Chapter Six
Brooke was glad to have the time to drive back to her rental cabin in the car by herself. It allowed her the opportunity to breathe, to center herself, and to accept she’d made the right decision.
Sure, it reminded her too much of four years ago when she’d been working on a case for North Star and had come under some threats from the murderer she’d been close to putting behind bars. When the handsome North Star operative had been assigned to her, and their whole thing had started.
The serious man who’d smiled like it was just for her. Who’d flirted with her before the danger. And then he’d protected her. She’d fallen in love with him. Quick and easy, so convinced it was meant to be. There’d been a bubble of time where she’d believed that was it. Love would win the day.
Ha. Ha.
She also understood now better than back then that his . . . protection wasn’t about feelings. She’d never considered herself na?ve before. She’d had a terrible, eye-opening childhood that had never once had her believing the best in anyone, let alone that love was some great magical thing.
But she’d thought Zeke’s protection had meant something, because of some strange, warped na?veté inside her. Where people didn’t help, didn’t protect. So the fact he had meant she’d mattered to him.
Now she understood fully. Helping wasn’t only intrinsic to who he was. He’d seen the entire North Star mission as one of protection. Of keeping people safe. It hadn’t had to be about her for him to feel the need to protect. It was just all the things he was made of.
So, he had to protect her in this moment, regardless of any feelings he might have had or not had for her. Any old attractions that may or may not still exist between them. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t let it matter.
It was just . . . smart to let him step in and help. And protect. Because she didn’t know what she was up against. And no matter how she liked to fancy herself a survivor, she’d really only endured, not necessarily survived. Never fought for herself. Or the people she should have fought for.
So she had to remember Zeke protecting her was just . . . a job. Even if he wouldn’t let her pay him. It was a job he was doing. Because she needed help, and he needed to give it.
Brooke repeated that to herself a few times as she parked in front of the rental cabin she’d been so looking forward to staying at. Nestled a little out of town, birdfeeders in the yard and suncatchers in the windows. For almost a month, she’d gotten to live here and pretend it was home while she examined the skeletal remains found on the Brink farm.
If it had been only that, it would have been a nice interlude. But then the remains had been found in the cave. But then she’d felt she was being followed. But then she’d been the person to bring Zeke into it.
Her fault. So it was her responsibility to endure once again.
Zeke was out of his truck and next to her before she could even fish her keys out of her purse. He held out his hand, like he was expecting her to just hand over the keys to the cabin. Mr. In Charge. Always.
She opened her mouth to argue with him. To tell him she could take care of it. But what a waste of breath. He wanted to protect. She’d be a lot better off letting him, rather than fighting him on it.
Will you be better off or are you just hoping it’ll be easier? Survive or endure?
She really wasn’t sure about the answer. Everything was so jumbled up and hypothetical. The only thing she knew for sure was that she could not make the same mistakes she’d made four years ago.
Number one, she wouldn’t read into him wanting to help. Number two, she would have boundaries. Zeke was the expert when it came to safety, so she’d allow him liberties there. But only when it came to safety.
So, she got her key out and ignored his outstretched hand. She walked up to the door, unlocked it herself, then gestured him inside.
He didn’t frown exactly, but she could read disapproval in the lines of his face. She ignored it.
“Stay,”
he said sharply before taking a step inside.
It took Brooke longer than it should have to realize he was talking to the dog. She blinked at Viola then scurried inside to follow Zeke. Because she didn’t need to follow anyone’s orders if she didn’t want to.
It didn’t do thinking about if she wanted to or not.
“Anything seem out of place?”
he asked, scanning the small living room and tiny kitchen that were immediately visible.
Brooke didn’t look at first. There’d been a time when no one would have had to ask her that question. When it would have been the first thing she’d do when she walked into a room. Look for what was out of place, brace herself for whatever might be wrong. Rearrange herself accordingly.
But this wasn’t about her childhood in a biker cult. It wasn’t even about one of those disaster foster homes. It was just straightforward danger. The kind she got for looking into dead people.
