After Dylan and Roxie finished eating blueberry waffles covered with blueberry syrup that morning, he pulled her onto his lap at the dining table. “Waking up to you is the grandest thing ever.” He gave her a leisurely kiss on the mouth, licking the blueberry syrup clinging to her lips.
“I love my new routine.” She licked his lips and smiled. “You taste so sweet.”
“You are sweet.”
“Only when I’m not riled.” She smiled sweetly with a hint of mischief. “So I have an anniversary party to manage today. You’re going in to the jailhouse to talk to Xander and Fennel, right?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid they’re going to be released, then return to Denver. I need to talk to them before they go,” Dylan said.
“Good luck on learning what you can from them, especially concerning where Jim might have run off to.”
“Thanks.” He had mixed feelings about learning where Jim might be. If Dylan had more places to look, he was afraid he’d be gone for some time and miss being with Roxie. With her in it, his life had changed so much for the better. “I hope your party goes perfectly right.”
“It will, I’m certain.”
They cleaned up after breakfast and called her family on a conference call to give them the news that she and Dylan were mated.
“Hey, we won that bet hands down,” Landon said.
Blake agreed.
“I thought you weren’t sure about me mating Dylan, Landon,” Roxie said.
“I always knew it would happen,” Landon said.
Kayla laughed.
Then everyone congratulated them, including Gabrielle before she went to the vet clinic and Nate, who was getting ready to check on a client’s case of potential employee fraud. Nate and Nicole’s mother, Nelda, said, “You realize we’re adopting you like the rest of the kids, right, Dylan?”
As if Dylan and the Wolff siblings were kids, but Roxie loved how Nicole and Nate’s parents treated them all like their own kids.
“Yeah, I couldn’t be more delighted,” Dylan said.
“Well, we knew it was a sure thing,” Nelda said. “We bet on the two of you both mating too.”
Gary, Nate and Nicole’s father, agreed.
Roxie laughed. She had never expected Nate and Nicole’s parents to bet on them too.
“This is cause for a family celebration. A night at Sam and Silva’s tavern for a dinner out or a family dinner at home?” Kayla asked.
“I opt for a night out,” Gabrielle said, Nicole agreeing.
“All right. As soon as we can schedule it, that’s what we’ll do.” Roxie was thrilled everyone was so welcoming to Dylan.
Then everyone said goodbye, though she’d see her siblings in a few minutes. She kissed and hugged Dylan. “They love you like I love you.”
“I’m glad for that. As much as Jim is a menace to society, I do have him to thank for helping bring us together.”
Smiling, Roxie shook her head. “I would have loved if it had been in a different way. Like running into you in the pool while you were wearing swim trunks—the right attire.”
“Yeah, that would have worked for sure.” Except he would never have been swimming in their pool for recreational fun. Not when he had a job to do.
When Roxie walked inside the lodge, Dylan drove into town, eager to learn anything more about Jim’s whereabouts from Fennel and Xander. Dylan arrived at the jailhouse, and Peter and CJ greeted him, both holding on to mugs of coffee.
“We just fed them,” Peter said.
Dylan took a deep breath of the aroma at the lounge of the sheriff’s office. “It smells like someone had ham and cheese omelets.”
“Yep. We treat our prisoners right.” Peter took a swig of his coffee.
“Did you get anything more out of them?” Dylan asked.
“No. We’ve been monitoring everything they’ve been saying to each other, though we have them separated so they can’t see each other. They were talking about the weather, seeing their families, wishing things had turned out differently, but no specifics.” Peter motioned with his coffee mug in the direction of the cells. “Who do you want to talk to first? We’ll move him into the interrogation room.”
“Xander.” Dylan hoped he had changed his mind about keeping mum about the whole thing. Dylan wasn’t sure Fennel knew anything more, but he was going to question him too.
CJ walked into the cell block. “You have a visitor.”
When Xander saw it was Dylan, his whole posture sagged as if he thought he had a friend coming to see him and was feeling more upbeat until he realized Dylan was about to interrogate him.
“Come in here and take a seat, Xander. Do you want some more coffee? What about you, Dylan?” CJ asked.
“Yeah, that would be good. A teaspoon of sugar, lots of milk or cream for me. Thanks, CJ,” Dylan said.
“Me too,” Xander said.
After CJ brought them their coffees, Dylan took a seat across from Xander. Dylan knew CJ and Peter would be watching and listening in on the conversation through a one-way mirror, unless they had to leave for something that required their immediate attention.
“All right, so you know that Jim took off with all your luggage and Eddie’s car and left the two of you stranded,” Dylan said.
