Chapter 5 – Jensen
Chapter Five
Jensen
I closed the bay doors, grabbed my duffel bag, and headed toward the office. I needed to get the hell out of here.
Susanna’s voice had me stopping short of the door.“Hey, Jensen.”
I paused, hoping she wouldn’t try to keep me for long. I was going out to Resting Warrior to meet Lucas and Liam for a workout in their gym.
“Do we have an update on Kenzie’s car? I told her I’d keep her in the loop.”
I grimaced. Kenzie’s car was what had me ready to put my fist through a wall. So, I was on my way out to Resting Warrior.
Something was very fucking wrong. It was one more reason I looked forward to seeing the guys. I needed to get their advice.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I’ll tell you when it is.”
Susanna frowned but nodded. “Okay. See ya, boss.”
Driving out to the ranch was one of the things I enjoyed most about being here. Montana, in general, was great, surrounded by mountains and all the open beauty of the land. But there was something even more impressive about Resting Warrior Ranch.
Lucas and the guys had created something special and lasting with that place. Not just because of the mountains and scenery, which was beautiful enough, but because of what they did there. Helping people.
Plus, they had found the loves of their lives and were happier than I’d ever seen any of them in all the years I’d known them. I couldn’t help but be a tad envious of that part.
The huge gate was open when I arrived. I saw a few of the wives outside as I drove around to the gym in back of the main lodge.
“Ladies!” I called out through my open window, and they all waved in return.
At the gym, I saw that Lucas had already started his reps with dumbbells. Liam was still warming up, stretching, getting ready for some deadlifting.
“Hey, brother. Glad you could finally make it. It’s been a while.” Lucas greeted me between reps as I walked in the door.
“Yeah, been getting some extra orders for my wood carvings. I’ve been staying pretty busy.”
“Good to see you, Jensen,” Liam called out as he moved to the bench to wrap his hands.
I wondered if I should just start right off with telling them about Kenzie’s car, but then I changed my mind. I was wound tight and needed to release some stress. Once we were finished and cooling down, I’d bring it up and get their thoughts on it.
For the next hour, the guys took turns with the bags and in the ring. It’d been a while since I had worked my muscles like that, but it was a good feeling.
Beating the shit out of something—even a canvas bag—alleviated stress in a way nothing else quite could. By the time we were done, I felt more centered.
“So, what’s on your mind?” Lucas tossed me a bottle of water then collapsed on the mat.
He’d always been able to read me. “Why do you ask that? ”
He quirked a brow and unwrapped his hands. “I can tell something’s going on.”
“Okay, fine. I wanted to run something by you guys and get your opinion.” I drank the full bottle of water, then sat down on the bench. “It’s about a car that a customer brought in a few days ago. Charlie sent her over when her car wouldn’t start at the station.”
“She new in town or passing through?” Lucas asked out of the blue.
“That’s an odd question. But yeah, she said she’s staying for a bit. Why?”
“Is her name Kenzie?” Lucas moved back to recline against the wall, facing both Liam and me. “I met a woman in town with Susanna a couple days ago, and she seemed a little jumpy. Made an excuse to leave pretty quickly after I walked up.”
Liam snorted. “Probably freaked out by your size.”
Lucas frowned and tossed his sweaty towel at him. We all knew Lucas’s own wife had once been frightened by his size.
“Yeah, Kenzie Hurst. That’s her.” I nodded. “I looked her car over briefly when she arrived at the garage. She’d been having trouble getting it to start.”
“Could you fix it?” Liam asked.
“Spark plugs, so yeah. Should’ve been a twenty-dollar fix. But something else was bugging me, and I started digging around more. I found some disturbing things.”
Both the guys stiffened at my words, and it felt like the air in the room went still.
Lucas rose to his feet and gave me a serious look. “Define disturbing.”
I didn’t like this. Didn’t even like to say it.
“Her car looks like it’s been tampered with. A smorgasbord of fuckery.”
“What?” Lucas asked. “Are you sure? ”
“Hell yes, I’m sure. Her lug nuts had been loosened. Two were missing. Her fuel was watered down. The fuel gauge was tampered with. And something’s wrong with her electrical system, but I haven’t completely figured that out yet. I can tell it’s affected the alternator, but it’s messed up the brake system too. I’m actually surprised she made it here in one piece.”
Lucas cursed under his breath at the same time as Liam whistled through his teeth.
“So, I’m not sure how to proceed. She mentioned that she’d had some trouble and that’s why she’s in Garnet Bend. Do I bring her in and tell her what I found, or just tell Charlie and let him take over? He’s the one who sent her to the garage in the first place.”
“Any way this is all a coincidence?” Lucas asked.
I shook my head. “No. Somebody was deliberately trying to fuck with her. To what end, I have no idea.”
I could still see her face in my mind from yesterday afternoon—features pale and pinched. She was already scared. Hearing about her car was going to make it much worse.
“Brother, that’s a tough call. But since Charlie sent her, I’d go to him first and see how he wants to handle it,” Lucas replied, nodding as he spoke.
