Wylde (16 page)

“
Dad?
”

 

Noah stiffened at the fear in Josh’s voice. He dropped the blanket, shoved the door open and strode after his son.

 

“Josh?”

A familiar big man with dark hair in his eyes and olive brown smiling eyes was slouching in the alcove by the front door, giving Josh a charming smile. “Hey, kid, you miss me?”

“
No,
” Josh growled, holding Fiona in a protective stance. Noah felt like someone had punched him in the chest.
Adam.

A
LEC
strained, gritting his teeth. “Hear anything while I was gone?” he huffed, eying Jade as she stood sentinel. “Hey, keep that gun ready!”

“I’ve got it.” Jade scowled, hefting the shotgun. “Trust me.” “You better, baby,” Alec growled.

Jade took a deep breath, as if reining in her exasperation. “Yes, I do, and nope, nothing since earlier. That’s a good sign, right?” Her dark eyes studied the shadowed cliff. “And anyway… Beau doesn’t seem worried.”

Since the bundle was hot against his sweaty skin, signaling something off, Alec didn’t answer but continued shoving with a half-rotten poplar sapling, using it under the log that held Jade’s distressed golden retriever to try to pry the animal free.

Crack!

“
Fuck
!” Alec staggered back, slamming a fist against rock. The sapling had snapped in his hands, and now a cold finger poked his spine. To find this one, he’d been gone about twenty minutes. Now….

“Jade, I have to try again to find something to use as a lever.” Alec resisted the urge to kick the shattered wood. Truth was, he was a little scared. Scared of whatever the fuck was haunting the woods that might have killed Morley Orris, scared to leave the woman he loved alone to possibly face it. “I’ll… have to go further down, deeper into the forest below.”

“Okay.” Jade swallowed visibly, her face ghostly in the glow of the flashlight, freckles standing out and pupils dilated. “Beau and I will be okay until you find the right thing.”

Abruptly the pouch around Alec’s neck was a steady warmth, not quite as hot, as if whatever menaced them had moved away. So they had more time, didn’t they?

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Thinking he had nothing to lose, Alec kissed her surprised lips. “Try not to make any noise. And take care of yourself for me.”

Jade shoved the flashlight into his hands. “You’ll need that to find your way.”

 

Alec stared at her, loath to leave her. “Don’t shoot me when I come back, okay?”

Jade’s eyes were wide and frightened, but she only nodded jerkily. “Right. If I see a flashlight, don’t shoot. If I see something else….”

Alec’s lips firmed into a hard line. “Shoot to kill.”
“J
OSH
,
go in the house,” Noah heard himself order in a calm voice.

He almost wanted to laugh, thinking what a fraud he was. He’d moved here, all the way down here to this near-wilderness, to avoid this man. He swallowed thickly, riding the raft of emotion of seeing Adam again.
Think of Josh. You have to take care of him. Nothing else matters.

“Dad.”

 

He looked at his son, seeing fear in the eyes so like his own. “Don’t worry.”

Josh glared at Adam but then slammed past him, obediently entering their house. Noah breathed a sigh of relief even as he spotted his son a moment later, staring through the window of the great room at them, his Blackberry in hand. He was sorry that Fiona’s homecoming had been shadowed; they’d looked forward to it, planned for it as part of moving down here.

“How did you find me?” Noah couldn’t believe he sounded so reasonable. Was this the man he’d lived in fear of? Brown eyes, brown hair, so pedestrian. For a moment, he felt like he was an actor in a melodramatic play. Had he really left Seattle because he was so uneasy to encounter him again?

“I run a security company. Figure it out!” Adam said, giving Noah a familiar indulgent look.

Noah gritted his teeth, nodding tightly. “And that’s how you got my number, even though very few people have it. I assume this is over Chief Farraday contacting a detective in Seattle about you?”

Adam shifted so his broad, thickly muscled body stood between Noah and the refuge of his house. He leaned forward, smiling slightly and whispering, “I would have tracked you down sooner or later.”

“Why?” Noah wanted to take a step back, creeped out, but he knew it would be a mistake with this man.

 

Adam’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? I had a thing for you. It’s not over just because you got a little skittish.”

Noah stared at Adam. Could the man be that stupid? “You made me very uncomfortable. Do you think I’d ever let you treat me that way again?”

Adam shook his head. “Look, I know I have some problems with my temper but I dated you a long time, Noah, and I never pushed things until that night. And then all I fucking did was hold you pressed against me. I don’t know why that was such a big deal!”

Noah laughed bitterly, remembering the sound of his own heart beating in his ears as Adam put a hand around his throat. His touch had been light, but Noah had felt something shift between them. “Damn right you didn’t push things, or I would have stopped seeing you!”

“I could never stop thinking about you,” Adam drawled, leaning against the porch support. “The one that got away.”

“Not my problem.” Noah’s face felt tight, like a mask. Was this truly him speaking, this strong, defiant man, standing up to Adam? “After that last night I took steps to learn how to defend myself.”

As if to test Noah’s words, Adam suddenly lunged. In reaction, Noah struck the larger man’s forearms,
hard,
the months of training making him react instinctively. He was rewarded when Adam’s eyes widened in surprise. “Some martial arts training, I grant you, but I could take you,” Adam scoffed.

“No, you’re right. I can’t fight you and win,” Noah admitted, falling back, retracing his steps to his Tundra.