“You know, you and the others have been all over me about all this,” Xander said.
“Right. But what we need to know is where Jim might have gone to. If he figured his grandfather’s cabin was too hot and we’d be looking for him there, where else could he have gone?”
Xander huffed. “So Jim must have figured that and told us to rendezvous with him there anyway.” He was holding on to his cup of coffee with his good hand, the other bandaged. He was looking into it as if he could find the courage to tell them the truth or maybe a way to get himself out of the mess he was in. “Okay, if I tell you some other locations where he might have gone, what if he tries to kill me? Or Fennel even, thinking either one of us or both of us had told on him?”
“If we can locate him, we’re taking him into custody.”
Xander let go of his cup and ran his hand through his hair. “The sheriff told us the DA said we’d get a deal if we testified against Jim.”
“Yeah, but we need to locate him and take him into custody.”
“All right.” Xander cupped his coffee cup again. “There are four other places we used to go for hunting that you might not know about. They’re not that far from Jim’s grandfather’s cabin. About fifteen to twenty miles.”
“He owns several?” Dylan was kind of surprised because when he’d checked property records for Jim, he hadn’t seen anything other than Jim’s palatial home in Denver. And he already knew about his grandfather’s cabin.
Xander shook his head. “Two are cabins owned by lawyer friends of his. They rent them out when they’re not using them. They have families and I know at least one of them is in Cancún right now.” He told Dylan the names of the lawyers and an idea of where the cabins were located. “Another is an abandoned structure, but it has a fireplace, roof, walls, and windows. The inside is pretty sparse. Just about anybody uses it. We’ve met up with other hunters there, hikers even, looking to get out of the cold for the night and warm up by the fireplace.”
Dylan suspected CJ or Peter was looking for the locations of the cabins right now as Xander told him about them. “And the fourth place?”
“A condo at Breckinridge Ski Resort. The place is booked solid for the ski season, so I mentioned it last. Unless Jim moves in on someone who has leased it, I doubt he’d go there.” Xander gave him the address. “I mean, the only other places he would go would be to see his parents, grandparents, and a sister in Denver. But I’m sure you already know about all that, and most likely someone’s been watching them.”
“Right.” They needed out-of-the-way locations where Jim could be hiding out. It would be too easy to catch him at a family’s residence. The police in Denver and a couple of the FWS guys there were watching the family’s homes. “Is he pretty well equipped to stay out in this weather for days on end, do you think?”
“He’s pretty handy at wilderness survival, but I don’t believe he’ll be able to manage weeks of living in the snow without finding a place to hole up.”
“All right. Can you think of anything else that might help us in locating him?” Dylan asked.
Xander’s eyes teared up. “Eddie was our friend. He didn’t deserve to die. I blame Fennel for revealing the affair Eddie was having with Jim’s supposed girlfriend and not letting sleeping dogs lie.”
“Did you know about the affair?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah, of course. I knew about it. The guys think I’m clueless about what’s going on sometimes, but I don’t get into the squabbles. I just ignore them, trying to pretend none of it exists. I was mortified when Jim raised his rifle to shoot Eddie. I thought he was just threatening him. I didn’t think he was actually going to shoot him. When he fired his rifle, I was numb. I watched Eddie stare at him for a moment, his jaw dropped, then the firearm went off. Eddie clutched his chest, and then he went down. There was a hell of a lot of blood.
“For what seemed like forever, none of us moved. Jim had lowered his rifle, but I–I just wanted to blend in with the snowy woods and pretend I wasn’t there, that I hadn’t seen what Jim had done. I was just in shock. So was Fennel. I knew—since he’d been the one to let the cat out of the bag—that he felt Jim would turn his rifle on him. If Jim had killed Fennel, he would have killed me too, since I would have been the last eyewitness. At least that’s what we thought.”
Xander drank the rest of his coffee. “Then we heard the kid in the woods, and we all realized he probably witnessed the whole rotten mess. That’s when Jim told us to help him bury Eddie fast. There was all that blood on top of the snow.” Xander gave a little shudder. “It took forever to cover it all up. And Eddie too. Then Jim told us to go after the kid. We’d taken too long to bury everything so by the time we found the tent, the teen—we discovered at that point—was gone and we couldn’t locate him. Jim was frustrated and furious. That’s when he said we had to split forces and search a broader area for the kid. Of course, I worried that there’d be more of them. I couldn’t imagine a sixteen-year-old on his own out in the snowstorm that was brewing. I tell you, I wouldn’t have done anything to him if I’d found him. Just told him to get as far away from us as he could.”
