Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Thank you for being here,” she breathed, eyes closed. Either she was enjoying his touch, or she couldn’t bear to leave her eyes open. “I’d be dead if you weren’t.”

  “I shouldn’t have let you come. I’m supposed to be protecting you.”

  “You did. You threw yourself over me. That’s, like, mastery level protection. You covered my body with yours. What’s bigger than that?”

  “Making sure you weren’t here to begin with. I could’ve started there.”

  “I’m not going to treat my house like a prison cell,” she reminded him with an edge in her voice. “I’m not going to let you lock me up there. I’m going to go on with my life—as much as I can, anyway. So I would’ve gotten in a fight over wanting to come along, and eventually, I would’ve won because technically you’re working for me, and to a point, you have to do what I say.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, you know.” He had to laugh.

  “Am I?” Her eyes opened slightly, taking him in with a quirked brow. “It wasn’t worth the fight. I’m tired of fighting. I mean, if we’d fought over my coming along and that person, whoever they are, shot me? The last thing I would’ve done would’ve been fighting. That’s not how I want to spend the end of my life, you know?”

  “Don’t even talk that way.”

  “I’m not trying to be morbid. You know I’m right.” She looked down at the hair hanging over her shoulder, cascading down her chest. Only then did he realize he was still touching her. “Am I okay?”

  “You’re the most okay person I ever met—but don’t let that go to your head.” He stroked her hair one more time before withdrawing his hand. Just like that, a sense of loss washed over him. The light in the room seemed to dim slightly.

  He heard the cars pulling into the lot and knew it was time to switch gears. His heart wanted to stay there, next to her, speaking quietly. Absorbing her. Adoring her. The rest of the team had different ideas. His phone rang within moments.

  “They’re going up to the space across from us,” he explained, standing by the broken window and looking down at the street. Logan, Jace, and Zane crossed from the lot, surveying the street around them before entering the building.

  Meanwhile, Marnie gave Braxton the codes he needed to get into their building. He was with them soon afterward, whistling softly at the sight of so much broken glass. “How many rounds, I wonder?” he muttered to himself, looking around.

  “Enough,” Sledge assured him, helping Marnie to her feet. She sparkled from so many splintered shards stuck to her jeans. “You might wanna, you know, brush that off.” He wouldn’t take the liberty as much as he wanted to.

  He had to turn away instead of watching as she ran her hands over herself—no matter how much he wanted to. Braxton seemed to understand, switching the topic quickly. “They’re probably well gone by now,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  “And they probably didn’t leave anything behind,” Sledge added. “We know this, but it’s worth at least checking out. We’ve gotta find some lead on them sometime.”

  “The computers are okay?” Braxton noticed Marnie checking them out.

  “Yeah. They’re both okay,” she breathed, miming wiping sweat off her brow.

  “Good—they probably wanted to destroy those too,” Sledge growled. His wolf was dangerously close to getting free, exploding from him. The word rage didn’t come close to encompassing what he was going through.

  Jace called. “Not a trace,” he reported, which came as no surprise. “The office is empty; it looks unused.”

  “So they would’ve had to know the space was available,” Sledge sighed, staring out the window.

  “I have to wonder if they have a lease on it,” Logan suggested. “I’ll pass that along to Val. She can look into the records.”

  “I wanna get her home.” Sledge glanced over to where Marnie hung back, arms wrapped around herself. She chewed her lip, gnawing away. He wondered if it hurt and then wondered if she even felt it.

  “Yeah, you should,” Logan agreed. “Get her out of here. She’s already been through enough today.”

  Truer words had never been spoken.

  “Wait.” Braxton stood behind him, almost too close.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered, not sure if he should laugh or shrink away.

  “Do you even know you were wounded?” Braxton touched his back—and only then did he feel there was something wrong. Something different.

  It had probably already healed to the point where the bullet was trapped inside him, but he’d definitely been hit during the gunfire.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You’re gonna need to hand over all contact information for whoever you dealt with.”

  Marnie nodded, turning away from Sledge in favor of staring out the window. It wasn’t like she actually noticed anything out there—everything went by in a blur. “Sure.”

  “Really? Not even an argument?”

  She knew he was trying to keep things as light as he could to make her feel better. Not everything could be painful and stressful. That was the only thing that kept her from lashing out if only to vent some of the pain building up in her chest and her head. “No. No argument. You can have whatever you want. I hope you kill all of them.”

  “Well,” he murmured. “It’s nice to have permission, and I sure want to. Did you know that?”

  “That you want to kill the people responsible?” She snickered. “Good. Do you have a plan?”

  He chuckled. “Nothing concrete since I have no idea yet exactly who they are. We’ll find out. We’ll find them. I have no doubt about it.”

  “I’m glad you’re so sure of yourself. At least one of us is.” Her voice cracked a little, and she couldn’t bring herself to care. What was the point of hiding all this fear? What was the point of anything?

  “You’ll be fine after this. I know you will.”

  “I don’t know how.” She ran a trembling hand over her face. “Who am I? How smart could I actually be if I didn’t see how bad these people are?”

