The Guardian (The Wolfe Series) (12 page)

             
Laurie was considering returning to Arivaca to see if she could find a place to hole up for a few days when she heard it, the unmistakable THUMP, THUMP, THUMP of a flat tire.  Her heart rate kicked into high gear as she looked in the rear view mirror before pulling over to the side of the road.  She breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t see any cars coming up behind her, but knew that the odds Luzaro or one of his men would find her increased ten-fold the longer she remained stalled on the side of the road.  As it was, she probably only had an hour’s head start before they had found her missing, and another half hour before they found the used car lot and convinced Ben to tell them everything he knew about her. 
I hope they didn’t hurt you, Ben.

             
The sun was a ball of blood red fire shooting flames of magenta and gold across the western sky.  Temperatures were still in the high nineties when Laurie opened the car door and climbed out of the Sentra.  Reaching down and releasing the trunk latch, she walked toward the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid.  Spotting the spare tire on the left side of the trunk she used the lug wrench that was nestled beside it to loosen the bolt holding the spare to the side of the vehicle.  The spare was fairly light and Laurie lifted it easily out of the trunk and leaned it against the side of the car while she went back to retrieve the jack and lug wrench. 

She had just placed the jack beneath the rear end of the car and was about to insert the lug wrench
into the jack when she heard it.  Her heart thundered in her ears as a car rolled to a stop behind her.

The girl was fifteen years old, petite and blonde, exactly the type of girl the slavers looked for to help fill their quotas.  She wasn’t a prostitute, which would have made it easier and less newsworthy.  But she had been that special one in one-hundred girls, the one men with money would pay a kings ransom to get their hands on, and the slavers hadn’t been able to resist. 

Jake and his
brother Rand, having heard the news of the kidnapping on their police scanner, rushed toward where they suspected the kidnappers would make the transfer.  A previous attempt to rescue a kidnapped girl hadn’t ended so well for them there.  The slavers had killed the girl before Jake and his brothers could get to her and all of the brothers now harbored a deep-seated hatred for the slavers and made the slavers lives difficult every chance they got.  Jake brought the ATV to a halt below the lip of a hill that overlooked the transfer site.  He and Rand jumped from the vehicle, grabbing their hi-powered rifles from behind the vehicle’s two seats before scrambling up the hill.  Lying flat on their stomachs they surveyed the shack below through their rifle’s telescopic lenses.  The Heckler & Koch PSG1 sniper rifle they had chosen for the job at hand was used mainly by law enforcement and was blessed with the greatest possible accuracy, even more than military rifles because they didn’t need to deal with such long distances.

Jake and Rand were
taking no chances with the kidnapped girl’s life this time around and planned to take the slavers out before any more harm came to her.  Jake lifted his head and sniffed the air using his wolf senses of both sight and smell.  The young woman’s fear-choked scent drifted toward him on the desert breeze, and he was glad it wasn’t the woman he’d been searching for.

It was now completely dark but with
their wolf’s vision Jake and Rand could easily see the young woman slumped between the two slavers who were dragging her toward the rendezvous shack.  Jake hoped against hope that he and Rand would have enough time to take the two slavers out and rescue the girl before the others arrived. 

Jake
nodded silently to his brother before adjusting the scope’s settings.  Drawing a deep breath, their fingers on the hair triggers, Jake and Rand fired.

Laurie’s stomach dropped to her feet as she slowly stood and turned to find Enrique Perez pulling a black Mercedes coupe to a stop not more than twenty feet away from where she stood.  Dark glasses hid the psychopath’s obsidian eyes and Laurie shuddered, the sight of the malevolent smile that tilted up the corners of his mouth chilling her to the bone.  She hadn’t thought that it would be Enrique who would track her down but she should have known better.  He’d been waiting all along for her to make a mistake and now here he was, ready to take full advantage of the situation.  Laurie knew that her death at Enrique’s hands wouldn’t be quick or painless.  He would take her someplace private where he could prolong whatever torture he had in mind for her.  She doubted that his ego would allow him to use a gun to overpower an insignificant woman, and probably expected his superior strength would be all that would be needed to overpower her.  And that was exactly the macho bullshit attitude Laurie was hoping for as she raised the lug wrench in her right hand and widened her stance. 
Come ahead, you bastard.  Do your worst
.

