“It appears that way.”

  “Okay, well, I need to call Peter.” Sheriff Peter Jorgenson had sworn in Landon and Blake as reserve deputies when he needed more deputies while pursuing criminals, so technically, they could arrest the man. But with prior warning like this, they needed to tell Peter what was going on and let him handle it with his full-time deputies.

  “And Darien or Lelandi.”

  Darien and Lelandi Silver, their pack leaders, always needed to be made aware of any trouble the pack members might be in for.

  “Right. Thanks so much, Nate. I’ll let my brothers know right away too.” She got off the phone and was hurrying out to see Blake and warn everyone about Durham Manning when someone approached the counter, a man with a shaved head from what she could see under the cap, his face free of whiskers. He didn’t look like the man in the photo—who was bearded and whose hair was black and curly. The man at the counter’s eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, and he had a cap worn low, the bill shading his features. He asked for the set of keys he had left in the room, his voice gruff and commanding as if he could intimidate Blake into giving them up just like that.

  Kayla immediately slipped the rap sheet Nate had sent to her below the counter for Blake to see, then hurried back into the office to call Peter. She shut the door, not wanting to leave her brother out there by himself to deal with a potential armed robber but needing to get a hold of the sheriff right away before the guy left.

  “Peter, we might have a situation here.” She briefly explained what was going on.

  “On our way.”

  She loved that about the sheriff’s department. They would come at a moment’s notice. Not that they didn’t have other situations to take care of in town, but Peter would make sure everything was covered pronto. She opened the office door to see the man holding his hands out, palms up and shaking his head. She texted Landon and Roxie about a potential emergency.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is,” the man said at the front desk. “I told you who I am.”

  “It’s just a formality. We don’t want to hand over the keys to the wrong person. It could constitute a liability issue. Do you remember where you had left them?” Blake asked.

  The man tilted his head to the side a little. “In. The. Room.”

  If he’d left them there, he would have known they were in the safe. Not just in the room lying on the dresser or some such place.

  Kayla saw Landon stalking across the floor—ready to take care of any troublemaker in their midst. Both her brothers were six feet tall, muscled but not outrageously, and they wouldn’t take any guff off of anyone.

  “Do you have the vehicle with you that these car keys belong to?” Blake asked.

  “No. I rented the car after a plane trip to Colorado. That’s why I didn’t realize that I had left my keys behind until I reached the airport. What else do I have to do to prove to you these are my keys?”

  Kayla was listening to everything that was being said as she checked in another guest. The main doors opened, and she glanced in that direction to see Peter and the pack leader’s brother Tom and Tom’s cousin Deputy Sheriff CJ Silver enter the lodge to speak with the man talking to Blake. She was relieved to see them and hoped there wouldn’t be a fight between them and the shaved-headed guy.

  “You’re going to need to come with us so we can have a little talk,” Peter said, showing his badge and identifying himself as the sheriff of Silver Town.

  “What the hell,” the man said, practically growling. “I come to get my car keys that I’d accidentally left in my room, and I’m interrogated as if I’m a common thief?”

  “Come with us. We’ll talk down at the sheriff’s office.” Peter was firm.

  The shaved-headed guy’s face grew crimson. “What? Are you going to arrest me? You have no cause. I know my rights.”

  “You’re claiming you’re Durham Manning, and he happens to be wanted by the FBI for questioning. They’re on their way to Silver Town now to speak with you. Put your hands behind your back,” Peter said.

  “All right. I’m not him.”

  Kayla had known he was lying when she had spoken to him on the phone.

  “So who are you then?” Peter asked. “Have you got any ID on you?”

  “No.”

  Convenient.

  “I mean, how could I say I was him when we don’t look anything alike? So I left my ID with him. So what happened was I’d met him on a hike a few days earlier and we walked together and he said his name was Durham Manning. He told me that he was staying at the lodge. Anyway, he’d left his keys in his room, and he said he’d pay me a couple hundred bucks to get them. Then I came to get them for him. I didn’t figure it would be a crime or any damn thing.”

  “Just like that? Did he give you a reason why he didn’t want to return to get the keys himself?” Peter asked.

  “Nope. I just figured he had his reasons. I didn’t realize he was wanted by the FBI, or I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “Okay. Well, since the FBI is on the way to Silver Town, they’ll want to question you about everything you know concerning Durham Manning,” Peter said again.

  “I told you. I didn’t really know him. I just met him on a hike, and we were mostly just…hiking.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you told me,” Peter said, but he didn’t budge from doing his duty.

  The man shook his head, muttering obscenities. But he finally complied. Peter and the others took him out to one of the deputies’ vehicles and drove him to the sheriff’s office.

  Blake sighed. “Well, they’ll let us know what they discover about this man. I don’t believe his story about just meeting Manning and then coming for his keys so he could earn a couple hundred dollars.”

  “Me either.” Kayla heard the door open again, though people were always coming and going, but when she looked, she saw Nate hurrying into the lodge, headed straight for them, warming her all over. He was like a bit of sunshine in her life, no matter what was going on. She smiled at him. “Don’t tell me you came to rescue me.”

