Bear Meets Girl (Grizzly Cove Book 13) Page 2

  A few tears leaked out of her eyes. She couldn’t help it. The relief she felt was enormous, even though the situation was still up in the air. Nothing had been resolved, yet, but at least, now, she had help.

  “I’m looking at a detailed map of the highway on my computer,” Sabrina told her. “So is Ace. He and his brother are discussing the next move.”

  “I can see him in my mirror,” Marilee reported. “He was next to the vehicle that’s following me for a while, but now, it looks like he’s slowly moving up toward me.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Sabrina confirmed. “He got a good look at the guys in the other vehicle. I’m not sure what he said to Ace, but they’re talking about strategy, right now.” That sounded ominous to Marilee. “Don’t worry,” Sabrina said, as if reading her mind, “you’re going to learn how resourceful these bears are. I have no doubt King is going to take good care of you.”

  Marilee wished she could be as confident. The fact that King had looked in on the other vehicle and then started discussing strategy, frankly, had her worried. It would have been so much easier if he had looked at the other vehicle and started laughing about her panic, because it was just some family driving along behind her singing campfire songs. Instead, strategy had to be devised. That didn’t bode well.

  “What did he see when he looked inside the other vehicle?” she wondered out loud.

  Sabrina made soothing noises. “I’m not sure, but whatever it is, he’ll handle it. You’ll see.”

  Marilee drove along, and worry crept in again. The situation was nerve wracking. She prayed as she had seldom prayed before, beseeching the Mother of All to smile down on her and her new protector. She didn’t want King to come to any harm while doing a good deed for her. Just as she was about to enter a full-fledged panic attack, Sabrina spoke again.

  “Okay. Ace wants you to get off at the next rest stop. Do you see the sign, yet? It should be the next exit.” Marilee looked all around, hoping to see the road sign Sabrina was talking about. “It’s not one of those fancy rest stops. It’s just a place to pull off the road and stretch your legs. There’s a little unmanned building with bathrooms, but otherwise, it’s just a long row of parking spaces and a few picnic tables, surrounded by trees.”

  Marilee had seen that kind of rest stop before. Quiet. Lonely. Isolated. What was Sabrina thinking, sending her to a place like that?

  Then, her inner wolf perked up. Trees meant possible concealment. If worse came to worst, she could always shift and run into the forest. She dared any human to try to find a werewolf in the middle of the woods.

  It would mean leaving all her worldly possessions behind, but she’d rather be alive and penniless than dead with all her stuff around her. She had Sabrina’s stuff in her car, too, but that couldn’t be helped.

  “I see the sign for the rest stop. Quarter of a mile,” Marilee reported to her best friend.

  “Good. Don’t put your blinker on. Just get off quietly. King will follow. He wants you to drive all the way down to the end of the lot and park in the last parking space. He’ll be right behind you. Don’t get out of your car unless he tells you, okay?”

  “I can do that,” she agreed readily enough. She had no idea what the bear shifter had in mind, but by all accounts, he was the expert on this kind of thing. She would follow his lead.

  “Just stay on the phone with me. I want to know what’s going on,” Sabrina told her. “I wish I was there with you.”

  “No, you don’t,” Marilee chided her friend. “Then, we’d both be up the creek.” She laughed somewhat morbidly at her own gallows humor. “Be glad you’re safe and sound with your mate. Your life is just starting to get really, really good, Brina. I want that for you. I’ve always wanted to see you happy. Don’t go wishing that away so you can die in a deserted parking lot with me.” She chuckled, again.

  “You’re not going to die,” Sabrina insisted, emphasizing the last word. “I’m going to hurt Ace’s brother if any harm comes to one little hair on your head. And you can tell him I said so.”

  Marilee appreciated the way Sabrina stood by her and tried to make her laugh, even in such a potentially dangerous situation. Sabrina was one of those sunny people who always made the room a little brighter when she arrived. Her happy personality was what had drawn Marilee to her at first. Her kind heart and willingness to put up with a weakling werewolf had cemented their friendship.

