Page 15 of Cold Foot Revenge (Wreck’s Mountains #7)

“Yeah, well you could’ve done better at saying goodbye,” Andrew said loud enough to be heard over the music. “This place kind of sucks without the Hoffman brothers.”

Dylan snorted. “You probably get in less trouble now.”

“Only because I have like forty kids and a wife.”

“Dude, you have two kids.”

“Twins. It feels like forty kids.”

Dylan looked back at the door to Coop’s.

He used to hang here with his buddies all the time when he’d lived here.

The tourists mostly stayed away from this street, but that wasn’t why he’d chosen it.

Coop’s was just a couple blocks away from the Rabbit Hole, and Dylan felt better if he was close to Roxy.

He’d texted her to come meet them afterward, but so far, she hadn’t responded.

She should be getting off work soon. The bar would be doing last call any minute now.

There was some kind of commotion outside, and when he turned around there was a woman running down the sidewalk right past Coop’s.

Andrew stood at the same time as Dylan, and a few of the others around them stood too and began drifting to the window as two more people ran past Coop’s. They were screaming.

Behind them, the bartender was making a call to 911 about some kind of commotion on Gentry Street.

The chaos came from the direction of the Rabbit Hole. What the hell? Dylan shoved the door open and stepped outside just as another trio of people came sprinting by. “What’s going on?” he asked one of the guys.

“Shifters. They Changed man. Get inside.”

They ran into Coop’s behind him.

“What is it?” Andrew asked from behind him.

Dylan drew his weapon and told him, “Get back inside. Shifters are out and Changed.”

“Dude you can’t go out there alone. Come back inside with me.”

But he didn’t understand. Andrew had his wife and kids at home safe. Dylan’s lady was in this Crew and something felt really wrong.

“I’ll be right back, just go inside,” he called as he picked up to a jog, his finger laying across the gun, not on the trigger yet.

“Move,” he said, to a crowd that was running his way.

He was going against the grain, and as soon as he made his way through them, he skidded to a stop.

Across the street, a flash of gray fur bolted down the sidewalk.

It was a coyote.

Roxy.

“Roxy!” he yelled, but his voice was completely drowned out by a ground-shaking roar, which dragged his attention to the road.

A grizzly bear was charging this way, and behind it there were at least three more.

“Fuck!” he gritted out, bolting for his truck. He’d parked right on the street so it was just a couple of cars up. He holstered his gun and slid behind the wheel and checked the side-view mirror once before he pulled out in front of the charging bear.

Now, he loved his truck. He did. He loved it and didn’t want damage to it, but he needed to pull that grizzly off the bloodlust, and the way to do that right now was to hit him with a damn car.

He laid on his horn, hoping to wake the thing up, but the bear slammed into the side of him and made his way around the truck immediately.

Bad news.

Roxy was in it.

Muttering a curse, he pressed the gas to the floor and zoomed around the animal, in the completely wrong lane, swerved around a car going the other way and then jerked the wheel until he was back in the correct lane and in front of the grizzly.

God, the thing was fast. Dylan was going fifty miles an hour, and the bears were catching up.

Frantically, he searched the sidewalk, but the parked cars were blocking a lot of the view. He laid on the horn and rolled down the passenger’s side window.

“Roxy!” he yelled. If she were close, she would hear it.

God, hopefully she hadn’t turned down one of these alleyways. The bears would smell her, but he couldn’t track her like that.

“Roxy!” he yelled again, honking over and over.

The grizzly was catching up, and up ahead, there was a light on a stale yellow. He would’ve been fine running it if it weren’t for the two cars coming to a stop there.

Dylan jerked the wheel, cast his eyes up at the now three grizzlies in the rearview, and that said one thing.

He was still going in the right direction.

He nearly crashed into a head-on collision as he pulled into the wrong lane, and tires screeching, he yanked his truck back into the right lane. “Roxy!”

There!

