Chapter Eleven: Derek

 

 

Keegan called in early afternoon on the land line. "Settling in okay?"

Derek was temporarily alone in the living room. Luisa was lying down for a nap, and Gaby had taken Sandy down behind the cabin to show him the spring, while Derek watched them out the window.

"This place is really something, man. I can see why you like it up here."

"Glad you think so. My dad and I built that place after I came back from South America. Sometimes you just need to get out in the woods and let the animal run, you know?"

"I know exactly what you mean." Through the open window, he heard the sound of a child's cries, and for an instant his heart lurched. He leaned forward so he could see Sandy and Gaby, reassuring himself that the squeals were happy ones. Even though there had been no sight or sound that anyone had followed them, and every reason to believe they were safe here, he wasn't about to stop being vigilant.

"Everything okay so far?" Keegan asked. "No sign of Ghost?"

"Everything's fine, except all you left us to eat is boxes of crackers and pancake mix. Someone's gonna have to make a supply run sooner or later."

"Hey," Keegan scoffed. "I wasn't expecting visitors. Anyway, there's a whole crate of MREs in the storage space under the cabin, and I've seen you live on those for months."

"Maybe I can, but I'm not going to expect Gaby to, let alone the old lady and the kid."

Keegan snorted. "There's a little town down the mountain where you can go for supplies. Just be—"

"—discreet, yeah, I know how to do the job, man. So what's the news? Sooner you guys catch Ghost, the sooner I can get Gaby back to her life."

He felt exposed as soon as the words left his mouth; he should have said get back to my life. But that wasn't what he cared about. What was his life, anyway, except some part-time security gigs and a daily workout routine? He didn't even have a pet goldfish.

It was Gaby who deserved to be safe, happy, and free.

"He's either gone to ground somewhere close to home, or he's off looking for you guys," Keegan said. "Let's hope for the first option, especially since Ms. Diaz ran him over with your car. Do you have any idea how badly she managed to hurt him?"

"I couldn't tell. She landed a good hit, enough to knock him off me. His healing ability will still take care of it eventually. I'm confident she didn't hurt him badly enough to kill him. He was trying to get up as we drove away."

"With any luck, it'll slow him down if you do have to fight him," Keegan said. "We did pick up his partner on the armored-car heist. Like I said earlier, he's doing muscle work for a local crime family, and as far as I can tell, that's all it is. Just bad luck that you two ended up in the same town at the same time. He's not coming after you because his bosses want him to. Actually, they seem happy to cut all ties. It's personal now."

"Wonderful," Derek said. If Ghost was working under orders, then they could lean on the crime lords controlling him. Ghost as a free agent was a lot more alarming.

"And you're confident he didn't follow you?"

"I know how to shake a tail. How about you? What are the odds someone could find out about this cabin?"

"Slim to none," Keegan said. "Like I told you, it's not in my name. There's no paper trail that would lead to me, let alone any reason for anyone to connect it to you. Stay up there as long as you want."

After he hung up, Derek sighed. He ought to feel better about this, but instead he couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something important.

Maybe it was just that it went against his nature to hole up while the action went on elsewhere. He felt like he ought to be out there helping. He was the kind of guy who got in the middle of a fight, not the kind who went and hid from one. If he was the only person involved, he would've gone looking for Ghost and tracked the bastard down himself.

But he had more than just himself to worry about now. And keeping Gaby safe took priority over anything else.

Gaby came in from outside with a wet and muddy, but giggling, Sandy in tow. "You know, I might not've thought this through," she told Derek with a grin. "Memo: don't let your kid play in the water when you don't have any dry clothes to change him into."

"Didn't you bring some stuff from the apartment?"

"A few things, but they're totally haphazard, whatever I could grab." She helped Sandy take off his muddy shoes at the door, and then picked up the squirming, giggling child and deposited him on the kitchen linoleum. "Now stay there while I find out if there's anything for you to change into."

Derek got another of Keegan's clean T-shirts; they were going to owe the guy laundry and a good cleaning of the cabin by the time they left. Gaby had managed to turn up a pair of spare little-boy shorts in the backpack. "I don't suppose there's a washing machine here?" she asked.

"Sure is. No dryer, though. That's what the line in the backyard is for."

"At least your friend has utilities," Gaby said, toweling off Sandy. "When I saw what the road up here was like, I was worried we were going to be lighting candles and cooking fish on a stick over a campfire."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. Speaking of which, if we want anything for supper other than canned beans and crackers, we'd better make a trip to town for supplies."

"Is that safe?" Gaby asked, looking up at him.

