Call of the Wolf (6 page)

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Abby worked industriously toward bringing order to her new home the following morning. By lunchtime, though, she was not only tired, hungry, and cranky, she was depressed. Contrary to what she'd thought when she started, it didn't make her feel more homey to sprinkle her personal belongings around the house. The house was probably twice the size of the apartment she'd had, but it didn't feel decadent and luxurious. It made her feel ‘exposed.’ . She'd slept fitfully the night before, not only because she was in such an ‘alien’ place, but also because the damned house had way too many shadowy nooks and crannies. It creaked and groaned almost constantly and the wind whistling around it sounded like moaning ghouls.

She'd finally locked herself into her bedroom and barricaded the door, but even that hadn't really made her feel safe. The huge windows in her bedroom were as tall as fucking doors and made her feel as if she was sleeping in a department store show window even with the blinds tightly closed.

After nibbling her way through half a sandwich, half an apple, and half of a container of yogurt, she finally decided she just couldn't find what she needed to appease the gnawing in her stomach—because it wasn't actually hunger. Grabbing up the folder that outlined her job, she debated briefly whether to try one of the rockers on the front porch or head out back. She finally decided sitting on the front porch might look like an invitation and headed out back.

The ‘late model’ car agent Milner had told her about looked like an unmarked police car—and probably had been. Ignoring it, she headed toward the grouping of lawn furniture she'd spied in the very back of the yard. The air was a little crisper than she really liked, particularly since tall trees still shaded the yard, but the tall privacy fence prevented anything more than a light stirring of air. Deciding she'd just go back inside if she was too uncomfortable in her shirt sleeves, she brushed the sprinkling of colorful leaves out of the chair she'd chosen and curled up in it. Pulling the information she'd been given out of the folder, she settled to reading it to refresh her memory for the following day's trial by fire.

She already had a headache forming when she heard the grumbling growl of motorcycle engines. Settling the stack of papers in her lap, she lifted her head to listen, wondering if they were just returning from somewhere or just leaving. They'd gone out the night before, she remembered. Maybe they'd ‘scored’ and were just wandering back in?

It actually seemed probable. As good looking as that bunch was, the local female population had probably thought they'd died and gone to heaven when they sauntered in to the bar in all that sexy leather—with ‘bad boys’ written all over them, almost literally.

The engines were shut off, which seemed to confirm her suspicion and then she heard male voices. Struggling to dismiss them from her mind, she picked up her reports again and tried to find where she'd left off.

"Getting ready for your first day?"

"Shit!” Abby exclaimed, bouncing in her seat and throwing papers in every direction. Flicking a quick survey around the yard and then at the fence, she finally spied Seth staring at her frowningly above the top edge of the fence.

"I was,” she muttered irritably. Scrambling out of her seat, she got down to gather the bulk of the papers, shoved them into the folder, and then began to chase the others that the wind had managed to strew around the yard.

Seth, she discovered, had joined her. She didn't feel any real dismay, though, until she noticed him glancing curiously at the pages he had chased down. Striding across the yard, she snatched them from his hand. “Thanks!"

The look he sent her was filled with speculation, but she didn't think he could possibly have read much before she'd reclaimed her ‘report.’ Glancing away from him to scan the yard to be certain she'd rounded all of the pages up, she discovered Cameron had joined them. Leaning down, he snatched a wayward page from the ground.

She rushed to him and grabbed one corner. Unfortunately, he didn't let go and she only succeeded in tearing one corner off. Glaring at him, she caught the edge of the paper and tugged at it until he let go.

She didn't like the way he looked at her when she'd retrieved it.

Turning away, she discovered that Seth had sauntered to her chair and picked up the folder while she was occupied with wrestling Cameron for the page he'd found. “I'll take that ... in!” she said, racing back across the yard.

He held it out of her reach, frowning as he flipped through the pages. “What is this?"

Abby managed to grab one corner of the folder. “Mine!” she said tightly. “And if you don't mind, I'd like to have it back!"

His face hardened, but he handed it back to her. “Now you can explain to me what it is and why you have it."

Abby felt the blood leave her face as it settled inside of her with inescapable clarity that he'd seen enough to totally blow her cover story. Biting her lip, she focused on carefully smoothing and arranging the papers, trying frantically to think of a believable lie to tell him.