  The rest of the Pack had—sometimes, literally—walked all over Marilee. Sabrina had never treated her badly. Never thought of her as less because she wasn’t as badass as all the other wolves in town.

  “Okay, I see the exit for the rest stop. I’m pulling off.” Marilee resisted the urge to turn on her blinker and, instead, just headed for the rest stop. She drove as quickly as she dared through the deserted parking lot, pulling into the final space. “I’m in the last parking space,” she reported to Sabrina.

  “Ace says leave your engine running,” Sabrina told her.

  Marilee nodded, even though nobody could see her. “It’s still on. But, I have to tell you, those trees in front of me look pretty inviting right about now,” she warned her friend. “My wolf wants to make a run for it.”

  Marilee heard Sabrina relaying her words to Ace, then she came back on the line. “Stay in the car for now, Mar. King is there. He’s going to block the road at the entrance to the rest stop and see what happens. Can you see him, yet?”

  Marilee craned her neck around to look out the side windows. “I see him,” she confirmed. “He pulled his bike across the width of the road and got off. If they’re up to no good, they could crunch up his bike something nasty.” Marilee worried about potential damage to King’s motorcycle.

  She hated that she would be responsible for anything bad that happened to the poor man. He didn’t know her. He hadn’t asked to be put in danger on her behalf. It wasn’t really fair to him, but boy, was she glad he was there.

  “Don’t sweat it, Ace says,” Sabrina told her. “King knows what he’s doing.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Marilee replied as she watched her knight in black leather take off his helmet and then his sexy black motorcycle jacket. He wore some kind of black cargo pants and a black T-shirt. He looked like a soldier. “Is he a soldier?” she asked, speaking her thoughts aloud.

  “All three brothers were in the service,” Sabrina confirmed. “Special Forces.” Even Marilee knew what that meant. They were badass. “You’re in good hands.”

  “Wow,” Marilee marveled. “When you send help, you really send help!”

  Sabrina laughed on the other end of the phone. “We aim to please, Ace says. He can get really smug sometimes, but it’s kind of endearing. What’s King doing now?”

  “He’s just waiting,” Marilee told her. “No. Wait. He’s moving in front of his bike and… Oh, no. There’s the car that was following me. He’s flagging them down, motioning for them to stop. Is he a crazy man?”

  “Hey, Ace, is your brother crazy?” Marilee heard Sabrina ask her mate. “Marilee wants to know.”

  The warm male laugh that sounded through the phone was somehow reassuring. Ace raised his voice, and she could hear his words. “King is going to ask them nicely why they’re harassing you. We’re going to see how it goes after that.”

  Marilee resumed praying as she watched the other car slow. “They’re stopping,” she reported. “Holy crap! Six guys just piled out of the car!”

  “Only six?” was Ace’s droll reaction. “King won’t even work up a good sweat. Shame.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  What followed was the most intense fighting Marilee had ever seen—and that included the fact that she had lived in a wolf Pack where fights for dominance were a common occurrence. All six guys surrounded King, and then, after a few words were exchanged, they all tried to jump him at once.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” she whispered, watching intensely.

  “What? What are you seeing?” Sabrina d
emanded. “I’m putting you on speaker for Ace. Is King in trouble?”

  “Far from it. He’s… Brina, I’ve never seen anything like him. Holy cow! He’s like…flowing through them. I don’t have the right words to describe it.” Marilee was astounded as the bad guys kept missing their target. But none of King’s blows missed. “Two of them are down. One looks unconscious, and the other is rolling around in pain.”

  “Good boy,” Ace muttered in the background.

  “Another one just went flying. Ouch. He hit a tree. Yeah, he’s not moving.” Marilee gave them the play-by-play. “Three left. No. Make that two. One just went down hard on the concrete. He’s not getting up. The two left have backed off a bit. They look like they’re weighing their chances. Oh, no.”

  “What?” Sabrina practically yelled through the phone.

  “One pulled a gun on King while the other is edging back toward their car. The first guy is holding King at bay with the gun. Should I try to help?” Marilee bit her lip. She really wasn’t a brave wolf. “What should I do?”

