“I heard Hal used the same brand,” Travis said.
Jack laughed. “I guess this mission is all hush-hush, as far as telling the wives.”
“No. You can tell Dottie what you feel you need to. I didn’t want to mention it to you when you were at your house in the event you didn’t want her to know you were going on a live mission your first time out.”
“Because she was afraid of me fighting in a war if I had to and not returning?”
“Exactly.”
Jack really wasn’t certain how she’d take the news. But he wasn’t going to keep secrets from her.
“So tell us what you know about Hellion, since you’ve had a personal run-in with him. His strengths, weaknesses. All we know about him is what we learned from police reports.” Travis handed pictures of the men in their human form back to Jack. Bishop was a narrow-eyed, swarthy, non-smiling little guy. Hellion was big, bulky, mean-looking as ever.
“Hellion’s got a real mean streak. He likes to act tough, but it’s not all an act either.”
“For example?” Travis asked.
“Threatening people he had some run-in with. One time he came with us, his sister and me, to a movie. We were still engaged at the time. She wanted to take him. I said sure, because I’m close to my family, and I didn’t mind getting to know her brother better. He threw candy wrappers out in the parking lot, and someone gave him grief for littering. Hellion got in his face and told the man if he didn’t like it, pick it up himself. The other man backed down. Gigi laughed, which gave me the impression she wasn’t in the least bit bothered by her brother’s belligerent behavior.”
“What did you do?” Leyton asked.
“Told Hellion the man was right. Only a slob would dump his trash all over. And if anyone was trying to collect evidence on him, his fingerprints would be all over it. The law enforcement official wouldn’t even need a warrant. The trash would be public property at that point. I figured Hellion would have been jumping down my throat next, but he just stared at me with the most hellish look. Then he smiled a little, if his sneer could be called a smile, and grabbed up the trash. He said, ‘Yeah, you never know what the Feds are going to pin on you.’ Then he gave the other man a caustic look, but he was already headed for the ticket booth. Anyway, I saw what Hellion was like. You don’t tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear or he goes ballistic. When he came after Dottie and me on the run a few weeks after I’d broken off my engagement with Gigi, I knew he was really bad news. A real psycho. Then, after robbing a convenience store, he came after me at my apartment with a loaded gun. I helped put him away and I’m sure he hates me even more for it.”
“He’s going to love you when we take him down again,” Travis said.
“Only this time, it’s going to be permanent,” Leyton said. “We’re just damn lucky neither of the men shifted into their cougars on jail time. It’s hard enough dealing with not liking something if you have a volatile temper when you could just shift and take care of the threat in your cougar coat. What about Bishop? Know anything about him?” Leyton asked.
“Nope. Never heard of him. Never saw him before either. Do you have any pictures of Bishop as a cougar?”
“No. We’ll have to wing it. We’ll be staying at a cabin a few hours from Yuma Town and running as cougars for a while. I’ve been out there before, chasing down his old partner. You wouldn’t happen to have known him in the army, would you?”
“By the name of Jeffrey Brown? No, not that I recall.”
“He was Bart Smith in the army. Then when he first got out, he changed his name to Butch Sanders. When he met Dottie, he was Jeffrey Brown.”
“What was his real name, do you know?” Jack asked.
“Zylen Wilson Miller. That’s the name he was born with.”
Jack was glad the man’s real name hadn’t been Jeffrey since Dottie’s and Jack’s son was named Jeff. Which, meant as far as he was concerned, Dottie had named their son after her uncle and Jack’s middle name, Alexander.
“He tried to kill me while we were under enemy fire. He used an enemy’s rifle to make it look like the enemy had shot me. Then he returned to his unit, and since no one had witnessed the incident but me, it was my word against his. He left the service after that, honorably discharged, and then was on a police force for a while. But he was a dirty cop. When he got out, I was already with the CSF and tracked him down. He was a priority mission for us,” Leyton said.
“Yeah, he was bad news. Just as much as the other two men he was with,” Travis said.
