A Mate for the Alpha and His Brothers by Cara Adams

and put them on the floor by Favian and then lie down. JJ, you get a couple of coats and lie on the floor by the backseat. If they’re looking for anyone, it’ll be you two.”
    Brayden was starting to get a bad feeling about this. He wasn’t a stunt driver. “We’re about ten, fifteen minutes from the Mackinac Bridge.”
    “Do you think they’ll try to push us off the bridge?” asked JJ.
    The boy was trying to sound brave, but Brayden suspect there was a very real fear behind that question. Fortunately Favian, ever the joker asked, “Why? Don’t you like swimming?”
    “Fully dressed, inside a minivan, and a couple of hundred feet above the lake? Not really, no,” said JJ.
    Brayden laughed. “Good answer.”
    “There’s a lot of steel in the bridge. I think it’d be harder to push us off there than just about anywhere else,” said Favian.
    “Hi, Dad. We might have collected a barnacle. We’re coming up to the bridge, and he’s just sitting behind us.”
    There was a pause, and then Amory said, “Yes. Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Okay. Sounds good.”
    Brayden listened hard, but he couldn’t hear anything their father was saying. Well, no doubt Amory would give them enough information to deal with the problem. He supposed it was fair enough that he’d been driving. Favian could protect Elsie and JJ, and Amory would guide their rescuers, or someone, to make a diversion and help them out.
    “Get off I-75 at St. Ignace. Go north and take 123 into the forest. The pack should be able to get there in time to meet us,” said Amory.
    “That’s all good, but what about the bridge?” asked Brayden.
    “Drive fast on it. Don’t worry about a ticket at a time like this,” suggested Favian.
    “A ticket might be good. With the police hanging around us, the white car will disappear. But I’m going to feel like seven kinds of an idiot if it’s just an innocent traveler who realized they’d been speeding and decided to slow down,” he said.
    “Except that you’ve sped up again, and so have they,” said Elsie.
    Yeah. There was that. He hoped to hell everyone was correct and no one would be interested in causing trouble on the bridge. He recalled it as having a lot of steel wires and things. But he still suspected a damn hard push at high speed would have them flying off the roadway and into the water.

    * * * *

    Amory felt guilty. He’d been so busy answering his damn e-mails and reading reports that he hadn’t even noticed the car tailing them. Now he tried to keep his head down as if he was still looking at his iPad while simultaneously trying to learn all he could about the car behind them. It might look easy in the movies, but it was damn difficult in real life. Every time the car came into view and he tried to read the license plate, they’d go around a bend or the car would move more directly behind them or something else would happen. It must have taken him four or five miles before he was certain he’d correctly identified the plate so he could text it to one of his business contacts.
    Being followed. Who are these people?
    On it.
    Well, that was good news. Probably. The traffic was slowing down considerably. Brayden edged ahead of several cars, squeezing into a gap and placing three vehicles between them and the white car.
    “Nicely done, bro.”
    “Hey, the bridge is a major tourist attraction. It’s important our guests get to see it.”
    “Does this mean I can get up off the floor now?” asked Elsie.
    Amory looked around. There seemed to be some holdup ahead, and they were in a steady stream of slow traffic.
    “Yes, sure. But the moment we get to St. Ignace on the other side, you and JJ need to be on the floor, understand?”
    “Yes, sir.” That was JJ already peering out the window.
    Elsie was slower, taking the seat beside Favian and staring out her window.
    The reason for the delay was explained when they reached the entrance to the bridge, as there was a tour bus and the