“I know it’s not.” Braxton hit him with an appraising look. “You’re not normally this dark. You’re usually the one telling us all to lighten up, that we’re being too serious and things aren’t as bad as we assume they are. What gives?”
What gives? It was almost enough to make him laugh. “Uh, let’s see. I came within yards of being run down on the road. I was almost blown up earlier in the week. I’ve seen what this has done to Marnie, our client who by the way is still in danger every minute these bastards walk the earth. Yeah. I’m a little less positive than I normally would be, I guess.”
“Okay. Point taken.” Braxton let out a low whistle as he turned back to the bank of monitors.
Rather than argue further, Zane left him alone. He didn’t understand. None of them did.
Hell, even he didn’t. All he knew was the sooner they got the girl to talk, the better for everyone.
Sledge was down in the living room with Marnie, trying to cheer her up by watching some mindless teen comedy from years earlier. “I liked this one,” he murmured, standing off to the side. The three of them watched as a teenager tried to climb a tree to look in a girl’s bedroom window.
“Was this ever considered funny?” Marnie asked, wincing as the boy took out a pair of binoculars. “I mean, it’s creepy. Right?”
“Times change,” Sledge shrugged, putting an arm around her shoulders. “There’s a lot of things that were acceptable back then, even laughed at.”
“Yes. By the people who did those things. Not by the people they were done to, I’d be willing to make a bet.” She shot him a dirty look. “What—did you climb a tree to look into a girl’s window as she was getting undressed?”
“Can I plead the fifth?” he asked, laughing when she elbowed him in the ribs. “No, of course, I didn’t. That’s gross and pathetic.”
“But you wanted to?” she asked, eyeing him up.
Sledge looked to Zane, clearly needing backup. Zane only held up his hands. “I’m not a part of this. I know better.”
“Thanks a lot,” his friend growled before turning to Marnie. “I mean, yeah. Maybe. When you’re a kid, you don’t think about things the way they are. Your hormones are pushing you in a bunch of different directions at once, and they definitely do your thinking for you. It’s like you’re not in control of yourself half the time.”
Funny. They’d pretty much gone back to being those people—out of control, with no understanding of what was happening to their bodies. All thanks to a bunch of so-called scientists in a lab seeing if they could put together an army full of super-soldiers, men and women impervious to serious injury who healed almost instantly the way shifters did.
They hadn’t counted on creating more shifters when they’d injected the bleeding, dying soldiers with shifter blood.
“I think I’ll leave you two to your movie,” Zane announced when it was clear Sledge was looking to him for help. He might not have been in the mood for joking, but he still saw the humor in leaving his friend at the mercy of an indignant mate. Better Sledge than himself since Marnie was no pushover.
Besides, he couldn’t seem to settle down. He’d never felt this restless before. It was almost enough to make him shift, to give in to what his wolf wanted: to be free to run, to feel the wind in his fur. Not exactly advisable in a residential area.
Not advisable with an assassin upstairs, either.
Logan crossed paths with him. The team leader placed a hand on his shoulder. “I was just about to round everyone up so we can talk strategy. It’s time to wake up Sleeping Beauty and see what she has to say.”
His wolf was glad, finally ceasing the endless pacing he’d been doing around Zane’s mind. “Good. I’m ready whenever you are.”
“You’re ready?” Logan tipped his head to the side, his piercing eyes fixed on Zane’s. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m going to be the one to question her,” he announced, and he meant it. He could hardly wait to get started.
Chapter Two
This was interesting.
On the one hand, she knew the people she worked for were going to kill her—or at least, they were going to do their absolute best. Her desperation had led her to reveal her existence to her targets and beg for their help.
Not her proudest moment by a long shot.
They were now holding her hostage in a tastefully appointed guest bedroom—the guest bedroom of a girl she was supposed to take part in killing.
On the other hand? This was a very comfortable room. Being a hostage could’ve been a lot less comfortable. Granted, she wasn’t exactly in the best shape. Just sitting up and crossing to the bathroom was enough to make her groan—softly since she knew there was almost always somebody lurking around outside the bedroom door.
So, the threat of death aside, this was not the worst situation she’d ever been in, not by far.
But the clock was ticking. She could practically hear it. They’d start demanding things soon—it surprised her that they hadn’t made strong demands yet, frankly. Two days of pretending to be too dazed and weak and pained to speak were as long as they’d give her. She could feel it.
Especially when that one guy stood at the side of the bed and stared down at her. She’d caught a glimpse of him as he was leaving and recognized him as the one who’d driven her to the house after unceremoniously dumping her in the back seat of his truck. A real gentleman. Good thing she didn’t have a back or neck injury, considering that treatment.
In her heart of hearts—a place she didn’t spend a lot of time in, admittedly—she probably wouldn’t have been much gentler were their roles reversed. She would’ve thrown him into the back of that truck like he was a bag of dirty laundry.
