Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Gus was talking the whole time, his chatter a release of nerves, and who could blame him. Fortunately, the conversation—about the weather, and the college football playoffs that were approaching in a month, and what he liked with his Thanksgiving turkey—was not the kind of thing that required robust responses.
Meanwhile, Daniel was looking for signs of disturbance. Footprints. A pattern of broken branches. His makeshift trinket map fucked up because the points of orientation had been so subtle that they wouldn’t have been noticed and avoided.
There was none of that.
But come on, like whoever had abducted Gus wasn’t savvy enough to camo their presence?
The fucker had been here already, though. Had to have been.
It’s what Daniel always did before infiltrating a site.
“Here we go,” he announced as they stepped out into a clearing of sorts.
There was a fallen maple right down the center of the break in the trees, and he remembered sitting on the downed trunk and trying to smoke and drink a little Jack. Really pathetic, if you thought about it.
“Have you ever held a gun before?” he asked, even though he guessed the answer.
Gus shook his head. “Not unless an arcade counts.”
“It doesn’t. Okay, let’s start from the beginning.” Daniel unholstered his nine millimeter. “There are three rules. One, assume all guns are loaded. Two, don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. And three, don’t point a gun at anything you aren’t ready to destroy.”
Gus glanced down at the weapon. Looked back up.
“Repeat what I just said,” Daniel prompted.
“Am I being graded?”
“Yup, and the F gets me shot while I’m trying to teach you.”
The three rules were spit back at him like Gus had had them drilled into him all night long. Then again, the guy was a genius, right?
“Good.” Daniel put the weapon flat in his own palm. “This is a nine millimeter Glock seventeen, Gen five. There are seventeen rounds in the magazine—”
“Wait, can you show me first? Like how it works?”
Daniel nodded, slipped off the safety, and front-sight-focused on a tree trunk about twenty yards outside the clearing. As he inserted his forefinger and found the trigger wall, he took a slow, easy breath. Settling a little deeper into his stance, he drew in another relaxed inhale.
Then he swiveled his head toward Gus, met the guy’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. The pop and thwack were a quick one-two, and the doctor’s mouth went slack.
“How did you do that?”
Daniel lowered his arms. “Practice and muscle control—”
“Whatthefuckisthat—oh, shit—”
As Gus recoiled and jumped back, Daniel wheeled around and pointed the gun in the direction of whatever had gotten the man’s attention—but when he saw the pair of glowing yellow eyes, he immediately slipped the safety back into place and returned his weapon to its holster.
“It’s a g-g-goddamn wolf,” Gus sputtered. “What are you doing—shoot it!”
“No,” Daniel murmured as he got down on his haunches. “We do not shoot wolves in my family.”
As soon as he lowered himself, the beautiful gray and brown female broke her hiding spot and trotted over, and God, he could feel himself smiling throughout his whole body as he held his arms wide.
He should have known his Lydia would watch over them.
His female was protective that way.
* * *
Confronted with the prospect of being eaten by a wild animal, Gus was kinda done with the whole shitting-in-his-pants-terrified thing. In fact, he’d been born un-ready for the sort of adrenal assaults he’d been enduring lately. A man of science, who liked controls and facts, was notfuckingequippedtodealwithgettingtornapartbya—
As Daniel went down close to the ground, like he wanted to make things easier on the wolf when it turned him into a Big Mac, the massive, one-hundred-twenty-pound predator… trotted over like a pet, ears floppy, jowls loose, tail swinging back and forth. And when that idiot opened his arms, the predator went right to him, rubbing its face on his chest, in his neck, on top of his head.
“What… the…”
On his side, Daniel was all about the Steve Irwin, stroking the powerful flanks, sinking his fingers into the fur, smiling like the pair were all reunited-and-it-feels-so-good.
“… fuck,” Gus finished.
“She’s here to protect us.” Daniel looked up from the animal. “She’s our best line of defense. With her nose and her ears, we have nothing to fear out here.”
At which point, the wolf angled “her” head toward Gus. With that tongue lolling out of those fangs, it was hard to reconcile the I’ma-eat-you with the lapdog routine—but you couldn’t argue with the fact that the animal had had more than ample opportunity to chew Daniel’s face off. And his arm.
Maybe one or both of his legs—
The wolf refocused on Daniel and took his sleeve gently between her front teeth. Then she sank down onto her haunches and started tugging.
“What are we doing?” Daniel asked as he stood up.