shout in the hallway followed by pounding footsteps as someone heavy ran toward her.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  The stranger, who’d already reached to grab her, threw his hands up in the air in a pose of surrender and started backing away. “Sorry! I thought ….”

  He didn’t get the rest of the excuse out. Lucien (or Damien, she wasn’t sure which at that point) grabbed two fistfuls of the man’s shirt. The man slammed his fists down on Lucien’s forearms to break the grip and swung at him at the same time, catching Lucien a glancing blow on the jaw with his elbow. Twisting, he managed to elude Lucien and race away while Lucien recovered his balance.

  Laurie didn’t see any more. A wall of flesh blocked her view as Damien swarmed over her, grabbing her and carrying her into the room in one movement. They landed against the wall. For a space of several heartbeats, Laurie felt every inch of his body plastered against hers. Then he stepped back and examined her with his gaze.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She was too shocked even to be shook up—really. It had happened so fast she didn’t have time to realize she might be in danger until it was over. She lifted her throbbing fingers and examined the row of broken nails. Then it hit her that the man had actually attacked her with the intention of harming her and she felt an avalanche of emotion crash over her. Fear and anger warred for dominance and she felt her eyes sting with incipient tears. She sniffed. “No.”

  He studied her woebegone face for a moment and abruptly pulled her close. That was all it took to shake the last of her control. She burst into noisy sobs.

  “Aww, baby! Don’t cry. I’m going to take the bastard apart limb from limb if he’s hurt you. You sure you aren’t hurt?”

  She shook her head, struggling to regain control.

  “You aren’t sure?”

  She sniffed. “He just hurt my hand when he hit the door.” She struggled with the urge to burst into tears all over again. “I thought it was one of you, come to collect me.”

  He caught her chin and tipped her head back. “What did I tell about answering the door like that?” he demanded sternly.

  “Give it a rest, Lucien,” Damien growled from behind him. “You know the lock wouldn’t have held even if she hadn’t cracked the door.”

  “I know if we hadn’t come out just then he would’ve had time to hurt her,” Lucien said tightly. “And if she hadn’t opened the door he would’ve had to beat it down.”

  “That could have happened, yeah. But it didn’t.”

  Lucien looked like he wanted to say more but finally merely shook his head. “Did he get away?”

  “I don’t know. The bastard had the stairway door fixed to lock behind him—he must have propped it open with something. He managed to get through before I could get hold of him. Basil took the other stairs and Kane took the elevator to try to head him off, but he caught us with our pants down. There’s no getting around that.”

  Lucien glanced up, scanning the ceiling. “Go see if you can talk hotel security into giving us the tape. If you can’t, see if you can capture a decent picture to help track the bastard down. I’m going to help Laurie grab her things. We need to get her to a secure location. This place is just too wide open.”

  * * * *

  The blitz attack had been over before Laurie had had ti
me to consider that her life was in danger. She supposed that was why it didn’t seem quite real to her and she was more focused on her discomfort over the fact that she hadn’t been sure of whether she was talking to Lucien or not until Damien had arrived.

  Which really sucked because she could’ve enjoyed the moments much better if she’d realized it was Lucien’s body pressed against her, Lucien who’d been so sweet … before he went back to lecturing her about the damned door!

  It made it worse that he’d been proven right. She imagined there would be no living with the man now!

  Apparently, she was going to get the chance to find out. They’d left Atlanta behind and were headed into the mountains of north Georgia.

  She’d been relegated to the backseat where she could see almost nothing even before it got dark. Lucien was driving and Damien riding shotgun. Basil and Kane had lingered behind. She hadn’t understood why until she’d overheard them talking to Damien on their walkie-talkies about making sure the back trail was clear.

  They left the interstate shortly after they left Atlanta traffic behind and got on a fairly well trafficked two lane highway. The traffic began to fall off fairly quickly, though, and before long there was only a smattering of headlights on the road.

  One pair consistently stayed about four car lengths behind them. She glanced back uneasily when she noticed Damien studying the lights in the rearview mirror. He lifted his radio. “That you behind us, Basil?”

  “Affirmative.”

  The cloak and dagger shit was unnerving. The worst of it was she still wasn’t reassured. If anything, she felt more threatened. The behavior of the guys confirmed her danger even while their presence was insurance against it. And the confirmation of a legitimate threat was far more powerful than their presence was reassuring.

  She had liked it better when she’d been blissfully ignorant of danger.

  Of course, Kane had told her that they’d been keeping an eye on her for a while. They’d escorted her from her home to Atlanta. That was how and why they just ‘happened’ to be near enough at hand to help her out when her car broke down. But she hadn’t known they were there and she hadn’t felt threatened by the DA’s certainty that her life was in danger. The murderer had been caught. He was in jail and she was safe. All she’d had to deal with was the aftermath of the trauma and worry about having to go to court.

  Now all she could think about was that the DA was afraid she wasn’t going to make it to court to testify.

  She’d managed to scare herself pretty thoroughly with her thoughts on the trip to the cabin by the time they got there. It had seemed to take forever—at least as long as it took to drive from south Georgia to Atlanta—and she was exhausted enough by that time, despite her fears, that all she really wanted to do was crawl in a bed and sleep until the trial.

  Lucien—this time she was sure it was Lucien—showed her to a bedroom. Basil and Kane brought her suitcases while he moved around the room grabbing up clothing and balling it under one arm, checked the windows and the bathroom that was attached.

  Laurie, who’d immediately moved to the bed and plopped down since there weren’t any chairs in the room, watched them uneasily.

  He glanced at her when Basil and Kane had trouped out again and disappeared.

