Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
Axel had six trail cameras open on the bench behind his desk at the back of the office, flashing firmware for the Kincaid ranch job. Valeria didn't work the front desk on Saturdays, so it was just him downstairs. The front door opened, and the scent of lilac and clean cotton came through.
He knew the scent before he knew what was happening.
His wolf lunged up under his skin so fast the small screwdriver skipped off the camera housing and across the bench.
Reese was in the doorway. Her photograph made flesh, slightly older, a little fuller through the body.
Hair pulled back, wearing her diner uniform.
Mate. Mate. Mate.
She stopped just inside the door and looked around the room at the dark workstations, the glass-walled conference room, the short hall to the break room. He could hear her heart beating too fast from across the floor. Her eyes found him last, and she gasped, taking a step back.
"Can I help you?" he asked, realizing she hadn't been expecting to find him here.
"You..."
He set the camera down and stood slowly, keeping his hands visible. He came halfway across the floor and stopped. "Night Owl?" he asked, creating the opening for her.
She didn't move. "Silent Wolf."
"I'm Axel Rivers."
"Reese... Walker." She said her first name and almost didn't offer the last. "I didn't come about mate.com."
"Okay." He felt the bond pulling at him, urging him to reach for her. He ignored it. "What did you come about?"
"I need my information scrubbed off the internet. So no one can find where I live." Her hands stayed at her sides. "Is that something you do?"
"You're in luck. That's my specialty, actually. We can start a free consultation about your specific needs if you'd like."
"Okay..."
"Go ahead and have a seat in the conference room. I'll get you some water."
She went into the conference room and sat in the chair facing the street. He went down the short hall to the break room, grabbed two bottles of water, and brought them back to the conference room. He set one in front of her and took a seat on the opposite side of the table.
He grabbed a pen and a legal pad from the stack at the center of the table. "Tell me what's going on."
"I left my abusive husband three months ago. He doesn't know where I am, and I need it to stay that way."
The words abusive husband landed hard in his chest. His wolf growled, and his heart ticked up a notch. He kept his face neutral and wrote that down.
"Has he attempted contact since you left?"
"Only through an old email account. I stopped checking it after the first week." Her thumb pressed the cap of the unopened bottle. "He doesn't have my new phone number."
"Is the new number attached to any account in your legal name? A carrier plan, shared billing, anything he could find?"
"No." Reese shifted the unopened bottle between her hands. "It's prepaid. I bought the phone with cash."
Axel made a note on the pad. "Are you using any bank account he knew about?"
"No." She shook her head. "I stopped using the shared account. I use cash now."
He wrote that down too. "Does he have any legal claim to your car?"
"No." Her fingers tightened briefly around the bottle. "It's mine. I bought it before him."
"Who knows you're in Fate Mountain?" Axel asked.
"No one from my old life in Spokane." She held his gaze across the table.
"If he was trying to find you, who would he ask first?"
"My mother. Maybe a few friends he never liked me having." Her mouth tightened. "They don't know where I am either."
Axel wrote it down. New prepaid phone, no carrier account. Shared bank account abandoned. Cash use. Car titled to client before marriage. No one from Spokane knew her location. Likely contact attempts through mother and former friends.
"Tell me about him."
She kept her voice even. "His name is Wade Sutton. He's thirty-five years old. He owns a contracting company in Spokane. He has money, a flexible schedule, and he doesn't quit. If he finds me, he'll drag me back... or worse. That's why I need to be impossible to find."
Axel's wolf was growling, the sound low and threatening, like the inner beast might spring up and drive to Spokane to end the man before his next breath.
Axel forced himself to keep his hands still on the pad.
She hadn't come here for an unhinged wolf, threatening to murder her ex.
She'd come for his expertise, and he'd give it to her.
"Okay." He clicked the pen closed. "I can do two things. First, I can pull your information off the data broker sites and keep checking when they repost it. Second, I can reroute the records that still need an address, so they point somewhere that isn't your current residence."
She nodded once. "Show me."
He turned the legal pad toward her and drew a box, then a line running away from it.
"Your name is here." He tapped the box. "Lease, utilities, car registration, anything official. Right now, if one of those records prints your real address, it can lead him to your door."
Her thumb went still on the bottle cap.
"And the rest?" She nodded at the line running off the box.
"That's the fix." He marked points along the line as he went.
"I move those records to a safer mailing address, then forward the mail to you without your real address appearing anywhere he can search.
After I clear you from the data sites, I keep monitoring them — they'll try to add you back when new records show up.
It never really ends. I just stay on top of it. "
"And if he follows the mailing address?"
"He gets a box in another county. Not your current residence." He set the pen down. "The point is to make every trail end somewhere you aren't."
She turned the bottle a quarter turn and stopped. "Could he still find me? Even if you do all of it?"
He didn't soften it. "Anything he found before today, I can't change. What I can promise is that after today, your data will be off the internet. And I'll keep it that way." He held her eyes, desperate to make her feel safe.
She was quiet for a moment, considering it. Then she nodded. "Okay. Do it."
"Then I need one more thing today. The names he'd search." He flipped to a clean page. "You gave me Walker, and Sutton?"
"Walker's my maiden name." Her jaw set. "Sutton is my married name."
"I'll run both."
She watched him. "How much does it cost?"
He'd already decided he was covering the cost himself. He knew she'd want to pay, so he gave her a number she could afford without thinking he was giving her a discount. "Two hundred covers the sweep, the box, the reroute, and the rechecks for as long as you need them."
Her shoulders came down a fraction. Two hundred was a relief for her. She pulled out a stack of twenties and counted them out on the table before passing them over to him.
He opened a release form from a second stack and filled out the boxes and passed it across to her to sign. She read it carefully and then signed with her maiden name at the bottom.
"When can you start?" she asked, passing the form back to him.
"Tonight. I'll have something to show you in a few days." He pocketed the cash and stood when she did.
He followed her out of the conference room. She crossed the floor and stopped at the front door with her hand on the bar. She looked back at him. "Thank you," she said, before stepping outside.
Through the window he watched her cross Main, scanning the parked cars and the street around her before she moved on. Then she disappeared around the corner.
He sat down at the desk and opened the case system. NEW CLIENT. WALKER, REESE. The cursor blinked at the end of her name, the name he hadn't searched four nights ago with the laptop open and her whole life one keystroke away. Now the work required it.
He'd pull the records tonight, now that she'd hired him. Whatever details she'd left out would show up in her data. He still couldn't believe his mate had spent four years married to a man who hurt her.
His wolf had been trying to come through his skin the entire meeting.
It didn't want to clear data sites. It wanted to drive to Spokane tonight, find Wade Sutton, and tear him apart.
He sat at his desk with his head down. He had to hold his wolf back by force, breathing through his teeth until it stopped lunging at the door.
He couldn't just go kill her husband, but Axel could make her invisible to him.