Her Ranger Rescuers

by M J Adams

  “This is nice,” she said.

  “Didn’t Luke tell you they remodeled the Academy after a fire about twenty years ago?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.” Isaac had Luke’s tour memorized, and that was definitely on it. “Maybe he sped things along this time. It is getting late.” Isaac couldn’t break his five a.m. wake-up habit, and he’d stopped trying. He ran on the treadmill or ran the fence line around the Academy property. It was only about three miles, but it was enough to work up a sweat and keep him in top physical condition.

  “If this is where I sleep, where are you?” she asked, cinching her arms across her body. She was tense, and Isaac was used to being third in the group of men. He didn’t like it, but he’d accepted it. At least for now.

  “We’re nearby,” he said evasively. It wasn’t his job to tell her where he and the others slept. “If you don’t want to sleep alone, one of us is always available to be with you,” he added. “Is that something you need?”

  “I…don’t know,” she said, glancing around the room. “Where would you sleep?”

  He indicated the couch. “Right there. We also have Army cots we can bring in. Just know it’s an option, no reason needed.” He gestured toward the door. “Are you up to see the classrooms?”

  “Sure.” She gave him a small smile and ducked her head.

  “I’ll be your teacher,” he said, slipping out of the room behind her. “The training room is right here across the hall, so you’re just a hop, skip, and jump away.”

  He opened the door, expecting Daphne to bark, which she did. “Quiet,” he told the German shepherd.

  Cora froze. “Dogs.”

  “I heard you liked them,” he said. “We can’t have personal pets here at the Academy, but this herd belongs to everyone who comes here. Since I’ve been here, I’ve taken over caring for them.” He clapped his hands, and all five dogs lurched forward. Cora crouched down and patted all of them, letting them lick her face as she cooed at them.

  “What are their names?” she asked him, looking up at him. She glowed, and warmth filled Isaac. He often pushed the women they worked with the hardest, and he tried to find a way to connect with them as quickly as possible.

  “Daphne’s the barker,” he said. “She’s still a puppy. Only about a year old. Daddy’s the oldest, and he’s probably ten. He’s the bulldog licking your knee.”

  Cora giggled, and Isaac sure liked the sound of it.

  “The two little ones are Squirt and Tootsie. I don’t know what they are. Mutts of some kind.”

  Cora picked up Squirt. “She’s a maltese,” she said.

  “She’s also a he,” Isaac said.

  “Oh, I see. Yes, you are.” She put the little dog down. “And the lab?”

  “Hodges.”

  Cora straightened. “Do I get to have class with the dogs?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “If you want to see them for sure, they go running with me at five o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’m a dog-walker,” she said. “Not a dog runner.” She gave him a flirty smile—or maybe Isaac had been out of the dating game for too long. Of course he had been. He’d been at Parkwood for three years, and he’d effectively cut all women from his life after he’d found his fiancée cheating on him.

  He’d called Max that night, and he and Luke had arrived in Colorado a few weeks later. There had been things to pack, and a funeral to attend. He and Luke had both been broken when they’d arrived here, and they’d both slowly put themselves back together with every woman they helped make a better life for themselves.

  Isaac was ready to move on, find somewhere else to be, but he couldn’t leave Luke and Max behind. He hadn’t said anything to either of them, but they were close enough, they probably already knew.

  She’d wandered over to the punching bag and tapped it. “I have to do this?”

  “You get to do that,” he said, focusing on his task. “It’s my job to make sure you’re ready to physically defend yourself when you leave here.” He scanned her from head to toe, wishing Max would get a sense of fashion. He was sure the women they got assigned thought the same thing. “We won’t do a bunch of physical training, because we actually need to get you back to a normal weight.”

  She glanced down at herself too. “I didn’t…”

  “Did your husband remove the mirrors from your room?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “How did you know?”

  “You’re not my first abused and battered charge,” he said with as much sympathy as he could muster. He slung his arm around her. “Don’t worry, Cora. We’ll get all those curves back, and you’ll be able to send someone packing if they even look at you the wrong way.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is.” Isaac wasn’t known for sugar-coating anything, and he wasn’t going to start now. “But hey, you’ll get to eat cookies whenever you want.”

  “Are there really cookies here?”

  “There’s everything here,” he said. “Literally, Cora. Anything you want, you ask me or Max or Luke. We’ll get it for you. We have a clothing closet here, as well as a general supply closet. Max gets those things, so don’t blame me if you’ve got ugly T-shirts in your dresser.” Max guided her over to a bin of athletic equipment. “And he doesn’t have great fashion sense. I can probably sneak you something from the clothing closet. The matron there likes me.” He flashed her a smile and took the clipboard off the hook on the wall.

  “So tomorrow, we’ll be starting self-defense,” he said. “And our afternoon classes will be counseling sessions. You meet with all of us, and we start to build a new persona and profile for you.” He looked at her over the top of the clipboard, her beauty striking him right in the chest. “So be thinking about who you want to be and what you want to do.”

  He put a check on the form that indicated he’d spoken to her about who did what, as well as offered her a roommate any time she wanted one.