"Long as we don't go around telling everyone where we are. Keegan said there's a little town down the road a ways where we can stock up."

While Gaby went ahead and got Sandy dried off and dressed, Derek went outside and took a walk around the perimeter of the cabin. He stood for a few moments looking off into the woods, scenting the air.

There was nothing here to be alarmed about. But just like the other time at the apartment, his bear seemed to be telling him that something was amiss. Or maybe it wasn't even his bear, just a low-level sense that he'd failed to take everything into account.

He did a quick, routine check of the car, wincing at the damage to the front end from when Gaby had hit Ghost with it earlier. It didn't seem to have caused any structural damage, though; as far as he could tell, the damage was only cosmetic. He tested the pressure in the tires and propped up the hood so he could check the fluids. Working on the car always relaxed him. He did a lot of the maintenance work himself, sometimes with Keegan's help. He'd never done a complete engine rebuild, but he'd always wanted to.

A possible reason for his unease occurred to him. He tended to think of Ghost as all brawn and no brain, but that didn't mean the guy couldn't have a good idea occasionally. What if there was a tracker on the car?

Derek got down on the ground and scoped out the most likely places on the car to plant a tracking device: under the front and rear bumpers, inside the wheel well, on the frame. He didn't find anything. But there were a lot of hiding places on a classic car like this one. And while they were inside Gaby's apartment building, Ghost would've had more than enough time to plant something. Or maybe even earlier, at the coffee shop.

You're being paranoid, he told himself. Still, paranoia had saved his bacon more than once.

Gaby came out on the porch, holding Sandy's hand. "Do you want to leave soon? I'm getting about ready for lunch. We could get a burger or something in town."

Derek straightened up and slammed the hood. "Sure. Is your mom ready to go?"

Gaby shook her head, dark hair bouncing on her shoulders. "She says she'd rather stay here. I think she's really feeling yesterday's activity in her hips, though she won't admit it."

"I don't like splitting us up. Nobody should be left unattended."

But Luisa refused to be budged. "I have my book," she said, holding up a paperback that looked like it came from Keegan's bookshelves. "And I have a nice cup of tea. I will be perfectly fine here. Buy some pork and I'll make us something nice. A man needs meat," she added, glancing at Derek's shoulders.

Derek crossed his arms. "What this man needs is to keep all of you in the same place."

But short of bodily carrying her to the car, there wasn't much he could do. He scribbled his cell number on the back of a gas station receipt. "Here. Cell phones don't work up here at the cabin, but they ought to work in town. Keep the doors locked and if you get the feeling anything's wrong, anything at all, give me a call."

"I will not hesitate to call at a whiff of danger," Luisa promised, and they had to be content with that.

"You said the cabin's safe," Gaby said as she belted Sandy into the Mustang's backseat. "She'll be okay, won't she?"

"I'm sure she will." Derek tried to push down his misgivings, and his frustration; he could see where Gaby got her stubbornness from.

It was nice to have daylight for the drive to town. He hadn't been able to appreciate the scenery in the dark, but it was really lovely now that he could see it. Although summer still had the city firmly in its grip, up here in the mountains the trees and underbrush were starting to show the faintest hints of color among the green: a flash of red here, of gold there. It was going to be a spectacular autumn.

I wonder if I could talk Keegan into letting me bring Gaby out here later this fall, just the two of us. Without Ghost's presence hanging over their heads, he could take Gaby out in the woods, lay her down among the golden fall leaves, take her glorious body in the autumn sunshine ...

"Penny for your thoughts," Gaby murmured.

Derek grinned at her and flicked a meaningful glance into the backseat, where Sandy was occupied with a handheld electronic game. "Probably not a good time to share them. Ask me again later."

She playfully rolled her eyes. "I would complain about your one-track mind, except I'm really enjoying the track it's on."

After a moment, she shyly held out a hand. Derek closed his bigger hand over it and laced their fingers together.

 

***

 

The town was called Autumn Grove, according to the sign on the highway. It was a pretty little town, framed by picturesque mountains in the background, with an old-fashioned downtown that looked like it should be on a postcard. After picking up some groceries at the town's small supermarket and a cooler to stash them in, they got burgers at a café on Main Street, the kind with checked red-and-white tablecloths and a menu chalked on a big board behind the lunch counter.

I really like it here, Derek thought, looking across the table at Gaby helping Sandy put ketchup on his fries. He had always liked being closer to the land than he could get in the city, and it was easy to see himself being happy in a town like this. Maybe build a cabin like Keegan's, or get a little house closer to town. A couple of acres of land ... room to shift, and roam ...

