The Reluctant Wolf (Book 1 Cloverleah Pack) (9 page)

Chapter Thirteen

As they pulled into the garage Kane and Shawn could hear the others in the house.  Leaving their bikes secured Shawn grabbed Kane’s hand, a first Kane noticed, and pulled him into the house - stopping long enough to remove their boots and jackets. As they wandered into the kitchen they saw Dean sitting up on the kitchen bench with an ice pack on his face and Griff washing blood off of Dean’s knuckles.

“What the hell?  Are you all right Dean?”  Kane was over at the younger man’s side in an instant, gently pulling back the ice pack to look at his face.  Dean sported a huge black eye, puffing to the side of his nose and a split lip that was already puffed up. 

“Yeth, I’m fine, stop futthing.”

“You should have seen the other guy, aye Dean.” Griff rumbled, but when he saw the look on Kane’s face, he quickly shut up and went back to tending Dean’s knuckles.  From the state of them it was clear that Dean had gotten in a few punches of his own.

Kane looked at Shawn.  “Can you do anything?” He gestured at Dean.

“Yeah, sure.”  Moving over to Dean, Shawn carefully looked at the damage to the man’s face, running his thin fingers gently all over the bruising and puffiness, looking for any signs of broken bones or permanent harm.
Holding the smaller man’s face in his hands he carefully tilted Dean’s head up so Dean had no choice but to look into Shawn’s eyes.

“Was this about me?” He asked quietly, daring Dean to lie to him.  Dean fidgeted on the bench and dropped his eyes.

“Na, not exactly.”

“Well, what the bloody hell did happen?” Kane was still standing by Dean and Shawn but he was looking at Griff.  “You guys were told not to engage anyone - just do some recce and then bloody come home.  What went wrong?”

Griff looked uncomfortable.  He could tell Kane was angry, despite the man’s quiet tone.  “It was kinda my fault boss.  We, uh, we did what you said.  Dean and I checked up on the boys from our ex-pack.  They were in the process of leaving.  But they hinted that it would be a really good idea for us to check out your mate’s place because ‘something was going down’ there.  So we escorted them to the town border and then swung over to Shawn’s for a look.”

“How do you guys e
ven know where I live?  You guys stalking me?”  Shawn’s voice cut through Griff’s explanations like a steel wire, even though when Griff looked at him he could see Shawn was still working on Dean’s face.  Whatever the man was doing was working because Dean looked a lot happier and a lot less puffed up in the face.

“Uh, that was actually my doing, sweetheart,” embarrassment clear in Kane’s voice as he spoke up.  Shawn looked over at him and muttered something about ‘nutter mates’ and kept on working on Dean.  Kane knew he was going to pay for his actions later and the thought of what Shawn might do sent a tingle through his balls.  He tried to get a handle on what Shawn might be thinking, but he couldn’t get anything as Shawn was still focusing on Dean.

Griff stuttered.  “Um, yeah.  Well we got to Shawn’s and I am sorry man but there’s nothing left.”  Shawn’s back stiffened but he checked in with Dean to make sure he was fully healed before turning round to Griff.

“Tell me.”  Kane came to stand by Shawn and rested his arm across his mate’s shoulder.  He could feel Shawn trembling but nothing was showing on the impassive man’s face.

“I am real sorry we didn’t get there sooner, man.  By the time we got there the place was up in smoke.  From the looks of some huge holes around the perimeter of the house it was like they set off some sort of explosives right around the house and then once they had gone off, they set what was left on fire.”

Shawn ran a hand over his face - it’s not as though he had a lot to lose.  At least his bike
was safe and he kept all of his papers and a few important bits in a locked box in a tunnel under the house, so that should still be safe. “Yeah, well they wouldn’t have been able to get into the house otherwise.  But how did Dean get into a fight?” 

Griff looked down and shuffled his feet.  He looked so uncomfortable.  “We were heading back here to tell you all what happened, and I…uh…I was hungry so I sent Dean into Kathy’s Diner to get a quick feed.  I didn’t realize that two of the hunter’s were i
n there until I smelt like an odd smoky smell coming from the diner as Dean went in.  I headed in after him as soon as I realized.” 