Dylan wasn’t sure he believed him.
Xander scoffed. “Hell, the one who was in danger ended up being me.” He raised his bandaged hand.
Dylan shook his head. “Fennel said it was up to Jim as to what you did to the boy.”
“Hell, no. I was like Fennel, wanting to stick together, but when Jim left us, I told Fennel we needed to rendezvous at Jim’s cabin like he told us to do and forget the kid. The boy wasn’t going to survive out there, and we couldn’t find him anyway. We couldn’t get any cell phone reception at that point, so we couldn’t check in with Jim. We trudged through the snow for what seemed like hours. Then Fennel and I argued about the quickest way to the cabin. That was my stupid mistake. I was sure he was leading us in the wrong direction. I tend to get turned around in the woods, but I couldn’t admit it to either Fennel or myself.”
“If you’d made it back to Denver, what would you have done?” Dylan asked. “With regards to the boy?”
“Nothing. That was all on Jim.”
“Fennel said that you would find the boy in Denver and talk with him.” Dylan was just curious as to what Xander would say in response. Since it had never come to that while they had Luke in safekeeping, it would all just be Xander’s word.
“Fennel might have said so, but I didn’t plan to have anything to do with it. Or with Jim any longer. If he could turn on a lifelong friend like that, none of us were safe around him. Besides, Jim has a history of flying off the handle.”
“Oh?”
“Jim’s juvenile records were sealed, but yeah. His dad, who was a lawyer at the time, got him off on all charges.”
“What had Jim done?” The news wasn’t surprising to Dylan. Oftentimes someone who was involved in illegal activities had started out at a younger age.
“We were all out hunting with a friend named Holson. We were sixteen at the time, and Holson was riding Jim about dating some girl in high school. Holson was asking if he couldn’t do any better than that, and Jim was getting madder about it by the second. I don’t know why Holson would rile him like that. It was really stupid. We were all carrying rifles. Holson knew Jim had a temper, but he just kept at it, and Jim shot him dead.”
“Hell. How did he get off? Besides that his father is a lawyer.”
“The finding was an accidental shooting while hunting. The rest of us, Eddie, me, Fennel, all knew better. But we all agreed to say that it was an accident. I wonder if Eddie would have said something differently way back then if he had known how it would have ended for him on this hunting trip,” Xander said.
“No kidding. Okay, so who tried to stop Jim from shooting Eddie?” Dylan asked.
“What?”
Dylan would have thought that despite the heat of the moment, everyone would have remembered the part where someone shouted to Jim not to do it, according to Luke’s recollection. “Someone told Jim not to shoot Eddie?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, that was me.”
“So you did try to stop Jim from shooting Eddie.”
“Uh, yeah, but Jim just went ahead and did it because when he gets that riled up, there’s no stopping him.”
“What is Jana’s last name?” Dylan asked, wanting to get a confirmation from her about the dating situation. Maybe she hadn’t stopped dating Jim and was still seeing him while she was dating Eddie also.
“I…don’t know her last name. It just never came up in any conversation.”
“Do you know how Jim met her?” Dylan asked.
“At a pub in Denver, but I don’t know which one.”
“Okay, thanks.” Dylan took their empty coffee cups. “If you have nothing more to say—”
“Watch Jim get off. He always does. If either Fennel or I had shot Eddie, Jim would have thrown us under the bus.” Xander stood up, and CJ came in to put him back in the cell.
“Thanks for talking to me,” Dylan said to Xander.
“You gotta get him or I’m afraid Fennel and I aren’t safe,” Xander said, then left the interrogation room with CJ.
Then CJ brought Fennel into the room to speak with Dylan and left them alone. “Okay, so where do you think Jim might have gone?” Dylan asked.
Fennel shrugged. “Back to his grandfather’s cabin? I don’t know.”
“If we can get him into custody, the better off you and Xander will be.”
Fennel told him about the other places Jim might be. The same ones that Xander had mentioned. Dylan wondered why Fennel would have been hesitant before to tell him where Jim might be holed up for now. If Dylan were Fennel, he’d want Jim caught. Then again, maybe Fennel felt some loyalty to Jim, no matter what had happened between the friends.
“You never said how Jim nearly killed you,” Fennel said, fishing for information, looking a bit smug again.
Dylan leaned back in his chair, figuring the way Fennel was acting, he had hoped Jim had killed him. “Is there anything else you can tell us that will help us to apprehend Jim?”
“Nope. That’s all I’ve got. Good luck.”
Dylan left the room, and CJ took Fennel back to his cell.