Except his decisions didn't only affect him anymore. He looked away from the window and the view of Main Street and the mountains, to Gaby dabbing ketchup off the front of Sandy's borrowed, oversized T-shirt. Did Gaby want to live in a small town or in the city? Did she want an apartment, a condo, a house?

We haven't talked about any of that yet.

But they would work it out somehow. For years now, he'd been looking for a purpose in life, and he felt as if he'd finally found it. He didn't care where Gaby wanted to live. Wherever she wanted to be was where he wanted to be.

Gaby looked up and noticed him watching. She smiled, a little quirk of her lips that brought out the tiniest of dimples in her cheek. "What?"

He thought about deflecting, but went for honesty instead. "Just thinking that I like this town."

"Me too," Gaby said, grinning wider. She dipped one of her fries in Sandy's pool of ketchup. "Which is something I never thought I'd say. I've lived in big cities all my life. But it's just so quiet and peaceful out here. I could go either way, you know? What about you?"

"Same. I don't mind the city, and there are a lot of great things about it. But my—there's a part of me—" My bear, he'd almost said. "—that will always long for the woods."

Sandy only ate half his burger, so Gaby had it wrapped up while Derek paid the bill. He carried Sandy out to the car, ketchup-stained T-shirt and all, with one of the little boy's chubby arms thrown trustingly around his neck.

He had never imagined that this could be his life.

"Do you see anywhere around here that sells clothes?" Gaby asked. "At some point we're gonna run out of Keegan's spare shirts. And Sandy got his shoes wet in the creek this morning."

The best they could find was a small sporting goods store. Gaby balked at the prices, but Derek insisted on paying, and they let Sandy pick out a few things he liked.

"This looks about your size, doesn't it?" Derek asked Gaby, holding up a women's T-shirt in pink camo.

"Pink's not really my color." She wrinkled her nose at him when he held it up against her chest. "Derek, letting you buy clothes for Sandy is one thing, but buying stuff for me—"

"—is something I'm more than happy to do. Let me treat you." He tossed the pink shirt into their basket. "Pink camo it is."

"Oh, for—" Gaby reached to snatch it out, then hesitated. "Well, my mom might like that. Derek, are you sure you don't mind?"

"Pick out a few things for each of you. Gaby, please believe me. I don't mind at all. I've got a savings account that's just sitting there, not doing anything except stacking up interest." He kissed her, slow and lingering, enjoying the taste of her sweet lips. "You've been taking care of everyone for years. Let someone take care of you for awhile."

They walked out with bags full of their purchases, Sandy chattering happily and clinging to his mother's hand. Derek had also picked up a kid-sized fishing pole, because he wanted to find out if there were fish in the creek, and he'd seen some fishing tackle back at the cabin.

Gaby giggled.

"What?" Derek asked her.

She nodded back toward the store. "I think the clerk thought we were a family. I mean, he thought you were Sandy's dad."

"Oh," Derek said, startled. He looked back at the store. "Do you mind? I mean, I could have set him straight—"

"Only if you mind," she said, somewhat shyly.

"Hell—uh, heck no. Not at all. I ..."

He wasn't really sure what he was feeling, honestly. It was a warm feeling that welled up from deep inside him, satisfying to both Derek and his bear.

Maybe this was what belonging felt like.

"Mr. Derek?" Sandy asked.

"Yeah, kid?"

"Are you dating my mom?"

Derek looked at Gaby. She ducked his gaze, her brown skin darkening as she flushed.

"I'd ask your mom, kid."

"Mom?" Sandy said, tipping his head back. "Are you dating Mr. Derek?"

"Yeah, hon," she said, her flush deepening. "I think I am."

Derek held out his hand. Gaby slipped her fingers into it.

They walked back to the car like that, hand in hand in hand.

Sandy was tired out, almost starting to nod off, as Gaby buckled him in. Derek looked forward to getting back to the cabin, settling in, locking all the doors, and having a quiet evening in relative safety. Still, there was that nagging sense that something wasn't right.

"Have you called your mom?"

Gaby nodded. "Right before we ate lunch. Everything was fine; she was just reading her book. Do you want me to try again?"

"No, I'm just being overly cautious, I think."

He twisted the key in the ignition. The car roared to life, along with a sudden, startling rattle from under the hood. Gaby jumped.

"Well, that doesn't sound good," she said as Derek hastily reached for the ignition key.

"No, it sure doesn't." He paused before he turned it off. The rattle had been short-lived, and now the engine had settled down to its usual smooth purr. Derek couldn't think what would make a noise like that, when the engine had been running just fine yesterday and this morning. Something jolted loose on the rough road, maybe? A rock thrown up into the engine somewhere?

