The phone rang and rang and rang. Tait thrust an arm dripping with soap and hot water out of the shower to grab the damn thing. He checked the caller ID before turning it off. He’d already emailed a partial report. The rest of the debrief could wait until morning. He dropped the phone back onto the counter and retreated under the scalding water pouring from the shower head. He’d been back from the retrieval Hank Patterson, his occasional employer at Brotherhood Protectors, sent him on for all of thirty minutes. Two spoiled rich kids decided to hit the road in Mommy’s Mercedes. He caught the brats on the other side of the Mexican border, minus the Mercedes and in the hands of a cartel far more interested in human trafficking than was good for the two teen-aged girls. Despite saving their lives and other things, they’d bitched at him all the way back to a multi-million-dollar log mansion in Aspen, where the father of the car thief handed over a cashier’s check with lots of zeros.
What the hell was wrong with young people today? Tait snorted and pictured himself in a rocking chair on his front porch shaking a cane at those young whippersnappers. Laughing ruefully, he leaned his hands on the granite tile lining his walk-in shower, head bent so the steaming liquid sluiced across his neck and shoulders. He was beat, as he was going on close to 72 hours with no sleep. Back in the day when he’d been running special ops with the SEAL teams, that had been a walk in the park. Even his wolf half was tired. The critter wanted a rare steak, the man a six-pack of beer, and both halves wanted 24 hours of snoozing in front of the fire. Sounded like a damn fine idea.
Tait “Shooter” McCord was a Wolf. He carried the lupi versi pellis gene on his Y chromosome and that weird little DNA anomaly gave him the ability to shift from man to wolf and back again. He never got sick, healed faster than normal when injured—and considering he’d been a SEAL for almost 20 years, he’d needed that special kick more than once. Tonight, though, he was feeling his age—emotionally if not truly physically. He’d come back to the Crazy Mountains in Montana to lick his wounds after that last mission in Bumfuck, Afghanistan. The operation had been a Charlie Foxtrot from the git-go. They’d only lost two men but the entire unit had been shot up, with half of the team sustaining career-ending injuries. Had he been human, his injuries would have resulted in a medical discharge. He’d received the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. All three medals made him feel like a fraud. Getting his teammates out wasn’t heroic. It was part of the job. So, he'd retired and returned to a place that had been home once upon a time.
The water turned tepid and he turned off the faucet. After drying off, he pulled on a pair of ragged jeans and wandered into the kitchen. The steak he picked up on the way home kissed the frying pan on both sides and then he was settled in front of the fire in his living room with the big screen TV showing some spring training baseball game. Ten minutes later, with his stomach full and headache finally receding after drinking one beer, he closed his eyes and dropped into combat sleep.
****
Hannah McIntire stepped on the lever to open the stainless-steel trashcan in the kitchen and upended the plastic container filled with cupcakes.
“They weren’t that bad.” Her husband, former Army SpecOps command sergeant major and current sheriff of Blaidd County, West Virginia, made sure he was out of her reach as he spoke.
“Seriously, Dad?” Their son rolled his eyes. “I could get away with that when I was a kid but Mom knows I’d be lying now. Let’s face it. They were pretty awful.” Like his father, Liam stayed out of Hannah’s reach.
“Would have been nice to have more than a couple of hours’ notice.” The lid clanged shut to emphasize Hannah’s irritation. “Not my fault the bakery was out of stuff and you—” She pointed an accusatory finger at Liam. “—insisted you had to leave with the damn things before they’d finished baking. I’m not taking the rap this time.”
Father and son exchanged knowing looks. Despite the fact both of them were Wolves, neither was fast enough to evade the identical Gibbs Slap™ Hannah landed on the backs of each of their heads. “I’m going to take a bath. You two can fix your own damn dinner.” She passed the blinking answering machine on her way to the master bedroom and paused. As bad as the cupcakes had been—and she had to admit her plan to avoid ever having to bake anything for the PTA ever again had worked brilliantly—she’d expected the machine to be full. There was only one message. Odd, that. At the very least, she figured the mates’ network would have been activated, with the other wives calling in either congratulations or complaints.
Three steps down the hall, Hannah stopped, pivoted, and returned. She had a bad feeling now. When she looked up from studying the blinking light, she had Mac’s full attention. She stabbed the play button. And listened. Then she hit replay as Mac joined her. They exchanged glances at the sound of shattering glass and the report of a large caliber weapon.
“I’ll get the number changed tonight,” Mac said. “Call Treece.” They reached for the burner cell phones in their hip pockets simultaneously.
Treece’s answering machine got an earful from Hannah, along with a demand to, “Call me the fuck back ASAP or I’ll come down there and feed you mountain oysters for breakfast, the ones I harvest from you, you stupid son of a bitch. FYI, my home number no longer exists and that means I have to fix the gawddamned PTA phone tree. Do you even realize what that means? No, of course not, you lazy—” His machine cut off. Hannah waited for Mac to finish his call.
She really thought Treece would have known better. He’d been her source inside the Defense Security Service at the Pentagon for years. She trusted him. Maybe all that damn rum down in Key West had pickled his brain. He knew better than to hand out her number to just anyone—but especially someone getting shot at.
“What if she’s hurt?” Liam asked, his voice cracking a little. The poor kid was going through the voice change and some days his was as deep and reverberating as his father’s while others? He still sounded like her little boy.