  “Don’t blame yourself for that. Don’t ever.”

  “I’m an idiot. All I saw was what I could get out of that contract.”

  “Why not? It’s your business. You’re supposed to land those important contracts that’ll bring in plenty of money. Obviously. Why wouldn’t you go for it?”

  “Even so. I feel like I should’ve known. I should’ve felt something.”

  “I know there’s no point in arguing,” he sighed. “You were right when you said there’s no point in wasting your time fighting. I’m not gonna fight with you now. Just… be better to yourself. You’ve already been through enough.”

  “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  He snickered like he thought she was kidding—when she didn’t join him, he made a choking noise. “You’re serious?”

  “Yeah. Why do you care how I feel about this? That’s not your job. Your job is to find these people and protect me—which you did, the protecting part. You’ve been doing it all this time. But you don’t have to pump me up mentally.”

  “For all you know, that is part of my job. It’s what I do.”

  “Is it rude of me to say I don’t believe that?”

  He snickered again. “What makes you not believe me?”

  “You don’t seem like the sort of guy who wants to get all emotionally wrapped up with people—and hey, it’s not like I can’t relate. I don’t love getting all emotional either.”

  “Maybe there’s more to me than meets the eye. Maybe there’s a lot more going on than what you see on the outside. Maybe I like you a lot more than I like a lot of other people.”

  “You like me?” A laugh bubbled up before she could stop it.

  “What’s wrong with that? Listen, if I didn’t like you, you’d know it. I wouldn’t even want to waste time on you if I didn’t like you. Trust me. This would be nothing more than a job.”

  “It’s more than a job?”<
br />
  “Why are you pushing me?” he chuckled. He was in a surprisingly good mood for someone who’d just withstood gunfire. Either he was in shock, just pushing everything away and pretending nothing was wrong, or this was something so ordinary that it didn’t even make a dent on his psyche.

  If that was the truth, what sort of person was he? Had combat turned him into this man? He wasn’t even shaky, not a little bit. He might’ve died.

  She looked his way, studying him the way she would’ve studied a data set. This was her wheelhouse; this was where she felt confident.

  And the first thing she noticed was the dried blood on the back of his shirt and the tears in the fabric. How had she missed that before? Because she was too busy evaluating her fragility, how quickly her entire life could’ve winked out like a star.

  “Were you injured?” she gasped. “Oh, my God!”

  “No, no.” He shook his head hard, though he never took his eyes from the road. “I’m good.”

  “But—”

  “I might’ve been grazed by some flying glass, but it’s nothing.”

  She couldn’t help but doubt it. “But your shirt is torn. There was blood. You were bleeding! Do you need to go to the hospital, maybe?”

  “No. Honestly, I’m fine. I’ve been through much worse than this.”

  It would be easy to believe that, to swallow that pill and accept what he wanted her to think, and he probably had been through worse than what they’d seen and heard that morning, but that didn’t make a person suddenly heal up after an injury like nothing had happened.

  There had to be more to him than he was letting on.

  “Don’t overthink this,” he murmured. His jaw was tight, just like his hands on the steering wheel. “Seriously. I understand the impulse to avoid thinking about your own situation, but don’t turn that focus on me.”

  “Why not? What are you hiding?”

  “Who said I’m hiding anything?”

  “The fact that you don’t want me to ask any questions and you won’t give me straight answers.”

  “You’re an intelligent person,” he murmured, staring straight ahead. “Do you know what it means when somebody doesn’t want to share things about themselves?”

  “It can mean lots of things. Either they have something to hide, or they’ve been through a lot of pain and it’s too difficult to talk about their experiences. Or they’ve had a bad history of opening up to people, so they don’t want to go through that anymore.”

  “Okay. That makes sense.” Boy, was he good at keeping things to himself. He didn’t offer a single thing on his own without prompting. And not much even then.

  “So which is it? Pain? Crappy history? Or something to hide?”

  “You’re tough.”

  “Yes. I am. But only when I care enough to be.” She sighed, smiling faintly. “That was how Beth knew we were hiring the right people—when I found somebody I cared about and genuinely liked.”

  Just like that, she had no choice but to cover her face with her hands to cover the tears spilling onto her cheeks. “I really liked Carla and Mike. I don’t like a lot of people, but they were good. They were quality people. I know that sounds snobby.”

  “It doesn’t. Not at all. You don’t have to like everybody. You don’t have to let everybody into your life. I respect that.”

  “Thanks.” She brushed away what was left on her cheeks. How many times had she broken down in front of this man? Right down to the panic attack when he was on top of her.

  And how embarrassing, knowing the panic wasn’t just because of the gunshots. It was because she didn’t know what to do with herself when he was that close. It was the guilt—actual guilt—over knowing she should care more about the threat of death than about the man shielding her with his body.

  It was not knowing what to do or how to process the war being waged in her head and deep down in her core, where a fire blazed out of control. Was there something wrong with her? Was it even right to care more about not knowing what to do with herself than she had about almost dying?

