by Terry Spear
“Thanks, Kayla.”
Kayla left the office and shut the door.
Landon finally spoke up. “Okay, the problem is that Roxie could be in danger if Rhys eliminated the other investigator, since she’s already thwarted him once. If he sees her, he could feel compelled to murder her to keep her from revealing that he’d been here.”
“What do we do about it?” Roxie asked. “Believe me, I’d rather do anything than hide out here. Or at the house.”
“I say eliminate him. He’s already dead. The insurance money is paid out. Let him get his just deserts that way,” Landon said.
Blake knew his brother was only half-serious. He wouldn’t mind doing it himself, since the sergeant had threatened their sister with a gun, but he knew they couldn’t. The guy was human, and the pack would have to be involved in any decisions of that magnitude.
“I’d go along with that,” Roxie said, “but I’m sure we don’t have that option, unless it’s in self-defense.”
“We could arrange that.” Landon smiled.
“I’m going to help Nicole with this,” Blake said.
“We’ll all help,” Landon said. “We need to end this guy’s need to commit crimes.”
“Since you are in charge of this, what do we do next?” Blake asked Nicole. He and his siblings were lodge operators, not criminal investigators. She would have to guide them in what they could do to help her.
“I need to go to my room to check on my partner’s condition. I’m sorry about not being able to charge Oscar the first time,” Nicole said to Roxie.
“I understand,” Roxie said. “I don’t like it, but at least he never got the coins and he never bothered me again before I left the service.”
“Okay, and thanks for helping with the case. Just let us know if you see him.” Nicole started to leave the office.
“I’m going with you,” Blake said. “I’m her boyfriend,” he reminded his sister.
Roxie scoffed. Landon just smiled. Smiling back at them, Blake hurried after Nicole.
“After the comment you made about a woman not being able to handle this job?” Nicole said, arching a brow at Blake as they entered the lobby.
“Uh, yeah, I apologize for that.” He figured he might have to work a bit on mending fences if they were going to pull off being a couple, but he was certainly willing. They took the stairs to the second floor.
When they reached her room, she unlocked the door and Blake saw her partner in bed, a redhead, looking pale as he opened his blue eyes and stared at the two of them.
“Okay, that’s it. You look awful, Larry. You’re going to see a doctor,” Nicole said to her partner.
Larry was frowning at Blake. “Who’s he?”
Blake thought the guy sounded more like a real boyfriend than just Nicole’s partner on a job. Not that he was surprised that the guy would be interested in more. If Blake had really been her partner, he definitely would have been intrigued enough to become a real boyfriend.
“He’s my fiancé. You didn’t last long enough in the relationship, though I told Blake you were my brother, in case anyone overheard what was going on. It’s much more believable this way. He’ll help look after me. Don’t you worry about it. I’m truly sorry you’re feeling so poorly.”
“You just picked the guy up?” Larry sounded as if he couldn’t believe how naive she could be.
Blake didn’t blame her partner. Even though Blake was a wolf like her, that didn’t mean he was automatically a trustworthy individual or that he was someone who could really protect her. Her partner wouldn’t know Blake was a wolf either. If the guys Nicole was after had been wolves, that would have been a whole other story. The pack would have taken care of them themselves. Actually, he and his brother would have dealt with them with the pack leaders’ blessing.
“Blake Wolff owns the lodge.” She changed out of her ski boots into furry snow boots.
“Oh. Stepping up in the world.” Larry tried to sit up in bed, and Nicole hurried to help him. “Does he have any combat training? Weapons training?”
Good questions. If Blake had been solely a business owner, maybe not. But being a wolf meant he’d dealt with lots over the years.
Nicole glanced at Blake, raising her brows.
“All of the above.” Not that he’d been in the military or on the police force, except as deputy sheriff in the wolf pack, but over the years, he’d had his share of fighting with the bad guys, wolf and human. He even knew how to use a sword, but that was more for fun.
Nicole sighed. “I’m sorry, Larry. It would never have worked out between you and me.” She smiled at Larry teasingly.
“Women are fickle.” Larry finally got out of bed and began to dress. Slowly. The way he kept leaning to the side and losing his balance, he appeared to be dizzy.
Nicole helped him as much as she could. Blake would have offered, but she seemed to want to take care of him.
“You can drive him to the Silver Town Clinic. They’ll take good care of him. If he needs longer-term care, they’ll transport him to a hospital farther away.” Blake thought maybe she could use his help getting Larry there. “Do you need me to drive you?”
“No thanks, we’re good.” She called the clinic. “I have a friend who needs to be seen for high-altitude sickness…right. I’ll bring him in right away. Thanks.” She pocketed her phone. “Dr. Weber can see him.”
“Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Blake realized he was reaching for any excuse to stay with her longer. It wasn’t just the kiss they’d shared but the reason why they’d shared it. He wanted to make sure she stayed safe, if she really needed a partner on this mission. And he suspected she did.
“I can manage. We’ll be fine.”
“If you need my services any further, just come get me. I’ll be down in the lobby. My brother will probably go skiing, but you and I can talk. And now that my sisters are here, they’ll be helping us run the lodge so I can take off more time.” Well, he guessed Roxie shouldn’t until they turned Rhys over to the authorities.
