Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

Logan looked legitimately offended. “You know that’s not what I do.”

  “It sounds a lot like you are. I’m fine. Really, I am—I admit now that we’ve talked this out, I do feel better. All right? I’ll give you that much.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Thank you?” Logan laughed.

  And Zane could laugh with him, and that was good though it didn’t last for long. Logan got serious in a hurry. “Well, now you know. You’re shaken up a little after maybe almost getting your head blown off. You’ve gotta stop letting it get in the way of what you need to do.”

  “That’s what you think I was doing?”

  “It’s what I know you were doing,” Logan corrected, and the light in his eyes changed what he said it. His wolf looked out at Zane through those eyes, if only for a split second. So his wolf was fighting to get out too. A silent warning, but its message rang out loud and clear. Don’t push me because you have no idea how I’m fighting to keep him locked away.

  “You’re taking it out on her, the fact that you felt vulnerable for a second—don’t even start,” he warned, scowling when Zane’s mouth fell open. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling vulnerable for a second. You did when the explosion happened, and you did again when you found out how Dan was killed. There’s nothing wrong with it. You’ve gotta get used to it; you’ve gotta get rid of the resentment. There’s nothing to resent besides the fact that, you know, she may or may not have set the explosion that could have led to your death, but that’s nothing new, Zane. That’s the nature of what we do. That hasn’t changed. You’re the one who’s changed, and you need to get right with it.”

  Zane’s eyes narrowed. “Why does that sound like an ultimatum?” he asked.

  “Because it is, basically. You know I would never choose to do something like this without there being a damn good reason for it, but if you can’t get it together, you’re gonna have to work from headquarters. It would be best for everyone involved since getting into petty squabbles with that girl isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re wasting time—which she probably knows damn well and is relying on. She’s not in any hurry to tell us what we want to know because it will be that much quicker that we’ll be able to get rid of her. So long as we need her, she’s in control. She knows it. Which tells me she’s way more terrified than she’ll ever let on—at least when she’s being forced to let on.”

  “I’d hardly say I’m forcing her. If I was, wouldn’t she have talked by now?”

  Logan sighed like a tired, overwhelmed dad. “I’m just saying she might need a little finessing.”

  “Then I can tell you right now you might as well take me off her detail.” Zane folded his arms, standing firm. “I know I’ve never done this before—ordinarily, I would never even think to question you or make it seem like I know better than you do, but if it’s finessing that needs to be done, I have to be honest. There’s no way I will ever finesse her. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” Logan sighed. “You know I would always rather have you guys be honest with me. That’s all we have—honesty. It’s what binds us together, and it’s what protects us. If anyone of you ever feels you’re not up to the challenge of a mission, I need to know rather than letting it go and jeopardizing everybody else.”

  He groaned like a man twice, maybe three times his age when he rose from the chair. “I need to catch some sleep. I’m on day four—or is it five?”

  Zane winced. Just when he thought he couldn’t feel any more like a bug crawling around on the ground, one of his teammates inevitably found a way to remind him how selfish he was acting. It just happened to be Logan’s turn.

  The two of them stared in curious surprise when Marnie started up the stairs carrying a plate holding a sandwich, potato chips. “Taking your lunch upstairs?” Logan asked.

  She shook her head with nothing more than a glance their way. “No, but I thought somebody else would like some.”

  The men exchanged a look. This would either work well, or it would be a complete disaster.

  As far as Zane was concerned, the entire mission was a disaster. Why not make things even worse?

  Chapter Six

  There were footsteps coming up the stairs one slow step at a time.

  Aimee tensed. What would it be this time? Would they stretch her out over the rack? Maybe a cat o’ nine tails would be the preferred method of punishment. Or one of the guys would bore her to death with more complaining about all sorts of things she probably hadn’t even done like the Great Chicago Fire and the San Francisco earthquake. Maybe the Civil War.

  The steps came closer. Whoever it was, they were coming for her. She held her breath.

  The door opened.

  In walked Marnie, carrying a plate. Aimee let out a long breath, her muscles relaxing. “Hi,” she ventured.

  Marnie didn’t answer. She stood there in the doorway like a statue with a kind of vague look on her face like she couldn’t remember why she’d come upstairs.

  Something must’ve happened to shake her out of her confusion, and she stepped into the room like somebody had put a hand in the middle of her back and shoved. Nobody was out in the hallway though.

  “I thought you might be hungry.” She set the plate down on the nightstand to Aimee’s left. “I hope you like tuna. I haven’t exactly been able to get out and get groceries with the roads being the way they are—and, you know, the whole somebody might kill me thing. There’s that too.”

  There was no use arguing with that. Unless the people who employed Aimee had suddenly decided to back off and learn a craft or hobby, there was a serious threat, a definite possibility that somebody was breaking their brain over how to draw Marnie out in the open, alone, so they could wipe her out.

  “I like tuna,” Aimee whispered. “I haven’t had a tuna sandwich in a long time, actually. Thank you.” Next to the sandwich was a pile of potato chips and a pickle. Health food it was not, but she was never a big salad eater.

