Forged in Ash (36 page)

From the careful cadence in her voice and the dry glance Wolf shot her, Cosky was absolutely positive she’d left out a good chunk of information.

“Wolf,” Russo said slowly. “You got a last name Wolf?” When the other man remained silent, Russo stepped forward and held out his hand. “Mighty thankful for your timely intervention there in Kunar. Never got a chance to thank you for that.”

After a moment, Wolf’s massive arms loosened and fell to his side, but it was another moment before he reached for Russo’s hand.

“We were in the area,” Wolf finally said dismissively.

Translation: no thanks necessary. The standard response following rescue. Except this time, the canned response failed to leave Cosky with the warm fuzzies.

“We? Who?” Cosky asked. He wasn’t nearly as eager to fall at the bastard’s feet. There was a hell of a lot that Kait and her mysterious family friend weren’t filling them in on.

Like how he’d known about the damn bomb.

Wolf dropped back into his impassive routine again. Goddamn him.

“Okay, buddy,” Rawls said. “We need to take care of this shoulder. Down on the ground.”

Swearing, Cosky eased down to the ground and stretched out on his back. Christ, he wasn’t looking forward to this. Rawls sat next to him, his chest facing Cosky’s left side. After carefully straightening the arm, he braced a boot just under Cosky’s armpit, extended his legs, and began to slowly, but with increasing pressure, pull on the arm.

Cosky took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and fought to relax. Vaguely, he was aware of voices in the distance. Slowly Rawls increased the tension, pulling the ball away from the shoulder joint. The pain was a constant, agonizing burn.

After a few seconds, there was a
pop
, and just like that the pain was gone. He unlocked his jaw. “It’s in.”

He opened his eyes to find a scraped, heart-shaped face staring down at him with huge, worried brown eyes. Without thinking, he reached for her—the urge to feel her soft lips under his hitting him hard and fast and completely unexpectedly. He was reprimanded for that moment of sheer foolishness by the knifelike pain that lanced his shoulder.

“I’m okay,” he said, sitting up.

He ignored the flash of regret as she backed away. Rolling to his feet, he scanned the parking lot.

Russo, Tag, and Tram were clustered around Kait’s Wolf, talking. Zane and Mac stood nearby, clearly listening.

Cosky headed for Zane. “He fill you in on the bomb?”

Zane silently shook his head, and shot Kait a frowning glance. He bent his head toward Cosky. “Something’s come up,” he told Cosky quietly. “We’re headed up to Seattle to check it out.”

“A lead?” Cosky asked, his voice just as quiet. Anticipation stirred.

Zane simply nodded. “You up to keeping an eye on Jillian and Kait?”

Hell.

The anticipation vanished. Of course he wouldn’t be going with them. He was a damn liability. Hell, he was half blind, with an arm and leg of diminished capacity. No wonder he’d been relegated to babysitting duty.

That’s when it occurred to him that he didn’t have a place to babysit the women. He didn’t have a house.

“We need a safe house,” he told Zane. “Someplace those bastards won’t connect with us.”

“The women come with me,” Wolf said from behind him.

Swearing, Cosky swung around. He hadn’t even heard the bastard’s approach, and then his claim sank in.

“No,” he said tightly.

Wolf rocked back on his heels and raised thick, black eyebrows. “It isn’t negotiable. They come with me.”

Stiffening, Cosky stepped forward, but before he could say anything, Mac stepped into the fray. From the black cloud roosting on
his commander’s face, he was no more enamored with Wolf than Cosky.

“You want to take Aiden’s sis with you? Fine. But the other one stays with us.”

“No.” The denial was intractable.

“You really think you can stop us from taking her?” Mac asked, his voice rising in disbelief. “There’s seven of us, you stupid motherfucker. One of you.”

“And the thousands of police, troopers, and sheriffs who will be on the lookout for you after I report you kidnapped two young women,” he said in a flat, cold voice.

Dead, hostile silence greeted the threat.

