“Robert, did you need a wheelchair?” she sweetly asked.

  She didn’t sound as professional as Ryan would have liked. Not as serious. More good-natured and, well, way too sweet.

  As Ryan approached, the man’s amber eyes, pig-like in appearance, switched from Carol to Ryan, and he swore Robert looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

  “The nurse asked if you needed a wheelchair,” Ryan said, his voice verging on a growl as he advanced toward the muscular man.

  Carol’s mouth dropped open as she stared at Ryan. “Ryan McKinley, whatever is wrong? Mr. Grayce has lived in the area forever.”

  Ryan glowered at the man and folded his arms. “You sure?”

  After forgetting all about Tom, Ryan finally noticed him leaning against the check-in counter. Tom nodded to confirm Carol’s statement, his expression bemused.

  Carol cast Ryan an annoyed look and then took Robert’s arm and helped him back to an exam room. Her hip pressed against the man’s as she eased him down the hall at a crawl, and Ryan swore the patient leaned into her more than necessary. She should have gotten him a wheelchair or, at the very least, crutches or something. She didn’t need to use her body to hold him up!

  “Where are the wheelchairs?” Ryan growled.

  Continuing down the hall with her charge without a backward glance, Carol ignored Ryan.

  Half hiding a smile, Tom pointed to a storage room. Ryan stalked inside, grabbed a wheelchair, and hurried it after the limping man. Just in case the man was truly hurting, Ryan couldn’t slam the chair into the back of Robert’s legs like he wanted to, but he’d give the poor guy a seat so he wouldn’t have to limp all the way to the exam room.

  Ryan stopped the wheelchair and seized the man’s arm, assisting him into the seat, and then grabbed hold of the handles. He gave Carol a smile as her mouth gaped wide again. Then she snapped it shut.

  “The least I can do as your bodyguard, Carol, is help with your patient.”

  As red as her face was, he was certain that, at the first opportunity, she would attempt to replace him as her bodyguard with anyone else. Mervin even.

  He sighed heavily and wheeled Robert into the room Carol motioned to. He had never suspected that guarding the woman would be this difficult.

  And this was only the first hour.

  Chapter 16

  “HE’S IMPOSSIBLE,” CAROL SAID OVER HER CELL PHONE to Lelandi and then took another sip of her bottled water to finish it off. She was making the call from the hospital staff lounge during her break. Although as annoyed as she was with Ryan, Carol hated to admit she’d miss him when he no longer had to guard her during her patient visits.

  Ryan stood with his legs apart, arms folded, staring out the break-room window, still playing bodyguard and listening in on her conversation. Small break room. Wolf’s hearing.

  Coffee bubbled in a pot nearby, the aroma mixing with someone’s beef-in-wine-sauce lunch that was hastily heating in the staff microwave.

  “Impossible,” she repeated and cast Ryan an annoyed look, but his back was to her so he didn’t get the full benefit of her irritation.

  “What did he do that was so wrong, Carol? He’s supposed to be there protecting you. You have to make allowances. I know it’s hard to have someone watching your every move. But he’s only trying to help.” Lelandi was her usual reassuring self, as if she was practicing her psychology lessons on Carol.

  Feeling worn out from her experience in the woods the previous night and Ryan and her early morning romp into sated bliss, Carol propped her cheek on her hand as she rested her elbow on one of the lounge tables.

  “He gave medical advice to six of my patients! Six! From allergy remedies to how to relieve tension headaches. Even gave them all kinds of dietary advice. And where did all this medical wisdom come from? Dealing with his Aunt Tilda, who has every ailment known to man and wolf kind.”

  “Was any of his advice dangerous?”

  “Well, no, of course not. But he shouldn’t be offering it!”

  “Do you want Jake to stay with you instead? He said he would. Or Tom, for that matter.”

  Carol lifted her head and watched Ryan. His whole body had tensed. Something she had said? Or did something he was watching out of the window catch his attention?