Kane shook his head and then looked at Dean.  “Why pick a fight?  That’s not like you?”

“I didn’t, well not really.  See, I headed in there and there were these two humans at the counter.  They were showing Trisha a picture of Shawn, saying that Shawn was a faggot, and he had been ‘got real good’ and laughing when Trisha got upset…and I don’t know, I just lost it.”

“Yeah, he lost it all right.”  Griff flashed a smile of pride at the smaller man.  “By the time I got there Dean already had one bloke on the ground and was trading blows with the other one and they were both heaps bigger than this one.” 

Catching Kane’s look, Griff quickly went on. “Na, I didn’t fight them. I just threw one punch at the lout holding onto Dean and then pulled him out of there.  Thought he was gonna hit me, he was so riled up.”  Then he looked across at Shawn and Kane.  “I asked Trisha not to call Mike, the Sherriff, you know - about any of this.  I told her that we would handle it.  Is that okay?”

“Yes,” said Kane.  “The less people who know about this mess the better.  You did the right thing.”  He looked across the kitchen to where Troy and Scott had been sitting quietly through all of the discussion.  “Are you two all right?”

Troy looked at Scott and Scott looked at Troy and then they both looked at Kane with a sheepish grin on their face. “Well, yeah, we did all right.  We found out where the blokes are staying.  There seems to be six of them staying in two rooms at the Starburst Motel about five miles out of town.” Troy said.

“Yeah, but then we was just gonna head back here and we got the call from Griff about Shawn’s house so we went out to scout the rooms to see if the hunter’s had got back yet.” Scott continued.

“And…” Kane growled.

Scott looked at Troy and mouthed, ‘you tell him’ so Troy said, “
Well, we saw they had two trucks parked outside the rooms.  The white one we saw yesterday when Shawn was shot and another bright blue pickup.  The hunters all seemed to be getting pissed and having a party - yelling about how they killed the freak and that they were gonna be rich.”  Troy looked at the ‘freak’ in apology before continuing. “So we kinda disabled the vehicles.”  He stopped, unsure whether to continue.

“Did anyone see you?” Kane growled at the twins.  Troy and Scott shook their heads.

“Na, boss, they were too busy drinking up a storm.”  Scott smirked.

“And we were quick.”  Troy continued, smiling now it seemed him and his twin weren’t in trouble at least.

“So come on boys, what did you do?”  Griff had to know.

“Sugar in the petrol tanks - simple but effective.”  Scott explained.

Troy continued.  “We figured it would take them at least until Monday or Tuesday to get in replacement vehicles, so we could, like work out what we were gonna do, or maybe just have some down time or something.”  He looked at Kane hopefully.

Kane looked over to Dean who was still sitting on the bench.  “You feeling all right now?”  Dean’s face had none of the swelling it had before and the cuts on his knuckles and lips were gone.  The only sign that Dean had been in a scuffle at all was a ring of red bruising right around
one eyelid. 

Dean smiled at him and Shawn. “Yeah, thanks for that Shawn.  There is no pain at all.”

“I didn’t want to get too close to your eyelid otherwise you would have no signs of the fight at all.  But the blood will disperse from there soon enough. Come and tell me if you get any more pain, okay?” Dean nodded. 

“
And I understand why you did what you did,” Shawn looked around at all of the men, “even though I don’t like it.  But thanks.”

“Sorry about your house, man.”  Griff looked troubled.  “Maybe if we had gotten there sooner…”

“No,” said Kane.  “If you had gotten there sooner the two of you would have been confronting four or maybe six men armed with guns and explosives at least.  You all did the right thing, okay.  We have got to be smart about this.”  He looked at Shawn, who had gone quiet again.

“Are you okay sweetie?” he asked, looking deep into Shawn’s eyes.   Shawn gave him a small smile.