She walked through the cabin, looking for anything that struck her as wrong. Her suitcase was where she’d left it yesterday morning, organized and open. She poked her head into the bathroom. Her toiletries were lined up along the counter just as she’d left them.
“If anyone has been through my things, they were very careful.”
Zeke nodded, studying the cabin. He poked at light fixtures, pushed on windows. She didn’t ask what he was doing—another lesson she’d learned. She would keep herself . . . separate from his attempts at keeping her safe.
No teamwork. No North Star to bind them. He was just a bodyguard. She was determined to think of him that way. Besides, when it came to her other options—telling the detectives or staying with the Hudsons as Zeke’s sister had suggested—surely figuring out how to deal with her ex-boyfriend from four years ago was better than that.
So she packed up her belongings and brought everything out to the front door. She hadn’t packed heavy because she didn’t have a lot of worldly possessions, even now that she was more financially stable.
Because she was too used to moving, and because her job called for so much travel, she’d convinced herself it was fine not to have a real home base. Fine to be a bit of a nomad and have a small collection of belongings that could be bundled up in less than an hour.
But it always made her far sadder than it should to see her life sorted into a single suitcase and nothing else.
In silence, Zeke hefted the bag—because why would a stubborn, ego-driven man ever let her help—and took her things outside. Brooke followed, locking the cabin door behind her. She wouldn’t get rid of the rental just yet. Maybe it was a waste of money, but it was always good to have a place to disappear to if needed.
She had a bad feeling she was definitely going to need that. An escape hatch, right within reach.
Zeke tossed her bag into the bed of his truck. “Let’s leave your car here tonight. It might throw some people off. You’ve got a routine down, and we want to shake it up in the eyes of anyone who might be following.”
Brooke didn’t trust herself to speak and not argue, so she just nodded and headed for the truck’s passenger side. She’d gotten herself into this mess. She had to take the consequences of her actions in stride. Because maybe it had been four years, but she knew Zeke too well to have thought this would go any other way.
He got in the driver’s seat and she hefted herself into the passenger’s, but just as she did she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. She looked over her shoulder. There was a gravel road out beyond the cabin. Brooke hadn’t done any exploring to see where it led, but along with a minor cloud of dust, she saw a flash of silver before it disappeared into the tree line.
Her heart seemed to stop for a moment, and her legs wouldn’t keep her up, so she sank into the seat, Viola hopping in behind her. “Did you see—”
“I saw it,”
Zeke said, his voice detached and very military. A little North Star déjà vu. “Get out of the truck. Go back in the cabin and lock the door.”
But that would take time, because he wouldn’t leave until she was safely tucked away and the car already had too big of a head start. She pulled her truck door closed. “We both know there’s no time. Just go.”
He slid her one irritated glance then he hit the accelerator.
Brooke held on to Viola as they took off toward where they’d both seen the flash of a silver car.
Zeke focused on driving as fast as he could while also being mindful of the woman clutching the handle of the door for dear life. He didn’t want to scare her, but he sure as hell didn’t want to miss his chance to get to the bottom of this.
“What do we do if we catch up to him?”
Brooke asked, her cool, calm voice a direct opposite to the way she clutched the door and how wide her eyes were. She always had been able to maintain that seemingly calm voice in the face of all sorts of danger.
But he was the one equipped to deal with all that danger. She did not have that kind of training. “You’ll stay in the truck. I’ll handle it.”
He ignored her sigh, concentrated on taking a curve in the gravel road without flipping the truck. He saw another flash. They were gaining some on the car, and it helped he was in a vehicle that could handle the rough terrain and the stalker was in a sedan that was just as likely to rattle apart as it was to make it over the next gravel hill.
Zeke lost sight of the car as it crested the hill first. And he didn’t like that tactical disadvantage. Still, he could hardly let the guy just disappear. Answers were within their reach, and he had to get them.
“Get my gun out of the glove compartment.”
