Cameron stepped out of his office, waving around a piece of paper covered in his writing. “Kintail rented cabin five, Big Pines Resort, for three days.”
“I’ll go check it out,” David said.
“I’ll go with you,” Owen offered.
“Me too.” Elizabeth was already headed for the door, not to be left behind.
“I’m going with you too,” Sheri said.
“Gavin and I’ll hold down the fort, try to get some casework done, and we can switch off with you in a couple of hours,” Cameron said.
“Sounds good.” David and the rest of his surveillance team headed out to his vehicle. When they arrived at the cabin, they found the same cars parked there that had been sitting in the agency’s parking lot.
“I’ll make sure it’s them.” David stripped and shifted in the vehicle, and Elizabeth opened the car door for him.
He lifted his head, checking to see which way the wind was blowing, and moved as close to the log cabin as he could without being seen. His nose immediately caught the scents of Kintail, Hans, and Bentley, and the other two men Kintail had with him. Fresh scents.
They were definitely still around.
He slipped back through the woods to the car, shifted and dressed, then stayed out of sight while they observed the cabin. He gave a call to Cameron. “Kintail and his men are at the rental cabin. The cars are still parked there, and I heard voices. Kintail is mad at Hans and Bentley. I couldn’t make out what they were saying exactly, but the tone was clear enough.”
“Okay, good job. Keep me posted.”
A few minutes later, they watched as Hans came out of the cabin and ran his hands through his hair, looking totally pissed off.
Then a vehicle drove up and Hans got into it. Now what? Should they follow him to see where he was going? Or continue to watch the cabin?
“We should stay with the pack leader,” Sheri said, reaffirming what David thought. “He’s calling the shots. I’m sure my parents told my brother off, and he’s probably on the outs with Kintail now too. He wouldn’t like my brother to show any weakness when it comes to doing his bidding.”
“Okay, we stick with them,” David said.
Splitting forces might have made sense in a different scenario, but no way was he putting Sheri or Elizabeth at risk. Plus Sheri was right. Kintail was the real threat.
They’d been there for about a half hour when Cameron called them. They were far enough away that David felt comfortable putting it on speakerphone. “Hey, Hans is here at the office looking to speak with his sister.”
Sheri’s mouth gaped. “No.”
“Yeah, apparently his dad gave him a dressing-down about lying to you about being disowned. So Hans is upset about that, and the pack leader is doubly upset with him for not standing up to his parents. Hans wants to talk to you in person. I’m coming to get you, if everyone else is busy with surveillance.”
A couple of new cars pulled up to the cabin. David tensed. That couldn’t be good.
“Uh, yeah, Cameron? Ask Hans if Kintail called in reinforcements to get more of his people down here,” he said.
They heard Cameron ask the question, his voice muffled.
Hans got on the phone. “Listen, Kintail left me out of what is going on. I’m on the outs with him now. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he called for backup.”
“What do you plan to do?” Sheri sounded irritated with her brother for being mixed up in all this in the first place.
“I don’t know, but I want to talk to you in person,” Hans said.
***
Elizabeth and Sheri wrote down the names of the men they saw leaving the cars and entering Kintail’s cabin. They were definitely called in by Kintail.
“They’re some of the men who were on the bear hunt with you and Owen, David,” Elizabeth said.
“I recognize some of them. Though some of them were wolves at the time,” David said.
“Yeah, I recognize them too,” Owen said. “So they’ve come to use brute force. Not surprising. They did the first time they tried to return us to the pack.”
Sheri called her parents and put it on speakerphone. “Hey, Mom, Kintail has called up the troops to try and force me to go home.”
Her dad got on the phone. “We’re flying up there from Cancun.”
“I don’t want you to get mixed up in this.”
“We are anyway. It’s not right that Kintail thinks he can dictate whether anyone leaves the pack. Your mother is already getting a flight booked for us to come out right away.”
“Thanks,” Sheri said. “I hope it doesn’t hurt your standing with the pack.”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll be there soon, I promise,” her dad said.
“Okay, thanks, Dad.” Sheri ended the call. “This is awful. I didn’t want my parents to get in the middle of it.” Sheri called her brother and put the call on speakerphone. “Thanks to you, my ex-boyfriend, and our pack leader, we’ve got a real crisis here. And Mom and Dad are going to be in the middle of it. You have a choice to stand with us or against us, but our parents are on my side.”
“Hell, Sheri.”
“Hey, if you all had left well enough alone, everything would have been fine.”
“All right, damn it. I’m with you. I can’t believe this. All because you followed your friend here.”
“And you followed us here!”
“Fine. I know. Geez,” Hans said. They heard a deep sigh, then he asked: “What can I do, Cameron?”
“Not screw this up!” Sheri suggested, as only a sister could, then hung up the phone.
David was glad she hadn’t backed down. She was just like Elizabeth in that way. It probably didn’t hurt that her parents were coming. He just hoped they wouldn’t regret throwing their support behind him and his pack.
He also wondered if maybe they wanted to check out the new pack while they were at it. He suspected the way Kintail was, he would be as pissed off at them when they returned to the pack, which might increase the chances of them moving here too. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to the rest of the pack yet, but he knew they would be welcome.
He just wasn’t sure where that left Hans. But that was a problem for another day.
The phone rang again, another call from Cameron.
“We’re going to switch out with you,” Cameron said. “We don’t want the women there now that Kintail has called in reinforcements.”