  He jerked his phone off his belt and then hesitated. She parted her lips to speak with him, but he suddenly flipped his phone open, punched a couple of buttons, and said, “Jake, south of the hospital, three men met across the street and then hurried down an alley. Yes, of course they should be checked out. I would, but I have to watch Carol. All three were wearing blue jeans and sweatshirts, real casual. They were taking a lot of interest in the hospital. Yet they didn’t make any move to approach it. One even motioned to your truck and then mine.”

  “Carol?” Lelandi said over the phone, breaking into Carol’s concern about Ryan’s conversation with Jake. “Did you hear me? Did you want Jake to watch you instead?”

  “Jake’s got another mission,” Carol said. She sighed. “After Ryan’s finished guarding me here, I’m going to recommend he go to medical school.”

  Ryan snapped his phone shut, folded his arms again, and continued to watch out the window.

  Even though she didn’t want to believe that the men Ryan saw were the same ones who had grabbed her, she couldn’t help the shiver trailing down her spine. The best medicine for what ailed her was work, though. She glanced at her watch. “Break time’s up, Lelandi.”

  “I’ll have dinner on when you get home.”

  “Can’t wait. See you later.” She closed her phone and said to Ryan, “Ready to go back to work?”

  He turned around and nodded, his face a mask of indifference.

  “Do you think it was them?” she asked, rising from the chair and hoping she didn’t sound nervous. But hell, they’d shot her full of dope, taken her out into the cold naked, and dumped her when they thought they might get caught. No wonder it bothered her that they might try something like that again! She shoved her hand in her pocket and felt the syringe, her defensive weapon if she needed one.

  “Could have been. Or not.”

  She wasn’t sure what Ryan’s response meant. He kept any hint of emotion out of his words so they were not reassuring but not alarming, either. She threw her empty water bottle in the trash and headed for her nurse’s station.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate you being here for me, Ryan. I really do. But you could get yourself, me, and the hospital into a lot of trouble if you keep giving medical advice to patients.”

  He opened his mouth to speak but then frowned and yanked his phone off his belt. As he walked her back to her station, he flipped the phone open.

  “Yeah, Jake? Same ones?” He rubbed his chin, studying her.

  Another tremor stole up her spine. Ryan was trying to keep his expression neutral, but she could tell he was worried by the way a small crease appeared between his brows and his eyes slightly tightened.

  Hell. She’d hoped that after Ryan and Darien and the others had kept those men away the night before, that would be the last of it. That today they were being way overcautious. And that tomorrow she wouldn’t need Ryan or anyone else staying in the exam room with her.

  “All right, Jake. Tom will watch over her. Be right there.” Ryan raised a brow at her as he snapped his phone shut. “Same rules as before. No seeing any humans. Tom will stay with you this time. Christian is going to watch the waiting room. Mervin’s got the back door. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “You’re going to try and track them down?” She hated how worried she sounded.

  “It’s what I do, Carol. I’m a damn good P.I.” He motioned to Tom who was already headed down the hall toward them. “Did your brother call you?”

  Tom joined them and stood near Carol in guard stance. “Yeah. Jake said for me to stay with her.”

  “She’s only to see special patients.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, perturbed that he didn’t think she could handle this.

  Ryan half hid a smile. “Is Christian in place?”

  “Yeah, he hurried over here and is sitting in the waiting room, pretending to be a patient, but he wanted to be the one in the room with Carol instead.”

  Ryan shook his head. “He can want all he likes, but Carol needs one of us to watch over her.”

  The unspoken words were that she needed an alpha for protection. And Mervin and Christian were definitely not alphas.

  “I agree,” Tom said. “Ready to get your next patient, Carol?”

  Ryan hesitated to leave. Did he think Tom couldn’t handle it?

  “I’ll be all right.” Carol shoved her hand in her pocket and ran her fingers over the syringe.

  To her shock, Ryan stepped close to her, his gaze remaining on hers as he slipped his hand in her pocket, sliding his fingers over the inner-pocket fabric covering her thigh in a much too sensuous caress before he pulled out the syringe.

  Tom’s eyes grew even bigger when he saw the syringe. “What’s that for?”