  “You sure we’re going to be ok here?” she asked worriedly.

  He moved toward her and sat down on the bed beside her, looping an arm around her and gathering her close to his side. “We’re going to take good care of you, Laurie. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you. I swear,” he murmured in a rumbling growl of a voice, tapping her chin to get her to look at him. “You believe me, right?”

  She stared up into his eyes, feeling warmth spread through her. It was so strange! She should have felt uncomfortable in his embrace. She hardly knew him, and yet it didn’t feel that way. He felt completely familiar. She felt an odd little déjà vu moment as she stared into his eyes, as if they’d done this before. She felt as completely comfortable curled up against him as if it was something they’d done many, many times. Swallowing with an effort, she nodded and then settled her head against his shoulder. “I do.”

  He stroked a large hand over her head and then used his thumb beneath her jaw to force her to look at him again. “Good girl. We won’t let you down.”

  She thought he was going to kiss her for several faltering heartbeats, but he merely tapped her nose, smiled and got up to stretch. Then he strode from the room and shut the door.

  Laurie stared at the door when he left, trying to decide what time it was and if it was late enough to be acceptable to go to bed. Or if it was still so early they’d think she was a wimp for flaking out or worse, some sort of country hick or prude—bed at sundown!

  The smell of frying bacon clinched it.

  She’d forgotten she hadn’t had a chance to eat after the deposition. She’d been making phone calls then almost gotten murdered and then they’d gotten in a hurry to leave ….

  Grabbing a suitcase, she found something more comfortable to wear and headed into the bathroom to see if a quick shower would revive her enough to keep her from falling asleep in her plate. It helped a little. She was still towel drying her hair when she left the bathroom. There was a tap on the door before she could grab her brush.

  “You hungry?”

  She thought it was Basil’s voice at the door, though she hadn’t heard him speak enough to positively identify his voice. She’d heard Lucien and Damien enough, though, to recognize them so it had to be Basil or Kane. “Starving! Am I invited?”

  He chuckled as she opened the door. She sure hoped it wasn’t the fresh scrubbed, wild hair that did it. His eyes were dancing, though, as they roamed over her. “Naw. I just wanted to see if you wanted some so I could say no.”

  Laurie smiled back at him. “I’ll arm wrestle you for some of that bacon.”

  His amusement deepened and his gaze warmed as it moved over her again, this time speculatively. “I wouldn’t mind …. Never mind. Come on and eat before it gets cold. Nothing cools faster than eggs.”

  Nodding, Laurie headed back to the vanity mirror to rake the snarls from her hair quickly and then left the bedroom. Neither of the twins were present, but she was just in time to catch one heading out the door with bacon and eggs rolled into a piece of toast in one hand.

  She lifted her brows questioningly at Basil as she headed to the small table to join him. “Where is everybody?”

  He dug into his plate of bacon and eggs. “Damien just went out to check the perimeter. Lucien and Kane are at the lookout watching to make sure we weren’t followed.”

  Laurie frowned. “I thought that was why you and Kane took another car and followed behind us?”

  He nodded. “Nobody followed us out of town, but this is the age of electronic gadgets. We didn’t get the chance to make a full sweep. Even if we had we could still have missed something. So we’ll keep a close watch to make sure nobody managed to plant a tracking device.”

  Laurie nodded, feeling her appetite vanish abruptly. The little bit of bacon and eggs she managed to eat after that hit her stomach like rocks and made her feel vaguely queasy.

  Basil reached across the table and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Hey! Don’t look like that. Nobody is going to get past us.”

  Laurie smiled with an effort, trying not to think about the possibility that somebody would even though she knew if they were determined enough they were liable to no matter how well the guys thought they were watching her. There were guns that could shoot for miles and crack shots that could hit their target at those distances. They could blow her head off without getting anywhere near her.

  When she’d eaten all she thought she could manage without throwing up, she pushed the plate back. “That was good.”

  Basil eyed the half eaten bacon and eggs a little skeptically. “I thought you were starving?”

  Laurie laughed. “I was. On my best day I can’t eat a half a pound of bacon
and a half a dozen eggs!”

  He looked her over. “No? I guess I overestimated you—maybe a little.”

  Laurie studied him and finally shook her head. “This is going to sound weird, I know, but did you ever meet someone and feel like you’d met them before?”

  He looked startled for a split second but shrugged. “Lately? Yeah.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lucien supposed the clash between him and Damien was inevitable, but he’d expected Damien to show more sense than to start shit when the risks to Laurie were so high.

  “What was that all about in the room with Laurie while ago?” Damien growled as soon as he spotted Lucien.

  Lucien was bone tired from being on watch for hours and not in the mood to put up with an interrogation from his younger brother. “Let’s try ‘none of your fucking business, little brother’,” he growled, moving to pass.

  Damien punched him on the shoulder. “Don’t start that little brother shit! You weren’t more than ten minutes ahead of me, big brother, and you didn’t answer my question.”

  Lucien paused, glaring at him. “Just when did you get to thinking I was supposed to answer to you, little brother?” he snarled warningly.

  “You guys going to keep Laurie up all night fighting over her like two dogs quarreling over a bone? She’s a client, you know—and nobody’s property.”

  Damien and Lucien turned to glare at Basil, who was propped against one of the posts on the porch of the cabin.

  “Stay out of this,” Damien growled. “I want to know what he was doing cuddling her … like he’s claimed her or something.”

  “Well want with one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up faster,” Lucien growled.

  Damien punched him. Lucien saw it coming but dodged too late to miss it. He was a lot quicker retaliating, punching Damien twice and then dancing out of the way when Damien swung at him again.