“You can buy me lunch when I return if you’re free.”
“Room service?” Blake smiled a little.
Larry shook his head as they helped him out of the room.
“In the restaurant,” she said, her chin tilted down, as if telling Blake that the kiss was purely for show.
But it had been the real deal to him—and to her, or she wouldn’t have put that much effort into it. She sure had him worked up, and that hadn’t happened when he was kissing other women he’d actually dated.
They were quiet as they helped Larry to the elevator and took him through the lobby, outside, and to her car. Blake had decided to go with them out to the car, not wanting to learn Larry had collapsed in the parking lot. He noticed her license tag said she was from Colorado. That helped with the ploy of Blake being her fiancé. Unless she’d flown into the airport and the car was a rental. Her fake Facebook page said she was from Sacramento, California, but he suspected she had included that to throw Rhys and William off.
“You’re from Colorado?” Was she with a pack or on her own? The only other Colorado wolf packs he knew of were Bella and Devlyn Greystoke’s up north and Ryan and Carol McKinley’s in Green Valley.
“Yeah, I’m from Denver.”
Blake was glad to know that, in case he wanted to take some trips there to see more of her. He helped Larry into the front passenger seat and buckled him in.
“You take good care of her. The last investigator disappeared. Mysteriously,” Larry said, giving him as stern a look as he could in his condition.
“I will. I promise. So will my brother, my sisters, and my friends. She’ll be in good hands. Just you get better.” Blake shut the car door for Larry.
Nicole climbed into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“S
ee you soon.” Blake watched them drive off, then glanced around at the people coming and going in the parking lot, but he didn’t see two males walking together who fit the cousins’ descriptions. He headed inside to talk to his brother in the lobby and saw him speaking with a guest, but then Landon motioned to the restaurant and the man headed in that direction.
Smiling when he saw Blake approach, Landon shook his head. “I always figured our sisters would pick mates first. We need to let the pack leaders know about this situation.”
Blake agreed. “We do. Helping Nicole doesn’t mean anything will come of this. Her partner didn’t look well at all. She’s taking him to the clinic to see Dr. Weber. I doubt the guy will be coming back to the lodge to help her anytime soon.”
“Then we’ll help her. Let’s check the men out and see what we can learn.” Landon and Blake returned to the office. Landon logged into a computer while Blake exchanged his ski boots for a pair of snow boots.
Roxie was watching the security monitors, but she came over to see what they were going to do. “What’s the room number where the creeps are staying?”
“Twenty-three,” Landon said. “Reserved to a Rhys Hanover.”
“Is Nicole working the case alone?” Roxie asked Blake. He thought she sounded a little concerned.
He explained what had happened to Nicole’s partner.
Roxie tsked. “You’re taking her out to lunch? She sure has you wrapped around her little finger.”
“What can I say? She’s a great kisser and she’s a wolf.”
“Single?”
“I sure the hell hope so.” Blake could just see some irate mate coming here to take him to task for getting fresh with his wife. It was one thing to have a partner, another to be kissing him as if she wanted to take this business with him a lot further.
“You don’t know hardly anything about her.”
“I know she’s from Denver, a wolf, and goes after bad guys. That’s good enough for me.” For now.
“Okay, here’s the news story on the men,” Landon said, pulling up the page.
Blake summarized the news report. “Okay, Oscar is the dead guy. Supposed dead guy. From this account from his cousin, William, it looks like Oscar was kayaking with him, following him down the Gore Canyon, which is considered an intense if not extreme river challenge. That’s where you and I went that one time we wanted to go kayaking in Colorado, Landon.”
His brother agreed. “Yep, that’s the same place all right. It can be hairy.”
“According to this, William slammed into an abandoned throw rope strung across the chute underneath the water. He was jerked from his boat and forced to swim to the shore. He finally reached the rocks on the bank and climbed out. Oscar was following him in his kayak and hit the same rope and flipped out of his boat, only his kayak was pinned among the rocks. There was no sign of him when rescuers finally arrived and secured the boat and turned it over.”
“It’s plausible, as far as abandoned throw ropes go. Anyone who doesn’t go back and retrieve their own rope ought to be hung with it. So did they hang the rope there themselves, or did they just happen to run into it? And then after Oscar was ‘lost forever,’ William mourned his cousin’s loss and waited for the insurance settlement.”
Blake agreed. “Not sure about the rope. It doesn’t say anything about the payout here. From what Nicole said, the insurance company has already paid the money to William.”
“Which is why they have all the money to spend up here. I take it you’re not going to ski,” Landon said.
“No, I’ll be hanging around here, waiting for Nicole’s return. You go ahead.”
“I’d like to ski the white powder,” Roxie said, “if anyone cared.”
“Are you already tired of looking at the monitors?” Blake had known she wouldn’t last long at it.
“Yes! Talk about a boring job.”
“You know, if you wore a ski mask, your reflective ski goggles, and a ski hat, Rhys would never know it was you if he ran into you,” Landon said. “Besides, he only met you twice.”