  “And Cora—you can’t do what you did in LA. No dog walking. No huge mansion overlooking the ocean.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “Max puts together a package of all new charges. He plans the extraction while Luke and I make sure we’re ready for you here.”

  “How many people have you helped?”

  “You’re our thirteenth,” he said, suddenly tired. He put a mask over his emotions, the way the Army Rangers had taught him to do. “We’ve never had a problem, and we don’t expect one this time either.”

  “Do you remember all of them?” Cora reached down and patted Daphne, who’d been following them around the gym-like space.

  “Of course,” Isaac said. “Amber-Lynn was our first, and I was so nervous. Max, Luke, and I were a new team, and while we’d assisted on the required five cases, we’d never completed our own. My training for this job was longer than for the Rangers, if that gives you an idea of how thorough we are here.”

  Cora nodded. “Who was the sixth?”

  “That would be Parvati Harmon,” he said. “She had a four-year-old daughter on the edge of developing dissociative identity disorder. Last I heard, everyone was doing well.”

  “You know where they are?” Surprise crossed her face.

  “We do,” he said. “We check-in from time to time. You’ll be able to contact the three of us any time after your new life begins.” He was the last leg of the Parkwood initiation, because he was exceptionally skilled at offering reassurances. “We don’t just leave you out there on your own.”

  “How much does this cost?”

  “We’re funded by private donors and grants,” he said. “You pay nothing.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes, and Isaac needed to talk to Luke about how to deal with the women when they cried. Isaac certainly wasn’t good at it, but he drew Cora into his arms and held her right against his chest.

  “You’re safe here, Cora,” he whispered. “Max, Luke, and I will mak
e sure of that.” The scent of chocolate reached his nose, which meant Luke had returned.

  “Come on,” he said. “I have one more thing to talk to you about.” He showed her where the phone was in her room, and how to reach him, Max, and Luke. The three of them had everything timed down to the second, and he’d finished his sentence at the same time Luke knocked on Cora’s bedroom door.

  “I brought a snack,” Luke said as Isaac mentally recited the words. He entered the room, and Isaac counted to five, expecting Max—and getting Max.

  “How’s everything going?” he asked, leaning into the room as Luke put the cookies on the dresser next to all the toiletries Max had brought up when he’d arrived.

  “Good,” Cora said, her face lighting up at the sight of Max. She looked around at the three of them, her gratitude evident in her eyes. “Thank you. All of you.”

  “Of course,” Luke said, embracing Cora quickly. Isaac had never felt jealous before—until now. He really was ready to leave this place, and he wondered if either of the others were too.

  He could ask them once they got Cora off to her new life. Isaac touched Cora’s arm. “Do you need one of us to stay with you tonight?”

  She glanced around again. “I think I’m okay. I just need some time to wrap my head around all of this.” She half-laughed and half-sighed. “This is a lot.”

  “It is,” Max said, glancing at Luke and Isaac. “We’ll leave you to it. Isaac showed you how to contact us. Don’t hesitate to do so.”

  Isaac nodded at her and followed his Ranger brothers out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “How’d it go?” Max asked.

  “Normal,” Luke said.

  “You didn’t tell her about the fire and the remodel,” Isaac said.

  “She looked tired,” Luke said, cutting a look out of the side of his eye. They went down the hall, past the bathroom, to their room. It was much bigger than Cora’s, but they were literally thirty feet away should she need one of them.

  Or all of them.

  “She is tired,” Max said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s down in the kitchen tonight either. You’ll be there?” He looked at Isaac, his eyebrows cocked.

  “Yep,” Isaac said. “She liked the dogs.”

  “Good work on that.” Max opened their door and went inside. “Are the pups coming in here tonight?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Max retraced his steps to get the dogs out of the classroom. They followed him down the hall to the bedroom, and he decided to get something out between him and the others.

  “Guys, I think this might be my last charge,” he said, glancing at Luke first.

  “What?” Luke asked, but Max just nodded.

  “You too?” Isaac asked.

  “I’m getting tired of it,” Max said. “I like the job. I’m good at it. I’m just…” He sighed and looked down at the little dog jumping on his leg. He scooped Tootsie into his arms and looked evenly at Isaac and then Luke. “I think I might be ready for a more normal life.”

  “A girl?” Luke asked.

  “No,” Max said, shaking his head. “Not that normal.” He gave them a rare grin and put the wiggly dog down. “She needs to go out.”

  “I know,” Isaac said. “I’ll take them down.”

  “Get us some more cookies,” Luke said.

  “Like you didn’t have half a dozen while I showed her the classroom.” Isaac laughed as Luke shrugged, a clear confession.

  “I can’t believe you guys are done,” he said.

  Isaac didn’t want to admit it, but he was ready for a girl. Maybe. He honestly didn’t know. Maybe if he met the right one.

  “Come on, guys,” he said to the canines. “Time to go take care of business.”

  “Don’t forget the cookies,” Luke called after him, and Isaac lifted his hand in a wave that said he’d heard.

  Chapter 5

  Cora

  I run, but the woods look identical in every direction. My husband’s property seems to go on forever, and these don’t look like the right type of trees for Hollywood Hills.