Russo finally shook his head and glanced at Mac. “We can’t take them with us, anyway. Where are we going to stash them while we’re”—he glanced at Wolf and raised his eyebrows—“busy?”

Zane shot Cosky an apologetic glance and nodded toward Wolf. “There’s your safe house.”

Cosky’s entire body tensed. Was he shitting him? “No.”

“He has no connection to us,” Zane reminded him.

And they were supposed to wave off the bombing of the condo?

Zane must have picked up on his thoughts. He snagged Cosky’s elbow and drew him away, then dropped his voice. “Think about it. That bomb must have been lying in wait for months. Since before we brought you back from Seattle. Rawls set the cameras up the day after we arrived back, so we’d have them on tape if they’d planted it since. Yet they didn’t detonate it until Jillian showed up. They know we have her, and they want her dead.”

Son of a bitch, he had a point. Cosky scowled and ran a tense hand down his face.

Apparently picking up on Cosky’s softening, Zane pressed on. “This is our best shot of keeping Kait and Jillian alive. Nobody knows about him, so they won’t be tracking the girls through him. You said yourself we needed a safe house with no connection to us.”

And then the bastard moved in for the kill. “Plus, you’ll be on hand to keep an eye on him. Do some poking around. Find out what the hell he’s hiding.”

Ah hell.

Swearing, Cosky turned to glare at Wolf. “I’m coming.”

Wolf’s thick, black eyebrows bunched like a beetle. “No.”

“Wolf.” Kait touched his arm.

Cosky’s hands fisted at the caress. “I’m coming.”

After a long glance at Kait, Wolf growled beneath his breath.

After several seconds of intense negotiation on Russo and Zane’s part, it was agreed that Cosky would accompany the women to wherever Wolf was taking them.

What wasn’t mentioned, although Cosky was certain Wolf was well aware of the unspoken pact, was that Cosky would pass the safe house’s location on once Mac and the team had scouted out the lab and learned all its secrets.

Soon enough Kait’s fucking Wolf would be finding the rest of ST7 breathing down his ass.

It took over seven hours to reach the safe harbor Wolf had promised them, and Kait was exhausted by the time they pulled into the driveway.

They stopped for food, water, ice, and gas; which Kait purchased since the men’s battered and bruised faces would have raised
notice. Cosky iced his eye while intently watching the road ahead and behind.

An hour into the drive Wolf called someone on his cell. The exchange took place in Arapaho, which Kait had been learning over the course of the past year, but she wasn’t nearly fluent enough to follow his half of the conversation.

She’d caught some of it though—the words for
food
and
clothing
and
house
. But the rest shot past her in a blur. From the annoyed expression and deepening chill on Cosky’s face, he didn’t appreciate her brother’s reticence.

“There will be food and clothing waiting for us,” Wolf told them after hanging up, but without explaining where they were headed.

Cosky didn’t ask. No doubt he knew Wolf wouldn’t tell him.

But Kait suspected she knew.

She was sure of it when he took the exit for Highway 99.

He caught her gaze, his black eyes gleaming with warmth and acknowledgment.

She’d been to his cabin three times now. The first, a couple months after she and Aiden had discovered they had a previously unknown sibling. During one of Aiden’s rare leaves, Wolf had shown up and escorted them to his haven in the woods.

His place was somewhere deep in the forests south of Yosemite National Park. From the moment she’d seen the lodge, she’d loved it. Made from rough-hewn logs, with verandas running the entire length of the house in front and in back, the building had three bedrooms—each with its own fireplace and bathroom. The kitchen and living room were comfortable and homey, with leather couches and tables cut from logs.

But the setting and the mountain view…ah, both were majestic.

She’d expected a certain amount of awkwardness as they’d gotten to know each other. But it was simply impossible to feel uncomfortable at the lodge. The place was too serene, too lovely, too perfect for awkwardness, which was undoubtedly why Wolf had taken her and Aiden there for their inaugural vacation together. It had been the perfect setting to get to know each other. They’d spent the entire two weeks talking, sharing, and cementing the blood bonds between them.

