Page 41 of Eco-Activist’s Mountain Men (Mountain Men Reverse Harem #4)

Toby

" O h Jesus Christ!"

I awake, startled and disoriented, half asleep still, eyes half open. Takes me a moment or two to remember where I am and why. Oh yes… the briefing room. The need for all of us to be together. Tim Collier.

Tim Collier!

I open my eyes completely. Eric is standing by his laptop, which quite obviously has gone into Sleep mode, after being left overnight whilst we all forgot about monitoring the tracks and went to sleep.

Oops.

Still… perhaps better to have gained some decent rest. Give us energy for today. Will we need it? Will Collier even come? I'm fifty/fifty. Men make threats all of the time, but most don't follow through.

That said, and judging from everything Luna's said about him, and from the little we know about his background, if there's one man who will follow through on his threats and turn them into promises, it's this guy.

"We forgot to monitor the screen last night," says Eric. "We just fell asleep. He could be here. He could be anywhere." There's a slight rise in tone that almost suggests the onset of panic. I'd better watch that. Can't have Eric making a fool of himself. Not today, anyway, and not like this.

"Yeah," I agree. "Bunch of fucking idiots, huh?" I stand up, stretch, and start hunting for my clothes that are presumably in amongst a jumbled heap of pants, shirts, and so on in one corner of the room.

I lay my hand on Eric's arm and look him in the eye.

He's taking this harder than the rest of us.

He hasn't had the experiences that the rest of us have had.

School, then college. Also, he's younger—just a couple of years older than Luna.

She's twenty-four, so he's what—twenty-six, twenty-seven?

At forty-one, I've always considered myself to be the youthful member of the gang. Suddenly, I feel old.

"Don't worry, Eric. There are five of us, including Luna, and only one of him.

That's if he comes at all." Eric smiles his gratitude for the encouragement, but still looks doubtful.

I squeeze his arm. "Come on, buddy, and bring the laptop.

Let's you and me go make breakfast for this bunch of losers. "

Breakfast is subdued, with none of our usual good-natured banter.

We discuss calling the police—yet again—and come to the same decision as we'd come to each time the topic had been raised.

There is no point, because what could the police do about it, realistically?

As things stood, it was just a threat. He couldn't be arrested for making a threat.

Anyway, how would they find him, assuming he really is on his way here?

What we do agree, is that just for today, we'll all stick together as a group. That way, if Collier shows up, he'll need to come through the rest of us if he wants to get to Luna. We make the kitchen our base, with two rifles and the shotgun loaded and ready for action if necessary.

We decide not to go outside unless it's necessary, despite it promising to be a glorious day, with the late September sunshine just peeping through the trees to the east at this early hour, and only the very gentlest of breezes shimmering the tops of the trees like a lover's caress.

So very different to the wild wind and battering hail on the day of that storm—the day that Luna arrived and sent all of our lives hurtling into such a different direction to that which any of us could possibly have predicted, or even dreamed about.

The whole thing indeed seems like one long dream.

Maybe it is. Maybe I'll wake up and share a laugh with brother Jack about the ridiculous imaginings I have dreamed of all night.

Maybe.

After breakfast, Luke heads across to the chainsaw shed and drags one of his big old 60cc Husqvarnas back with him. He starts taking it apart on the kitchen table and fiddling with it, presumably to give it a service, or clean its insides, or do whatever needs doing to it.

Jack always has paperwork to do—even if these days much of it is on a laptop rather than actually on paper.

He and Luna get in a huddle at the opposite end of the kitchen table to Luke and his chainsaw, giving Jack the chance to run Luna through the financial details of what she's actually bought, and showing her the management information we keep and generally updating her on how we operate as a business.

Not a side to the outfit that I am any good at, or indeed interested in, to be honest.

I grab the owner's manual for our recently purchased John Deere tractor that had so impressed Eric a few days ago.

I want to try to understand some of the ways of using its "CommandPro" programmable joystick to automate and simplify some of the more common tasks we need the tractor to perform.

It gets quite "techie," so I draw Eric into the conversation, and soon the two of us are watching YouTube demos on my phone, whilst simultaneously watching the hidden wildlife cameras' outputs on his laptop.