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t been afraid of dying. Each burst of fire, each crash of glass, had been harrowing beyond belief not knowing what was happening next, whether something even worse would happen.

  She realized it could’ve been complete overwhelm that led her to focus on Sledge rather than the fear of what was coming. That made sense—and it helped her breathe easier since it meant there wasn’t something completely wrong with her.

  Maybe.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted.

  “Who would in a situation like this when you’ve never been through it before?” Sure, let him think she was only concerned with the assassin who had her in their crosshairs. That was safer.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered, which wasn’t a lie. She was scared of dying, scared of what her future would be if she managed to live.

  She was terrified of the man she sat next to but not because she thought he’d hurt her—not in the usual way. She wasn’t afraid he’d use his body or his strength against her.

  She was afraid he’d use it in the way she wanted him to, the way she fantasized about him even when she didn’t intend to, afraid of why her body had just about burst into flame at his presence over her, covering her, making contact with hers in so many places at once.

  What if he gave her what she wanted? What if the walls broke down and there was nothing but the two of them and she finally felt and experienced things she’d closed herself off from for so long… and he didn’t want anything to do with her when it was all over? What if she regretted it?

  What if she had to let him go when she wasn’t ready? She’d be without him, without Beth. All alone really.

  How could she handle that? How was she supposed to live with that?

  Was there really anything in her life worth living for?

  Yes. She was scared. More than she’d ever been.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “How’s everything looking out there?” Sledge walked past the front windows, glancing out as he did.

  “Quiet,” Zane reported. “Which I’m not complaining about. His car’s not in the driveway.”

  “Was it there when you arrived?”

  “No—we know he didn’t go to the office since Marnie told him not to.”

  “What office they have left.”

  “What are you doing about the slug?”

  Sledge winced. Was it just his imagination making him feel it, or did the lead slug lodged in his beck really move around when Zane mentioned it? Probably all in his head—but maybe not.

  “Doc said he’d come in and take it out for me tonight when she’s asleep. I could’ve gone in now and had it over with, but I don’t wanna leave her alone.”

  “Hell, I wouldn’t wanna be alone if I were her,” Zane admitted. “Especially since this is all so new. How did she react earlier?”

  “Like you’d expect a person to react the first time somebody ever shot at them. I almost crushed her trying to make sure she was covered. She panicked. She’s been in a weird place ever since. I can barely get a word out of her since we reached the house.”

  “She needs a little time to process everything.”

  “She needs a lot of things,” Sledge muttered, looking up the stairs. She was up there alone. He hated the thought of leaving her that way, nothing but her and her thoughts swirling around. “And she refuses to accept most of what I wanna give her.”

  “You can’t force it. I know that’s not easy for any of us. She’ll come around if it’s right. But she’s already so freaked out. She’s got so much to wrap her head around. And don’t grumble or get pissy.”

  “I’m not grumbling or getting pissy.”

  “You sound a lot like it.”

  “Who are you? My mother? Honestly.”

  “I just wanna see things work out for you, man. That’s all.”

  It was rare hearing Zane speak that way. He was always the
funny guy, always cracking jokes and easing the tension in a situation. There were times when it got to the point where Sledge wondered if it was all a little too much for him. Nobody had it in them to lighten the mood all the time, to always have a smile and a smart comment.

  Rather than pointing this out and breaking Zane’s balls for suddenly getting so serious, he asked, “What’s Dan’s neighborhood like?”

  “Quaint. Old. Lots of twists and turns on the streets. They’re narrow too. Like almost too narrow for cars to park at the curb.”

  “Lots of neighbors?”

  “Sure—there are houses lining both sides of the street, and I’ve already seen the older ladies sitting on their porches having coffee or whatever. I doubt much happens on this street that at least somebody doesn’t witness.”

  “We want that,” Sledge reminded him. Some of the tension melted out of his shoulders when he heard it. “Less chance of anyone sneaking around without being noticed. Have you asked any questions?”

  “Not yet—I’m parked across from the house and wanna wait until Dan gets here. Once I know he’s settled in without any major disaster, I’ll approach somebody and ask whether they’ve heard or seen anything out of place.”

  “Sounds good. And Logan’s at Alex’s by now, and everything looks okay over there.”

  “Maybe today was all about stalking Marnie,” Zane mused.

  “I wish I could believe we’d get that lucky,” Sledge admitted. “I doubt it.”

  “There’s that positive attitude. It would be like a day without sunshine.”

  “Shut up.” He laughed though since it was practically impossible sometimes not to laugh at Zane’s jokes. “Besides, you know I’m right. I doubt this is all focused on her. And I know I got lucky. I just happened to be with her when the shooting started. If it had been just half a minute sooner…”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Zane advised, and he wasn’t joking anymore. “That way lies madness. You can’t torture yourself over what might’ve happened if this or that had gone differently. There’s a reason things went like they did. You were with her at the time, and that’s a good thing, and you were obviously supposed to be with her to protect her. Don’t overthink it.”