Mary Ellen Porter - Off The Grid Christmas

He snagged her pack, yanking her backward with enough force to throw her off balance. “I thought we were done sparring, Arden.”

“You need to leave.” She spun around.

“Not without you.”

“Let me make this perfectly clear: I’m not going anywhere with you. Make this easy on yourself. Go back to Maryland. And tell my brothers that I’m fine.”

“Jace told me to bring you to Grayson—you can deal with the FBI together.”

“Jace is going to be very disappointed.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Actually, she crossed them over her bulging stomach. He frowned, eyeing the mound under her coat. It wiggled.

“Carrying a passenger?”

“My cat.”

“Might have been a good idea to leave him home. Microchips can make it difficult to drop completely off the grid.”

“I’m aware of that,” she said.

“Yet you brought him to the vet anyway,” he pointed out.

“I was worried,” she said defensively, her left hand reaching up to cradle the mound under her jacket. “Though it really was an unfortunate turn of events that the Lubec Veterinary Clinic uses microchip scanners.”

“I guess that depends on your point of view.” For Kane, it was just the break he’d been waiting for.

She stepped past him, acting like she was going to go ahead and do what she’d been trying to since he’d arrived—leave.

“I hope you’re not thinking that you’re going anywhere without me.”

“I’m not thinking it. I’m doing it.”

After nearly six days without a lead, he’d arrived in this snowy ocean-side town under no delusion that getting her home would be simple. She knew how to hide, and she knew how to fight. According to Jace, she also had a tendency to be dogmatic in her approach to things and often unwilling to compromise.

“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. I’m bringing you home, so we’re going to have to stick together from here on out.”

“Sorry, that doesn’t work for me. I prefer solitude to company,” she said, tugging open the door to the shed.

He pushed it shut again. “I prefer cooperation to animosity, but we don’t always get what we want.”

“You’re in my personal space,” she responded, ignoring his comment. “How about you get out of it?”

He stepped closer, tired of the wordplay and anxious to get her away from the property. “Now you’re in mine.”

“Personal space is the variable and subjective distance at which one person feels comfortable talking to another. If you want to speak with me, you need to back away.”

He almost cracked a smile. Almost.

She wasn’t looking for a chat. She was looking for an escape route. He could see it in her eyes. Her body language.

She was Jace’s sister through and through. If the black hair and blue eyes weren’t a dead giveaway, the stubborn set of her jaw certainly was.

“Let’s take the FBI out of the picture for a minute. What are you running from?” he asked, his right hand still holding the shed door closed. His arm just above her shoulder blocked escape from her left.

“Trouble,” she replied, glancing to her right as if calculating the likelihood of dodging out of his reach.

“Better to face it with a support system than alone.”

“I can’t involve anyone else. It’s too dangerous.”

“You can explain that to your brother when you see him.”

“Returning to Maryland isn’t an option.”

Kane shook his head. “From where I stand, it’s the only option.”

“Well, if you’d just back up about a foot and take a few steps to your left, my preferred option will become a little clearer to you.”

He could have laughed if he’d let himself. Jace had said his sister was brilliant. He hadn’t mentioned her sense of humor.

“Sorry. That’s not going to happen. I promised Jace that I’d find you and bring you home.”

“You should never make a promise you can’t keep.” Her back against the door, she slowly edged her way toward the right corner of the shed.

He grabbed her left arm just below the elbow, and stopped her in her tracks. “We’re wasting time,” he said. “I found you—it’s safe to assume someone else will, too. If you don’t want to tell me why you’re running, maybe you can tell me who you’re running from.”

“I’m running from so many people, it would almost be easier to tell you who isn’t after me.” She tucked a few strands of hair under her hat, her gaze shifting from him to a point beyond his shoulder.

“Go ahead.”

“And leave? I was thinking about it, but it’s hard to do with you holding onto my arm.”

“Go ahead and list the people who aren’t after you.”

She sighed, tried to yank her wrist away. “Look, I know you’re trying to do what Jace wants, but I can handle this alone. I won’t drag him, Grayson or even you into this.”

“We’re already in it,” he pointed out, and she frowned.

“You don’t have to be. You can walk away and let me go back to what I was doing.”

He was tempted to do just that.

He didn’t have time for games. After twelve years of active duty, he’d left the army in August and spent the last three months getting his and Jace’s fledgling business off the ground.

Shadow Wolves Security, named after their Army unit, was finally up and running. It had taken a lot of work. With Jace’s tour not up for another four months, the bulk of it had fallen on Kane. He’d spent countless unpaid hours making certain things were ready. He’d even managed to land their first contracts, set to start in less than a month.

With that under his belt, he’d planned to leave the business in the hands of his other business partner and Chief Operations Officer, Silas Blackwater, and take a long, relaxing weekend. Jace’s phone call had changed his plans. When he’d asked Kane to help Grayson locate their sister, Kane couldn’t refuse.

Yeah. He might be tempted to walk away and let Arden deal with her problem alone, but he wouldn’t do it. He owed Jace a lot. More than he could ever repay.

“Let’s go.” He still had his hand around her wrist, and he started walking, dragging her along beside him, not caring that she was yanking against his hold.

“You don’t understand the ramifications of me going back,” she muttered, digging in her heels and putting all her weight into trying to stop their forward momentum. There wasn’t a whole lot of weight to her, so it barely slowed Kane down.

“Explain it to me then.”

“The people who are after me are dangerous and they’ve got deep pockets. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want. They don’t care who they hurt in the process.”

“Grayson can work with the FBI to clear your name and protect you.”

“I trust Grayson, but I can’t ask him to put his career on the line and take my side against the FBI. Besides, there’s no way to be sure they don’t have someone in the FBI on their payroll.”

“Who, exactly, are these people, and what do they want from you?”

“That information is need-to-know.” She tucked another loose strand of hair beneath her hat. A nervous tic? he wondered.

“I need to know.”

“You are an intermediary. You only need to know that I’m not returning home. Not yet. Tell my brothers—”

A loud chirp interrupted her words. Two more followed in rapid succession.

He didn’t ask what it was.

He knew.

She’d set up a perimeter alarm and it was going off.

“What quadrant?” he asked as she pulled a cell phone from her coat pocket.

“West. Looks like the same way you arrived. You’d better go—”

The phone chirped again.

“Sounds like they have an army coming for you.” He sprinted back to the shed, pulling her along with him. She’d been trying to get inside since he’d arrived.