Liam walked over and slapped me on the back. “Yep, I agree with Lucas. If Charlie sent her, then she had to be at the police station for a specific reason. Maybe that has something to do with what you found. I’d definitely let him make the call.”
“That’s where my thoughts were going too. It’d be better coming from him anyway.” I retrieved my phone from my bag and stepped away to make the call. But something wasn’t sitting right with me.
“Invite him to come out here, and we’ll see if we can do anything to help,” Lucas called out before the door closed behind me .
There. That felt more right.
I heard the police cruiser pull up just after Lucas, Liam, and I made it into the great room—high, vaulted ceilings with a huge fireplace and leather couch. Daniel, the unofficial leader of the Resting Warrior team, joined us. If there was something going on, he wanted to know about it.
Daniel answered the door at the knock, but it wasn’t Charlie he led inside, it was Charlie’s top deputy, Lachlan Callaway. I liked the man. He had a good head on his shoulders and Charlie depended on him for a lot. In a few years when Charlie finally retired, no one doubted Lachlan would be taking over as chief.
“Evening, fellas. Charlie was feeling a little under the weather so Linda made him come home. Blood pressure stuff.” We all nodded in return and walked farther into the room. None of us liked thinking about Charlie’s heart issues, but the man was getting up there in age.
“Jensen, thanks for the call,” Lachlan continued. “Charlie has gotten me up to speed with Kenzie Hurst’s case. I’m glad you suggested meeting here, because this sounds like something we might need help with.”
“Sure,” Lucas replied. “You know we’ll help if there’s anything we can do.”
“But I’d like for us to try to keep the contact to this place minimal.” Daniel frowned in Lachlan’s direction. “It’s been quiet here for a while now. We don’t need to bring more trouble to our door.”
All the men nodded. It wasn’t just them here anymore. The women they loved were a factor as well. They wouldn’t put them in danger.
“We’ve definitely had enough trouble to last a long while.” Liam plopped down on the leather sofa .
“Of course. I don’t want to see any more trouble for you guys either.” Lachlan glanced around the room at each of the men.
“So, how can we help?” Daniel asked.
“Well, first, Kenzie gave us permission to share specifics of her case with you, but she didn’t necessarily like it.”
Specifics of her case . That meant there was some real trouble going on here. I wanted to know what it was. I couldn’t stop thinking of how worried she’d been yesterday.
“Here’re the basics,” Lachlan began. “Kenzie is a highly successful commercial real estate guru in Denver.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear any of that. It was basically how I’d pegged her as soon as she’d gotten out of her car.
“She’s been dealing with a stalker. Recently, it escalated into something pretty ugly.”
The more Lachlan talked, the more my gut tightened. A fucking stalker . One that had forced her to leave her home.
“It started online through social media. Vague threats that could’ve come from any troll with some sort of a grudge. But then it grew into the stalker physically following her, violence against her, and defiling her home.”
I started pacing back and forth. There was nothing I wanted to do more than put my fist through a wall, and I didn’t even have details.
“After the last event, the Denver detective on the case suggested our town as a good place to lie low since he knew Charlie and of you guys from their conversations. Knew we’d watch out for anything suspicious.” He looked over at me. “I’d say what you found is definitely suspicious.”
“I’d say so too.”
“Especially after we got a call from Kenzie in a panic the other night,” Lachlan continued.
Hearing those words, I felt my whole body tense. I tried to quickly relax my muscles so none of the guys would notice, but Daniel and Lucas both raised an eyebrow in question. I ignored them and rolled my shoulders, then turned my attention back to Lachlan.
“She got on one of her social media accounts and was sent a message while she was on. It was a threat, and she called the station immediately.”
“It sounds like this all started as a social media troll. Maybe someone not happy with her business?” Lucas volunteered.
Lachlan nodded in agreement. “She also teaches how-to seminars for real estate newbies. Someone could have been unhappy with a class or the way she approached a certain subject.”
“But it’s definitely someone who keeps up-to-date with her online activity. They were waiting for her to get on and then sent the message. They probably have a program that lets them know anytime she’s live on social media,” Liam said.
“What did the message say?” I asked.
Lachlan pulled out a little notepad. “Getting out of Denver isn’t far enough. Trust me. You need to leave the state, or the blood on your walls will be yours next time.”
The mention of spilling Kenzie’s blood had me wanting to punch walls again. But the phrasing was interesting. “The stalker doesn’t know where she is if they’re telling her to get out of the state. She’s already out of Colorado.”
Lachlan nodded. “That’s what ultimately reassured Kenzie, I think. At least enough to keep her from freaking out completely. The stalker thinks she’s closer to home.”
But she’d still been alone and terrified. I clenched my fingers into fists again.
“The stalker knows she’s not in Denver anymore, which isn’t surprising, given the escalation,” Lachlan said. “They were probably trying to get her to slip up online and give information about her whereabouts. ”
“Does the Denver detective have any leads yet?” Liam asked from the sofa.
“Nothing new. I filled him in on the recent events before I came here. What about what you found, Jensen?”
I shook my head. “Whoever has her in their sights isn’t playing around.”
