Hank: Gray Wolf Security Wyoming, #1

By Glenna Sinclair

This is the first book of the Gray Wolf Security Wyoming series, with over 50,000 words of romantic suspense. For the best reading experience, it is highly recommended to start from the very beginning with Donovan, Gray Wolf Security.

 

I'm a cowhand. I've never pretended to be anything more, but that didn't give her the right to pretend that I wasn't smart enough to have read all those fancy books she taught her students, or that I wasn't brave enough to have served my country. Her and her privileged background—what did she know about working for a living? What did she know about pride and bravery?

 

But there was something about her, something irresistible. And when she got herself caught up in the middle of the very first case Gray Wolf Security's newest office was assigned to handle—I couldn't quite find a way to keep my distance from her.

 

Would I have kept my distance if I'd known I'd have to make a choice between her and Sutherland Knight, my best friend's widow, and my boss? What the hell have I gotten myself into?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenna Sinclair
• Release date: Mar 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9798223722625

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

Prologue

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Jonnie

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I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten my laptop! Of all the things to forget the night before grades were due, I went and forgot my laptop. I had the essays my kids turned in yesterday, had the test they’d all taken today. But I’d forgotten my laptop. Wouldn’t do me much good to grade all those papers tonight if I couldn’t post the grades on the computer!

I used my key to let myself in through the heavy doors at the side of the building, wishing my classroom was on the first floor. This late at night, it was creepy to walk through the empty building all alone, especially since I had to go upstairs and down two long corridors to get to my classroom. I was a grown woman. I shouldn’t be afraid of the dark anymore, but I couldn’t quite help myself. Some fears just never disappeared.

I walked slowly, softly, trying to minimize the sound my shoes made in the dark. I managed to creep myself out with the noise I made. No one told you that when you went to school to become a teacher it would require you to do things like that. Maybe I should have done like my mother wanted and become a doctor.

Hospitals were never dark and empty like this.

But then I would have had to give up the Brontë sisters, and Poe, and Longfellow. Not something I was willing to do.

Finally, at the top of the stairs, I made my way slowly to my classroom. I was nearly there—around the corner and three yards more—when I heard glass breaking. I stopped, and my heart jumped into my throat.

What the hell was that?

A huge thud—and I wasn’t waiting around to find out. I turned and ran, no longer concerned about the sound my shoes made. That appeared to be the least of my problems now.

Chapter 1

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At the Compound

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Ash looked around his domain, thinking of how much had changed since Gray Wolf Security opened their doors nearly ten years ago. They’d begun in the living room space of a house he’d purchased on the outskirts of Santa Monica—just Ash, his brother, and three operatives. They’d grown to ten times that size, but they still managed, somehow, to keep the core of the group on the compound. But they had a more proper office downtown and another in Los Angeles. Only Ash, Donovan, and Rose still had their desks at the compound. Kirkland ran the office in Los Angeles, and Joss had graciously agreed to come back and run the office there, in Santa Monica.

Ash wasn’t sure what he would do without his loyal support staff. He’d never imagined how quickly and how hugely Gray Wolf would grow.

David, his brother, had opened a satellite office in Austin over a year ago, and it was flourishing just as quickly as the original. Already David had more business than he could handle. He and Kipling McKay, his second in command, had been forced to hire three new operatives on top of the original five. And that would probably have to be increased in the next two or three months. On top of that, they had clients all over the country. The cases they took were mostly restricted to the West Coast, but there was the occasional request for work as far east as New York and as far south as the Florida Keys. In time, they might have to open a satellite office in Chicago or Boston. For now, Ash was considering opening one in Wyoming.

He settled back behind his desk and picked up the letter—yes, a snail mail letter—that had arrived on his desk that morning. Sutherland Knight. That was a name straight out of his past. Sutherland was a beautiful, gentle woman he’d met over fifteen years ago, while still a member of the Green Berets. She was a sergeant assigned to the clerk’s office at Fort Bragg while she recovered from an injury sustained overseas. Ash found her to be by the book and a little abrasive, but one of the guys on his squad, Mitchell Knight, had been blown away by her big, gray eyes and rare smile. He was persistent when it came to Sutherland. Ash was almost ready to tie the man up when Mitchell had finally made a breakthrough by convincing Sutherland to write him while he was deployed in Afghanistan.