“Just my thought,” Roxie said. “I won’t speak to them if we end up getting close to them.”
“No giving him the evil eye,” Blake said.
“He’d never know it if I did while I’m wearing reflective goggles.”
Landon hesitated to leave. “Are you sure you don’t want me to hang around, Blake?”
“No. We’ve got enough hired help to take care of the check-ins and checkouts and reservations. I’m really only needed if we have trouble. And everything seems to be running smoothly.”
“Roxie, if you keep covered up at all times while we’re out skiing, you can come with me. At the same time, we can see if we can locate them anywhere on the slopes.” Landon asked Blake, “Are you going to check out Nicole’s background while you’re doing research on the internet?” Landon took off his boots and put on his ski boots.
Roxie was hurrying to do the same. They’d built a walk-in closet in their office for all their gear—emergency gear, skis, ski poles, boots, and snowshoes. They could take a break skiing or hiking, or they could help with emergencies while they were working at the hotel.
“Doing that right now.” Blake did a search for Nicole on the internet and found her listed as living in Denver with a private investigator business there. He smiled. “‘Mile High Investigations—no job too big or too small.’”
“Tell me what you learn when I get back. We’ll be gone for a couple of hours.” Landon slapped Blake on the back. “Just be careful.”
Blake couldn’t help thinking about the pretty blond and her mission. She should be working with a partner if these men had anything to do with the disappearance of the other investigator.
While he was searching on Facebook for her real profile, he had found five Nicole Graysons and one that had his Nicole pictured: blond hair, green eyes. But he couldn’t see her posts without friending her. And then she’d know he was checking her out.
He smiled. They were supposed to be engaged. He friended her, and as soon as she accepted his friend request, he’d list her as being in a relationship with him. Her cover, right?
Chapter 3
Nicole couldn’t believe how bad off her partner was, and she wished she’d made him go to the clinic earlier to have his condition checked out. He was going to be okay, but he needed oxygen and they were transporting him to another hospital at a lower elevation. Larry said he hadn’t been skiing for a couple of years. He was in excellent physical shape, but sometimes that worked against someone visiting a location at a higher altitude than they were accustomed to.
Pulling off his oxygen mask, Larry reached his hand out to her.
She squeezed it.
“Be careful. And call Taggart if looks like you need real backup,” he said.
“I will.” She suspected Larry had thought he might get to know her better since she was running her own detective agency and was single like him, and she and he had gotten along from the beginning. But he had no idea that she was all wolf.
Speaking of wolves, she had been surprised to see Dr. Weber was a red wolf when they arrived at the clinic. So was the office manager. The nurses and the receptionist were gray wolves. Nicole had thought only the lodge was wolf-run. She wondered just how many wolves lived here. And she suspected if she really needed more help with her mission, she’d get it. She imagined the pack’s members wouldn’t tolerate anyone coming into their territory and causing trouble for other wolves, local or otherwise.
As an attendant wheeled Larry out to a waiting ambulance, Nicole got a notice from her Facebook account that she had a new friend request. She rarely got them, so she was surprised. She glanced at the friend request and saw it was from Blake. She chuckled and wished Larry well, then had to tell him what Blake had done. Larry just shook his head again. Larry hadn’t friended
her on Facebook. But then he wasn’t a wolf.
She said goodbye to Larry and accepted Blake’s friend request.
As soon as she climbed into her car, she saw that Blake had changed his status from being just a friend to being in a relationship with her. She laughed. He must have been waiting for her to accept his friend request. In a heartbeat, he had moved right into the role of being her boyfriend. But she was certain he’d be busy running the lodge and couldn’t always watch her back. Still, it was good to know he was there and she could solicit his help if she needed to. She was certain Landon would help too. She just hoped Roxie kept a low profile so that Rhys didn’t see her and make the connection.
Nicole called Blake on her Bluetooth as she drove back to the ski resort. “Hey, Blake, I’m on my way back. If you had qualifications to be a real PI, I could hire you at my agency and then ask the insurance company to hire you to help me with the investigation. Too bad we couldn’t do that.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment.
“But you would already have to have all the credentials and a PI license.”
“You want to hire me?”
“We’re already dating and I could use a partner. For this job. But you’d need to pass a written exam and have a degree in an investigative field.”
“Then you’re going to throw me under the bus once this job is done?”
She chuckled.
“It wouldn’t work out. I have a degree in hotel management. Since you’re new here, you don’t know the workings of the pack, but Sheriff Peter Jorgenson deputized us in case we were ever needed to help take down bad guys in the town, if anyone like that showed up. I have a permit to carry. Even though I couldn’t get a PI license in time to do this job, I still am qualified to help.”
“Excellent! I won’t have to hire you and then have to let you go after the job is done.”
He chuckled.
“I’m just pulling into the parking lot now. See you in a sec.” Nicole had been watching Rhys this morning to see if he and William ate or drank anything so she could get Rhys’s fingerprints off his trash or utensils, but they never seemed to eat or drink when she was around. She hoped she hadn’t missed them coming in for lunch this time.