Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Had Renny really thought of what she shared with Mick as “good” sex? Because if she had, she needed to check her dictionary for the definition of good. She didn’t think it stretched to the kind of sex that could render her deaf, dumb, and blind for the better part of a night. That kind of sex crossed over into the realms of spectacular, possibly even earthshaking.

Life-changing?

Oh hell, yeah, she decided, grinning into her pillow. She felt like a new woman, after all. A new, slightly sore, and thoroughly mated woman, with a man who possessed an unfortunate tendency not to hog the covers, but to kick them off the bed entirely during the middle of the night.

The chilly air had her shivering, and she fumbled around on the floor for the missing duvet. It had turned out her nails hadn’t damaged it too badly, and only a few feathers had spilled out to stick in her hair.

It had been totally worth it.

She kept smiling even when she realized the blanket hadn’t landed on her side of the bed. If she wanted it, she’d have to get up and find it, or make Mick do it for her. Rolling over, she found the space beside her empty and blinked into the fading darkness. Judging by the sky outside the windows, it had to be the last hour or so before dawn.

“Mick?”

A squeak of a floorboard and the low murmur of his voice told her that her mate had gone into the living room to have some kind of conversation. Really? In the middle of the night? After they had wrecked each other like that?

Now that was stamina.

She climbed out of bed and shrugged into one of his shirts but didn’t bother with the buttons. With luck, she wouldn’t be wearing it long, but it was too chilly to walk around naked without her fur.

Her bare feet padded silently down the hall. She found her mate pacing across the living room with his cell phone pressed to his ear. He looked concerned, but not murderous, and his movements spoke more of restlessness than suppressed fury. No immediate danger, then. It still left her with questions. Who was he talking to in the middle of the night, and about what?

She stepped in closer, lifting her hand to cover a yawn.

“… expected to hear from you before now. What the hell happened?”

Eavesdropping really wasn’t her style, and damn it, it was chilly out here. The cold front the forecasters had mentioned must have moved back into the area. She entered the room, seeking her mate’s warmth.

Mick scented her and turned. She watched as he initially stiffened, then adopted a resigned expression and relaxed. He beckoned her forward. Renny settled into his side underneath his arm and snuggled close. The male gave off more heat than an old-fashioned radiator.

He pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed a button, then held it a few inches in front of them both. “Wait, what was that again?”

“I said that we expected to call before now.” Zeke’s voice came over the speaker clearly. He sounded tired. And cranky. “The fuckers played us. We had the decoys in place in the room you used last night, surveillance was active but covert, and everyone involved maintained strict radio silence, but they still made it as a setup.”

“Are you sure? Maybe they just decided tonight wasn’t the night to make a move.”

“Oh, no, they moved.” Zeke’s tone filled with disgust. “One of the fuckers managed to sneak in close and mark the damned wall under ‘your’ bedroom window. The coyotes knew you weren’t at the B and B, and they wanted us to know they knew. The sting flopped.”

Renny pursed her lips and peered up at her mate. He didn’t have the grace to look ashamed of himself, but he at least looked like he knew he should pretend to look ashamed. He failed.

Mick sighed. “All right, then. Back to the drawing board. If they know we tried to set them up, it would be stupid to try the same thing again. We’ll have to come up with another way to lure them out of hiding.”

“Yeah, but later.”

“Yeah. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Oh, no, you won’t. I’ll be asleep. You can call the department. They might actually answer.”

The line clicked off, and the phone screen went dark. Renny raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess,” she said dryly. “The menfolk came up with a plan to lure Geoffrey and his pals out without putting poor, vulnerable little me in danger. What did it involve? Dressing one of the deputies up like a woman and sending him and his partner to the B and B to pretend to be us for the night?”

“Don’t be sexist. This is the twenty-first century. We have deputies who actually are women.”

“Riiight. How’d that work out for you?”

Mick made a face. “You heard Zee. It didn’t.”

“Did Jaeger not mention that Geoffrey isn’t stupid?” she asked. “He’s been stalking me for months, Mick. He’s not going to be fooled by any other stand-in with breasts. He would have known right away that wasn’t me at the inn. Hello, coyote, remember? He’d be able to scent that it wasn’t me.”

“I gave them some of our clothes, and they used some hunter’s tricks to mask their own scents. We’re not idiots, no matter how badly our master plan flopped.”

She patted his bare chest, trying not to let the feel of it distract her. “Sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to underestimate your intelligence, but you just underestimated Geoffrey’s, big-time. He’s no genius, but the man is a coyote, and an alpha at that. He’s clever, and he’s sneaky. Since tricks and cheating constitute his normal set of tactics, he’s going to expect them from others and be on guard for it. You’re more likely to catch him by breaking down his door and dragging him out by the ears.”

“By the balls, sweetheart.” He stroked her hair and cuddled her close. “I’d drag him out by the balls. It would be the last use he ever got out of them.”

Renny snorted. “Yeah, anyway, if someone had bothered to ask me, I could have saved a bunch of Alpha’s finest a really late night. A decoy was never going to work.”

“You blame us for trying?”