The sun rises higher in the sky as the morning passes, until we reach midday, and eventually we get to one o'clock—lunchtime. The weather is perfect. Still, calm, warm, and sunny. It proves too much for Luna.

"I need to stretch my legs."

"Well, you can't." Jack is adamant, and Eric nods in agreement.

"Oh, come on, guys. I don't mean I'm going to paint a target on myself and walk up and down the track all afternoon shouting: "Shoot me then, Collier, you motherfucker.

". I just want to get outside and brush the cobwebs away.

Yawn, stretch. Take a few breaths of fresh air instead of being cooped up in here with you lot of stinky males.

Just five minutes, and you can all come too, to make sure I'm safe. How about that?"

"Two minutes," Jack growls.

"Four."

"Three."

Luna sighs. "Fuck me. Alright, three minutes. Happy now?"

"Nope. I'd rather you stayed inside."

"I'll be fine, bring your bang-bang stick so you can shoot the bastard if he turns up. You have my express permission to go ahead and do so.

"Alright, we'll all go… with you in the middle."

Luna sighs again. "I guess that's the best I'm gonna get. Come on then, boys. Let's go get some fresh air for five minutes."

"Two minutes."

"Three minutes," Jack grunts his uneasy assent, and picks up the shotgun that's never left his side the whole morning.

I pick up one of the rifles, and I see Luke grab the other.

Eric looks nervous. Just as well we don't have any more guns, he's as likely to shoot his own foot as any assassin, bless him.

We head to the door, Jack and Luke leading, Luna in the middle, and Eric and me bringing up the rear.

"Wow, it's lovely out here." Luna stretches her arm up dramatically above her head and does a little twirl.

"Let's go sit by the picnic bench for a moment or two.

" She takes two strides forward towards the picnic bench.

As she does so, and before any of us can react, a camouflaged figure rises seemingly from nowhere, just twenty yards or so away, at the edge of the trees.

Jack reacts fastest. He's already turning, bringing up the shotgun to face the threat.

Luke thrusts himself forward, as though somehow intending to close the full twenty yards before the man can fire.

Eric and Luna are both frozen in place, like rabbits in a car's headlights.

As for me, I make a dive for Luna, football tackling her to the ground and hopefully to safety.

But I'm only halfway through my dive when I hear the shot ring out from the stranger's rifle.

A distinct and high-pitched "zing" that sends my blood cold throughout my body, my heart thumping in my chest. Missed, but I'm not going to make it.

Everything slows down. Seemingly in slow motion, I see the assassin aim again, steadying, then the little squeeze of his finger and "zing", but this time he's had time to correct his aim.

This time, he's on target, I know it. I'm still only halfway in my dive.

Too late now. Too late to bundle her to the floor.

Too late to cover my own big body over her tiny one, to protect her precious life and that of our baby growing inside her.

Too late for anything. The bullet is racing from the rifle at the speed of sound—eleven hundred feet per second of deadly force, covering the short distance in under one tenth of a second.

No time to even pray. Certainly no time to say goodbye.

And then, in the midst of my despair, a flash of gray from the bushes, equidistant between the shooter and ourselves.

A streak of fur, a howl of rage, a blur of a leaping body in motion, in mid-air…

and then a jolt as the bullet impacts. A long, dark shape spins, drops, and hits the ground with a sickening thump. Lies there, inert, unmoving.

Bleeding.

Southpaw!

Luke is closing in on the camouflaged shooter.

Too late, the shooter realizes he's under attack.

He turns and tries to raise his rifle… but he doesn't stand a chance.

I'd say it was a fight, but really it wasn't. Luke's massive fist moves once and once only, connecting with the would-be-killer's face and dropping him instantly to the ground, unconscious, his rifle flying off somewhere into the undergrowth.

The danger is over, practically before it began. My unnecessary leap brings poor Luna to the ground with an "Oomph" as the breath is knocked out of her. Jack is standing over us, shotgun at the ready, but he knows the danger is passed. Eric is visibly shaking.

"Wh… what happened?"

"Southpaw," Luna whispers beneath me. "He saved my life." Then she bursts into tears.

Jack and I squat down next to the unmoving gray body of Southpaw, whilst Eric and Luna comfort each other as best they can.