I didn’t know Kenzie at all, but the thought of what had been done to her car…the sort of danger she’d been in without even being aware of it? I shouldn’t care, but I did.
“What was done to her car could’ve been deadly,” I continued. “At best, she might have gotten stranded. But if the weather had taken a turn for the worse and she’d done much more driving, it could’ve easily forced her off the road violently—impossible to recover from. In my opinion, someone was trying to kill her.”
“Fuck.” Liam was the one who muttered it, but it captured what all of us were feeling.
“All of this needs to be investigated further, and we need your help keeping an eye on Kenzie,” Lachlan said. “We don’t have the staff. I know you guys don’t know her, but Charlie said to tell you he’d take it as a personal favor.”
“For Charlie, we’re on it,” Daniel volunteered, and the other men nodded.
Relief flooded my system at Daniel’s words. There was no way I could keep an eye on Kenzie all by myself, plus run the garage. Not that it was my responsibility to keep her safe, but I knew I wasn’t going to abandon her to deal with whoever this stalker was herself.
Neither were the rest of the Resting Warrior Ranch guys. This was what they did.
What we did.
“We’ll dig around with our sources and then fill you in if we find anything,” Daniel continued. “Then you guys can fill in the Denver detective as needed. Does that work for everyone?”
“Agreed,” the guys all called out in unison.
The next hour was spent coming up with a plan to help Kenzie that would still allow us all to handle our normal daily duties here and in town. Daniel got the other Resting Warrior guys on speakerphone and filled them in.
Not a single one said they couldn’t help. None of them even asked for more info about Kenzie. They just knew one of their own was making a request, and that was enough.
“Can you look into the identity of the person who’s been DMing Kenzie threats?” Daniel asked Jude. On the Resting Warrior team, he had the most skill with computers.
“Sure, I’ve got some backdoor ways I can dig around. See what pops up,” Jude offered.
“I can help with that too,” Harlan volunteered.
I crossed my arms. “Sucks that the Denver PD is taking so long to investigate.”
“I doubt they’re being slow on purpose,” Lachlan said. “Watters is a good man. But we do have less crime here. And with you guys helping, we have more resources to expend.”
“That’s true,” Lucas agreed.
And it was. Hell, law enforcement aside, among the eight of them, we wouldn’t have any problem handling Kenzie’s safety, while the police handled the town and served as backup.
“Hey, what about Cole?” Liam chimed in. “We could use his skills.”
Daniel was already shaking his head before Liam finished talking. “He and Rayne aren’t back yet. Her conference lasts through the weekend, at least.”
“He’d be a good asset to have if we get stuck,” Noah pointed out. Cole had ties with the FBI.
The others nodded in agreement, and Daniel added, “Yeah, if we can’t figure this out before they get back, we’ll read him in when they return and see what he thinks. ”
“Okay. It seems like you’ve got everything covered for now, and I can’t thank you enough for your help.” Lachlan stood. “I know this will be a weight off Charlie’s shoulders.
Everyone nodded. If they could take one small thing off the older man’s list, especially after all he’d done for them over the years, that was the least they could do. “I’ll leave you guys to it and head back to town.”
Daniel and Lachlan started walking to the door when Lachlan suddenly stopped and turned back to me. “One last thing. If you wouldn’t mind sharing your news with Kenzie about her car? It would probably be better coming from the mechanic in case she has questions. Let her know you’ve informed us, and Charlie will check in with her later.”
“Sure. No problem,” I agreed. I tamped down my excitement at the thought of seeing her again and turned back to the others and the planning while Daniel escorted Lachlan out.
“Jenson, I think you should serve as point bodyguard for Kenzie, if you don’t mind,” Daniel said when he came back in.
“Me?” I wanted it, but I wasn’t sure I was the best choice.
“You’ve got the security background, and you’re closest. And…I think you’re the most invested.”
There was that silence again, but now everyone looked at me with a variety of expressions, from raised eyebrows, smirks, and Liam’s boisterous laugh. They knew I was attracted to her, but no one wanted to call me on it right now.
“You,” Lucas confirmed, as if it wasn’t already obvious.
“Yeah, okay. I can do it.”
I was much better building or fixing stuff with my hands than I was people, but I couldn’t say no. Didn’t want to say no. Yes, I was attracted to Kenzie, but there was something else, something more. I couldn’t explain it, but I had a need in my gut to make sure she was safe.
“But are you sure?” Daniel questioned.“We know you’re not big on having people in your personal space, so if it’s a problem, we’ll figure something else out.”
“I’m sure. You guys all have your hands full here. Plus, you have wives and families. I’ll take point.”
“He’s interested,” Liam added with a huge grin. “Why don’t you ask her out? Two birds, one stone and all that.”
“I don’t see that happening. We’re too different,” I replied. “Plus, you know me. I don’t date.”
Relationships had never been my forte. Not as a kid when I’d gotten bounced around from foster family to foster family and not as an adult.
Loving a woman wasn’t on my radar. Not today and not tomorrow. I wasn’t at that place in my life right now. Probably never would be.
And Kenzie wasn’t my type anyway.
Maybe if I repeated that enough in my mind, it would sink in once and for all.