“Of course not.”

He held her in silence for a moment, then blew out a breath and chuckled. “Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, blinking innocently. “Why, whatever do you mean, darling mate?”

He pulled away and took her hand, leading her back down the hall to the bedroom. “I mean, we may not have known each other long, but I didn’t need much time to figure out that my independent, opinionated, and intelligent mate was going to have a few things to say about our planning this sting behind her back.”

Renny discarded the shirt and smoothed the duvet back over the bed. She climbed onto the mattress and tucked the fabric neatly around her. “In that case, I’m sure you’ve also figured out exactly what I might have to say.”

He slid into bed beside her. “Yeah, but you deserve the chance to say it.”

She nodded. “Good. At least you’ve learned that much.” She turned to face him. “Why the secrecy?”

“Would you believe because I didn’t want you to worry?”

“I know you don’t want me to worry. I also know that you’re smart enough to realize you can’t stop me. Did you think I’d try to interfere somehow? That I’d insist on being part of the sting myself, instead of letting you send a deputy in my place?”

He eyed her warily. “Maybe.”

“Mick, we just got done acknowledging that no one around here is an idiot, and that includes me. How many times do I have to tell you that I have no desire to put myself at risk? I’m not a hero. I’m not even particularly brave. And I’m certainly not trained in self-defense, police procedure, and criminal apprehension the way a deputy is.”

“Are you trying to tell me you wouldn’t have put the kibosh on our plan just because we replaced you with a decoy? I’m not sure I’m buying that. You were the one who suggested trying to lure Geoffrey out, and you initially suggested yourself as bait.”

“True, but I dropped that idea once you guys vetoed it. I thought we’d moved on. If I’d known you still planned to pursue it, I could have told you exactly why it wouldn’t work. It would have saved everyone a lot of time and effort. And you wouldn’t have had to hide it from me.”

“But you’re not mad at me because I did hide it?”

She settled back against her pillow. “No. I thought about it. Mind you, I still think I have a right to be mad. Not at the operation itself, but at not being consulted on the change in plans. This does all affect my life, after all.” She speared him with a glare, but only a half-hearted one. “But then I realized that even if I’d warned you, you might still have wanted to give it a try, and what could I have done if I did know ahead of time? You wouldn’t have let me participate, and I’d only have been waiting around here for news the same way you were. What would that accomplish?”

He shook his head on a laugh. “I’m not sure, but I can tell you what you’re accomplishing right now.”

“That’s not exactly a challenge.” She glanced dismissively at his erection tenting the covers.

“I meant besides that.” He tugged her closer and stroked her hair back from her face. “You’re making me feel pretty damned guilty without hardly trying.”

“I don’t want you to feel guilty—”

Mick cut her off. “I know, but your reasonable, mature, and rational response is nonetheless pointing out to me that hiding things from you wasn’t any of those things. It was … well, I guess it was stupid. And I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. I don’t want you to hide things from me, Mick, and I really don’t want you to lie to me.” She brushed a kiss across his lips. “Just tell me stuff, okay? Even the stuff I don’t like is better off out in the open where we can deal with it together.”

“Agreed. Now will you let me apologize to you?”

She frowned, confused. “I thought you just did.”

He grinned and slid a hand down over her hips. “I want to be certain you know how much I mean it.”

The look in his eyes lit the familiar spark in her belly and sent arousal sneaking through her. “Oh. Well, in that case…”

She leaned up into his kiss and prepared herself to be convinced.

“Isn’t the library open on Saturdays?”

“It is, but the librarian only works one Saturday a month, usually the first one. The rest of the time it’s a Monday through Friday gig.”

“Ah, I’ve heard about those.” Molly sipped her coffee and reached for another of the cookies cooling on the kitchen table. She took a bite and moaned in pleasure. “Are you sure you want to give these to a bunch of ungrateful idiots like my brother and his colleagues? I’m telling you, double chocolate is wasted on them. You should give them to me.”

Renny grinned and shook her head. “I’ve already set off the alarm once this week and had to call in to cancel it. By the time I found the number and the code word and dialed, the patrol car was halfway here. Believe me, before I get used to that stupid security system, I’ll be baking the sheriff’s department individual soufflés in their choice of flavors. The cookies are a stalling tactic at best.”

“You know it’s their job to monitor alarms for high-risk citizens, right? As in, it’s part of what they get paid for.”

“But they don’t get paid for the fact that I am an idiot who can’t remember not to check the alarm before I open the window to let the steam out of the bathroom.”

“Let me tell you how happy Deputy Draper was that he got the all-clear on that call before he actually got here,” Zeke drawled from the kitchen doorway. “He would not have wanted to explain to your mate why he was breaking down the front door while you ran around the house wearing nothing but a towel.”

Renny pulled a fresh rack of cookies from the oven and smiled in greeting. “Hey, Zee. Want a cookie?”

“Do dogs have fleas?”

She snatched the tray out of his reach and glowered at him.

He coughed and tried out a charming grin. “I mean, do bears shit in the woods?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should ask Jonas Browning. Over a nice big plate of cookies.” She narrowed her eyes as she teased him.

