Erin's Fight: Gray Wolf Security Shifters, #4

By Glenna Sinclair

This is book four of Gray Wolf Security SHIFTERS and contains over 50,000 words of paranormal romantic suspense.

 

Tunstall travels to Austin to get help from Gray Wolf security expert David Grayson. He's joined unexpectedly by the newest recruit, Garrick Hamilton, a naïve but likable shifter with almost no experience in the security game. They're not in Austin more than an hour before Garrick invites himself into a case, protecting a pretty but terminally ill social worker who's been getting threats from someone wanting to find one of her young wards...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenna Sinclair
• Release date: Apr 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9798224724697

Glenna Sinclair

Experience the heart-racing novels of Glenna Sinclair, the master of romantic suspense. Sinclair's books feature strong male protagonists, many with a military background, who face real-world challenges that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Books2read.com/GlennaSinclair Facebook.com/AuthorGlennaSinclair GlennaSinclairAuthor at Gmail dot com

Book preview

Chapter 1

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Trinity

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The child was sleeping soundly, peaceful despite the rush with which she’d come into the house in Tunstall’s arms. I brushed a piece of hair from her face, searching her features for something familiar. Was she his? Was she just a stray he’d picked up like everyone else? What was she doing here?

It’s a complicated story, Tunstall said as he came into the room, speaking as though he could hear my thoughts.

I have plenty of time.

I guess we both owe each other a story. He came up behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder even as he bent over and tugged the blankets higher up on the child’s body. The child snuggled low almost as if she knew it was Tunstall tucking her in. As though she felt safer when she was near him, as I had always done. The idea set off alarm bells in my head, again making me wonder who this child was and where she’d come from. And what she meant to him.

She’s an orphan. The woman downstairs with Garrick, she’s a social worker. She was a client of David’s operatives in Austin.

The woman? Then how did the child—

She is a client of the social worker.

Is she like you?

A shifter, you mean?

Yes.

I’m not sure. But I think it’s possible. He stepped back, drawing me out of his bedroom and into the sitting room. We took seats by the fireplace, the only light the low glow of the fire itself. He leaned forward a little, taking a deep breath.

It’s a long story.

Start at the beginning.

That would be the dreams, he said almost to himself. And then he smiled, a look of pure amusement in his perfect brown eyes. Actually, that would be in Oklahoma City. I was eating dinner in a filthy little diner and Garrick just showed up...

Chapter 2

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Tunstall

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Ten Days Earlier...

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I’d left the lodge with a heavy heart this morning. That was new to me. Leaving had always been easy. I told myself I’d done it so many times that it no longer mattered. I’d been on the move since leaving Silas’s home all those years ago, since the night my pack attacked and took his beautiful wife from him because of me. I will never forgive myself for that and I would never allow it to happen to anyone else. That’s why I always moved on before it mattered.

But now... it mattered when I realized Trinity had slept on the couch so she wouldn’t miss me leaving. It mattered when Regan came out to see me off. No one had cared much about where I went or how long I was gone until now. I knew taking on this role as the leader of this new branch of Gray Wolf would require creating connections I wasn’t used to creating. I hadn’t realized it would make my heart this heavy, this attached to people who’d been strangers just a few months ago.

I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I sat back against the sticky vinyl seat of the diner booth and looked around at the truckers and the guys with no one at home to share a meal with. It was a filthy place. Grease was visible on nearly every surface, including the table where I sat. And there was stickiness everywhere that smelled of maple syrup. Between that and the smell of spoiled beef, the place was almost too much for my enhanced senses—between the stink and the overwhelming darkness of the human emotions. Maybe this hadn’t been the best choice for a good meal.

Maybe a lot of my choices lately weren’t the best.

I’d been okay on my own. I don’t have a problem with my own company. I never had trouble traveling alone, never had trouble living inside my own head. I liked being alone. I’d been alone a long time before Levi came along. Even with Levi, I’d been essentially on my own, going anywhere I wanted to go whenever I wanted to go, no one I could offend or annoy. No one to annoy me. Levi—he wasn’t really the kind of guy to argue with anything anyone had to say. He would follow someone into fire if they told him it was how things had to be. It’d been an easy life. Uncomplicated.