They were talking about her. She could hear them through the floorboards, which meant they were probably just beneath her. She considered getting on her hands and knees and touching her ear to the floor, but even she had her limits. It seemed sort of degrading even when there was no one there to see her, especially when she didn’t need specifics.
No, she already knew there was no love lost between them. She was the enemy, and this was more than likely just as foreign to them as it was to her, the fact that they were in a position where they needed her help.
They certainly weren’t happy about it, a bunch of deep voices overlapping, occasionally rising in volume before another voice shut them down. This happened again and again until she wondered whether they’d be able to keep it together long enough to protect Marnie and her—and themselves since somebody wanted them dead too.
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs. She sat up a little straighter in bed, pillows behind her, running her hands over her hair to smooth down any flyaways left over from sleeping. Marnie had lent her a T-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. Hardly her normal working uniform, but those clothes had been soaked and uncomfortable when they reached the house. Her caretaker had hardly broken his neck to get her into the house before she was half-drowned.
Not that she remembered. She’d been unconscious. Only when she woke up and found herself in someone else’s clothes had one of the guys—not the one who’d put her in his car; she knew him from their altercation on the road—explained that Marnie had changed her.
It was almost funny the way he’d looked at the floor when he said it like it was embarrassing to even talk about something like that, like a man big enough to throw her around the room was embarrassed by just mentioning the fact that she’d been out of her clothes for a minute.
It was enough to make her wish she’d learned more about them, but there hadn’t been time. Everything had started to fall apart in those last few days.
Now, at least one of them was coming up the stairs, heading her way. They were out of patience. How far would they go to get the answers they wanted?
That was the sort of thing she would have to wait to find out.
She didn’t have to wait long.
The door opened, and her heart sank when
she saw who was in the lead. It was him. The one who clearly had a problem with her. Not that the rest of them were friendly, not that they liked her, but he had a personal issue. It might as well have been written on his frustratingly handsome face.
A few of the others waited in the hall, standing around with their arms folded, looking stern and serious and like she was in big, big trouble if she didn’t play nice. It would’ve been a good effect, one she might even find nerve-wracking if it wasn’t for the way they kept glancing at their buddy, then at each other.
There was something wrong. She’d been through enough situations like this to see it clearly. Either they didn’t trust him with her, or they didn’t trust her with him. Since she was clearly at a disadvantage, at least physically—he was easily twice her size; they all were—she had to go with the former.
Shouldn’t that have bothered her? Shouldn’t it have made her nervous, jittery? What it most definitely should not have done was give her a sense of satisfaction, a little thrill that ran up her spine.
For the first time in forever, she might be able to match wits with someone. It really had been too long.
He cleared his throat, taking his place at the foot of the bed. There he stood, his eyes hard as he stared down at where she sat. Interesting eyes, almost amber-colored. The sort of eyes a girl could get used to staring into under better circumstances.
Under better circumstances, she wouldn’t have minded seeing him standing at the foot of her bed, not even looking the way he did just then—like he wanted to tear her apart. There were times when a girl wanted a man to look at her that way.
Then, he opened his mouth to speak, and that brief, lust-fueled illusion broke. “Who are you?” he demanded.
Very serious, this one. That made it even more fun for her, though he didn’t know it. She could almost feel sorry for him. “That’s it? No easing into it? No small talk?”
He flinched, brows drawing together, his mouth tightening into a thin line. Was it her imagination, or was there a smattering of laughter from the hall?
“The time for small talk has passed,” he informed her. “You’ve been here for two days. We’ve already wasted enough time.”
She nodded slowly. He was very serious, intense. She shouldn’t play with him; she knew it, but it was too much to resist. “You’re right. We’ve wasted a lot of time. Well of course, if it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead right now, and there wouldn’t be any time to waste.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked with a hint of a smirk. “You believe that?”
“Yes. I do. You’ve seen our work. You’ve seen what I and the people I’m involved with can do. Trust me, he wouldn’t have stopped until he accomplished his mission out there on the road. The fact that there weren’t more than our three vehicles out there only helped things.”
He frowned again, his eyes darting back and forth over her face like he was trying to judge whether she was serious. “More sarcasm?” he asked, one eyebrow quirked up like he was waiting for a punchline.
“No, that was flat-out truth,” she informed him, folding her hands in her lap, almost smiling as she looked across the bed, almost pleasant.
He snickered, which only annoyed her since he was supposed to be unnerved. Maybe he was slow on the uptake. Had she lapsed into another language? What was there about what she was saying that was so difficult to understand?
Someone out in the hallway cleared their throat, which was clearly intended as a signal to her inquisitor. His spine straightened. His chin lifted.
And she had to catch her breath. Really, he was a fantastic looking man, not to mention an excellent physical specimen. It was easier to think of him that way, from a purely logistical perspective rather than letting her overlooked and often ignored desires get the better of her.
Once again, he opened his sensuous mouth to speak and broke the illusion. “Enough playing around. Who do you work for?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” she shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“Why not?” he barked. “You admitted they want you dead. You don’t owe them anything.”