Not a sigh this time, just a noise unique to Brooke that he recognized all too well, full of disapproval. Why that made him want to smile in this tense moment was something he was going to have to excavate . . . some other time.
Still, she did as told, opening the glove compartment and pulling out the gun, not hiding her distaste.
“Can you hold on to it for a minute?”
He had to maneuver the truck into a defensive position as he crested the hill. One that would keep Brooke out of the line of potential fire.
And quickly. The minute Zeke took his truck over the hill, the driver of the silver sedan was parked and getting out.
Zeke screeched to a stop on an angle to keep some distance, to keep Brooke not directly in the man’s line of sight.
“Stay in the truck.”
An order for the dog . . . and the woman.
She didn’t mount an argument, just handed over the gun.
He opened his driver’s-side door, got out of the truck carefully, using the door as a kind of shield while he held his gun trained on the man—who appeared unarmed. Zeke suspected the driver had a firearm on him somewhere. He was way too calm with a gun pointed in his direction not to have some kind of weapon handy.
Unless he had backup. Zeke turned off the safety on his gun and scanned the world around them. He saw one rental cabin in the distance, but otherwise just highway and land. No people. No nothing.
Zeke began to move toward the driver. The guy held his hands up in surrender, though it didn’t feel like a particularly scared or submissive move. It appeared far more . . . mocking.
Zeke didn’t quite know what to do with this, but he’d been in strange, confusing and dangerous situations before. He’d made an entire adulthood out of it—hell, his entire life had been about getting people, including himself, out of trouble.
With his gun clearly drawn, he continued to inch toward the man. Zeke watched everything and put Brooke and the dog out of his mind. The trick to any difficult situation was to divorce feelings from it and to focus on instincts only.
He’d only ever struggled with that as a North Star agent when Brooke was involved. And she, for some reason, had reminded him of his family. Of Walker out there trying to track down their mother’s killer and maybe getting himself killed in the process. Of Carlyle out there chomping at the bit. Of Walker trying to protect her from all the world had to offer.
Brooke had reminded him of what he’d felt for his family, and it had been the first chink in an armor he’d considered impenetrable. It had been the first realization he’d been getting in too deep with her.
And now was quite possibly the worst time ever to be thinking about that.
“It seems you’ve taken a real interest in my friend,”
Zeke called across the distance. He was close enough to take stock of the man. The guy was tall, big. Definitely wouldn’t be easy to take down in a fight. They’d be almost evenly matched, and he had a fighter’s kind of stance that spoke of either time in the ring or time in a cell.
Zeke was betting on the latter.
He still didn’t see anyone in their surroundings. No backup. Unless he was missing something, but Zeke had to trust his instincts and believe he wasn’t. While preparing for anything.
“You could say that,”
the man returned, unbothered. “And you could also say it’s none of your damn business.”
“You’d be wrong about that.”
The guy jerked his chin toward the truck. “Then why is she getting out?”
Zeke knew better than to look, than to be distracted. He really did. He was almost certain he wouldn’t have looked back, except he heard the sound of feet hitting gravel.
He wanted to shout at her, but some gut feeling he could still manage to follow caught it in time, so he said nothing at all. Though he did move his body to act as a physical barrier between Brooke’s approaching form and the man.
Since she couldn’t stay in the damn truck. He wanted to curse. Instead he could only watch her out of the corner of his eye. The dog followed by her side—neither bounding ahead nor lagging behind.
Brooke came to an abrupt stop a few steps behind Zeke.
“Royal?”
she said. Her voice didn’t seem strong enough to carry, but he noted the way the man by the car stiffened.
Zeke didn’t lower the gun but glanced at Brooke, now moving toward the man, clearly without thinking. Zeke grabbed her by the arm with his free hand as she tried to pass him. She looked over at him as if startled to find him still there.
The man crossed his big, tattooed arms over his chest and smirked at Zeke. Then his gaze moved to Brooke.
“Heya, Chick.”