One look at his face, however, was enough to dissuade her that she could possibly come up with anything he was likely to swallow. Glancing around uneasily, she discovered that not only was Cameron waiting for an explanation, but that Adrian and Jerico were striding around the side of the house.

"Excuse me,” she said abruptly, whirling on her heel and heading toward the house at a brisk trot.

For all the good it did! Seth and Cameron fell into step on either side of her. Adrian and Jerico altered course and headed straight toward her, cutting off any possibility of retreat. Clutching her folder to her chest, she looked up at them fearfully as they surrounded her.

Adrian and Jerico frowned, glancing from her white face to Cameron and Seth's grim ones. “What's going on here?” Adrian demanded.

"We're waiting for Abby to explain that,” Seth growled. “Although ... I have to wonder if that's even your name."

Some of the sheer terror dissipated—not the panic, not enough to think straight, but enough that her heart ceased to feel as if it was going to burst from the frantic pounding. He'd seen something that had aroused his suspicions—evidently Cameron had, too, but she couldn't for the life of her remember what had been on the pages she'd confiscated from them. Swallowing with an effort, she licked her dried lips. “What do you think's going on?” she asked a little hoarsely, hoping he'd give her some clue.

He gave her a look. After glancing around, however, he took her arm and escorted her into the house. “We'll talk inside."

Oh! Let's don't!

Abby balked, but she discovered fairly quickly that it wasn't going to do her any good to try to put on brakes. She wasn't certain he even noticed. It sure as hell didn't slow him down. He didn't stop until he'd dragged her into her living room.

"Sit down,” he barked.

"I'd rather stand!” Abby said stiffly, although her knees were knocking together.

His lips tightened. He leaned low, until he was almost nose to nose with her. “Sit ... down!"

Jumping, Abby wobbled over to the couch and collapsed on it.

"Give me the folder."

Abby clutched it tighter. “No!"

"God damn it, Abby! Give me the damned folder!"

Abby glared at him, too panic stricken to focus on much besides hanging on to the ‘evidence'. “I will not! It's mine ... you don't have a warrant!” she exclaimed on sudden inspiration. “I want a lawyer!"

His eyes narrowed. “Why do you need a lawyer?"

Abby blinked at him several times, glanced at the other men ranged around her and finally returned her attention to Seth. “Because ... because ... well, I'm just not going to talk to you until I talk to one!"

Cameron leaned down while she was distracted and pried the folder away from her, nearly dragging her off the couch in her desperation to cling to it. Stalking across the room with it, he dropped into a chair and opened it. Seth, Adrian, and Jerico followed him, leaning down to grab several sheets each.

For many moments, all Abby could do was stare at them. Abruptly realizing they were distracted, she leapt to her feet and bounded down the hallway to her room, slamming and locking the door behind her. Hearing thundering pursuit, she grabbed everything she'd used the night before to barricade the door and piled it in front of the door.

"Open the door, Abby!"

The demand only boosted Abby's panic. It didn't inspire any inclination to open the door. Instead, her frantic mental search for help finally clicked on a possibility and she raced to her phone on the bedside table, grabbed up Milner's card and started punching in the numbers with shaking hands. “I think I'm in trouble,” she babbled the moment she heard the line picked up.

"Case number?"

"Oh for god's sake!” She dropped the damned card when she tried to flip it over and leapt off the bed to retrieve it. “Milner! I have to talk to Milner—anybody! Case # 931AM021,” she said shakily. “I'm in trouble, damn it!"

"I'll connect you to his alternate. Agent Milner isn't available."

"Fuck!” Abby exclaimed while she waited for the transfer. They were pounding on the door now—it sounded like all of them. She was shaking so badly if she hadn't had a death grip on the phone she thought she might've dropped it.

"Open the damned door, Abby, or I'm going to break it down!"

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Shit! Oh Shit!"

A man answered at the other end.

"Help!"

"Who is this?"

"God damn it! I gave the fucking woman the fucking number! How many times do I have to repeat it?"

"I need the number to verify and also to locate you!"

She repeated the number shakily.

"Was that M as in Michael? Or N as in Nancy?"

"It's T as in trouble, god damn it! And D as in dead, you fucking moron! They're beating down the door!” Abby screamed at the man. The hysteria finally seemed to penetrate his cool professionalism.

"Run! Get out of there!"

"Great advice! The problem is ... never fucking mind!"