“There you go trying to get me in trouble again.” Mick appeared behind Zeke and strolled to his mate’s side to steal a kiss. And a cookie. “You really want me to have to wrestle a grizzly bear because you were flirting with him over baked goods?”

“Who said I was planning to flirt with him?”

Mick shot her a deadpan expression. “You were feeding him cookies.”

Her eyebrow shot up. “And the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”

“No, it isn’t,” Molly chimed in. “It’s hanging between his—”

“Mary Margaret Finula Buchanan!” Zeke roared, looking horrified.

“What?” She blinked wide, innocent eyes.

Renny laughed so hard she almost dropped the cookies. She had to set the baking sheet down on the stove top until she could stand up straight again. Mick just watched the show with a smile.

Zeke continued to gape at his sister, seemingly paralyzed into speechlessness. Taking mercy on him, Renny swallowed another laugh. “I think your brother would prefer not to think about your hypothetical familiarity with the male anatomy, Moll.”

Molly blew a raspberry. “Hypothetical, my ass. I’ll have you know—”

In a gesture of desperation, the big lion shifter stuck his forefingers in his ears and began to sing the theme song to the classic Dukes of Hazzard television show at the top of his lungs. He even managed to put a fairly decent twang into his voice.

“Have a heart, Molly, and stop torturing your brother so that he can stop torturing us.”

Renny had never said he could hit any of the actual notes.

“Fine.” Molly rolled her eyes but changed the subject. “In that case, why don’t you inform us little ladies what you’re both doing here? Is there news?”

Renny looked at the two men with renewed interest. She hadn’t even stopped to wonder why they had wandered into the kitchen during Molly’s visit. Zeke had become such a fixture around the house while they remained on guard against Geoffrey that she’d forgotten today wasn’t his shift patrolling the area around their property. The infamous Deputy Draper was working today. And Mick was supposed to be working, though she suspected he was just trying to give his mate some alone time with her girlfriend, aka staying out of the estrogen atmosphere.

“Maybe.” Zeke pulled out a chair and straddled it, reaching for a cookie. “I checked in with the office this morning. It looks like our teams have covered about half of the search area we laid out with no luck. No one has spotted where the coyotes are hiding out.”

Renny grimaced and began transferring cookies from baking sheet to cooling rack. “That’s not news. It’s the same thing you’ve been telling us for days.”

“No, before I was telling you we’d covered less than half of the search area.”

“Har-har.”

“Wow, tough crowd. Give a man a chance to elaborate, would you?” He brushed crumbs off his shirt and snagged his sister’s coffee, stealing a slug. “The important part of today’s update is that the sections we’ve cleared include all of the private and urban areas on our map.”

Mick stiffened where he’d been leaning up against the counter. “They’ve got to be in the Forest, then.”

Renny shot him a look like he’d lost his mind. “Um, hello? What else is there around here? This place is all forest. It’s the Pacific Northwest.”

“Not the forest, the Forest. Capital F. The Wenatchee National Forest,” Mick explained. “And if they’re in there, we have a lead.”

“We do? Why? How big is the forest?”

“About four million acres.” Zeke held a hand up when she would have laughed. “Obviously, we’re not searching all that, but knowing they’re in there gives us a bunch of new options.”

“Have you called the NFS?”

Renny might have grown up in a more suburban part of California, but she’d lived in Sawmill long enough for “NFS” to enter her vernacular. The National Forest Service still had a visible presence in Trinity County, and apparently, they did here as well.

“Sheriff’s doing that now. Even for shifters, roughing it gets old after a while. They could pull up permits for hunting cabins, alert us to any public structures, even have their rangers keep an eye out for us. They probably wouldn’t join the formal search, but they’re out there every day, right where we need to be looking.”

Zeke grinned fiercely. “It’s like you read my mind, brother. We should have a preliminary list of sites to check in the next few hours. We’ll have to divide them up among the teams according to their assigned areas of the grid, but they’ll be flagged as top priority. I want most of them checked out by the end of the day tomorrow. I’m getting damned tired of twiddling my thumbs and waiting for this asshole to make his next move.”

Weren’t they all? Renny felt a surge of excitement and renewed optimism. Maybe the end of her nightmare really was coming into view. Wouldn’t that be a relief? No more endlessly looking over her shoulder, no more constantly being under guard and worrying about where she could go or what windows she could open. It would mean living like a normal person again. Did she even remember how that worked?

Mick reached out and gently pulled the spatula from her grip. “You okay, little red?”

She blushed, realizing she’d stood there frozen and staring into space for a good couple of minutes. What could she say? She been fantasizing about this whole nightmare ending for what felt like forever now. She could be forgiven a little daydream.

“Sorry. Just thinking.”

Her mate smiled and wrapped his arms around her. “About this finally being over? It will be, red. Soon. I promise.”

She shivered with happiness and felt her stomach growl. Suddenly, her cookies smelled damned good. If she wouldn’t need them to bribe deputies for much longer, maybe she could help herself to a couple, along with a nice, tall glass of milk.

Yes, she felt like celebrating.