It was a passionate courtship that Ash felt almost privileged to witness. He’d never been more proud to stand as best man at a wedding—not that he’d done it much, just a handful of times over the years. And as such, he’d never been more devastated to witness the grief that came with making a personal notification after the death of one of the soldiers under his command.

Ash set the letter down, his memories haunting him as they often did. They’d been on patrol around their base, a routine patrol that should have ended in a tightly contested card game and a lot of drinking. But no one ever plans ahead for an IED, left on the side of the road by citizen soldiers who thought they were fighting a war with greater meaning than the War on Terror the American Government had declared against the Taliban.

A wrong step, a second faster lead, and it would have been Ash’s body torn to pieces by the device. Instead, it was Mitchell, his legs blown away in the blink of an eye. As Ash assured him he’d be okay, despite the liters of blood flowing into the thirsty ground, Mitchell forced him to promise that he would watch over Sutherland for the rest of her life. It was an easy promise to make in the heat of the moment. Not an easy promise to fulfill, especially when Sutherland was the kind of woman who refused to ask for help, let alone accept it when it was offered.

Ash picked up the letter again, rereading the final line:

I’m sure things will pick up over the summer with the upcoming rodeo circuit and the new calves we expect to be produced this spring. If we can just get our luck to change a little...

Sutherland had left the army three months before Mitchell’s death to take over the ranch that had been in the Knight family for nearly two hundred years when Mitchell’s father—his only family besides Sutherland—died. Sutherland had been pregnant at the time, but was still reluctant to leave the service, the only real structure she’d ever had in her life. Mitchell had promised, however, to muster out upon his return to the States after that tour, and join her in time to be by her side when the baby was born.

He died weeks before his return, leaving her alone with a child on the way and a massive ranch needing a competent leader.

It’d been a difficult decade for Sutherland Knight. Ash kept tabs on her, sending her what he could when she’d accept it. The thing was, even though Ash knew Sutherland was struggling, she refused to take anything from him or anyone else. She wanted to do it all on her own. It was frustrating as all hell, especially now since Ash had done a little snooping and discovered that Sutherland and MidKnight Ranch were in desperate financial straits. If Sutherland didn’t generate over thirty thousand in profit by September this year, she’d default on a loan with a balloon payment for which the ranch was collateral.

She’d lose everything.

Yet she refused to ask for help. Ash couldn’t sit back and let Sutherland become homeless, but he also knew she wouldn’t let him pay her debt for her.

Ash had an idea, but he needed to talk it over with David first. That’s why he was waiting for David to contact him over Skype. They were partners in all this, even though Gray Wolf was Ash’s baby. David had invested just as much in the satellite office as Ash had. This next step had to be a mutual decision.

Rose wandered over, dropping a pile of paperwork on Ash’s desk.

You have a meeting in an hour.

Thank you, Mother, he said, bowing from his waist.

Rose smacked his shoulder, a smile on her face as she turned and walked away.

The computer beeped just then, signaling that Skype was coming to life.

Brother, Ash said, smiling as David’s image filled his computer screen, his small daughter tucked in his arms with a bottle wedged between David’s chin and the baby’s mouth. I would ask how things are going, but I can see for myself.

David adjusted his hold on the baby and sighed. It’s been a long couple of months. But we’re finally falling into a pretty good routine.

At least Ricki is back on her feet, right?

That is a blessing. David settled back, reaching for a file folder just out of sight of the camera. We have the latest figures here—

I didn’t ask you to Skype to talk about that. I have another issue I’d like to discuss with you.

Oh? David’s eyebrows rose. What’s going on? Everyone all right out there?

Everyone’s fine. Mina and the kids are on their way to the store as we speak to get a new summer wardrobe. Those kids go through clothes faster than anything I’ve ever seen.

David laughed. Don’t I know it!

Ash smiled, too, but then his thoughts went back to Sutherland and the little girl whose picture she’d sent along with the letter. He glanced at it now, his logical mind calculating the expense of the glasses the child wore and the little dress that looked as though it was already a bit too small. Those things cost money, too.