She was at a full sprint ahead, still sticking to that sidewalk, where the cars had thinned out. She was running out of busy road.

“In, in, in!” he yelled, his foot on the gas as he tried to line up with her.

The damn grizzlies were so close and would swat the back end of his truck any moment now.

He could see the recognition in her terrified green eyes as she glanced over at him. One moment, and then she was blurring to him, so fast. He reached over to shove the door open, but she jumped through the open window before he could.

He would never in as long as he lived forget the way she hunkered down on the floorboard of the passenger’s side.

He would never forget the sound of her panting, or the soft, scared yip at the end of every breath.

He wouldn’t forget how tightly her tail was tucked, or the way she just stared up at him.

“Hold on,” he murmured, changing lanes so he could floor it.

Behind them, the bears were slowing, tiring, and one of them had already fallen behind and stopped completely.

The roar that followed them was deafening, even over the loud exhaust on his truck.

His heart was pounding so hard, but he was worried about Roxy. “It’s okay,” he said calmly. “Everything is okay. I’ve got you. We’re going to get away from whatever is happening, okay? Just breathe.”

She was the size of a large dog, a German Shephard perhaps. Bigger than a wild coyote, but much smaller than the assholes who had been chasing her.

The anger was starting to replace the adrenaline inside of him, and he glanced up to find all the bears had stopped and weren’t pursuing them anymore.

He wished she was human right now so she could explain what the hell was happening.

His phone was connected to Bluetooth in his truck, so when Andrew called, it came right up on his screen. “I’m good,” he answered. “I’m out of there.”

“Are you coming back?” Andrew asked.

“We both know I suck at goodbyes,” Dylan teased dryly. He did not feel like joking right now. He felt like going back and unloading every clip he had stored in his truck into those fuckin’ grizzlies. What was their plan if they caught Roxy? Huh? Kill her? Hurt her? Maim and maul her?

Ooooh the anger was getting bigger and bigger.

He talked to Andrew for a few seconds more, then got off the phone and aimed his truck in the direction of his hotel.

The yips at the end of her panting breaths turned to the whining of a dog, and he put his hand near her to pet her, but she snapped at his fingertips. He felt the air from her bite barely miss his skin. Dylan flinched back.

“Can you Change back?” he asked, a little concerned that he’d picked up a random coyote shifter and not Roxy.

The coyote could barely fit in the space in front of the passenger’s seat, and tried to turn around, but couldn’t move. She looked pinned. Another whine escaped her. God, he hated this.

“Who did this?” he demanded. “Who was chasing you like that? Grave? Leech?” He wasn’t meaning to raise his voice like this, but all he saw was red right now.

They were going to hurt her.

They were really going to hurt her. Right there in the street in front of everyone.

His phone rang, and a completely unexpected name came across caller ID.

Wreck.

Dylan accepted the call. “I’m a little busy right n—”

“Why am I looking at news footage of you hitting a bear shifter with your truck in the middle of some unknown town?” Whooo the steel in Wreck’s voice said he was angry.

“It’s not an unknown town. It’s my hometown, and probably because that asshole deserved to be hit by a truck. I have to go.” He hung up, but Wreck called him right back.

“What?” Dylan snapped.

“Where. The fuck. Do I send the Crew?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where are you?” Wreck bellowed.

“I’m coming back to Darby right now.” He glanced at the coyote. “I’m bringing a friend. She needs a safe place to land.”

Wreck hung up on him.

Good, he didn’t want to talk to the Alpha of the Cold Foot Crew anyway.

Garret called next, and when he didn’t pick up, Raynah’s name came across the caller ID.

And then Tawk. “I’m not even in your Crew!

” he yelled, trying to disconnect his phone from Bluetooth so he could think.

“You’re Roxy, right?” he demanded, remembering how close she’d been to biting his hand.

She didn’t answer, just panted and yipped at the end.

Her eyes were the same shade of glowing blue. She’d come from the direction of the Rabbit Hole.

It had to be her.

It had to be.