“I’m glad you took him down. And that he didn’t get to Dottie and the kids.”
“So how did you feel about learning you were a dad with twins?” Leyton asked.
“Hell, I was shocked, just like any single man would be who didn’t know he’d fathered any kids. I didn’t even know she had any. Or that she’d been married.”
“So once you picked yourself up off the floor?” Leyton asked, looking back over the seat at him.
“I was thrilled. Asked her aunt to see baby pictures. Jeff is the spitting image of me at that age. I can’t tell you how that made me feel.”
“Proud, I imagine. And protective,” Travis said.
“Hell yeah. I’ve always loved Dottie, though I wasn’t sure if she felt the same way about me and would want to make a go of it. Once I learned she had the twins, I hoped more than ever to convince her that she needed me in her life. Sounds kind of sappy, doesn’t it?”
Leyton and Travis laughed.
“If we hadn’t fallen into the same predicament, minus the kids, I might have thought so. But I feel the same way about Bridget,” Travis said.
“Same with Kate and me,” Leyton agreed.
“Okay, so we’re staying at a cabin and you figure these guys are headed in that direction, or staying nearby?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, we had another man on the job. Chet tracked them to this area and the thing of it was, this is where I’d tracked one of their cohorts before, Butch, as I knew him. Chuck recalled Chet and told him he needed him in Wyoming on another case. He also didn’t want him out here on his own, like I was last time.”
“Hell, that was the best thing that ever happened to you,” Travis said. “You kidnapped Kate from her clinic and made a camping trip out of it.”
Jack wondered what that was all about.
“And you were all tied up nice and pretty like a Christmas package, until Bridget rescued you,” Leyton said to Travis.
“Yeah, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Jack smiled. “Hell, sounds like my relationship with Dottie’s been rather boring.”
“We’re glad for that,” Leyton said. “She’s been through a lot. And she’s not a highly trained operative like most of us are. She needs stability and a loving husband and father for the kids.”
“I plan to be that.” Jack further pondered what Leyton had told him about the guys returning to the area. “So have you figured out why these guys keep coming here? It seems to me if we knew why, we might be able to get ahead of their moves. Also, I wonder why they’d come here when they know you realize that they keep returning here.”
“They don’t know that we’re onto them. Only Butch was out this way. Hellion, as far as we know, has never been here. When we had trouble at the mine, the three men were there. But we lost track of Bishop. I suspect that Butch didn’t tell Bishop that I chased him all over this area before I got shot and couldn’t go after him for a while.”
“But you’re sure it’s something out here?”
“I would think so,” Leyton said. “I found a cache of weapons and destroyed it. They have a cabin too, they’ve been using. Same one as before.”
“And they didn’t smell your scent there?”
“We came back and cleaned up the place. He would never know we’d been there.”
“How far is our cabin from theirs?”
“Five miles. Short jog in the park as cougars. Far enough away that we’re n
ot on top of them. We’ll run over there tonight as cougars and see who all is there,” Leyton said.
“So we can’t have any fire at our cabin?” Jack asked.
“We’ll be like regular campers. Fire, roasting Smore’s. The works,” Travis said. “Gotta have some fun on this job before all the biting and shooting, etcetera. If they did manage to snoop around here, we’d just take care of them then. No having to chase after them.”
“So let’s say we find the two men there, then what? We just take them down?” In the army, they had rules. Especially since it was a human run organization, whereas this one was cougar run and was responsible for eliminating cougars who were real trouble. Jack wasn’t exactly sure what the rules were with this outfit. From the sounds of it, they didn’t take prisoners. Didn’t prosecute the men on their radar.
“Okay, yeah. For these guys? They’re both attempted murderers. The one in your case. The other in ours. We eliminate them. If these guys were civilians, we’d turn them over to the police. We work with them, though they only know of us as a secretive government organization. We have badges and ID that gives us some authority.” Travis pulled a package out of the console and handed it back to Jack. “Keep them in good health.”