  “I used to love eating tuna sandwiches with chocolate milk,” Marnie murmured as she backed away, looking down at the food. “I don’t have any chocolate milk right now. I don’t even know if you like it.”

  “I do. I love it, though I’ve never had it with a tuna sandwich.”

  “I just generally like it with all sandwiches, actually.” Marnie rubbed her hands together. Aimee wanted to tell her to stop, that she didn’t need to be so nervous. She’d never wanted to kill this girl—granted, it wasn’t like she’d wanted to kill anybody, but she wasn’t in charge. Nobody exactly asked her opinion.

  The thing was the girl seemed nice. Really nice. The sort of person Aimee would want to be friends with if she was a normal person capable of having friends.

  But having friends meant sharing secrets. It meant being open. It meant having time for people—when a friend called, needing to talk or to hang out, she’d need to be there for them, and there was just no telling when she’d ever be available.

  Then, there’d be questions. Why wasn’t she ever around, where did she go, why was she always so secretive? Even now, thinking about it in completely hypothetical terms, her palms went slick with nervous sweat.

  She wasn’t a normal person. She never had been, and she was the world’s biggest idiot to even let herself think the way normal people did because that only led to a letdown.

  Marnie wasn’t aware of any of this, of course. She wandered around the room. Puttered, Aimee’s mom would’ve called it. She’d pick something up, then put it down. A tiny box with pearls on the lid. A fake succulent plant.

  “I didn’t know people take this many pains to furnish a guest room,” Aimee offered. It was better than telling Marnie to stop wandering around trying to come up with a way to say what she wanted to say. It was better than blurting it out.

  Marnie hit her with a sharp, surprised look. “You think that’s weird?”

  “No!” Aimee gasped, eyes wide. It was maybe one of the few genuine reactions she’d had in years. Right up
there with the reaction when she’d learned Price was about to kill Marnie and her guards.

  When she’d… reacted. She hadn’t acted, hadn’t followed a command or a mission or anything like that.

  She’d followed that little voice inside herself that she’d been ignoring for as long as she could remember, the voice her mother told her was her conscience, her soul. A voice she hadn’t heard in a long time, but when she had, it sounded a lot like her own voice.

  A voice that had told her no. Absolutely not. Stop this. This isn’t right.

  A voice that had come at maybe the worst time ever, but it had come nonetheless, and she’d had no voice but to listen to it because the voice was right. What Price was about to do was wrong.

  Marnie stood at the foot of the bed waiting for a better explanation. Aimee licked her lips, which had gone dry all of a sudden. “I mean, no, it’s not weird,” she insisted. “I swear. It’s nice. I think it’s really nice. I have a second bedroom in my apartment, but it never hit me that I could actually put a bed in it and set it up nice for company.”

  Marnie frowned. “What do you have in there now?”

  “Boxes. I think some of them are still packed up from when I moved in,” Aimee admitted with a wince. “I guess if something’s been sitting in a box for three years and you’ve never once touched it, maybe you don’t need it.”

  The frown eased a little. “I guess not.”

  “Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve been carrying those boxes around with me over a few different moves.”

  “And you haven’t touched anything inside this whole time?”

  “I never even slit the packing tape. Is that messed up?” And since when did she ever ask the opinion of anybody else, including and especially strangers she was supposed to have killed?

  Marnie didn’t offer some quick answer, a knee-jerk sort of thing. She seemed to think about it, to really think. That alone earned made Aimee respect her more than before. She was a thoughtful person. There weren’t enough thoughtful people in the world.

  “I don’t think of it as being messed up,” she finally decided, folding her arms in a way that told Aimee this was a very serious decision. Well, Marnie was a serious person—one of the many, many things Aimee had learned about her once she’d gotten mixed up in what she’d gotten mixed up in.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I think there are certain things a person owns that are important to them, but they don’t necessarily have to take them out and touch them and hold them. That doesn’t make them any less important. It only means they’re special enough not to be interfered with.”

  Special enough. Was anything she owned special enough not to be interfered with? “Come to think of it, I don’t even know exactly what’s in those boxes,” she admitted. It was almost enough to make her laugh at herself. She had no idea what she’d been carrying around all these years through so many moves.

  Marnie smiled, and it was a nice smile, a friendly one. Warm and genuine, like she saw the dark humor in the situation. Aimee always had appreciated people who could see dark humor for what it was and appreciate it.

  Except that smile didn’t last forever. It slipped away inch by inch, and the light in Marnie’s eyes went dim.

  And that was when Aimee’s heart hardened because she knew what it meant—that this person who might’ve been her friend if she’d been born the daughter of a plumber or a cop or a nurse had only just remembered the reason why she was there.

  And the people she’d killed.

  “Was it you?” Marnie asked in a choked whisper.

  “Excuse me?” Aimee stalled.

  “Was it you who killed her?”

  Aimee sat up a little straighter on the bed, pulling the blanket around her chest. Like that would do anything to help her, to shield her. It was the kind of thing a little kid did when they thought their blankets would protect them from monsters in the night.