You remember me talking about Mitchell Knight’s widow, Sutherland, right?

The one in Wyoming?

Yes.

I remember. You went to visit her last year, right?

He had, along with his wife Mina. They’d spent a week camping out near the river that ran across the back of Sutherland’s property and hunting with her foreman, Shelby Sloane, there on the ranch. It was one of the most relaxing vacations Ash had had in a long time, though he wasn’t sure his wife appreciated it much. She was more of a hotel-room-service kind of girl.

She’s struggling right now, but she’s too proud to accept help from anyone. So, I was thinking... we’ve been taking a lot more cases up in the Wyoming, Montana area. More than I ever anticipated when we started branching out up there. I think it would be incredibly helpful if we had a base of operations up there.

You want to open a satellite office in Wyoming?

On Sutherland’s ranch.

David set the baby’s bottle down and lifted her onto his shoulder, his expression thoughtful.

It would certainly benefit both of us. Kipling just sent one of our operatives to Cheyenne last night to cover a security case for a business with a branch office there.

That’s my thought exactly. If we had an office up there, we wouldn’t have to send our own personnel to cover things like that. There would already be people up there. And if we did have to send some of our own people, they would have backup right there, waiting to help.

That would be ideal.

And it would help Sutherland out. Become a source of revenue for her that would help her with the ranch.

Would she be open to that sort of idea?

That was the question. Ash wasn’t completely sure Sutherland would appreciate the suggestion. But as a former soldier, he was hoping he could appeal to her sense of comradery and loyalty.

There’s only one way to find out.

Well, David said, drawing out the word, I think it would be worth approaching her.

I was hoping you and Kipling would be willing to fly out there with me this weekend.

The team approach? David smiled, his eyes moving wistfully over his infant son. How long would we be gone?

Not long. A couple of days.

David’s eyes came up to the camera, the idea of a short break from his expanding family filling his expression with something very much like relief. Ash understood completely. He’d been there himself.

We’ll take the private plane. I’ll pick you up Friday afternoon.

David only nodded.

***

Midnight, Wyoming was a tiny town in the middle of central Wyoming, one of those places that just sort of sprung up in the epicenter of the large ranches that were the only source of commerce in this dusty, godforsaken landscape nearly two hundred years ago. It was named after the largest of all the ranches, MidKnight Ranch, founded in 1827 by Nathaniel Knight of Rhode Island. No one believed a man from Rhode Island could survive on the plains of the west. Nathaniel not only survived, but he created a ranch that withstood all the natural disasters and agricultural nightmares of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And his ranch still survived and would, someday, belong to his great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Mitchell Knight, Sutherland’s eleven-year-old daughter.

The history of it all was impressive to Ash. He couldn’t help but consider it all every time he drove through this small community.

Sutherland stepped out of the house as they drove up in the rental car. She looked exactly as she had fifteen years ago, when Ash first set eyes on her: willowy in her height, thin, but curvy, the kind of woman who looked good in both jeans and a formal gown. She had long, brown hair that had highlights of red and gold that made the brown a much richer color than it should have been. Her eyes were gray, her skin a deep tan that brought out the beauty in her face that much more, reducing the impact of her stubborn, independent personality.

Ash had always seen exactly what Mitchell had loved in her.

Ash, she said with a smile as he walked into her welcoming embrace. What a lovely surprise!

It’s good to see you too, Sutherland.

She stepped back to look up at him, a little wariness in her eyes. Not to be rude, but why are you here? You rarely ever come out here and when you do, you give me a lot more notice.

We have a business proposition for you.

The wariness turned into surprise. And suspicion. What kind of business proposition?

Can’t we go inside first?

Tell me now because I might not want you in my home after.

Ash bit back a chuckle. Some things never changed.

Before he could tell her, though, Kipling and David had joined them. Sutherland’s eyes darkened at the sight of her husband’s former squad commander.

Captain McKay, she said, pulling back so that she could pull a proper salute.

We’re not in the service anymore, Sergeant Knight.

Kipling returned her salute despite his words, but then he pulled her in for a tight hug. Ash swore he saw tears in the man’s eyes. Kipling was one of the toughest men he’d ever known, but there was clearly a soft spot in his heart for