"What do you think, bro?" I ask, anxiously.

Jack reaches out a hand, buries it under the inert furry mass.

"There's a heartbeat," he says. "But it's faint. We need to get him to Jim as soon as possible. Can you make it on the quad, with Southpaw in the trailer?"

Jim is the local veterinarian. His place is about an hour away in normal conditions.

With the roads still partially blocked, it's hard to tell how long it might take.

I stand up, already striding towards the barn where the quad is parked, not wanting to waste even a single moment.

Every one of those moments could mean the difference between life and death for Southpaw. We owe him everything. We need to try.

"I'll have to," I reply over my shoulder.

It's late in the day before I finally make it back to the lodge. I park up the quad and get stiffly out of the saddle, glad to take off my helmet and stretch in what remains of the day's sunshine, the sun now only perhaps an hour away from setting below the trees in the west.

I leave my helmet dangling from the handlebars of the quad and head inside.

In the kitchen, four anxious faces look up at me as I enter.

"Well?" asks Jack

"Is he…?" Luna's eyes are misted up. She swallows, unable to finish her sentence.

"Doc says he'll pull through," I say, as I sit down heavily, glad not to have the constant motion of the quad bike under me anymore. Luke pours me a coffee from the ever-present jug on the stove.

"Thank God." Luna hugs and kisses Eric, who happens to be standing beside her. Lucky bastard. "Will he really be okay?"

"According to Jim, he should be fine. He says Southpaw was lucky. A little to the left or a little to the right, and it might have been a different story."

"Shit, we were lucky." This comes from Luke.

"Yeah, seems that way. Jim's extracted the bullet, cleaned the wound.

He had to anaesthetize Southpaw whilst he worked on him, just in case—he is a wolf after all—and I stayed to make sure everything was okay.

Then I left him with Jim for observation.

He wants to keep him for a couple of days to make sure the wound heals properly. Then, with luck, we can go fetch him."

We discuss Southpaw a little more, and we all agree that when he gets back to us, we'll have to do something special for him to say thank you for his bravery in protecting Luna.

We all agree it was deliberate. He knew he was taking that bullet for her.

Why else would he have dived up into the air at just that moment and in just that direction?

So did that mean he's been watching over Luna this whole time, without us knowing? We agree it's entirely likely. We also agree he's a strange animal. Half human, half wolf, half what? Guardian angel?

Whatever he is, we're all grateful to him. We all owe him so much. We will definitely be making a fuss of him when we get him back,

Meantime, though, there's something else that needs sorting out.

It's my turn now to get an update from the rest of the team as to what's been happening in my absence.

"So, guys," I ask. "What happened whilst I was gone? Where's Collier?"

"Luke knocked him unconscious," Luna giggles.

"Yeah, I was there. What happened afterwards?"

"Luke and Jack tied him up and locked him in the fuel shed."

The fuel shed is a strong, block-built structure with heavy doors and no windows, built to contain a small explosion or fire outbreak in our stored fuel. No way he'd get himself out of there, even if he wasn't tied up.

"Did you call the cops?"

"Yeah. They were very casual. They said if there was no immediate threat, could we please hold him overnight, and they'd be down tomorrow midday to pick him up and to take statements from us."

"Have you fed him?"

"No."

"Oh. Should we?"

"You can if you want." Luna looks stern. "He's getting fuck all from me."

"Fair enough. Can he move?"

"No, we told you, he's tied up."

"So how's he supposed to pee? And shouldn't we at least give him a drink?"

"Hark at Toby the humanitarian. Who'd have thought it?" Luna leers at me.

"He's right, though," interrupts Luke. "Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean we have to lower ourselves down to his standards."

"Doesn't it?" Luna's half smiling, half serious. But in the end, she comes around.

"Yeah, yeah, alright, you bunch of mother's boys.

I'll make the asshole a sandwich, and you can give him that and a bottle of water, and maybe if you have your rifles with you, a couple of you could let him use the bathroom before he settles for the night.

If you really want to, then I guess we could sling him a mattress to sleep on.

Take his boots and his belt, though, so if he does get himself untied in the middle of the night, he'll be less likely to run, given there's a hundred or so miles of forest in every direction. "