looking worse for wear, his face ashen, but he and Kline managed to carry Gardiner while Emerson carried Condor as they headed to the pickup point.
“Did you get him? Smith?” Condor asked. “Hell, did you get shot?”
“Yeah. Arm. And no, I didn’t. He tore off in a Jeep.”
“I thought you were quicker on your feet than that.”
Usually, Emerson was. “I was afraid I’d break a leg or ankle on all that rubble. Then where would we have been?”
“True, thanks for coming back for me. Did you change the pickup location?” Condor asked.
“Hell, man, how can you even talk with a bullet rattling around in your skull?”
Kline and Robertson chuckled. “Condor never shuts up,” Kline said.
“The bullet didn’t penetrate, I don’t think. But I’m too dizzy to walk and my vision is blurred,” Condor said.
“Yeah, yeah, any excuse.” Emerson gave him a wry smile. “Are the rest of you okay?”
Kline was quiet. “Yeah, just pissed off,” he finally said.
Robertson didn’t say anything, but Emerson couldn’t look back at him to check on his condition. He just had to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other and pray that Robertson went home to his kids all in one piece. “I think that’s how we all feel.”
They finally reached the pickup point and Emerson was damn glad Smith hadn’t learned of it or they probably would have been in another firefight. And this time he doubted they would have made it.
“We have to kill him,” Condor said again as they got into the helicopter.
“Yeah, but we need to heal up first.” Emerson would recuperate at his uncle’s home at the Whispering Pines Resort and give Uncle Paul the news he wanted to hear more than anything else in the world—Emerson was quitting his dangerous job for good and helping him to manage the resort, taking over even, if his uncle was ready to retire.
He checked on Robertson who looked near death. A medic on the flight kept him alive though as Emerson and the others tried to help. He was thinking he’d send Christmas gifts to the kids, but they didn’t know each other’s identities. It was safer that way for just this reason. Smith would want them all dead still, and Emerson didn’t want Robertson’s family in the crosshairs.
Once Emerson was feeling better, he was going after Smith, with or without Condor and the rest of the men’s help. At least with his faster cougar healing genetics, Emerson would be in good shape soon.
Condor could be another story if he really had a bullet in his skull—even as a wolf shifter. Kline appeared to be in stable condition. Robertson was touch and go. Emerson glanced at Gardiner’s body and promised him, “Smith is a dead man walking.”
Jessie Whittington said goodbye to her mom and dad and took off from Loveland, Colorado to go to Whispering Pines Resort on Lake Superior. She’d made a special German chocolate cake for Mr. Paul Merriweather, who owned and managed the resort. He was sixty, a cougar, widowed and he had always been so kind to her. He gave her a discount on her stay at the resort and she brought him a special treat every time she visited—which was going on five years now. Her mom had a cake business and she made cakes for special occasions and Jessie was used to helping her with them, but this one she made herself.
In the car, she got a call on her dashboard from Deputy Sheriff Nina Hill, who had been sharing some psychic stories with Jessie for the romantic suspense novel she was writing. Jessie’s story would be fiction, but Nina and her twin sister, Ava, were the real deal when it came to seeing future events from time-to-time.
“Hi, Nina, I’m driving up to the resort up on Lake Superior. Do you have another story for me to incorporate in my novel?” Jessie couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get another story idea from Nina or her sister. Jessie found their stories fascinating, which was why she was writing about a psychic hero and heroine and villain this time.
“Listen, I talked to Ava to see if she had any visions about you but she hasn’t had any.”
“About me?” Now that wasn’t what Jessie had expected to hear.
“I saw you chasing two bears while you were wearing your cougar coat.”
Jessie smiled. “You must have been having a dream or nightmare like I have.”
“Maybe, but if it’s a premonition, promise me you won’t chase after a