Gray Wolf Security complicated my life.

We had these drug traffickers to worry about. We had a biased sheriff to battle—though he’d loosened up a little since Regan had agreed to go out with him. We were still recruiting new operatives and adding new personalities to the already diverse group we had living under the same roof. And we’d soon begin taking other cases besides this Mahoney cartel thing Ash had asked us to handle.

Complicated.

And then the attack a few days back. That had scared me in a way I hadn’t been frightened since the night my pack had attacked Silas’s house. The idea of Regan or Trinity getting hurt—or killed, God forbid!—because of a mistake I’d made was almost paralyzing. I had to make sure I could secure the lodge well enough to keep anyone else from getting past our fence that easily ever again. That was the point of this trip. That was why I was in Oklahoma City. At least partially.

Oklahoma City was a stop on the way to Austin, Texas, where David Grayson—my cousin and the Gray Wolf tech expert—had his own satellite branch of Gray Wolf. I intended to go there and discuss with him the possibility of improving his security system in order to make it impossible for anyone to access the lodge property without jumping through a half-dozen hoops. I would not allow another attack on our front lawn without the time to prepare a proper defense. Or to keep it out altogether.

I would not let anyone put my people in that position again.

I didn’t want to be attached. Yet I was. And I felt responsible for the people living in that lodge. It was all very new to me, all very complicated. But it was what it was.

Before all that, however, I had some old business to take care of.

As I sat there, I watched a couple of thugs come through the door, laughing and talking much too loudly for the sedate, depressed clientele. I recognized one of them from a past encounter; the other was new to me. They were tall, dressed in leather jackets and worn jeans. One wore a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead while the other sported a greasy do that he probably spent more than an hour perfecting in front of a mirror before coming out. They called out to the waitress as they took a couple of stools at the counter, one whistling under his breath as the woman came toward him, her jeans particularly tight on her generous behind.

I picked up my water glass, a little grossed out by the specks of old food sticking to the inside and out of the milky plastic, hiding my observation under a mundane action. My friend, Levi, tended to get involved with people he shouldn’t. These two fine, upstanding citizens were a couple of those people. It had something to do with a gambling debt, or something like that. I supposed the details didn’t really matter, though Levi would be happy to fill me in if I asked. The end result, though, was that Levi owed the Dawson brothers some money and they were looking for him. They’d keep looking for him until they found him and either got their money back or took the equivalent out in his hide. I knew because I’d saved him from these people once before.

And the fellow in the baseball cap was Elvis Dawson.

I didn’t know where Elton was, but if Elvis was here, Elton wasn’t far away. This might go faster than I’d originally assumed. But I should probably get out of here before Elvis caught sight of me and recalled our last meeting. He didn’t walk away too happily from that last meeting. In fact, he didn’t walk at all. He had to be carried.

I slid to the end of the bench and was about to stand when a man suddenly plopped down on the bench across from me.

Hi, Tunstall, the man said.

I looked sharply toward the counter, but Elvis didn’t seem to have heard my name. I turned my focus on my newly arrived companion, a little shocked to see him sitting across from me when, just sixteen hours earlier, I’d left him sleeping at the lodge. But here he was, in awkward-fitting clothes that were pretty clearly not his.

Garrick?

He picked up a piece of raw meat I’d left on my plate and popped it into his mouth. I’m famished! Is the food any good here?

How did you get here?

I ran.

I tilted my head, trying to figure out how literally I should take that statement. "You ran? It’s more than a thousand miles from here to the lodge!"

One thousand, ninety-six to be precise.

And you ran that? In less than a day?

I can run pretty fast.

That’s not just fast. That’s superhuman.

Well, I’m not exactly human. You’d be surprised how fast a Przewalski’s horse can run.

I glanced over my shoulder, waving at him. Keep your voice down, Garrick. Then I frowned. A what?