 

“Noah, I just want to talk to you. It’s not like you were seeing anyone after you stopped taking my calls.”

“How do you know that?” Again, that brush of wrong. “I don’t want to talk to you, Adam.” Noah opened the trunk, keeping his face carefully schooled as he reached into a rectangular box he’d made Josh swear he’d never touch, pulling free the shotgun and pointing it toward Adam’s feet, ready to level it if he had to.

“Whoa!”

“You came here because you got wind someone was investigating you, fine, but I want you gone,” Noah growled. “I learned how to use this for protection when we decided to move down here.”

“You wouldn’t shoot me.” Adam held up his hands. “You’re not a killer, Noah. I know the type.”

“
I would.
Right through the chest and a second one to the belly. The retired Navy Seal who taught me how to use this gun said it’s good to hit the body in two different places if you want to bring a man down.” Noah cocked a brow. “Don’t push me, Adam.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “You told that Chief about me, didn’t you? You couldn’t face me like a man, so you put him on my trail as soon as you thought you were safe.”

Noah shook his head. “Believe what you like. Now I want you gone; this is my place now.” His voice was firm, as if it came from a place rooted in the ground he was standing firm on, his pulse racing and his palms sweaty, but there was a still, singing rightness inside. He would kill Adam if push came to shove. Kill in a heartbeat to protect himself and his son.

“S
HIT
!” Alec shoved the branch aside in disgust. It was wet and

broke easily in his hands, half-rotten like the rest. He had to find something more than deadfall! He looked up at a towering Douglas fir, branches moving in the cold breeze like arms reaching out, and in the flashlight’s circle made out a branch about the size he needed a mere ten feet above the ground, tantalizing him.

This had already taken too fucking long! He needed to get back to Jade and Beau.

Deciding to go for it, he placed the flashlight where it would shine up the tree, ripped his T-shirt, the sound loud in the sleeping woods, and wrapped his hands.

Then he put a foot to the bottom of the tree and reached up for the first branch.
“U
H
,
COME
on,
come on!
” Alec was twisting the branch he’d
zeroed in on when his medicine pouch stung his skin in abrupt warning.

 

He froze, heart pounding, suspended, peering beyond the faint lemon glow from his flashlight to the woods beyond.

 

B
EAU
was barking!

“Oh, Jesus, this isn’t good!” Jade muttered to herself. Alec had been gone for what seemed like forever, and now her dog was acting fierce all of a sudden. She gripped the shotgun tighter, glad that Alec had left it, even as she was frightened for him.

Beau growled again, brown eyes staring beyond Jade. “
Beau, be quiet!
” she shushed her dog, but then Jade had had it! Had it with being scared and had it with not taking direct action, which was not like her. She reached for the broken sapling Alec had abandoned, shoving it under the debris holding her dog fast. She pushed, feeling a muscle tearing in her back; this was far beyond her strength, but still she strained—

Beau suddenly bounded free, wasting no time in plastering his body against Jade’s, trembling as they huddled against each other under starlight, listening.

She made out the faint scrabble of stones. Footsteps! Alec returning, or something else…?

A
LEC
worked, frantic, and finally the branch snapped, a decisive sound, loud as the crack of a gunshot in the hushed quiet of the forest. He let it fall, watching as it hit the ground, olive colored needles shuddering. Panting, he backhanded the sweat from his forehead.

The bundle was a steady warning heat against his skin, prodding him, and then he caught it, something moving fast through the brush toward him, making nearby blackberry bushes shiver in its passage.

Suddenly the flashlight rolled an arc, shoved aside by…?

Alec caught his first look as a figure sprang easily into the tree opposite where he sheltered. Black, rough-cut hair, almost down to a browned waistline, wide blue eyes full of fear and curiosity… dirty hands with a grip on the branches.

“Holy shit!” Alec whispered.
“
D
ON
’
T
shoot!
”
Jade lowered the gun, huffing for breath. “Holy-fucking
hell!
” she muttered, trembling.

“Don’t be afraid, young lady,” Mr. Anderson admonished. Jade immediately recognized the older man, squint lines burned deep into his skin surrounding pale gray eyes, though she’d only met him once or twice at the Anderson house. He was holding a flashlight, thank heavens, and Jade was glad for the light.

Jade stood, back sore and protesting, holding onto her dog so he didn’t do something stupid like run off into the deeper forest, since retrievers could be the dumb blonds of dogdom. “I’m not afraid and I’m no lady, or so your wife made clear. No offense, but what the heck are you doing down here in this canyon?”

The older man dropped the light so it focused its glare on the ground between them. “Would you mind not pointing that gun in my direction?” he asked, very mildly.

Jade raised her brows. “Soon as I feel comfortable you’re not moonlighting as some weird-ass-ghost-impersonating-serial-killer, yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.”

“You know very well I’m a successful businessman, so I do deals, not people,” the older man reassured her.

“Deals, huh?” Jade blinked, gun up and fixed on her former employer as he picked his way toward the edge of the shelf where she’d been huddling with her dog. Finally she shrugged, letting her gun hand fall. “Just in case you don’t remember me, I’m Jade. And I do men, mostly.”

A
LEC
had one moment of holding wide, frightened eyes, his sweaty wrapped palms slipping—

 

And then he was falling.

 

A
N
SUV suddenly careened into Noah’s driveway, parking
crookedly. Next thing, a rumpled, unshaven, and cranky-looking Kell Farraday erupted out of the vehicle.