  A growl to my right has me dodging left, but glowing eyes emerge from the darkness there.

  I pause, my heart throbbing in the back of my throat. Every muscle is tight, and I really need to move. Left, right, up, down.

  Where to go?

  “Cora,” a man said, and she jerked awake. She never truly slept deeply. She’d learned that lesson in the first week of her marriage. If Rich wanted to talk, she needed to talk. If he wanted her attention, it didn’t matter what time it was or that she’d been sleeping.

  She immediately looked to her right, but the huge bank of windows separating her from the outside world weren’t there.

  “You’re at Parkwood,” the man said, and he didn’t sound like Rich at all.

  She blinked, her thoughts finally catching up with her present. She wasn’t in Hollywood Hills anymore.

  “You were thrashing and calling out,” Isaac said as he settled on the edge of her bed. “I wasn’t sure if I should wake you or not.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, pulling the blanket all the way to her chin as she leaned against the headboard. “What time is it?”

  “About one-thirty,” he said. “I have a bit of a midnight snack weakness.”

  Cora was sure the man didn’t have a weakness at all. Max was the stoic one, clearly in charge and the most knowledgeable. She was grateful to him, as he’d rescued her and accompanied her to this new, strange place.

  She’d connected to Luke the easiest, because he’d been married before. He’d endured loss. He’d seemed the most real, the man who wasn’t hiding the pain and fear he felt.

  Isaac soothed the ragged edges inside her. His easy way with animals testified that she could trust him, and the fact that he’d offered to stay with her spoke of his kindness. She’d declined, but he was there anyway.

  “You have a weakness?” she asked, her voice definitely dubious.

  “Cookies,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you.” He stood and extended his hand toward her. She hesitated for a few seconds, her stomach telling her to get up. So she did, sweeping the blanket off her body and scooting to the edge of the huge bed. She hadn’t slept in anything bigger than a couch in so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to spread out and straighten her legs.

  Isaac’s eyes traveled down her body and flew back to her face. Cora gasped and covered her chest with her hands. She wasn’t nude, but the nightclothes that had been in the dresser were boxy and scratchy, and she’d opted to sleep in her underwear and a camisole.

  “I’ll wait outside,” he said, turning with that Army precision and leaving the room. Cora dressed quickly and joined him in the hall, her eyes darting to him and back to the floor in a single breath.

  “You don’t have to stare at the floor here,” he said.

  Cora lifted her head and looked toward the stairs. “Are there really cookies in the kitchen?”

  “And so much more,” he said. “Let’s go.” He reached over and threaded his fingers through hers, slowly, carefully, one at a time. A thrill ran through Cora. A feeling she didn’t know how to categorize. She hadn’t had a caring touch from a man in a long, long time.

  She enjoyed the silence between them and the comfort moving through her as they walked down to the kitchen. Cora stilled in the doorway, hearing voices. Isaac continued, and he gently tugged on her hand. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “There are several people who can’t sleep at night. This is usually where we all congregate.”

  Cora looked at him, eyes wide. “You can eat whenever you want?”

  “Of course,” he said, and Cora felt like a fool. Of course they could. Normal people didn’t have locks on their fridges and coded panels on their cupboards. She swallowed and nodded, trying to get her thought patterns back to what they were thirteen months ago, before she married Rich and became a prisoner inside her own life.

  Isa
ac led her to a group of six people congregated around one of the islands in the kitchen. “Everyone,” he said, his voice calm yet powerful. “This is our new charge, Cora.”

  She hadn’t gotten any direction on if she’d be using her real name or not, but apparently, here at Parkwood Academy, she would be.

  The four men and two women smiled at her, and names started getting thrown out. She removed her hand from Isaac’s and shook everyone’s, trying to hold onto their names. Emily. Meryl. Jenna. Eliza. Davis. Joel.

  She recited them the way Rich had taught her—then remembered she didn’t need to smile, hold a flute of seltzer water and smile at all the Very Important People he’d invited to the house.

  “Banana bread with chocolate chips,” Isaac said. “Emily makes this. She’s a genius in the kitchen.” He flashed the short-haired blonde a smile and picked up a butter knife to slather a piece of bread with apricot jam.

  “Jam on banana bread?” Cora asked.

  “Try it,” he said, handing her the slice and picking up another one.

  Cora took a bite, her taste buds exploding with flavor. She couldn’t help the moan that slipped up her throat, and Isaac smiled at her too. It was a different kind of smile than he gave Emily, and Cora felt the heat of it sweep through her body and curl her toes in the slippers she’d found at the end of her bed.

  Everyone else chatted, but Cora simply ate. When someone offered her a glass of milk, she said yes. When Davis asked her if she wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, she couldn’t say no. It would be rude.

  An hour later, Isaac took her back upstairs, where he leaned in her doorway while she wandered over to the bed. “That was wonderful,” she said, turning back to him. “You go down to the kitchens every night?”

  “Just every night I can’t sleep,” he said.

  “Is that every night?” she asked.

  He gazed evenly at her. “Yes.”

  She walked back over to him, reaching out but not daring to touch him. He didn’t look away from her, but a muscle in his neck twitched.