“Yep, I will be fine.  How about I get us all some dinner - what you guys all want to eat?”

After the men had all tucked into the delicious fried chicken with potatoes and gravy that was decided on after much debate
, the mood in the house got a lot lighter.  Then Shawn had a thought and he asked Kane, “Have you got a laptop or a computer here - something connected to the internet and preferably with a media player on it?”

“Yes, I have a laptop
that will do that,” Troy piped up.  “Do you want me to get it?”

“
If you would, thanks.” 

Troy abandoned his meal and ran off to get it from his backpack.  Opening it up and flicking it on, it
was warmed up and running by the time he got back to the table.

“What do you want to look at?” Kane asked his mate.

“You’ll see - just a minute.”  Shawn was looking at the computer.  Finding the internet browser he opened it and quickly typed in a long string of numbers, dots, characters and dashes into the address bar.

Once the page was loaded, Shawn clicked on the last file name.  It opened up another page with a long list of other file names on it.  Looking up at Griff he asked, “What time you reckon you were at my house today?”

Griff looked at Dean.  “I don’t know, about 3.30ish I think.”  Dean nodded.

“And about how far gone was the house by then, do you think?  I am trying to get a time line of when the blokes might have gone to my house,” he explained as all the men were looking at him with interest.

“It was still hot, but most of the house had burned by the time we got there.  So I am figuring it had to have been burning for at least an hour, maybe more.”

Shawn went back to looking at the list of files on the computer.

“So about 2.30ish when the fire started…maybe an hour before that trying to get into the house and then setting the explosions, so about 1.00 - 1.30 PM.  I’ll try from then.” 

Shawn was thinking out loud.  He double clicked a file name, seemingly indistinguishable from any of the others, at least in Kane’s head, and a page quickly loaded.
Kane noticed that all of his men were now gathered around the computer.

The screen came up in a video format with four different views of what was apparently Shawn’s house, or former house Kane thought grimly to himself. 

“Hey Shawn, you mean you had a remote video feed of your house?”  Troy was obviously fascinated.

“I set the system up myself.  I have, or should I say had, cameras all around the house itself, pointing outwards but of course they would have been damaged after the explosions.  But I also had four extra cameras set up in strategic points around the property - all tacked into trees.  The cameras would all feed onto a continuous recording on my computer hard drive and every half an hour those recordings would be backed up automatically onto my own personal server so I could access them remotely.”

Troy was clearly impressed with the explanation. “Shit so much security. You could work for the CIA or something.”

Shawn gave a wry grin.  “I’ve been on my own for more than ten years and been a target
pretty much since the day I left home.  I like to sleep at nights.”

Shawn tapped a couple of buttons on the computer keyboard and the four pictures all got a slight fuzz on them as the recording was clearly being fast forwarded.
As the men watched two vehicles swung into view, doing a couple of donuts on the lawn before screeching to a halt, one on each corner of the front of the house. Tapping another couple of keys, Shawn slowed the video down to normal running speed and the men all leaned in for a closer look.  It was not a pretty picture.

On the video four men got out of the two vehicles, all brandishing guns.  Two of the men ran up the steps of the porch but then were hurled back as though someone had just tossed them off. 

Kane looked at Shawn in askance and Shawn had an evil grin on his face as he explained.  “Protection wards - no one could get on that porch.  All of the porch, the windows and the doors.”  Kane grinned back; his mate was not only beautiful he was really smart.

They both looked back to the screen as the men on the video had obviously decided on a new tactic.  The four of them spread out across the front of the house, guns at the ready.  Without warning they all opened fire at the house and the men in front of the computer screen
all laughed, as they saw the men on the video all suddenly drop to the ground as the bullets apparently ricocheted back on the shooters.

One of the men ran back to the truck and got what looked to Kane like a Molotov cocktail.  He lit the wick and biffed it at one of the windows on the side of the house.  The bottle flew back at the thrower who ducked for cover as it went off.  All four men then regrouped at the trucks for what seemed to be like an emergency meeting.