He shut it off, got out, and looked under the hood, while Gaby craned out the passenger-side door. Nothing was visibly wrong. Derek tested some connections with his fingertips, leaned over to look over the cylinders and fan belt. The nice thing about an old car like this was that everything was out there where you could see it; unlike a modern car's engine, it wasn't a densely packed mass of hoses and electronics. If something had broken loose, he ought to be able to see it.

He crouched down and peered underneath the front end of the car. A glint of metal on the gravel caught his eye immediately. Derek stretched a long arm under the car. Probably just a dropped earring or a loose bolt or something, hopefully not anything that would be difficult to replace in a small town like this—

As soon as he got it out into the light, his stomach dropped about ten feet.

"What?" Gaby asked, seeing his face.

Derek turned it over in his fingers, a little piece of metal and plastic about half the size of a credit card.

He'd looked for a tracking device earlier. He just hadn't looked hard enough.

They were making the things so goddamn small these days. That asshole must have crawled under the car and stuck it all the way up inside the engine, where he'd have had to tear apart the whole engine to find it.

And he probably never would have found it, if not for two trips over that rough road knocking it loose.

"Gaby, you got bars on your phone? Call the cabin."

The urgency in his voice silenced any objections she might have made. She punched in the number and held the phone to her ear while Derek opened the hood and took a quick look over the engine for anything else visible, any sign of more bugs or sabotage. He didn't see anything—but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

There could be a tiny hole in the brake line, wearing out slowly, waiting to snap.

There could be another tracker, hidden even better.

"It's just ringing," Gaby reported. "No answer."

"Get Sandy," Derek said. "I'm going to need you to—"

And there he stopped, because there was nowhere safe to leave them.

Ghost knew where they were. He knew all their movements. He knew they'd been in town all afternoon.

Every instinct screamed at him not to take his mate into danger -- especially with her cub, who he had started to think of as his cub as well. But there was simply nothing else to do. What was he going to do, push her out at the side of the road? Take the time to drive around town and find a motel, when it was always possible that he hadn't found the only bug on the car, and Ghost might follow her there anyway?

No choice.

And, with Luisa in deadly danger, no time.

There was no way Ghost wasn't in these mountains already. He'd had the better part of a day and night to track them down. Derek hadn't smelled him around the cabin—but he wouldn't have. Ghost was a pro, and he knew he was up against a bear shifter. He knew Derek's sense of smell would be as keen as his own. He'd have done exactly what Derek would have done in his place: stayed upwind, watched through binoculars, waited for his chance ...

Such as the rest of them going off and leaving an old woman alone.

No point in kicking himself for it now, though. All they could do was deal with the situation as it stood.

"Derek?" Gaby asked. She was gripping her phone in both hands, staring at him. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"This is a tracker," he told her, holding it up. He dropped it and ground it under his boot heel, feeling the electronics crunch and pop on the gravel.

The blood drained out of her face, leaving her gray. "Mom," she whispered.

"I have to find somewhere safe to leave you and Sandy. Somewhere public, maybe—"

"No!" Gaby shook her head vigorously. "The only place I feel safe is with you. Wherever you leave us, he can find us."

She was horribly right.

"Okay, we're going back to the cabin. You'll stay in the car with Sandy, I'll get Luisa and your stuff, and then we'll get out of here. Okay?"

Gaby nodded wordlessly.

"Mom, what's going on?" Sandy asked anxiously from the backseat.

"Nothing's wrong, honey," Gaby said, taking her seat. Only Derek could see that she was trembling, holding herself in control by sheer force of will. She looked close to tears.

Give her something to do.

"Here." He tossed his phone to her. "I just unlocked it. Look up Keegan and call him while I drive. Tell him everything."

That kept her busy while Derek roared out of town, driving so fast on the rural road that the car was airborne half the time.

He slowed when he turned onto the driveway leading up to the cabin. Ghost, like Derek, had a mercenary background. That meant he knew how to set traps. And if Derek was going to set a trap, this was where he'd do it.

"I've lost reception," Gaby said, her voice faint. "Keegan says he's sending help, but—but it's going to take awhile to get out here."

"Mom?" Sandy asked in a small voice.

"It's okay, honey."

"It'll be fine, bucko," Derek told him, crawling forward over the ruts in the driveway. "Just listen to your mom and do whatever she tells you. Okay?"

"Okay," Sandy whispered.

"Why are you driving so slowly?" Gaby demanded, clutching the door handle as if she planned to jump out of the car and run ahead.

"Making sure the road's okay."