“Listen. It’s not as if they met with me in person, not like they invited me out for a weekend on the Cape. That’s not how this sort of work is done. We used as few specifics as possible. Always.”
It looked like he was fighting with himself, like he didn’t know whether he could believe her or not. When he spoke again, his voice was tighter than ever. “What made you so sure you were in danger?”
“The fact that two people I worked with on this project ended up dead. It didn’t take much for me to figure out something was going on, especially when those people were in the field when they died.”
“Sounds familiar,” he pointed out, and she knew he was talking about Marnie’s team. “They were on a mission from your bosses?”
“Yes.”
“In relation to Marnie and her company?”
“Yes.” She could tell the truth about this since she’d just about told them all of it while she was half-conscious behind the wheel of her SUV. There she went, letting her mouth run away from her. She knew better than that.
How many times had she put up with even more stressful situations than the one she’d faced with Price during the hurricane? It didn’t matter that the road was flooded or that lives hung in the balance, that she’d crashed the car and hit her head and strained just about every muscle in her body after bracing for impact.
She’d been through worse, much worse, and she hadn’t folded back then, not anywhere near the way she’d folded on the road.
Maybe because she’d known how much she had to fear at the hands of her own bosses.
“And what were the details of those missions?” he asked, expectant.
One rule she’d always set for herself was to maintain composure. This didn’t make her unique. A person in her line of work couldn’t break the wall between themselves and the people questioning them. A blank face, a flat tone of voice. No emotion. No reaction.
She’d earned a reputation over the years for her steeliness. Nothing could break her.
Except, apparently, stupidity because she’d never faced such a stupid question before, and she couldn’t help but laugh out loud once she understood the man who asked it wasn’t kidding around.
“You’re serious?” she managed to gasp while laughing in his face. “You think I’m gonna spill the details of the missions my colleagues performed? Sure, and while I’m at it, you can have my social security number and the passwords to all my online accounts.”
All that moved was his jaw, and even that wasn’t anything more than a muscle twitch. But it was a strong twitch, obvious enough for her to see it from across the room. Yes, she’d gotten under his skin—way under it—and she hadn’t even had to try.
This might actually be fun in a way. Maybe a little morbid for her to think that, but she couldn’t help it. There was only so much about her job to be enjoyed. She had to take her joy where she could find it.
“Enough of this.” Another one of the men barged into the room, this one a little older than the rest but only by a little and only thanks to the slight touches of silver that ran through his short, black hair—just a little bit here and there but enough to catch the light. It was very attractive.
The way her interrogator stepped down told her right away that the man who’d walked in was the leader. That would make him Logan. She’d learned all their names; she’d had to. There hadn’t been enough time to memorize their faces, however.
He looked to her, and it was almost funny the way she shrank under his gaze. Unlike his colleague, he didn’t have to do anything but look at her to make her stand down. There was no bluster, no threats. Just a glance. His team would’ve been smart to take lessons from him.
“What’s your name?” he asked in a voice that told her he was rarely denied anything he wanted. “There’s no harm in that, and we would like to know how to address you.�
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She caught sight of the other guy from the corner of her eye. Let him take a lesson from this. “Aimee. My name is Aimee.”
Logan smiled slightly, satisfied. “See? That wasn’t so difficult. My name is Logan, and this is Zane.”
Zane. Right. She turned to him, plastering a fake smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Zane.”
All he did was mutter a curse under his breath before leaving the room, and it took all her self-control to keep from smiling, knowing she’d won this round.
Still, no matter how neutral an expression she adopted, Logan seemed to see right through her. “I would be careful if I were you,” he warned. “Winning the battle isn’t the same as winning the war, and until you figure out that we’re all on the same side, all we’ll be able to do is spin our wheels. We can’t do you a lot of good with our hands tied. Understand what I’m saying?”
It was funny. She had the impulse to mess with the other guy, to tease him, to drive him nuts. This one, on the other hand, had the opposite effect. Not that she wanted to please him, per se, but she didn’t see any point in dragging things out.
“Really, there’s only so much I can tell you,” she shrugged. “I know you guys are military or used to be, so you understand what it means when there’s a lot of people keeping a lot of secrets. I really wasn’t that far up on the totem pole, so it wasn’t like they made a point of cluing me in on their plans.”
He sized her up, quite blatantly, and finally smirked once he reached his conclusion. “Right. Tell me another one.”
She blinked hard. “Excuse me?”
“That was only partly the truth, wasn’t it?” He shoved his hands in his pockets, chuckling. “You’re going to find out sooner or later that you can’t lie to us and expect to be believed. There might be people out there in the world to think you’re a good liar, but we aren’t those people. The next time somebody comes in to talk to you, you’re going to want to be more truthful.”
Again, she was struck by how easily he chilled her. He didn’t even have to raise his voice. There was just enough of a threat in his smile, the edge in his voice, to convey how serious he was.
Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset Page 75