             
Enrique couldn’t believe his good luck when he saw Laurie Kincaid knelt down behind her little car where she appeared to be changing a tire. 

“Good luck for me,”
Enrique chuckled as he slid the car’s shifter into park and opened the door. “And oh, so bad luck for you.”  He sneered at the tire iron Laurie held in her right hand and was brandishing like a weapon as he stepped out of the car and began walking toward her.

“Drop the tire iron, Laurie,” Enrique cajoled.  “You’ll only make things harder for yourself if you fight me.  Luzaro is beside himself with worry and waiting for you back at the ranch,” he lied.  “Come with me now and all will be forgiven.”

“You’re a lying bastard, Enrique,” Laurie snarled, surprising herself with the intensity of her response.  “Come any closer and I promise I’ll make you pay.”

Enrique laughed.  “And just how are you going to do that, my lovely, hmmm?  With that puny little tire iron?”

Laurie was ready for Enrique when he lunged.  Her instructor had told her to watch her opponent’s eyes for sign of their intent because the eyes never lied.  She hadn’t been so sure of that where the psychopath she was now facing was concerned, but she’d seen the slightest narrowing of Enrique’s eyes just before he’d lunged and she’d been ready for him. 

Laurie’s round house kick landed on the side of Enrique’s head
, stunning him and sending him reeling.  Staggering under the powerful blow, Enrique stumbled back a few feet and tried to regain his balance.  Laurie didn’t wait for Enrique to recover.  She moved in quickly, swinging the tire iron at Enrique’s head with all her strength.  Enrique tried to avoid the blow and turned away at the last moment.  The tire iron connected with his left cheek, the bones cracking under the impact, and blood spurting from a terrible gash.

Laurie was breathing
hard as she moved in to finish Enrique off. 

“
Take this, you bastard!”

Flipping the
bloody tire iron into her left hand, Laurie punched Enrique’s shattered cheek as hard as should could with her right fist.  His head snap back and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head.  As though in slow motion Enrique’s body tilted precariously for a few moments before hitting the pavement with a thud.

“You aren’t going to be so pretty the next time you go after some unsuspecting woman!” Laurie snarled as she threw the tire
iron down beside the unconscious man. 
Time to get the hell out of here!

The adrenaline fading from her system, Laurie raced toward Enrique’s BMW and slid behind the wheel.  “Damn!” she cursed when she saw the car keys were not in the ignition.  Sliding out from beneath the wheel she started back toward where Enrique had fallen to search his pockets when she heard him moan. 

Laurie skidded to a halt, her heart beating against her breast bone as though it were trying to escape.  Pure unadulterated panic coursed through her veins.

Enrique struggled to get to his feet, the pain in his head so blinding that he was afraid he would lose consciousness again.  “I’ll get you for this, bitch,” he growled.  “
You aren’t as smart as you think you are.  Even now my men are on their way here.”  It was a lie but there was no way the woman could know that.  “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

Laurie didn’t wait to hear any more.  She bolted into the shadowy desert night.

Enrique limped back to his BMW and fell into the driver’s seat.  He counted on his hatred of the Kincaid woman to sustain him as he drew the car keys from his pocket and started the car. 

It had taken all of his considerable will power
to make it back to the ranch while holding a bloody rag against the side of his face to staunch the bleeding.  He had mostly compartmentalized the pain, his main focus on destroying Laurie Kincaid.  His first stop when he reached the ranch wasn’t the doctor’s casita where most men would have gone.  His first stop was to Laurie’s bedroom where he grabbed a pink camisole out of the laundry.  Stalking back through the house, the housekeeper and guards took a frightened step back when they saw him pass.

