I took a deep breath and nodded. As much as I didn't want to talk about the Goslings, I knew I was going to feel better once I'd shared my experience. I was just about to start with my story, when one of the windows was blown out. Bullets sprayed the back and passenger side of the RV.
Shit. The Goslings had found me.
4
Kyle
"Fuck me, dead! Speed up, mate. These fucksticks are going to kill us!" I yelled out to Sandy while I instinctively threw my body over Larry's like a human shield. I didn’t know why I even bothered when he was already squirming out from under me.
Larry pulled up a pant leg to reveal a handgun that was duct-taped to his calf. I sucked in a breath, wincing with imagined pain when I saw him rip it right off—taking a bunch of hair and a layer of skin off along with the tape.
Across from us, Niles opened a duffel bag and pulled out a shotgun. I was looking back and forth between my mates, wondering how they’d managed to be armed without me even knowing about it. And how had Larry been taken to jail, then brought to the hospital, and yet nobody had ever checked to see if he was carrying?
I shook those thoughts aside and scampered out of the way when Larry knelt beside me on the bed and peered through a gap at the end of the window. He and Niles were silently communicating with hand gestures and their eyes. It was as if they spoke some special bro code that no one had ever taught me.
Not that I would've wanted to know if it went along with the guns in their hands. I was a healer, not a warrior. Guns were the antithesis of everything I believed in. Except… I had to admit they were handy to have right now if they could save our lives. Especially when another spray of bullets hit the side of our vehicle.
"Well, are you just holding those to look pretty or do you plan to actually maybe shoot back at some point?" Dottie reappeared from the living area, I hadn't even been aware that she'd left—that's how terrified I was in this moment. My jaw fell open when I heard a tch-chk click–click noise and saw that Dottie was loading a scary-looking shotgun that was damn near as big as her. She glanced at Larry’s gun before opening a cubbie and pulling out a box of bullets. “You using a .45 there, baby?” At Larry’s nod, she tossed him the box. “Here, won’t want to run out of ammo at a time like this.
At that point, I just pushed back against the headboard and hugged my knees, plugging my ears while I prayed to anyone listening for us to make it through. Niles eased a window open on the side and pointed the barrel through the crack before firing. Larry must have done the same thing, because I heard his gun go off behind me. When Dottie started shooting as well, I just closed my eyes and waited for silence.
There was a squeal of tires and a loud bang then nothing else. I slowly pulled my hands away from my ears and looked around. "Do I want to know what happened?"
Larry swallowed, his jaw clenched as he kept one eye on the road behind us. "One of our shots blew out their front tire and they slammed into the guardrail. We have about as long as it takes for them to get it fixed to get some miles between us."
Larry flipped a switch on the top of his gun—I was guessing it was a safety mechanism—and tucked it into his waistband. Niles set his shotgun down before sitting at the edge of the bed and turning to face us. "Those are the people who are chasing you, Larry? Who the fuck are they, and why do they want you?"
Dottie snorted. "Is nobody going to mention the fact that the car was filled with women? Good looking ones too, if you ask me. We all know you didn't go knocking one of them up, since you're an omega. So what's the deal, sweetheart? You can tell us anything. Just consider us your family." Dottie had also set her shotgun down—how was I in an RV with two people who had their own shotguns?—and walked over to take Larry’s hand. She was so sweet in her sincerity that one could almost forget what a pain in the arse the old dear could also be when the mood struck.
Larry rolled his head back and let out a long sigh before smiling gently at Dottie and lifting her hand to kiss the back of it. While she stood there making cow eyes at my mate, he flashed me a wink and sat down beside me. He glanced back and forth between me and Niles. "Is it me, or is our mating off to a crazy start? Not that I find that surprising since the last years of my life have been something out of a movie.”
"And how much of that has to do with that carload of deranged stalkers you had following us?" Niles grinned, taking any possible sting out of his words. It made my heart warm to see this fun side of Niles. “It’s a crazy start, but we’ll figure it out. Now tell us what’s going on with you and how we can help.”
Larry took a deep breath. "I served in the military for eleven years. Different tours to places I can't tell you about while on missions that were so secret I still can't discuss them. The last three years of my service were spent on an elite special forces team. Despite the shitshow you just saw, I'm actually a skilled sniper."
Niles nodded respectfully. "Thank you for your service. So why are you trying to escape a group of supermodels here on home soil instead of on some top-secret mission in a jungle somewhere?"
Larry patted the outside of his left thigh then pointed to a constellation of small round scars that were scattered over his ribs on the left side. "I was injured in the line of duty. Came home and was going through recovery and physical therapy. I knew my military days were over and I was trying to figure out what to do next. One weekend, I went hiking in the Appalachian mountains and came across those women. They were operating an illegal moonshine still. At first, they wanted to attack me, because shiners don't want anyone to know where they operate, you know? But then I made the mistake of telling them that something was wrong with their batch and that's where it went downhill for me."
I frowned, unable to make the connection. "They're chasing you because you told them something was wrong? They need to bugger right off with that shit."
"No, it's not that simple. You see, I was able to save them from losing thousands of dollars. I heard something wrong with their boiler. My shifter gift involves enhanced hearing. The closer I am to nature, the better it works. So not only did I save their batch, I saved their entire operation from quite literally going up in flames because it probably would've exploded. They decided they wanted to keep me after that. I thought they were just being nice by inviting me home for dinner. Maybe wanting to thank me or something, right? Wrong. They took me captive by weakening me with something in my food. When I woke up, I was chained in a cellar. Every time I tried to escape, they somehow managed to find me. And even worse, I haven’t been able to shift since they first took me. My wolf is sleeping so deep that I can’t rouse him."
Niles leaned forward, looking just about as angry as I felt. "What do you mean by every time you tried to escape? How long did they keep you captive?"
Larry's blue eyes flicked back and forth between us while his pink tongue nervously licked his lips. "A little over three years, I believe. I don't know how I managed to get so far this time, but this is my first successful escape attempt. But as you can see, they weren't far behind me. They’re geese shifters, so they can take to the air to track me down. That’s why they’ve always been able to catch me before. Plus, they’ve kept me drugged so I couldn’t shift and I can only run so fast in this form.”