Leaping to her feet, Abby bounced across the bed and tried to push the nearest window open.

"She's trying to go out the window."

"I'll go around."

Hearing the discussion through the door, Abby frantically renewed her efforts to get the window open. When it wouldn't budge, she discovered it was locked. By the time she'd managed to move the lock, though, she could see Adrian rounding the corner of the house. Slamming the lock back in place, she leapt away from the window with a squawk of fright just as the pounding on the door became deafening. The next blow shattered the door. Abby screamed.

"They're coming in! Big, really big—tall—six foot to six four—tattoos—they've all got tattoos,” she babbled mindlessly, clutching at the one thought that made any sort of connection in her brain—the need to identify her attackers.

Screaming again when Cameron, Seth, and Jerico plowed through the remnants of her door and leapt over the barricade she'd built in front of it, she bounded from one side of the bed to the other as they surrounded the bed, trying to dodge them. “Two of them have black hair. One guy's blond, the other one has brownish sort of blondish ... no scars, but the tattoos..."

Seth tackled her abruptly, knocking the breath from her in an inelegant grunt. Slamming her into the mattress so hard they both bounced, he wrested the phone from her. “Who is this?” he snarled into the phone.

Dimly, Abby heard the agent's response.

"This is Sheriff Seth Banner speaking,” Seth growled. “I know who I am. Who the hell am I talking to?"

She couldn't hear the other man's response, but then her ears were ringing.

"So run a check. If this is who I think it is, you've already run one."

Seth closed her cell phone and tossed it over his shoulder, levering himself off of her far enough he could pin her with a hard look. Finally, he heaved an exasperated breath and rolled off of her.

Abby tensed, staring at him wide eyed, trying to cudgel her panicked mind for some sort of fight or flight plan.

"What I'd like to know is why I wasn't informed,” he growled at her. Climbing off the bed, he studied her assessingly for several moments. “You're not a Fed, so why don't tell me who you are and what the hell you're doing here posing as a school teacher?"

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Chapter Five

Abby huddled a little deeper into the corner of the couch, eyeing the men ranged around her warily. Adrian and Jerico had returned to leafing through her folder. Cameron had decided to prop against the doorframe between the living room and the hallway and Seth was prowling the rug on the floor in front the couch.

Abby's terror had reached it's zenith and plummeted, but she wasn't certain if that was because, instinctively and intellectually, she knew she wasn't in danger, or if her mind had simply reached maximum overload. She was still trying to decide whether to answer Seth's questions or not, and if so, how much it would be safe to tell him, when she heard her cell phone ring.

Seth glanced at Cameron and jerked his head in the direction of her room. Straightening away from the doorframe, Cameron strode down the hallway. He was back in a few minutes with the cell phone at his ear. “Hold on."

Approaching the couch, he extended the phone.

Abby eyed him resentfully for a moment and finally took it. “Hello?"

"Are you alright?"

Abby thought it over. “Yes."

"Can you talk?"

She shrugged. “Yes."

"Are you with Sheriff Banner?"

Abby considered that. “He said that was who he was,” she replied finally.

"Describe him to me."

Abby shifted uncomfortably and finally cupped her hand around the phone. “He's about six-foot-four, built like a fucking gorilla, and he has black hair,” she muttered in a low voice.

There was a rather prolonged silence. “Six-foot-two sound about right?"

Abby surveyed Seth, who'd come to a halt in front of her. “Maybe,” she said a little doubtfully. “From where I'm sitting it looks more like six-four, though."

Another long silence followed that. “Can he hear you?"

Abby looked up at Seth uneasily. There was grim amusement in his eyes. He nodded.

"I think so."

"Why didn't you tell me that?” Milner demanded in exasperation.

"Because you didn't ask me that!” Abby snapped, and she was still too frightened to think to straight.

"Give him the phone and let me speak to him."

Abby held the phone out to Seth. Without a word, he took it and held it to his ear. “Sheriff Banner here."

Abby studied his face, pricking her ears to try to hear the conversation on the other end of the line. All she could hear, though, was a garbled rumble of sound.

"She's fine. No. There may have been a little misunderstanding. Yes. I'll keep an eye on her until you get here."

Closing the phone, he tossed it to Cameron. “That was Agent Milner. He's tied up right now, but I assured him I'd keep an eye on you until he could get here. He said he'd be here Friday—earlier if he can manage it."