“I wondered how we did this. Okay, so let’s say we kill them. Then what? Surely, we can’t just bury them anywhere.”
“Chuck will arrange for a cleanup crew. We’ll wait until they get here. Or Dan and his men might take care of it,” Leyton said.
“What if the perps have enlisted other men’s help? People we don’t have any record of?”
Leyton drove down a gravel road. “Case by case situation. They shoot at us, we take them out. They come to kill us with claws and teeth, we take them out. If they give up? We’ll take them in. We’ll need to learn what else they’ve been involved in. The two men who have already tried to kill us? They don’t stand a chance. Anyone else, we’ll give them the benefit, if they give up willingly before they try to kill us.”
Jack hoped he didn’t do anything wrong like let the bad guys go, or get his partners injured or killed. “How does the chain of command work? I know you’re in charge of the office in Yuma Town. But you still seem to be working with Chuck, taking his lead.”
“Yeah, we have our own office, and he’s still overall head of the organization. We’re expanding as we need to. If I’m out of the office on an assignment, you’ll go through Travis. If both of us are gone and you need guidance, call Chuck. We do go on independent missions, especially if one of us is on vacation, or we’re only after one guy and we think we can handle it. For the next year, or less, depending how adaptable you are, you’ll be with me or Travis. Or Bridget. She’s also CSF and good at what she does.” Leyton pulled into a parking area next to a log cabin. “This is it. We’ll unpack our bags and food, have some lunch, go exploring a bit, and then wait until it’s closer to dusk. This is a recon mission. That means we wait to see who all is there. If no one is, we hang around to see if anyone shows up, sniff around the place, determine how long ago anyone was there. According to Chet, Bishop should have been there just a couple of days ago, if not more recently than that.”
Jack was eager to get on the way. These guys knew when to take care of the mission best, but he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to get this over with and get home to Dottie and the kids.
“Whatever you do, put Dottie and the kids out of your thoughts,” Leyton said, carrying in one of the ice chests.
Jack grabbed another. “Gotcha.”
“It’s hard to do sometimes. But we really want to keep you focused on the mission.” Travis seized several bags of groceries.
“Will do.” Jack really thought he could do that. Sure, he’d think of her, but he was good at compartmentalizing what he needed to do now and what he needed to do later.
Later that night after trekking the five miles to the cabin and seeing a light on, the first thought Jack had was Hellion could be in there. He immediately recalled the details of the last cougar fight and human altercation he’d had with him. What he hadn’t expected was for Gigi to appear at the window.
7
Dottie picked up the kids at Shannon’s house that morning, afraid they’d be disappointed that they hadn’t seen their daddy yet. “He had to work at his new job.”
“You said he was coming home,” Jeff said.
“He did. Then Leyton called him to come work on the new job. Daddy might be gone for a few days. We thought he would have the whole weekend with you kids. Leyton really needed him though.”
“We really needed him.” Trish crossed her arms in a huff.
Dottie smiled. “You know most of the guys, and Tracey and Bridget, take down bad guys or rescue good guys, right?”
Jeff and Trish nodded and she got them into the car and buckled them in.
“Well, Leyton and Travis had to ask Daddy for help. Sometimes they need more helpers to take down the really bad guys.”
“So when’s he coming home?” Jeff asked.
“We’re not sure. Maybe a couple of days. I have to go back to work on Monday. I have the whole weekend off to take you swimming, or running as cougars, whatever you want to do.”
Then she got a call from Ted Weekum. Apparently, besides being the foreman at the Haverton’s ranch, he was on baby delivery announcement duty. “Tracey and Hal are at the clinic now. They said it’s just early labor. Hal wants her to stay there until she has the babies because they live so far out. But Kate and Tracey said no.”
Dottie laughed. She remembered feeling the very same way when she had the twins. Jeffrey hadn’t been there for her either. Thankfully, Stryker had been on patrol that day and nearby, so he had taken her into the clinic.
