Page 44 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

I look at her. Despite the blood and the cracked rib and the fact that Tyler’s network just sent two men to take her back, the corner of my mouth lifts.

“Top shelf of the closet. Left side. Box of fifty.”

“Good. Now hold still. I need to check your ribs and you’re going to flinch again and I’m going to call you a baby again and the suspects don’t need to see that.”

She opens the med kit.

I hold still.

And the birds keep singing.

22

Zoe

There are four men in the cabin and the cabin was built for one and a half.

Jax arrived first, two hours after the attack, driving the black SUV with a forensic kit in the back. He looked at Ryker’s bandaged eyebrow, looked at me, looked at the two zip-tied suspects sitting in the snow with a deputy watching them, and said, “I leave you alone for a few days and you start a war.”

Kane came twenty minutes later, quieter than Jax in a way that took me a while to understand. Jax is quiet like a coiled spring. Kane’s quiet like deep water. He walked in, nodded at both of us, and went straight to the kitchen counter where he unpacked a laptop and three phones and started building what he called a “comms architecture” without explaining what that meant.

Brock arrived last, coming off his tail of the Ridge Auto man. The phone had led them to a motel on the outskirts of Alpha Range where the man made two short calls: one to the Ridge Auto shop and one to the rental company that leased the gray sedan outside my apartment. Kane is working on a warrant for the content of those calls.

Four men. In a one-room cabin. With me. The other two men of the team, Mason and Colt, are back at the office. They’re running checks through the system, whatever that means.

I’m on my stool. The men are everywhere else. Ryker at the table with maps and photographs. Jax leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. Kane at the far end with his electronics. Brock on the couch cleaning his sidearm like it’s a form of relaxation.

Four months ago this many men in a room would have sent me into a spiral. The shipping container had men outside the door. The mine had men everywhere. My body learned to code multiple male presences as threat.

But something has shifted. The coding isn’t erased, just updated. My nervous system still runs the assessment. Eyes still study exits and distances. There’s still a low-frequency alertness in my back teeth. But the result is different now.

Not threat. Team.

These men are Ryker’s family. They’re here because one of their own is hurt and the woman he’s protecting is in danger. For the first time in my adult life, I’m in a room where the numbers aren’t against me.

“All right,” Ryker says. He’s standing at the table with his hands flat on the map. The butterfly closures above his eye pull tight when he furrows his brow. The bruise underneath is spreading purple and green. “Let’s talk about what we know and what we don’t.”

“What we know,” Jax says, counting on his fingers. “Tyler is operating in Alpha Range under the name Derek Bowen. He’s employed at Ridge Auto. He’s meeting with at least one unidentified associate who looks like a recruiter or buyer. He’s actively grooming a new target named Lacey at Alpha Pig BBQ. And he sent two men to this cabin to retrieve Zoe, which means he knows she’s alive and has a general sense of where she is.”

“What we don’t know,” Kane says from behind his laptop, voice a low rumble. “Identity of the third man at the restaurant. Full scope of the network he’s rebuilding. Whether Ridge Auto is a cover or a legitimate front. Whether the two suspects will cooperate. And whether Tyler’s next move is to run or escalate.”

“He won’t run,” I say.

Four heads turn toward me. The attention of four trained men landing at once is a physical sensation. My shoulders try to rise in the old protective hunch. I force them down.

“He won’t run,” I repeat. “Running means starting over. New identity, new town, new operation. That costs money and time and connections. He’s already done it once since the mine raid and he chose to stay close. Whatever he’s building in Alpha Range is far enough along that abandoning it would cost more than protecting it.”

“She’s right,” Jax says. He’s looking at me with that sharp focus.

“Tyler also has an ego problem,” I continue. “The charm isn’t just a tool. It’s how he understands himself. He needs to be the man who walks into a room and makes women trust him. A man like that doesn’t run from a fight. He doubles down because that’s how he proves he’s still in control.”

Brock looks up from his sidearm. “You’re describing a narcissist with a business model.”

“I’m describing the man who sat at my counter and studied my schedule and locked the door behind me. I had lots of with him. I know how he thinks because he showed me.”

The room processes that.

“So if he’s not running,” Kane says, “the attack on the cabin was either retrieval or a warning. If it was retrieval, he wants Zoe back because she’s evidence he can’t leave loose. If it was a warning, he wants to scare us off.”