Page 37 of Her Three Rangers
“Then we’re all happy,” I said, hoping to put that topic to rest. I glanced at the clock and frowned. “I have to leave soon. Do you guys need anything from town while I’m out?”
They all shook their heads and exchanged glances. “Where will you be going?” Jaeger asked.
I frowned. That wasn’t the response I’d been looking for. “I have a client who needs help birthing a calf.”
“How far is it from here?” Ty asked.
Now I knew something wasn’t right. I half-expected Jaeger to give me a hard time, but not Ty.
“It isn’t far,” I answered. “Maybe twenty minutes away. Twenty-five if you get stuck behind the train. Why? What’s going on?”
They all looked at each other again. There was definitely some sort of unspoken communication happening here, and I hated not knowing what it was.
Cody was the first to speak. “We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go there by yourself.”
“Or anywhere else by yourself,” Jaeger added.
I knew I must have been giving them all a look as if they had just grown horns or something, but I couldn’t help it. If these guys thought they were going to go all alpha-macho-caveman with me, they were mistaken.
“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” I began, “but I’m not some delicate little flower. I have a job to do, and I have to be able to make house calls sometimes.”
I felt bad for a split-second as I saw Cody’s reaction to my words. He looked as though I had physically slapped him. Jaeger just looked pissed.
Ty, always the peacemaker and the voice of reason, put a hand up and shook his head. “It’s not like that, Grace. We know you can take care of yourself. None of us are looking to control you… but this is something that needs to happen. At least for a little while.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “And furthermore, I don’t like it. You can say it’s not like you’re being controlling, but that’s exactly what it sounds like to me.”
“But it isn’t,” Cody said. “It’s for your protection. We just don’t want you going anywhere unaccompanied until we can deal with Garrick.”
My eyes went wide at that name. “What does that even mean? Deal with Garrick? Are you guys in the mob? Are you gonna break his knees or something?” I felt my eyes go even wider as another thought occurred to me. “My God, are you going to shoot him?”
“Jesus, Grace,” Jaeger said. “Do you think we’re a bunch of thugs? We’re not going to do any of those things.”
“I’d like to break his kneecaps,” Ty said, shrugging. “But you already knew that.”
Cody huffed out an exasperated breath as he looked over at his friends. “Not helpful, guys.” He looked back at me. “We don’t want to shoot Garrick, Grace. We want to arrest him.”
I looked over at Cody in the passenger seat as I drove the pickup that I used for work down the bumpy dirt road to the little farm where my client was waiting.
I still couldn’t believe what they had told me, but I didn’t have any reason to doubt any of them.
And the way Cody was constantly scanning the mirrors and the horizon?
Yeah, I could tell that he was not only prepared for the worst, he was expecting it.
I honestly wasn’t even sure what the “worst” might be, but from the things they had accused Garrick of—human trafficking across the border, forced labor, and who knows what else—I had to assume it would be pretty bad.
While I had initially been too shocked to worry about what all of that meant, the more I thought about it, the more worried I became.
“You really think something will happen on the way out here?” I asked, hoping for at least a little reassurance. “I’ve never run into Garrick anywhere besides in town.”
“We can’t be sure,” Cody said, still scanning the road ahead and behind us. “I hope nothing happens. But if something happens, I’d rather be prepared. The thought of you out here alone if something happened…”
He didn’t finish, but I didn’t need him to.
That thought scared the hell out of me, too.
“We’re almost there,” I said, for his benefit as much as for my own. “And then it shouldn’t take too long to help with the calf, as long as everything is good when we get there.”