Dylan went to speak with Peter after that. “Okay, so can we get a team together to check out these places?”
“Yep. The same guys are going to back you up, including CJ. We’ve got to get this done before the Valentine’s Day party.” Peter smiled.
Dylan knew Peter was only joking. Who knew how long it would take to get this done? “Hey, if it runs longer than that, I want everyone to return to the party. I’ll get him on my own,” Dylan said.
Peter shook his head. “Are you kidding? Daniel and Bryan are single so they don’t have any issue with not returning in time for the celebration. But CJ, Michael, and you? I don’t even want to think of what the she-wolves would say about that. If you don’t find Jim at one of the locations in a reasonable amount of time, return here before the big event, and you can go out again after Valentine’s Day.”
“Yeah, that will work.” Though Dylan hated to have to tell Roxie he was leaving again. He was certain she would understand, but he just didn’t want to leave her. That was a complete turnaround for him from being gone all the time and glad to do it, tracking down perps, to wanting to be around home all the time to see Roxie. “Okay, I’ve got to get packed, and I’ll meet everyone—”
“At the lodge with snowmobiles gassed up and ready to go.” Peter slapped him on the back. “CJ, are you ready to go?”
“And get this done? Hell, yeah.”
Then Dylan headed back to Roxie’s house and called her. “I have some locations where Jim might be hiding out.”
“Don’t tell me they’re in Denver or another state.”
“Nope. Only fifteen to twenty miles from Jim’s grandfather’s place. So the same crew is going with me as before.”
“Oh, that’s not bad then. You’ll locate him in no time at all.”
“We hope so, but we plan to come home if we don’t find him before Valentine’s Day.”
“Unless you have a lead. The guy’s a murderer. He attempted to kill you too.”
“And he killed a friend when they were sixteen and got away with it.”
“No way,” Roxie said.
“Yeah, so he’s gotten away with murder already. If I have anything to say about it, he’s not getting away with Eddie’s murder.”
“I agree. If you can’t make it back in time for the Valentine’s Day party, you can wear your tux for our wedding. I already reserved all three banquet rooms for June eighth, new moon, no issues with shifting.”
He wanted to hug and kiss her. “I can’t wait.”
“Yeah, my sister and sisters-in-law and Nicole’s mother are helping me plan the whole thing.”
“If you need me to do anything, just let me know.”
“So you’re going now?”
“I’m almost to the house. I’m going to pack up and meet everyone at the lodge. Then we’re heading out.”
“Okay. No matter what I’m doing, just come and say goodbye before you leave,” she said.
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, honey.”
“Good. I’ve got to run. See you in a few minutes then.”
He was glad she wasn’t upset with him about not being there and even being understanding if he couldn’t make it back in time for the party. He didn’t want to miss it for anything, unless he was about to capture Jim.
He arrived at the house and pulled his camping gear out of the garage. Once he grabbed some clothes and slipped them into his backpack, he packed up food for a few days in case they had to be out for that much time.
Then he walked over to the lodge and found Roxie talking to Kayla at the front desk. He kissed Roxie. “Sorry that I have to run off again.”
“No way,” Kayla said. “You need to stop this guy from hurting anyone else.”
“I so agree.” Roxie hugged him. “Hmm, just come back to me in one piece.” She kissed him long and with feeling.
God, she felt so good pressed against him, and he wished they had time to make love one more time before he ran off into the snowy woods again.
“I’ll be waiting for you. Is Michael going with you again?” Roxie asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call up Carmela and have dinner with her until you return if she’d like.”
“Nate will be home tonight, but if he goes out of town overnight while Dylan and Michael are gone. I’ll let you know, and I’ll eat with the two of you,” Kayla said.
“Absolutely,” Roxie said.
Then the guys started showing up.
“Are we ready to go?” CJ asked.
“Yeah, let’s go so we can reach that first location pronto,” Dylan said. He kissed Roxie again and embraced her soundly. “I’ll keep you posted when I can.”
“Okay, good.”
Then the guys took off with their camping equipment and loaded everything on their snowmobiles. Dylan was so ready to get this done. He just hoped they’d find Jim at one of the cabins. The first one they looked at preferably, so they could get this over with.
“We had to release Xander and Fennel on bond. They’re returning to Denver. But at least we have both their testimonies,” CJ told Dylan. “I don’t think they’re going to run unless they’re afraid of Jim, should he return to Denver.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
Then they all mounted their snowmobiles and headed off in the direction of the first of the cabins. Dylan sure hoped they’d find Jim and no one would get hurt.