  “A weapon,” Ryan said. He handed it back to her. “You won’t need it, but if it makes you feel safer… keep it with you. I’ll be back.” Then he stalked off down the hall.

  All of a sudden she didn’t feel so safe. Sure Tom was an alpha, but Ryan was truly someone to be reckoned with if anyone got on his bad side. Hell, she had been afraid he might have given Robert Grayce a stroke, and here the poor guy had torn tendons from a bad fall at the silver mine. She thought Robert might have even asked her out if Ryan hadn’t been hovering over him until Doc came to examine the man’s leg. But she felt incredibly safe when Ryan was with her.

  Now, she felt apprehensive again, and while she thought Ryan might be more successful than someone else trying to hunt the men down because of his P.I. and former police training, she still wished he hadn’t gone.

  “You okay, Carol? Want to go home?” Tom asked, concern etched in his expression.

  “No, I can’t leave the others to work here alone. I’ll be fine.” She patted his chest. “I have you.” And the hypodermic with the tranquilizer cocktail in her pocket.

  * * *

  Ryan was torn between wanting to stay and protect Carol and locating the bastards who had taken her from her shower. He hated that she felt she still wasn’t safe, so much so that she had to keep a weapon—syringe, nurse style—with her for protection. On the other hand, he admired her for having the foresight to protect herself, and he knew she had the fortitude to carry out her plan, as long as a would-be kidnapper didn’t get the upper hand.

  If he could catch them, he’d make sure they’d never mess with Carol again—or Lelandi either, if they had a mind to go after her next. He met Jake and Darien, their expressions hard and determined, near the woods where the reds had taken off.

  “None of us can shift this close to town,” Ryan said.

  Darien raised his brows at him.

  Jake shook his head.

  Well, hell, Ryan was used to being a leader and not used to giving up command, even in another wolf’s territory, at least not in a case like this where it was a dangerous situation. Darien motioned for them to get a move on. “We’ve got several coming to aid in the search.”

  “We… you want us to split up?” Ryan asked, trying to be more amenable and not so much in charge, even if it killed him.

  “Ryan, you’re good at tracking. Probably better than most of my people. Sam and I will team up. Jake will go with you. Just watch out if they’re shooting bullets again.”

  Appreciating Darien’s comments, Ryan nodded and headed out while Jake ran to catch up to him.

  Trudging alongside Ryan, Jake shook his head. “I never in a millennium would have thought Darien would say that about you. But you know, I think he’s kind of taken a liking to you. So, do you believe in Carol’s sixth sense now?”

  Ryan bent down to check out a broken branch and then headed west. “She had a premonition about being taken.”

  “Hell,” Jake said.

  “I wonder if she thought she had the vision earlier, but she really had nightmares about it after the fact when she was still half doped up.” Not that Ryan didn’t believe her, but in his business, he always looked at all possible sides of an issue.

  Yet, that didn’t explain what she’d been thinking of when she was sitting in his truck with a faraway look, like she was not really there. Just like when he’d be deeply contemplating a case and Rosalind would interrupt his meditation with a question. He suspected Carol was telling the truth, that she’d had a vision and that she truly had other psychic abilities.

  “Keep thinking she doesn’t have psychic connections, and I’ll have to mate her,” Jake said.

  Ryan glanced at him. He looked damn serious. “Then why the hell don’t you?”

  “Annoyingly, she’s got a thing for you.”

  Ryan almost smiled.

  “In this premonition of hers… she didn’t tell you that someone might steal her away?”

  Glancing up from a footprint, Ryan gave him a look of exasperation. “Are you going to help me search for these guys or just talk your fool head off?”

  “Did she?”

  “No. She said her visions are too vague. That she didn’t know what this one meant.”

  “Trouble. Every time she’s had a vision, it’s been trouble.” Jake sniffed the air. “This way.”

  “Always?”

  “Since I’ve known her, yeah. So she’ll always be a handful, I suspect.”

