Rafe sat up straighter in his chair, “Kaylie, did you change your cell number before you left town, or is the number you have the same one from when you and Brian were married?”
Drake let out a quiet curse at his stupidity for not even thinking about her phone.
“No, it’s the same number, I kept it in case my lawyer needed to get ahold of me. Why?”
“
Go get us your phone, sweetheart,”
Drake said.
When she had stepped into his room where they had left it, Rafe turned on Drake, “You didn’t even think to see if there was GPS on her phone? Fuck, man, if our hunches are right about her ex, he’ll know exactly where she is!”
Kaylie walked back carrying the phone, her eyes wide in her pale face. She said nothing as she handed the men her unlocked phone open to the newest text.
Time to play and I’m it.
Frowning,
Rafe took the phone, and after hitting some windows, he glanced at Drake, showing him the GPS icon.
“He knows how to find me, doesn't he? Drake, I need to get away from you, from Jenny. You don’t know what he’s capable of, and now he could be coming your way.”
Both men looked at her incredulously as they started to chuckle at her. “Sweetheart, did you forget that we are both former military? And now we’re both reserve cops up here? I’m pretty confident in our abilities to keep not only us, but you as well, safe. If you still want to leave after we’ve established that the threat has passed, well, we’ll discuss it. But for right now, even if we can get your car running, I need you to stay here. Rafe and I will just take your phone on a little trip and leave it someplace, so if he does go looking for you, he’ll end up in the wrong spot. We’ll still be extra cautious around here, just in case.”
“Damn it, are you two seriously going to sit here and laugh about this?”
“Sweetheart, I can assure you we have seen worse, and, if the time comes, I swear nothing will get past me to you.”
Drake turned and walked back into his room for a minute before returning with a revolver in his hand. “Have you ever handled a gun, Kaylie?”
At her nod he continued, “Since I don’t know how well you know handguns, I’ll leave you this one, as a precaution. Don’t pull it out and aim it at anyone unless you plan on using this, and aim for the kill, not just to hurt someone.”
He and Rafe went on to explain how to handle the gun, taking her outside to fire off several rounds until he was certain she had the basic knowledge, should she ever find herself in a situation to need it.
“I’m wasting my breath arguing with you, aren't I?”
When both men merely nodded in agreement, Kaylie threw up her hands, turned, and finished setting out what they needed for lunch while Drake moved to put the gun in the side table drawer.
Chapter 18
The two men set off in Drakes truck with Kaylie’s phone, leaving both Kaylie and Jenny at Drakes house with his phone,
and his revolver, in case she needed to call them. Once they’d c
leared his property they headed further down the road several miles in the opposite direction from Kaylie’s car before pulling off the road and tossing her phone out the window. As he turned his truck around, Drake couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, his hands tensing on the steering wheel as his eyes kept checking the mirrors to make sure there was nothing to worry about.
“Rafe, do me a solid and…“
“Already on it,”
Rafe said, cutting him off as he picked up his cell and began sending out a text to their friends from the sheriff’s office, and the teammates who might be up in the area. “Man, the way you're twitching and checking our six is crazy. I know we’ve seen more than enough shit that could fall into the ‘are you fucking kidding me?’
category, and I won’t say there’s no way anyone could have followed her up here this fast considering the roads have been shit until they were plowed yesterday, but it’s highly unlikely, and now it’s snowing again.”
“Just a feeling between my shoulder blades. Pissed at myself for not thinking about the GPS on her phone. If he’s as twisted as she said, there’s no way he or Acosta wouldn’t have had someone watching her. And if they noticed that her phone was stationary? Shit.”
Rafe’s phone signaled in incoming text, grunting as he read it. “Cal and Zach are heading up and should be in this afternoon,”
he was saying as he started typing out a reply. “They’ll head over to my place, the less people we have in plain sight, the better the surprise, if we need it.”
“That’ll work. We also need to get word to the Sheriff’s office and let Sanchez know what could possibly be going down.”
“I already called, Sanchez is out on vacation, and it seems,”
Rafe made air quotes with his hands, “Deputy Sheriff Robby Collins is in charge.”
Drake pinched the bridge of his nose with that information, “Are you serious? That idiot’s in charge? Damn it!”
He let out a deep breath of resignation. “What did he say when you filled him in?”
“Basically, as long as you’re defending your property, you’re good, we are not to turn this into some, and I’ll quote him here, ‘hot shot, glory days mission that endangers civilians lives’.
And since everything we have right now is hearsay, we can’t use any of the other officers, even if they were close enough, until we have conclusive evidence of a crime.”
Drake punched his fist on the trucks dashboard, the anger evident in his clenched jaw as he rounded the turn in the road where Kaylie’s car had been left, and pulling to a stop in front of it, putting his truck into park. “Fuck them, Rafe. We run mostly on mountain law, spread thin as we are. We’ll take care of it, and call in the big dogs if we need them,”
Drake slammed his way out of his truck before reaching in the bed of this truck for the towropes and chains that they had brought with them.
Rafe let out a low whistle when he saw the car, wondering how she had managed to come away with so few injuries, and how lucky she was that Drake had come up on the car before it had been completely covered with snow. “Man, I have no idea how you saw her car here, I would’ve kept going past it if I hadn’t of known where it was,”
Rafe said, as he tried wiping off more than six inches of snow off the barely recognizable car. “Shit, there’s a good solid inch of ice underneath the snow on her car! This is going to be a bitch to pull loose, man.”