  Nate gave her a hug. “Yeah. Well, and I’m deputized too, so I thought if you all needed me, I would be here for you. Where is he?”

  She knew he’d wanted to come and check on her personally, which she thought was truly heroic. “Well, I appreciate it. You just missed him. Peter hauled him off.”

  “Oh, good. I’m glad they’ve taken him into custody to learn what this is about.”

  Roxie quickly joined them. “I was dealing with a plumbing issue in the lobby restroom with our plumber. I can’t believe the guy who left the keys in the safe was an armed robber. Blake texted me and sent a photo of Durham Manning. He was the black-haired, muscle-bound guy in the woods we saw talking to the blond while we were on our run, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Kayla said, not wanting to bring that bit of news up again.

  “Which you should have told Landon and me about already,” Blake scolded.

  “What’s this?” Landon asked.

  Blake told him what Kayla had revealed earlier about running as wolves and encountering the two men.

  “Hell, Kayla, you and Roxie should have told us about it,” Landon said.

  They would never hear the end of it.

  Roxie turned her attention to Nate and smiled at him to avoid responding to Blake’s and Landon’s comment. “Did you come to rescue Kayla?”

  Nate was frowning, looking as serious as could be. “Yeah. Of course. If Blake can’t go running with you, just call on me.”

  Kayla and Roxie sighed.

  “But who is this other guy then if he’s not Durham Manning?” Roxie asked.

  “That’s what Peter will have to discover. He said he’d called the FBI to take care of him though. The man’s not a wolf, and if this guy truly knows the armed robber, the FBI will need to question him thoroughly, learn his identity, and go from there,” Blake said. “He didn’t have any ID on him. I guess he just thought he could waltz in here, and if he was aggressive enough, we’d fold and take him at his word.”

  Not long after that, Tom Silver came back into the lodge. “Hey, if you’ve got that set of keys belonging to Manning, we need to turn them over to the FBI agents. I figured they wouldn’t want them because the real owner might still come for them. Though, if the real owner is Manning, they’ll want to take him into custody for questioning anyway, so they need the keys.”

  “I’ll get them,” Kayla said and retrieved them from the safe in the office. She handed them over to Tom. “I hope we get to learn what this is all about.”

  Tom nodded. “The two agents are wolves, and they’ll definitely let us know what happened. If they hadn’t been wolves, they wouldn’t have shared what was going on.”

  “Good show,” Nate said.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as we learn something.” Tom saluted them, then headed out of the lodge.

  “What happened to you?” Roxie finally asked Nate, looking at the wound on his face.

  He’d removed the bandage, but the area where the chunk of hail had hit him was still cut and beginning to heal. “Uh, that was due to the fight with the hailstorm. Don’t worry though. I won.”

  Roxie’s mouth gaped, and then her gaze shot to Kayla. And, no, Kayla hadn’t told her sister or her brothers about the injuries they’d had in the hailstorm.

  “Were you hurt too?” Roxie asked.

  “Not bad. We’re both healing up just fine. Luckily, we found protection under that massive stone ledge next to the creek,” Kayla said.

  Blake and Landon were frowning. “The creek was a raging river by the time the storm let up,” Landon said. “That’s how come you went swimming in it?”

  “Yeah, the earth gave way, and we ended up in the creek, but”—Kayla patted Nate on the shoulder—“he rescued me. If you ever get caught in a hailstorm and are swept away in a raging river, be sure Nate is with you.”

  “Kayla Marie Wolff, you never even mentioned the two of you were hurt by the hail,” Roxie said, scolding.

  Kayla smiled and hugged her sister. “We made it out just fine and watched a great movie afterward.”

  “Okay, so I need to get back to that retirement party I’m in charge of catering, if you don’t need me,” Landon said.

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Blake said.

  Landon stalked off to one of the banquet halls.

  “Hey, it’s lunchtime,” Nate said, as if he wanted to get Kayla out of hot water with her siblings. “Can I buy you lunch at the lodge, Kayla, if you’re free?”

  “She’s free,” Roxie said, shaking her head. “Next time…”

  “There won’t be a next time like that,” Kayla said. “Dinner, drinks, wine and popcorn and a movie, a run as wolves, sure, but no hailstorm issues.” She took Nate’s hand. “You know how this works. We own the restaurant, so the lunch is on me.”

  “Even better.” He winked at her, and they headed off to the restaurant. “Sorry about mentioning the hailstorm, but I didn’t know what else to say when your sister asked how I was injured. Besides, my sister asked me first thing about my injury this morning at the office, and when I told her we took refuge next to the creek, she said the same thing as your brother. The truth would have come out.”

  “You’re right. I’d mentioned it, but not that we were hurt.” She kissed his shoulder with affection. “You know you really didn’t have to come here and rescue me.”

  “Yeah, I did. I would have hated myself if hadn’t shown up and you were harmed. How are your injuries from the hailstorm? I didn’t even think to ask you about them this morning.”

  “Much better, thanks. Your face is healing nicely.”

  “Yeah. And the rest of me too.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Nate opened the door to the restaurant for her. “All right, so what’s today’s special?”

  “Lobster tails, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob.”