"Why wouldn't the road be okay? We just drove it a couple of hours ago. It's not going to magically not be okay now."

"It would if someone did something to it."

"Oh," she whispered, and fell silent.

Like that. There, ahead of them: a trip wire across the driveway, right at car-bumper height.

No telling what it was attached to—a deadfall, an explosive device, something to puncture the car's tires? He braked hard. The smart thing would be to back the car out to the road, leave Gaby and Sandy in the car, and go in on foot—but he was going to need the car to get Luisa out. She couldn't walk all the way down the driveway, not in her condition.

"What are you doing?" Gaby gasped when he reached for the car door.

"Dismantling a trap. I'm gonna leave the engine running and the doors locked. If anything happens, slide over to the driver's seat, back down the driveway to the road, drive into town, and call Keegan. And stay in the car with the doors locked until Keegan gets there."

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and nodded.

Derek drew his gun and got out of the car. He popped the lock down and slammed the door behind him.

The low rumble of the idling engine was the only sound in the very quiet woods.

The one thing in their favor was that Ghost could only be in one place at a time. If he was working with an accomplice, they were screwed.

But Derek still didn't think so. From his conversation with Keegan earlier, he thought it sounded like Ghost had burned his bridges with his employers in town. Ghost was out here for revenge. He probably hadn't brought any help.

Probably.

Derek walked up to the trip wire carefully, watching the driveway ahead of him. As soon as he got there, he saw that it was a very simple trap. Ghost had cut most of the way through a large tree beside the road. The wire was fastened securely to another tree across the driveway. When the car hit it, the wire would pull down the tree. Depending on how fast they were traveling, it would either crush the car's engine, or fall on the roof and crush the occupants.

Simple. Evil. Deadly.

He got out his pocket multitool, clipped the wire, and kicked it out of the way. The tree swayed a little, but didn't fall. Ghost would have been careful not to cut it so deeply that any errant breeze would push it down.

It was still possible it'd fall and block the driveway before they got back down. He filed that away as a possible hazard for their escape.

Looking back, he saw Gaby watching him through the windshield, eyes wide and anxious. He gave her a thumbs-up and then walked carefully up the driveway, looking around, tense and alert.

He walked just as far as a bend that took him out of sight of the car. If he remembered right, the cabin was around the next bend, and he didn't want to alert Ghost that they'd come back. He found one more trap, a disturbed patch of earth right in one of the tire ruts. Derek brushed away the dirt and found several nails pointed up. He picked them out and threw them into the woods, then retraced his steps to the car.

He tapped on the window and Gaby leaned over to unlock the driver's door for him.

"Are you okay?" she asked anxiously as he got in.

"I'm fine." He put the car in gear and crept forward, speeding up a little as he passed under the deadfall trap before stopping just past the other trap he'd disarmed. The cabin was right ahead, around the next curve. And unfortunately, because Keegan was a paranoid bastard who'd built the place like a fortress, Ghost would have a perfectly nice sniper nest in the cupola up top. Derek wouldn't be surprised if he was already stationed up there, watching the driveway.

This was a terrible place to turn around, but with some careful back-and-forth, crunching into the brush on both sides of the driveway while branches scraped the sides of the car, he managed to do it.

"Aren't we driving up to the cabin?" Gaby asked.

"I need to check it out first. If anything happens—if you hear gunshots, or if I don't come back in, say, half a hour, drive back to town and call Keegan." Derek pointed to his phone, still in her hand. "Put his number in your phone."

"Derek, you can't go fight him alone—"

"That's what I'm good at. You have a more important job. You have to take care of your son."

"I've got the number," Gaby said, handing his phone back. "Still no bars. Derek, I'd feel better if we stayed together."

"So would I, but there's no choice." He patted the steering wheel. "I'm leaving the keys in the ignition. Soon as I get out, slide over to the driver's seat and make sure the door's locked. Don't unlock it except for me."

She nodded, then startled him by throwing her arms around him and planting a passionate kiss on his mouth.

"Ew, Mom, gross!" Sandy said from the backseat.

Gaby caressed Derek's face as she let him go. "Please be careful," she whispered. "Save my mom, and come back to me."

"I will. I promise." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "Take care of your son." He started to reach for the door handle, then looked over the backseat. "Hey, Sandy? Take care of your mom for me."

"Okay," Sandy said solemnly.

Derek got out and slammed the door. Gaby slid over to take his place in the driver's seat as soon as he was out.

She was smart and strong and brave. She'd be okay, he told himself. She'd be okay.

Gun in hand, he walked up the driveway toward the cabin.