“Let me know when it’s for real. I’ll be right over then.” When she got off the phone with Ted, she told the kids, ”Tracey should be having her babies soon.”
“When can they play with us?” Trish asked.
“Well, you remember when Shannon’s twins were born? Sadie and Zoey are two now and it took them a while before they were old enough from the time they were born to when they could really play with you. But remember, as kittens, they will love to play with you. You just have to be careful with them.” She loved that about their cat shifter half. Human babies took so long to grow up, and that affected how quickly they grew as cougars too. They were still easier to handle and could get around on their own more as cougar cubs though.
Jack couldn’t believe that Gigi was at the cabin where Hellion and Bishop were supposed to be meeting up. Jack and his fellow cougar agents checked out the area as close to the cabin as they could without catching her eye. Cougars could see movement really well, so they had to stay out of her sight. They finally climbed into different trees and just watched to see if anyone else would show up. He smelled that Hellion had been here a couple of days ago. Jack had smelled another male also and he assumed it was Bishop’s scent. Unless they had another villain working with them. Gigi’s scent was there too, and really fresh. So it appeared she was the only one here right now.
He couldn’t believe she’d be here. Was she up to no good along with the rest of the men? Or just staying at the cabin on vacation? He suspected that if she didn’t know about their illegal dealings, she wouldn’t be here. Even though she hadn’t seemed to care that her brother had tried to kill him, he still couldn’t see her as someone who would commit violent crimes also.
For four hours, they watched the house and the surrounding area. Except for Gigi moving around in the lighted cabin, then finally settling down for the night and turning off all the lights, nothing else happened. Neither her brother nor Bishop showed up.
Leyton leapt down from his tree and Travis followed suit. Jack thought someone should continue to watch the cabin. What if the men showed up in the middle of the night? What if the perps left for some other destination, and the agents didn’t have a clue where they’d gone to next?
Leyton and Travis waited for him. Jack
wasn’t budging. He belatedly realized he was probably defying an order to leave, in a cougar way. Leyton nodded at him, acknowledging he could stay, then both cougars raced off. After another hour or so passed, Jack fell asleep. Any little noise would wake him, so he figured he might as well get some sleep.
About an hour after that, he heard a car roll up on the gravel road and park next to the cabin.
Jack watched a man get out as the interior car lights illuminated him. It wasn’t either Bishop or Hellion. Then a light came on inside the cabin and another cast a shadowy illumination on the front porch. Gigi rushed outside in sweats and threw herself at the man. He grabbed her up and carried her into the house, then slammed the door. Apparently he was Gigi’s lover. But was he one of Bishop and Hellion’s partners or just Gigi’s lover?
Maybe Hellion and Bishop had already cleared out of there.
The lights went out again, and that was the end of any activity. Though Jack kept an eye peeled the whole time.
Before dusk, Jack saw a cougar approaching his tree, and he recognized Travis. The cougar jumped into the tree. Jack shifted and told him that the woman in the cabin was Hellion’s sister, and about the new man and that no one else had appeared. Jack shifted back into his cougar form, and Travis shifted to give him orders.
“Return to the cabin. Get some shut-eye. Tell Leyton the news and we’ll take shifts.”
Jack nodded, then leapt from the tree and headed back to the cabin.
When he arrived there, Leyton was fixing eggs and ham on the gas stove and making toast. Jack went to the bedroom, shifted, and dressed, then joined Leyton in the small kitchen, walking across the wooden floor, making them creak. If anyone broke in on them, they’d hear them before they reached the bedrooms.
Pine cabinets, a pine wooden table for four, pine paneled walls, even in the bedrooms, a large brown, rust, and green braided rug, and country chairs and loveseats gave the cabin a rustic appearance. The living room was comfortable, a screened-in porch with a view of the river right off that, and the bedroom windows looked off into the woods. Each of the beds sported patchwork quilts and Jack was thinking how much fun it could be if he and Dottie and the kids had a cabin of their own like this someday.