Lowe grabbed the med kit and pinned his gaze on the floor, resisted looking at her as he crossed the room to her and set the bag down beside her feet. “I’ll bandage it properly this time and then you should probably get some rest. You can take my bed.”
He unravelled the makeshift bandage and stared at the dark bruise on her leg.
“In the morning, if the weather is still clear, we can probably call in an air ambulance.” He slid a glance at her and she didn’t look at him.
She just stared at her leg, a distant look in her eyes, one that made him want to ask what she was thinking. A bubble of suspicion rose up and popped in his mind. She didn’t want to leave, and he had the feeling it wasn’t because he was amazing company and she just couldn’t bring herself to part from him.
Any normal female would want an air ambulance to pick her up and take her away from a group of men in the wilderness. Wouldn’t they?
He tore open a pack of crepe bandages and carefully wrapped her leg, glancing at her from time to time, noticing the worry blooming in her eyes. Something was wrong, something that was keeping her silent and putting a war in her eyes.
He pinned the end of the bandage and sat back, stared at her until she finally looked at him. “What is it, Cameo? What are you not telling me? You can tell me.”
She swallowed hard, her fine eyebrows furrowing as she looked from him to her leg and then back again. She drew down a deep breath, looked as if she might say something, and then sucked down another.
Lowe sensed the rising tension inside her and the fear, and placed his hand on her knee. “You can tell me. I know you’re in trouble, Cameo. I just don’t know how deep that trouble runs. I can’t protect you from something I don’t know about.”
A light entered her blue eyes, a flare of hope that quickly died, and she looked away from him and sighed.
“The man that I—” She swallowed hard. “He isn’t the only one up here in the valley. There’s another. I got him with the bear spray, but what if he was the one who shot the bear? Maybe he wandered into the settlement looking for me?”
That thought clearly shook her.
Lowe was more shaken by her attachment to her bear spray, and the fact his lie about how Saint was responsible for what had happened to the bear she had seen apparently hadn’t been convincing enough for her.
“The man didn’t shoot that bear, Cameo.” He drove that home, all softness leaving his voice now. He needed her to believe the bear had run off and Saint had been the one to do it, giving his alpha a reasonable excuse for his injuries. “But if there’s another man up here in the valley, I’ll find him… and I’ll deal with him. I won’t let him near you… but I need to know why they’re after you.”
Her face crumpled and she shook her head.
Lowe shifted his hand to hers where they rested on her stomach, shuffled closer to her on his knees and stared deep into her eyes. “I need to know, Cameo.”
Her brow furrowed again and she leaned her head back, stared at the ceiling for so long he was sure she was ignoring him and wasn’t going to answer.
But then her throat worked on another hard swallow and her left hand slipped from beneath his. She unzipped the pocket of her black weatherproof trousers and fished out a phone, unlocked the screen and held it out to him.
“Messages. One from my brother. Nate.” She squeezed her eyes shut.
Lowe found the messages and scrolled through them, didn’t miss the fact she had sent a heart to her father’s number while he had been occupied with Saint or that a lot of unknown numbers had contacted her in the last few months. He clicked on a few of them, cursing himself for snooping, but his gut said the message from her brother wasn’t the only disturbing one on her phone.
All of the messages were threats. Demands for money. Threats about killing her parents. Threats about how close they were to finding her.
He bit back a growl as his mood took a dark turn, as a need to head out into the darkness and find the other human in the valley blasted through him. When he found the bastard, he was going to rip him to pieces.
Lowe found the message from her brother and opened it.
Froze.
His blood caught fire, boiled in his veins as he stared at the photo.
He clenched his free hand and set his jaw, stared at the image of someone he presumed was her brother, but the male had been beaten so badly that it was hard to make out his face through all the blood, swelling and cuts.
Lowe went to set the phone down, but Cameo reached for it, hurt and fear in her eyes. He handed it to her and she clutched it to her chest, holding it in both hands, as if it was precious. It probably was. It looked like it was her lifeline—her only way of knowing her parents were safe. He guessed the heart messages they were exchanging were a way of communicating with each other that they were fine.
Still alive.
Unlike her brother.
“Who did that?” He growled those words, on the warpath now, determined to uncover how many people were after her and track every single one of them down.
They would regret coming after her.
They would regret hunting her parents too.
“A man named Karl. I knew him back east. We both did. He got my brother involved in drugs… not taking them.” Her voice hitched and she pulled down an unsteady breath. “Nate was dealing them… or handing them out to dealers… or whatever it is people do in that damned business. I didn’t know about it until he moved to Vancouver. I thought he was on the straight and narrow. I should’ve known better.”
She looked down at her phone and sighed, a wealth of hurt in it as tears lined her lashes and one slipped down her temple, cutting into her hair.
“They wanted me to help them get drugs over the border and I refused.” She sucked down another shuddering breath and exhaled hard, her voice tight as she said, “Nate did something foolish. Apparently, being a drug dealer or whatever he was hadn’t been lucrative enough for him… or he made an honest mistake. He… money went missing.”
The money the males were now demanding from her.
Lowe frowned at her phone. “Nate got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and figured he could get out of being killed by saying you had the cash.”
She nodded. “I don’t know what he was thinking.”
Lowe did. The male had probably been thinking Karl would let him go and would either target her instead, or make Nate take him to her, and he would have a chance to escape and get the money and flee.
Instead, he had gotten himself killed and painted a target on his sister’s back.
He placed his left hand over hers and held them, looked at her fingers as they trembled beneath his as she fought tears.
“I won’t let them near you, Cameo,” he growled, those words a vow he intended to keep. “What they did to your brother… it won’t happen to you. I swear it. You’re safe with me.”
She looked at him. “I know, but I’m scared. He’s out there.”
He gently squeezed her hand. “He doesn’t know you’re here, and if he comes knocking, he’ll have more than just me to deal with. I’ll warn my brother.”
Knox was going to be angry with him when he learned about Cameo’s trouble, but his brother would do the right thing.