Hannah reached for him but he ducked her hand. “I’m serious, Mom. She sounded scared and she said she found your name in a file. I thought all the files had been deleted.”
“There’s nothing to worry about, Liam. We’re safe here.”
“Then why is Dad having the home number changed? Again.”
Mac finished his call and faced his wife and son. “Sean’s throwing some switches on the number so we can’t be tracked. He’s also doing a reverse trace on the cell phone and the name.” His fingers curled around the back of Hannah’s neck and he pulled her stiff body into his. They’d been together a long time, but his need to protect her, to protect their son just got stronger with each passing year. He’d already killed to keep them safe. He relaxed slightly when Hannah leaned against him and slipped her arms around his waist. “He’ll do a file search to make sure none of us are in the system.”
“Are you going to find and help that lady?” Liam persisted.
Hannah exchanged a look with Mac before saying, “We’ll see.”
****
Tait awoke to a howling wolfdog and someone pounding frantically on his front door. Shit. He bolted off the couch, hurdled the coffee table, and slid to a stop at the front entrance. Good thing his combat instincts had kicked in because it took him only seconds to unlock and open the door. He grabbed the arm raised to knock and jerked the man inside. Stepping out on the front porch, he glared at the animal until it stopped yapping and sat.
“Dammit, Chewy! You know Hank. Not nice to eat the boss.” The hybrid wolf growled. Tait stared and growled back. Chewy whined softy and went to his belly on the grass. “Can you behave now?” The wolfdog made a whurfle sound. “Then come in and get breakfast.”
He turned around and held the door for the wolfdog. Chewy padded inside and ignored the man pressed against the wall next to the door. “I’ll fix coffee,” Tait told his sometime boss.
“That damn dog is a menace,” Hank muttered.
“That’s why he doesn’t like you. Chewy is more in tune with his wolf side.” And boy, wasn’t that the truth. Not only his wolfdog but he himself. They often ran together, especially when the moon was full.
In the kitchen, Tait motioned for Hank to grab a stool at the island then he dove into a chest freezer next to the back door and hauled out a haunch of venison. Opening the back door, he peeled the freezer paper off and held the meat so Chewy could grab it by the lower leg. Tail wagging, the hybrid trotted back outside.
“You gave him frozen meat,” Hank stated, as if that was a bad thing.
Tait shrugged, not turning around as he set up the coffee maker. “Keeps his teeth sharp.”
“You are one sick puppy, you know that, right?”
Giving his eyes an exaggerated roll, Tait grabbed two mugs from the upper cabinet. “And that’s why you keep calling me to chase down mean girls.”
The grin that had been hovering around Hank’s mouth disappeared. “How close was it?”
Tait leaned against the counter, arms folded across his chest and he faced Hank. “You read the email?” Hank nodded. “Then you know I snatched them from the cheap hotel where the cartel runners stashed them before transport.”
“Were they…hurt?”
“No.” Tait’s voice was cold and flat. “Five more minutes? They probably would have been.”
Hank scrubbed a hand through his brown hair, his eyes snapping angry green sparks. “Glad I sent you then, Shooter.”
“Glad I was available. I’ll type up a full report and zip it over to you. Hang on and I’ll grab the check.”
“Any problems there?” Hank called to Tait’s retreating back.
A gruff laugh echoed from the bedroom before Tait called, “Only at first. Then the father got a good look at me.” He returned, the check held between two fingers.
Hank rolled his eyes and snorted. “Yeah, you definitely have that alpha-hole stare down pat.”
“Not that it will do any good. I got the sense no lessons were learned.” The coffee maker gurgled to a stop so Tait poured coffee into the mugs and joined Hank at the island. “You didn’t drive all the way out here and face down Chewy for the fun it. What’s up?”
“Chewy my ass,” Hank muttered. “Shoulda named that thing Cujo.”
Tait snorted a laugh. “Better not say that when Kujo with a K is around. I’m not sure who would be offended the most.” Joseph “Kujo” Kuntz was a former Delta Force dog handler who worked for Hank. “You do know that Six and Chewy are pals, right?” Kujo’s former military dog, Six, had been injured saving Kujo’s life.
When Hank caught Tait’s gaze again, his expression was troubled. “You know anyone in West Virginia?”
“Why?”
“There’s a county sheriff there who’s been trying to track you down. He ended up with the number for Brotherhood Protectors. The guy claims to be former Army SpecOps.”
“Name?”
“Ian McIntire. He says you owe him.”
For a long moment, Tait wondered if his blood had frozen in his veins. Then his heart started beating again.
“What’s going on, Shooter? Who is this guy and why is he tracking you down?” Hank’s gaze remained steady, if still concerned and uptight. “You know we’ve got your back, right? Me and all the Brotherhood. That’s what we do. Who we are.”
Hank’s words should have warmed the cold dread lodged in his chest but it didn’t. Mac McIntire was a ghost from the past. In fact, Tait was surprised the guy was still alive. He’d heard rumors for several years that Mac and his team had all been wiped out. Evidently not. And Mac would know to trace him to this part of Montana. Tait’s mixed Crow and Irish ancestry and growing up near the Crow reservation wasn’t a secret—not to the man who commanded the Wolves of the 69th.
Before Tait could reassure the man who trusted him when he didn’t always trust himself, Hank’s cell phone buzzed. The other man glanced at the screen and held the phone up for Tait to see. Blaidd County Sheriff Office.
He hesitated a moment, then said. “Answer it and give him my number.”