Enrique figured Luzaro was still in Nogales trying to track down the Kincaid woman and at the moment
he didn’t care.  He staggered toward the pen where he kept his pack knowing the guards and groundskeepers were afraid of his killer coyotes.  They thought the coyotes were possessed and it wasn’t far from the truth.  Enrique had developed an affinity with the more aggressive types of animals, especially the coyotes.  He smiled grimly when he thought of the terror the Kincaid woman would feel when she heard his pack hunting her.  He wondered if she would realize he was the one who had sent them.

“I know, I know,” Enrique crooned as he starred into the lead coyote’s eyes.  “You and your friends have been cooped up a little too long, haven’t you my friend?”  He held out Laurie’s delicate pink camisole.  “You will find and destroy this woman leaving no trace of her.”  He looked deeper into the unblinking eyes of the pack’s leader.  “No trace at all.”

The leader of the pack sniffed the garment and yipped several times, encouraging his pack mates to do the same.

Satisfied that his orders would be followed, Enrique opened the gate.

C
hapte
r
F
ourteen

            
 
J
ake watched until the Razor carrying Rand and the girl disappeared from sight before effortlessly shifting into his wolf form, his bones popping and contracting, his jaw turning into a muzzle filled with razor sharp teeth.  He wanted to run, to feel the earth between his paws and his coiled muscles, his great strength pushing him harder and faster as he raced toward home.

Jake had left the task of taking the girl into Nogales and turning her over to the authorities to Rand.  There hadn’t been room for three passengers in the ATV and Jake had been more than happy to let Rand have the onerous duty of retuning the girl and answering the myriad questions t
he authorities were sure to ask.

Jake
gave a bobcat he saw hunting near the edge of an arroyo a wide berth as he flew in his wolf form over the parched desert floor, stopping occasionally to sniff the air for that one illusive scent that had eluded him for so many months.  He finally stopped near a deep canyon to rest before the last leg of his journey home, his heart racing and his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.  When he was finally able to catch his breath he lifted his head and sniffed the desert breeze.

His
head swiveling on powerful shoulders, Jake looked toward the west and Altar Valley.

Howls suddenly filled the night and Laurie stopped abruptly to listen, her heart slamming into her throat as fear constricted her vocal cords and rendered her frozen, unable to move another step.  She recognized the sound of coyotes from a recent National Geographic special she’d watched and knew that they were found throughout North and Central America and that the absence of natural predators, more living space and a larger variety of prey had helped to establish them in large numbers.  Laurie shuddered when the yips and howls seemed to be moving closer, circling her as though with deadly intent.  She struggled to remember more details of the program she’d watched and tried to convince herself the animals meant her no harm.  She knew coyotes were smaller than wolves and that they stood about two feet tall.  They communicated among themselves with high-pitched yips and howls, the same as she was hearing now.  She’d seen them sometimes on the outskirts of the city and knew that they were capable of stealing small dogs and cats from the backyards of their owners. 

Laurie shuddered and wrapped her arms around her mid-section becoming even more frightened knowing that coyotes traveled in packs and were keen hunters. 

They couldn’t possibly be hunting me, could they?
  She shuddered again at the thought. 
How could that be?
 

Coyotes weren’t known to attack humans and they were supposed to be easy to drive away by making loud noises, shouting or waving your hands and throwing small stones in their direction.  She recalled
that the program had shown a female giving birth to ten pups which had been born blind and limp-eared.  The pups had remained that way for the first two to three weeks at which time they opened their eyes for the first time and their ears became erect.  The pups had left the den when they were three months old and at that time she had thought it sad that only about twenty percent survived.  Laurie was good with most animals and had a certain amount of telepathy with them.  She didn’t know why she was able to communicate with them, she just accepted the fact that she had been given a gift and let it go at that.  As the yips and barks continued, though, she wasn’t so certain she was going to get a chance to communicate with the animals she felt surrounding her.