Outfoxed by Love (Kodiak Point Book 2) Read Free

veteran, and my mother taught me to respect my elders.”
    Elder? Boris growled. “I just turned thirty-one.” Which was only about six years older than the pup beside him. Some days it felt like a hundred years.
    “Middle -aged, I know, and still single. That’s gotta suck. Maybe if you grew a moose-tache you’d snag yourself a lady.” Travis slapped his leg and laughed.
    Boris gave his steering a sharp jerk and sent his passenger’s head rapping off the glass. As if the young grizzly took offense. Travis chuckled harder. “You military types with your fetish for being clean shaven. Which I guess is cool. Chicks probably dig that too. On the bright side, at least you’re not living in your mom’s basement or something. Because that, you know, would be really pathetic.”
    “Says the boy still living at home.”
    “Hey, I’m the man of the house. I have my own bedroom upstairs, and I’m barely on my Xbox these days.”
    “Only because every time you logged on I kicked your ass at Call of Duty .” A man trying to forget the war playing a war game? Don’t judge him. He found it soothing—and liked following Travis’ avatar around and shooting him; anger therapy that didn’t leave bruises.
    “One of these days, dude, we are going to have to go head to head in a Kinects Sports battle.”
    “Bring it, cub.”
    “You got it, old man.”
    The banal banter served its purpose. It kept Boris’s mind from veering down dark paths. Twisted violent ones where he couldn’t help but imagine finding Jan in a pool of blood, her lovely blue eyes staring unseeing and crimson matting her golden hair.
    A vision made more concrete once he found the wreckage. He almost didn’t spot it, the wind having smoothed over the tracks her SUV made when it plowed over the steep edge of the gorge. It was Travis, damn him, who spotted the clue.
    “Dude, something took out the snowbank.”
    Which just went to show how frazzled Boris was. He should have seen it first. Usually he would have, and it was stupid little things like this that made him more determined than ever to stay away from Jan. The woman addled his mind, whether present or not.
    Boris slammed on the brakes, and the truck fishtailed slightly. He hopped out of the cab and circled around to the other side for a closer look.
    As if he could see much in the dark. Enhanced eyesight was all well and good, but it only went so far.
    “Light,” he ordered.
    Travis fumbled in the back of his truck for a moment before a blinding beam lit the slope angling away from the road. Despite the wind doing its best to sweep the area clean, evidence of something plowing a trail was clear, but even more telling was the crumpled truck at the bottom of the steep embankment, its front end embracing a tree.
    Boris didn’t recall moving . All he knew was he half slid, half jogged down the steep incline, eyes trained on the wreck, inhaling as well as he could the scents in the area. Nothing fresh jumped out at him, but the lingering aroma of blood and animal, many animals, permeated the area. He also couldn’t help but note the numerous snowmobile tracks.
    Reaching the bottom, he slowed his steps as his old friend fear—a fucking asshole he kept trying to ditch but who kept coming back—made him dread peeking through the smashed driver side window of the all-too-familiar crushed SUV.
    He offered up his first silent prayer in years. Please let her be alive. Jan might vex him, but Jan was too beautiful and bright to die so young.
    A noisy breath escaped him when he saw the empty cab. No bodies. Yet.
    He turned to survey the area , the shadows mocking him in the bobbing beam of the flashlight Travis brought with him.
    The grizzly skidded to a stop beside him. “No sign of Jan or Tammy?”
    Boris shook his head.
    “Think whoever was on these sleds took her and the human chick?”
    If they had, Boris would get them back.
    Despite Boris’ dislike of the cub, Travis was a decent tracker. Between