  “Stay in your car,” Ace thundered through the phone. “You’ll only distract him. Let the boy play.”

  “Play?” Marilee was outraged at his brother’s casual attitude. King could be shot! Killed!

  “It’s okay, Mari. These guys think danger is fun,” Sabrina explained in a long-suffering tone. “You’ll see.”

  Marilee chewed on her lip as she watched the scene with great apprehension. Then, something weird happened. King made a move that was like nothing she’d ever seen a person do before. Not in human form. He sort of twisted and bent in the flash of an eye. The gun went off, but he wasn’t where he’d been, and the bullet missed. All of a sudden, he was right next to the gunman, and the gun was falling out of the guy’s hands as King trapped his arm.

  Even parked in the last spot with all her windows closed, engine running, and doors locked, Marilee heard the snap of bone as the gunman’s arm broke in half. She jumped.

  “King broke the gunman’s arm. I’m not sure how he moved like that in human form,” she marveled as she reported back to Ace and Sabrina. “Now, the last guy is coming back, and he has a really big machine-gun-looking thing in his arms.”

  “Where’s King?” Ace asked, his tone filled with a kind of smug knowledge.

  “I…” Marilee gasped. “I don’t know. I was watching the man with the big gun and… He just disappeared.”

  “I bet King’s coming up from behind. It’s one of his classic moves,” Ace commented.

  Sure enough, suddenly, King popped up from behind the bad guy and put him in a choke hold, the gun useless against King’s brute strength. The man slithered to the ground, King relieving him of the machine gun and then hitting him on the head with the butt of the gun.

  “He’s going around making sure they’re all unconscious, I think,” Marilee reported. The guy who’d been writhing on the ground in pain got a tap to the head too, as did the guy with the broken arm. “Holy crap, Ace! Your brother is like a superhero or something!”

  Ace laughed, the rich sound coming over the phone and warming her a little. Marilee had been subsisting on adrenaline for too long. She was feeling very brittle.

  “No, ma’am. Just a soldier,” Ace said in reply. “Tell him I said good work, and get on the road. I’ll ride out to meet you, when you get closer.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, near tears from relief. She watched as King went to his bike and rolled it out of sight, behind the SUV that had been following her. He came back into view a few minutes later.

  “He’s stealing their car,” Marilee said, not quite believing her eyes as King got into the driver’s seat of the SUV that had been her bane, and drove it closer to her car. “Oh, they have a trailer. He put his bike next to something under a tarp that’s about the size of an ATV.”

  While she’d waited for King to reappear, Sabrina had taken the phone off speaker, and Marilee knew Ace was back in touch with his brother, getting a report on his own phone. Sabrina had talked to her, helping her calm down, but Marilee had no idea what she’d really said. Soothing things. Reassurances. It was helpful to calm Marilee’s inner wolf, but her human side was still in a bit of a daze.

  “Ace says to tell you that King is going to take their vehicle and dump it somewhere far enough away that they can’t get to it easily. You still have the trailer hitch on your SUV, right?” Sabrina asked.

  “Yeah, why?” Marilee asked, not really putting two and two together.

  “Ace says King thinks we might be interested in what’s on the trailer. He’s thinking maybe you two can stop somewhere and move the trailer over to your vehicle, and then, maybe you can drive together the rest of the way. That way, both of you can take turns driving and get here faster.”

  “That’s a heck of a plan, but it makes sense. As long as the trailer has a standard two-inch hitch, it should work. My vehicle is rated to tow up to four tons, I think. I had to know when I helped Belinda move that time, though I never even got a thank you from her.” Marilee groused. It was an inconsequential memory, but her emotions were out of whack after everything that had happened.

  Sabrina chuckled. “She was a selfish cow, wasn’t she?”

  They both made a few snippy remarks about the woman who had lived in the town where they’d met. Somehow, touching base like that with shared memories made Marilee feel a little more grounded.