  “That sounds good.”

  Today was already perfectly special, she thought, because she had a hero of a wolf trying to rescue her again.

  “Then we’ll go to Green Valley and look for a car for you. I already discussed it with Nicole, and she said she could manage since I was coming here to help out anyway.”

  Kayla smiled. “Oh, yeah, perfect.”

  Chapter 11

  After having lunch at the lodge, Nate drove Kayla to see cars at some of the dealerships in Green Valley. He hadn’t bought a new car in several years. He loved haggling with car dealers and had done the same for his mom when she’d needed a new car and for Nicole too when she left the army. “What about this one?” Nate asked Kayla, while they looked at the cars at the first dealership she wanted to check out, thinking a minivan or hatchback would be useful.

  He was peering in through one of the car windows when a salesman came out to sell them a vehicle. “We just want to look around on our own for a while. She’s not sure what she’d like to get this time around.”

  “Yeah, sure, my name is Zan Jenkins. Just call on me if you need some help.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Once the salesman walked off, Kayla let out her breath, sounding relieved. “I hate high-pressure salesmen, so I’m glad you suggested that we just look on our own for now.”

  “Yeah, me too. Okay, so what about this one?” Nate showed Kayla another hatchback and was reading all the items included with the package deal.

  “I’d like to have a red car. Then I can see it in the snow.”

  He smiled. He was thinking more in terms of style and use, not color. He started looking at a Honda Odyssey. Man, it had room to spare. Just perfect.

  She folded her arms while he slid back the side door and climbed into the rear back seat. With three rows of seats, it was perfect for family outings. A pair of twins, grandparents, parents, and room for another person in the last row. And storage room in the trunk for whatever they needed.

  He was sold on it. For the price, and it was red, he thought it was perfect. But when he saw her raised brows and folded arms, he figured Kayla wasn’t buying it.

  He sighed, and they began to look at two-door coupes.

  “These are cute,” she said, “but it would probably be more practical to have a four-door, or I wouldn’t be able to take all the ladies—Nicole, Roxie, your mother—to the tea shop.”

  “I’m sure one of the other ladies would volunteer and you could have the sporty car for running around in.”

  She smiled at him. “Let’s look at some of the four-door sedans.”

  Then she and he began to check them out. While she was sitting in the driver’s seat of one of the red sedans, he glanced back at the Odyssey. He was thinking if he took his parents and his sister and brother-in-law and the babies and Kayla anywhere, he could use the vehicle.

  “Is that the one you like?” he asked Kayla as she checked out the trunk of the sedan.

  “I want to look at the others too.”

  “Even if they’re not red.”

  She chuckled. “I will give up a red one if one of them has everything else I want.” Then she saw a Honda Civic on the showroom floor in red. “Let’s see that one.”

  He smiled.

  And it turned out to be just the one she wanted.

  “Okay,” Nate said to the salesman. “How much will you take off of the price if we get both the Honda Civic and the Honda Odyssey?”

  Kayla frowned at him, looking puzzled.

  The salesman offered a reduced price but said he could go no lower than that.

  “Ask the manager,” Nate said.

  The salesman went off to speak with him while Kayla and Nate drank some complimentary bottled water in the office. “Why do you want the Odyssey?” Kayla asked Nate.

  “With my sister having the twins, I could take the family places. I can’t now.”

  She sighed. “You know if you get that van what will happen.”

  “What?”

  She took another swig of her water bottle. “Our families will think something else is going on.”

  He had to admit when he’d asked Kayla to mate him and they were expecting their own babies, they’d need a van. But truly, he figured it would help out with his own family for now.

  The salesman returned and made a counteroffer.

  “Do you want to check out the Ford dealership?” Kayla asked Nate, rising from her chair. “We just started looking. There are three other dealerships in Green Valley.” She shrugged. “We can go to Denver after that. We’re in no rush.”

  Nate stood, following Kayla’s lead. She was really good at this bargaining business.

  “I’ll talk to the manager again,” the salesman said, and hurried out of the office.

  “Damn, Kayla, I should have let you do all the bargaining.”

  She laughed. “You got us down that far on the price. If we’re going to get two vehicles, they should give us a better discount than that. And I really am ready to check out the other places.”

  Then the manager came back and met their offer.

  “What about your car?” Kayla asked Nate.

  “I’ll sell it.” They filled out all the paperwork on the new cars, and Nate made arrangements for a friend to take his old car to a used car sales place that would give him a better price than if he’d used it as a trade-in.

  His friend was one of the PIs with the Green Valley wolf pack, Bryan “Phoenix” Wildhaven—who happened to be a cousin of their pack leader, Lelandi—and met him there. Nate handed him the title, registration, and car keys. “Thanks, Phoenix. I owe you one.” Nate was glad he had brought the paperwork with him, just in case he had decided to get a bigger vehicle for himself. It always paid to be ready for anything.

  “You bet. And like we said, while you’re on your vacation at the cabin, we’ve got you covered,” Phoenix said.

  “I sure appreciate it.”

  When Phoenix drove Nate’s car off the new-car parking lot, Kayla took Nate’s hand and squeezed it. “You seemed to know him.”