  There was no hiding from monsters since sometimes monsters walked around looking like normal people. Everyday people. People like her. She was a monster, and she’d never seen herself as a monster before now.

  She had to look away. There was no making eye contact since if she did that she’d have to see what she’d done. She’d have to face what she’d left behind.

  Grief. Mourning. Sorrow.

  “Was it?” Marnie’s voice was sharper this time. “Was it you? Did you kill Beth? What about the rest of them? Did you break Carla’s neck? Did you toss Michael’s razor into the tub? What about the explosion that killed Dan? Did you do that? Was it all you?”

  Disconnect. You do not feel this. This isn’t real. It’s happening to somebody else, somewhere else. It has nothing to do with you.

  “You don’t wanna know those things,” she muttered, looking toward the window. “Trust me.”

  “Don’t tell me what I do and don’t want to know.”

  So typical. People thought they wanted to know really terrible things like they were entitled or something, like they could handle the darker truths, truths people like them had never needed to face before. The kind of stuff they weren’t prepared for, not even a little bit.

  But everybody thought they were smartest, didn’t they? That they knew best. Just because they had rotten, crappy things happen to them—hell, they might even have witnessed some horrible things, things that scarred them for life.

  That didn’t mean they were able to face the really, truly god-awful truths. Things they’d only end up wishing they’d never heard.

  For a second, she wanted to tell everything just to prove to this genius with her eidetic memory that she wasn’t half as smart or jaded or whatever as she thought she was, to prove some things really were better left unknown.

  But that would be cruel, and she had already caused this girl more than enough pain.

  “You don’t want to know. Leave it there.” She wouldn’t turn back to Marnie for anything, not for any reason. Not if the girl burst into flame.

  Marnie was silent for so long Aimee wondered if she was still in the room. No, her breathing was audible. Either the girl was dreaming up ways to murder her as slowly and painfully as possible, or she was getting up the nerve to say something. Maybe she was too devastated to do anything but stand there.

  Finally, she spoke in a tight, pained whisper. “I just want to let you know that Beth was my family. I know that doesn’t matter to somebody like you—why would it? You probably had to give up on being an actual person a long time ago so you could protect yourself. So you could go through the day and not hate yourself too much. Right?”

  Aimee imagined a door closing and locking. It was an old technique, one she’d picked up back in the early days, back when she’d learned how to compartmentalize, how to shut out the thoughts she needed to block so she wouldn’t give anything away while being questioned.

  How to get through life without hating herself to the point of self-harm. Maybe there was something to the whole genius thing because Marnie called that one.

  “Beth was a good person,” she continued, her voice a little stronger now. “She was the best person, and I loved her. Does anybody love you? Why do you get to stay here, alive, when she’s dead? She at least tried to add something to the world. She made my life better. Have you ever made anybody’s life better? Why are you even alive?”

  Close it off. Close it. She practically vibrated from the effort of pretending not to hear what Marnie had to say. Not to care.

  The door slammed when Marnie left. She was alone now. Control it. Control it. You’re in control of yourself.

  Her eyes obviously hadn’t gotten the memo since they overflowed with hot, shame-filled tears that rolled down her cheeks and soaked into the blanket.

  Chapter Seven

  “What happened?” Zane asked as Marnie hurried past him with a hand up against her face, shielding her eyes.

  “Nothing, I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine obviously. Why did people feel the need to say th
ey were fine when they so clearly weren’t? For a second, Zane considered comforting her but then reminded himself that she wasn’t his to comfort. She was going to Sledge who was in the backyard. Sledge would soothe her if that was possible.

  The girl brought Aimee lunch, which she absolutely didn’t need to do. She was even staying in Marnie’s house, using her guest room, and she couldn’t be bothered to be civil? Marnie was a civilian. She had nothing to do with keeping Aimee hostage.

  If she could even be called a hostage.

  If the circumstances were different, they would’ve considered her client. They were protecting her, but she had the balls to throw Marnie’s hospitality back in her face.

  His fists clenched tight, nails digging into his palms—nails that felt suspiciously like wolf’s claws. The wolf was just there, on the other side of what Zane thought of as a curtain between his human consciousness and his other consciousness, the wolf’s consciousness. It was still him, still his mind, but it wasn’t.

  After years of being both man and wolf, there was so much that was still a mystery.

  But that was hardly the time for mysteries. No, it was more like the time for setting the record straight on a few things.

  Which was why Zane climbed the stairs again and opened the guest room door.

  The last thing he’d expected to find was Aimee curled up in a ball on the bed, holding a pillow against her chest. She sprang up when he entered—she’d been crying too hard before then to hear him coming obviously.

  “What?” she barked. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  “For one thing, you don’t deserve to be left alone,” he reminded her. “This isn’t a hotel. You’re not staying here because you’re a guest. We’re protecting you, but you owe us something in return, and you haven’t made good on that yet.”

  Her eyes were an even more brilliant green now that they were red-rimmed, sparkling with tears she hadn’t yet shed, but she’d managed to get herself under control pretty quickly—probably just another part of her training, he guessed. She had to be good at controlling her emotions, at turning them on and off at will.