She could never have found the place on her own, though. All she remembered were a multitude of unmarked, twisting, narrow paved roads, followed by unmarked dirt roads, followed by a series of narrow rutted driveways.

But even now, two years later, she could still remember that moment of pure awe as he topped the last rise and paused at the crest of the hill. Below, in a perfect bowl of a valley, a miniature lake had shimmered like topaz.

Her fingers had itched to transfer the view onto paper.

Kait’s preferred artistic medium was glass, but with no kiln available, she’d switched to canvas and spent the two weeks painting—either on the back veranda or sheltered beneath the huge boughs of ponderosa and sugar pines overlooking the rocky shoreline—as she listened to Wolf and Aiden talk.

It was close to one o’clock when the Escalade finally erupted from the dark, tree-lined driveway and cruised down to the glowing house below. Every window was lit, beaming out to them with welcoming warmth. Wolf pulled to a stop in front of the stairs leading to the front veranda.

As soon as the SUV stopped, Cosky thrust open his door and stepped out. Stretching, he scanned the shadows that ebbed and
flowed against the brightness spilling from the house. “Who else is here?”

“No one.” Wolf headed around the hood of the SUV. “I had a friend stock the place and leave.”

Kait slid out of the car and arched her back as Wolf opened the passenger door and caught Jillian before she fell out.

“You can take the room you slept in before,” Wolf said, glancing at her as he lifted Jillian’s still body in his broad arms.

Kait nodded. Although a shower was definitely in order before hitting the mattress.

Wolf climbed the five stairs to the veranda easily, even with Jillian’s extra weight in his arms. He shifted her slightly to open the front door. Kait and Cosky followed him into the spacious living room.

With a sigh, Kait glanced around. Nothing had changed since she’d last been here. Although at the moment the rock fireplace didn’t house a snapping, cheerful blaze. But the leather couch, with the colorful Navaho blankets tossed over it and the worn, butt-indented leather recliner were in the same place.

“You’ve been here before,” Cosky said as Wolf carried Jillian across the living room. There was something sharp in his voice, but when she turned to look at him, his swollen, bruised face was impassive. “Do you know where we are?”

He probably had as good an idea as she did. Every time she’d awoken and looked at him during the ride up here, he’d been watching the road. He must have seen all the signposts.

“Just a general idea. Somewhere south of Yosemite Park.”

He swore softly and scanned the room, then headed for the computer system sitting on a massive table with polished logs for legs. After a few minutes of tapping on the keyboard, he swore again.

“It’s password protected.” He looked at her.

She shrugged, and broke into a yawn. “Look. We’re safe here. Wolf isn’t going to hurt us.”

He just stared back.

“I don’t know the password,” she finally told him. “I’m heading to bed.”

It suddenly occurred to her that there were four people and only three bedrooms. And she was the least damaged of the four people currently in the house.

“Do you want to take my bed?” she asked reluctantly, hating the thought of giving up that blissful mattress for the couch. But she didn’t have nearly the injuries Cosky had.

“You’re not sharing his.” There was such an acidic bite to the question she couldn’t tell whether it was a command or a question.

“Of course not!” Kait blurted, feeling heat sting her face. “We’re just friends.”

Cosky cocked his head, his face watchful.

“Like we’re friends?” he asked, that strange sharpness still in his voice.

Kait stared at him.

What he was really asking was if she’d slept with Wolf, like she’d slept with him. Which was none of his business.

“
Are
we friends?” she asked him quietly.

She wasn’t sure exactly what they were. But she knew what they weren’t. Not quite lovers. Not quite friends. Not quite acquaintances. What did that leave?

His soft curse echoed through the room and suddenly he looked tired—more than tired, exhausted and hurting.

Something inside her softened. As it always did when she thought of him in pain. “I could do another healing before we go to
bed.” Her gaze lingered on his grotesquely swollen, blue-tinged eye. “Maybe it will help your shoulder, knee, and eye.”