Drake only grunted his response while he was trying to break the ice off of the front bumper of the car before finally breaking enough loose that he could attach the tow hook underneath it, before moving to the rear of the car. “Rafe, get your ass over here and help, would you? I don’t want to be out here too long. We need to see if we can get it off the damn tree, and this ice over here won’t make it easy.”
The two men were struggling to free the car when a sheriff’s department SUV pulled up alongside them. Drake and Rafe took a minute to catch their breath while they waited for the officer to step out of his vehicle.
The door to the truck creaked as it opened, its driver stepping one long booted leg onto the paved road before following it out with the other. As the deputy unfolded himself to his full height, both Drake and Rafe rolled their eyes at Deputy Collins’
motions. “What’re you two doing with this car, boys? This car looks like it was abandoned and needs towed to an impound lot.”
“It was abandoned after the driver slid into this tree, Deputy,”
Drake growled at him. “The owner of the car was shocked and concussed when I happened across her the other day as the storm was getting started. I called it in when I got home, reciting everything, including that the driver was with me.”
“And there’s a good question to ask you, Givens; why was, or is, the woman with you? If she was injured, shouldn’t she have been taken to a hospital? You keeping her with you for any particular reason?”
“I really don’t like what you seem to be implying, Collins,”
Drake said as he took a step around the car and into the deputies space. “The roads were too dangerous to drive on, and waiting for an EMT was out of the question, all things considered. I was able to ascertain her injuries as non-life threatening, and took her to my place to observe her, if medical attention was necessary, I would have called it in immediately and done everything I could to keep the victim safe.”
“Did you call in her name to anyone, see whether there was a missing persons alert on her?”
Collins gave Drake a hard stare, “See, Givens, this just isn't sitting right with me. I think I need to go over to your place and check on this mystery victim myself, make sure she doesn’t need ‘rescuing’
from you.”
Rafe cut over and stepped up behind Drake, grabbing him before the man could do something foolish like take a swing at the stupid deputy. “Collins, if you’re not going to help us, then get the fuck lost.”
Robby Collins gave a tight-lipped smile before walking to the back of the disabled vehicle to assist the other men. He had more important shit to do than be here with these two
reserve
officers, he thought to himself. Sheriff Sanchez had left for vacation, leaving him in charge of the law, but he knew these two were tight with Sanchez, and didn’t want any complaints about him reaching the Sherriff's ear; that man was a well-respected sheriff and could have his badge if he wanted it. No Sir, Robby thought to himself, he was going to be just as important and powerful as Sanchez is, he just had to bide his time.
The three men grunted and strained as they finally freed the car from its position around the tree. Drake crawled back under the front end to attach the towropes, checking to make sure everything was secured before they tried to pull the crumpled piece of metal back to Drakes place.
Walking over to Collins, Drake offered the man his hand, “Thanks for helping us out here, I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, sure. It’s all part of the job. What’re you going to do with this piece of junk now?”
“The lady wants to see if it’s repairable, so I called a couple of buddies who can fix damn near anything and they’re headed up this week to take a look.”
Collin’s cell started to ring, and after casting one last glance at the car and the two men, he turned, climbing back into his SUV and drove away.
“What a fucking prick,”
Rafe said as they watched the taillights pull away. “There’s something with him, and one of these days karma’s going to catch up to him and kick him in the nuts,”
he sighed.
“Alright, man, let’s see if we can get this car back to your place and check on your girls.”
Drake stopped short in front of Rafe, turned and plowed his fist into Rafe’s jaw, knocking the man’s head back. “
That
was for talking shit in my kitchen,”
he said as he climbed in the truck, waiting for Rafe to climb in beside him before making their way down the road.
Chapter 19
Not sure what to do with herself and Jenny, and knowing the two men would be gone for a couple of hours at least, Kaylie decided to dive back into cooking for the guys, to deal with the nervous energy she had coursing through her. Pulling some chicken out of the fridge, she sliced it up into strips and placed it in a bag with a marinade. She found Drake’s meager selection of vegetables, selecting a few to start slicing up to add to the chicken when she put everything together for an easy and hearty dinner.
Once she had everything prepped, she checked the time and winced when she saw that hardly an hour had passed by. Knowing she’d be unable to sit still, she turned on Drakes stereo turning the volume up, and filled the house with music to sing along while she started cleaning house.
Kaylie was lost in her own world when she caught sight of Jenny pressing her nose on the window and growling. Stopping what she was doing, she walked over to a window near Jenny to see if she could see what had Jenny so suddenly upset, hoping it would just be a winter rabbit or a fox that had caught her attention. Not seeing anything obvious out the window, she was about to turn away when she caught the form of a man running back into the woods behind the house.
Kaylie was opening the drawer in the side table that held the gun as Jenny was pacing in front of the widows, growling low and menacingly in her chest and throat, the fur on her back standing up. Kaylie was starting to shake when she heard the sound of a vehicle coming up to the front of the house, her panic was forced down when Jenny recognized the sound of a familiar engine and ran to the door to greet Drake, her body quivering with excitement.
Kaylie ran to the door, just steps behind Jenny, pulling it open before throwing herself into his arms, gasping in his secure contact and shaking.
Drake pulled her back so he could see her face, “What’s wrong, Kaylie?”