Cameron studied him a moment and turned to look at Abby.

"She's a federal witness,” Seth responded to the question in Cameron's eyes and then turned his head and fixed Abby with a piercing stare. “Her name isn't Winthrope—it's Bennett—and she's no school teacher."

Abby gaped at him. “He told you that?"

His lips tightened when she confirmed his suspicions. “Why don't you fill in the blanks? Who's after you? Who has the kind of connections that would require them to stash you away here in Ajax and give you an entire new identity?"

Doubt pricked at Abby, but there didn't seem any way Seth could've figured out so much if he hadn't been told. It didn't follow that they'd be willing to tell him any more, as far as that went.

He'd said Milner was coming Friday—just to check on her? Or to remove her to another place?

She hadn't wanted to stay in Ajax—still didn't want to, and yet the prospect of going through what she'd already gone through—months of preparing her for another identity—was daunting. She couldn't face that. She didn't want to
have
to face it. “Is he ... are they going to move me to another place?"

"Is that what you want?” Seth asked after a long moment.

Abby stared at him, feeling her throat close. Tears stung her nose and eyes. She looked away. “It doesn't matter what I want. I don't have a choice. I don't have any choices anymore."

Seth moved closer and crouched in front of her. When she refused to look at him, he lifted a hand to her face, applying pressure along her jaw with his fingertips until she met his gaze. “Tell me, Abby. I can't protect you if I don't know what's going on."

Abby swallowed against the hard knot in her throat and finally dragged her gaze from his, glancing at the others. “They told me not to trust anybody,” she said hoarsely, “not to tell anybody anything except what they'd coached me on."

He studied her face for a long moment and finally turned and glanced at the others. She could see they weren't pleased about the question in his eyes. Their faces tightened angrily, but after a tense moment, Adrian and Jerico strode from the room. Cameron lingered for a long moment after they had gone but finally stepped away from the door. “We'll be out back."

"You don't know them,” Abby said uneasily when they'd left.

Seth seemed to consider it for a moment. He shrugged. “I know them in the sense that I know what they are ... and what they aren't. Whoever it is you're running from, they would have no connection with them."

Abby rubbed shaking hands over her face, but she didn't think it really mattered what she told Seth. Despite the fact that they'd scared her witless earlier—maybe because they had—she realized that it was her own behavior that had prompted it. It seemed indisputable that if they'd meant her any harm they would've already done the worst. If she'd hadn't behaved so ... suspiciously, she didn't think any of it would've happened.

She'd panicked, plain and simple. If she'd kept her wits about her and tried to brazen her way through their suspicions she might have had a chance of smoothing things over without it going as far as it had.

It wasn't paranoia, although she supposed it must look like that to them. It was perfect awareness that her life could just be erased any second of any day merely by turning the wrong corner or speaking to the wrong person.

Dragging in a shaky breath, she dropped her hands, studying them in her lap instead of meeting Seth's gaze. “My name's Kylee Bennett. I suppose you thought I was involved in some kind of scam and that's why you came after me, but I thought you—y'all—must be somebody he'd hired. But this was actually set up for me by the witness protection program. I testified against a Russian mob boss by the name of Mikhail Zodorf, who's currently serving time but appealing his conviction and who also, the Feds are almost certain, has a contract out on me to make sure I'm not available if they have to call upon me to testify again."

"What was your involvement with Zodorf?” he asked tightly when she'd finished.

She sent him a resentful glare. “I dated him. I'd gone out with him on three whole dates and then the Feds descended on me and threatened to charge me with conspiracy and everything else they could think of to charge me with unless I wore a wire on the next date and managed to get him to talk ‘business’ with me. They suspected that he'd targeted me for my business connections so they prepped me on it and told me to angle for a percentage for myself.

"I thought he was going to kill me right then, but when he'd calmed down a little, he decided it was better that I work with him as a partner, instead of what he'd intended. Which was to manipulate me and slip his transactions through without my knowledge."

He rose after a moment and began to pace the room again, obviously thinking. Finally, he dropped into the chair Adrian had vacated a little earlier. Leaning forward, he propped his elbows on his splayed knees. “You'll be safe here. When Agent Milner comes, we'll have to convince him."

Abby studied him a little doubtfully. “You really think I'll be safe?"

His eyes gleamed as he met her gaze. “I guarantee it."