That’s what they call the species of horse that I am. He shook his head slightly, reaching for another crumb of my meal. If I’ve learned one thing in the last few days back in human company, it’s that humans only hear what they want to hear. I could stand in the middle of this room and announce my nature and no one will actually believe me.

He was probably right about that, but it still made me nervous. It was like asking bad luck to follow us around.

Why are you here, Garrick?

He rolled his shoulders. I came to the lodge to meet you and to help you in the upcoming battle. I figured I should be with you in order to do that.

What upcoming battle?

Garrick tilted his head slightly, still reaching for crumbs on my plate. There will be a reckoning for you, Tunstall. Your past is going to catch up to you. But that’s not the only battle that will unfold in your future.

He sounded kind of like one of those fortune tellers that people visit at carnivals. I glanced at Dawson just in time to watch him scan the room. I slid lower in the booth, trying to hide my face with my hand. I didn’t want him to recognize me now and get spooked.

His brother is waiting outside in a large vehicle.

I glanced at Garrick. Whose brother?

The man at the counter. The one you’ve come to talk to.

How do you know about that?

I have good hearing. I know the one called Levi asked you to come and talk to the Dawson brothers. You keep watching that one, so I assume he is one half of the brothers. The man outside has similar features, so I deduced that he was the other half.

You know why I’m here?

I know more than any of you could suspect.

How?

Garrick ran his finger over my plate—which was now wiped cleaner than it probably was before my food was laid on it—sighing softly with something that sounded a lot like irritation. I speak with nature. It knows everything.

Nature?

Yes. You saw me with the ants—correct?

You know I did.

That was part of my communing with nature.

The ants told you there was a conflict coming for me?

Among other things.

Anyone else would have dismissed Garrick as someone in need of some psychiatric help. But there was the fact that he was a shifter, like me. And there was still so much about shifters we didn’t know or understand. We all came from different backgrounds, different origins. Our abilities and our natures differed as much as humans differed in eye color, height, weight, and race. So who was I to doubt some of Garrick’s abilities? If he could commune with nature, how was that different from my ability to heal from a gunshot wound in less than twenty-four hours?

Do you know what the source of this conflict might be?

Garrick shook his head, looking longingly at my clean plate. No. It only knows trouble is coming your way and you might need my help. It also knows you’ll lose someone close to you. He looked up at me with wide eyes. I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I?

"What does that mean, I’ll lose someone close to me?"

Garrick shrugged. I don’t know. I’m just the messenger.

Hey! a voice called to us from the counter. Hey! Don’t I know you?

It was Elvis Dawson.

Shit!

We need to go, I said to Garrick.

I guess I don’t have time to eat, then?

I glared at him as I slid my way out of the booth and onto my feet. I could feel Elvis watching me as I left the diner, but he didn’t follow. That was good. But the moment we stepped out into the heat of the summer night, I could see Elton watching from the front seat of a massive pickup truck. I didn’t have to wonder if he’d recognized me. I saw the moment of recognition clearly on his face.

I grabbed Garrick’s arm and pulled him around the side of the building into a wide alley. We need to take up a defensive position, I hissed. Elton recognized me. He’ll go get his brother and the two of them will follow us here. We need to be ready for them.

Why do we need to hide? Why can’t we just go after them where they are?

Because we need a moment to prepare ourselves.

I’m ready!

Garrick rushed back out of the alley. A second later, I heard the exhalation of a man taking a punch in the stomach. Cursing under my breath, I rushed out of the alley too, expecting to find Garrick on the ground, near death as the two Dawson brothers and their friend beat the crap out of him. I was pleasantly surprised.

Garrick was the one doing the beating while Elton lay on the ground, curled into a fetal position as he tried to avoid Garrick’s assault.

Elvis came rushing out of the diner at that moment, aiming to take out Garrick with a knife he’d clearly taken from the rusty, dirty collection inside the dining establishment. I headed him off, grabbing the hand holding the knife and twisting it as I punched him twice in the nose, forcing him to drop the knife as he worried more