  Which supported Ryan’s opinion that Carol needed someone uniquely qualified in her life. Someone who could deal with the dangerous situations she found herself in. She wasn’t a police officer or trained in military tactics. Yet if she envisioned a crime being committed and she tried to stop it, or if the perp learned she knew about his or her commission of a crime, she could put herself in a world of jeopardy. Beyond that, she needed to learn how to control shifting. From what she had admitted to him, she needed someone to help her through the transition.

  Ryan paused to examine scattered leaves. “They ran through here.” He quickened his pace. “She needs an alpha, Jake.” But not just any alpha.

  “Yeah, I know. So that means you, me, or Tom, unless we let her go to another pack.”

  “But Tom thinks he’ll find his dream mate.”

  “Yeah, and who the hell told Carol that?” Jake frowned at Ryan, in protective brother mode.

  Ryan hid a scowl. “She needed to know the truth. She was harboring some notion that Tom might be interested in her.”

  “Oh.”

  Ryan glanced at Jake. “And you, too.”

  “But she practically melted in your arms during the dance. And the way she kissed you…” Jake shook his head. “Guess that means I’ll have to call you out.”

  “Call me out?”

  “Yeah, see who wins the little lady.”

  Ryan chuckled under his breath. “I’m sure she’d love that. Probably decide to mate with Mervin instead and give the rest of us up.”

  “About what you said to Nurse Matthew. Do you really think he was in trouble in his previous pack?” Jake asked.

  Ryan smiled a little. “Only as far as he fought with his pack leader’s brother over a woman a number of times. That didn’t set well with either the pack leader or his second-in-command.”

  Jake looked surprised.

  “I investigated everyone—those in your pack and those who were joining—just as a courtesy to Darien, in the event anything was important.”

  “Did you tell Darien?”

  “No need to. The woman chose Matthew’s competition. He came here to lick his wounds. Figure that’s why he hadn’t hit on Carol yet. Probably still feels something for the woman who didn’t choose him.”

  “But you made it sound like he had something to hide.”

  Ryan sniffed the air. “His own failure.” He suddenly stopped and pointed at the path the three reds had taken this time. “There. This way.”

  “Darien said to take them any way we had to. If they fight us, so be it.”

  Ryan nodded. If he’d gotten hold of the man who’d stolen Carol away before, the man would have been dead—no argument.

  He and Jake quickly stripped off their clothes and shape-shifted. The showdown would be between two grays and three reds, if Ryan had any say about it. Then he bolted through the woods in hot pursuit as Jake skirted around the trees a few yards away.

  At least this way, the reds they were hunting would be far away from Carol, and he figured she’d be safe, no matter who was watching over her.

  For over an hour, they pursued the reds, who were surprisingly speedy. Expecting their next move, the three separated and Jake chased one, while Ryan targeted another. Even if they took only two of them to task, it would show the grays’ strength and possibly stop the reds from trying anything further.

  That’s when Ryan discovered a campsite, tents, a smoldering fire, and tuna cans and cracker wrappers littering the ground. What caught his eye next was that the man he’d been chasing was no longer running as a wolf. Half dressed in a pair of jeans, hairy chest naked, boots unlaced, his face covered in a scruffy red beard and amber eyes narrowed, he pointed a gun at Ryan while he hovered near a pickup, his getaway vehicle.

  Shit. Split-second decision time: lunge at the armed man, or make a hasty turn, try to avoid getting shot in the back of the head, and run in the direction of Silver Town. Tucking tail was not Ryan’s way.

  Before he could leap, he heard the sound of gunfire. The bullet ricocheted off a tree and grazed Ryan’s left foreleg before he reached the bastard. Panicked, the guy fired again twice without aiming. And Ryan darted behind a Douglas fir.

  The bullets struck the tree next to him with a whap… whap! When Ryan came around the tree to take the man down, the red dove into the pickup, slammed the door, charged up the engine, and tore off with the truck leaving a trail of dust in its wake.

  Hell. Ryan’s foreleg burned even though the bullet wound was superficial, as far as he could tell. He licked the injury, knowing that his wolf saliva could reduce some kinds of bacterial infection and that studies had shown that it could actually aid cell regeneration because of saliva’s epidermal growth factors.