  King took an extra moment to apply zip ties to the wrists and ankles of the six men who had accosted him. He dragged them all under a bush and searched them briefly, taking their electronic devices. He’d leave everything in their vehicle when he dumped it. He wore his gloves so he wouldn’t leave any evidence of his identity, but if these were Venifucus or even the supposedly tamer Altor Custodis agents, they probably already had a file on him and his brothers. They hadn’t exactly kept a low profile for most of their lives.

  He looked for tattoos—he’d heard intel reports that sometimes, Venifucus agents had magical tattoos—but he didn’t see any. He took a quick photo of each man’s face with his phone, just to have a record. Maybe the leadership in Grizzly Cove, or the Lords, might have some idea of who they were. If not, it wouldn’t hurt to start a few intel files of their own.

  It seemed, more and more, folks on the right side of the coming conflict, or just innocent bystanders like this woman, Sabrina’s friend, were being watched, followed, even attacked. King had no doubt the bad guys were keeping records on everyone who interested them, who wasn’t part of their organization, but so far, to his knowledge, the good guys weren’t doing the same.

  King had already decided that, when he got to Grizzly Cove, he was going to seek out a fellow named Trevor, who had deep ties to the intelligence community. The conversation had to happen. The good guys were running behind, and they needed to catch up. Maybe this was a first step. King liked a challenge, and he also liked using his skills to help good people.

  Unlike his two brothers, King had done some specialized intelligence training and work while they were all in the Special Forces. Those skills didn’t just go away, now that he was retired from the military. He really wanted to put them to good use, again, in the service of the Light.

  He wasn’t going to get all mushy about it, but he had deeply held beliefs about good and evil that had been forged in some of the slimiest hellholes on this planet. He’d seen, and done, a lot as a soldier, and those experiences had changed him. Hardened him. Made him the man he was today.

  Of his three brothers, he was a little quieter than the other two. He thought deep thoughts and didn’t readily share them—not even with his brothers. He kept his own counsel and liked working behind the scenes to keep everybody safe and happy. That his eldest brother had found his true mate gave King hope for the first time in a long time. He’d almost given up. He’d almost let himself believe that none of them would ever find the true happiness of having a mate and the possibility of a family of their own. He’d almost let pessimism win
.

  But Ace’s mating changed all that. King was looking at the future, now, and it was brighter than it had been in a while. He would use all his skills and strength to make sure Ace had a clear run at that Happily Ever After. Jack, too. He wanted his brothers to be happy. And, maybe…just maybe…if the Mother of All was smiling down on him, King might find that kind of happiness, as well.

  He knew, though, that it would have to be earned. Hard times were heading their way, and he would have to be vigilant to protect those who needed his help. Like this woman—Sabrina’s friend. A submissive werewolf, Ace had told him. She’d certainly followed orders to stay put like no werewolf woman King had ever met. Most of those crazy bitches would be out there in the middle of the fight, snarling and scratching. But not this one…Marilee, her name was.

  He wondered what might have happened to her in the past to make her so docile. It probably wasn’t any of his business, but King knew himself. He knew his protective streak ran even deeper than his brothers’. And, that was saying something. They were all built with strong guardian spirits. Their bears were never happier than when they were helping others who were weaker than themselves.

  He had Ace on the line, again. His cell phone was still in his pocket, while a small wireless earpiece kept him connected. He’d paid top dollar for one that wouldn’t fly out of his ear the moment he started roughhousing. Not that he’d had much opposition from this gaggle of yahoos. If they’d been smart and brought out the firepower before they tried to take him on in a fist fight, they might’ve been more of a challenge.

  “These guys aren’t exactly amateurs,” King told Ace, “but they’re not exactly professionals, either.”

  “Do you think they’re smart enough to have some kind of tracking device on their vehicle?” Ace asked.

  “Maybe. I’m going to dump it quick, along with all their personal electronics. If you have any contacts in the area with the right skills, maybe someone can take a look at the phones. There might be good intel on some of them. Phone numbers and contact info. But if these goons are smarter than they look—or, their bosses are—then I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Still, it would be worth checking out, if there’s an opportunity. I’d do it myself, but I think the higher priority is getting your mate’s friend to safety.”