Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Okay, fine. We already said all of that before. I just need to be alone, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. That seems to be a basic human right, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t play high and mighty with me,” he laughed. “You’re playing to the wrong audience if you think that’s gonna work. I couldn’t possibly care less what you need—it was hardly my idea to bring you a sandwich, but I know better than to try to stop Marnie when she has an idea in her head. But when she left here crying, it seemed like something had to be said. Maybe you needed to be reminded of the real situation at hand. You’re not in control of this, and you aren’t in charge. And you have a hell of a lot of nerve to make that girl cry after everything you’ve already done to her.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her!” she blurted, and the slight twitch in the muscles of her face after she said it told him she hadn’t planned on it. It slipped out.

  “No?” he pressed on, deciding it was better this way. Let him keep antagonizing her, let him keep drawing things from her that she wouldn’t ordinarily have shared. “You don’t call killing her best friend doing something to her? Or killing her employees? Oh, I know. Maybe you weren’t doing anything to her when you were shooting at her through the windows of her office. Sure, none of that had anything to do with her. You weren’t hurting her or affecting her life in the least bit.”

  If looks could kill, he would’ve been dead not long after he’d started talking. He’d never seen such pure, unvarnished hatred in the eyes of another person. That meant something coming from a man in his line of work. He’d made many more enemies than friends; they all had.

  But she took the cake. She put the rest of them shame.

  “You still don’t know who was responsible for any of those events, though. Do you?” There she went, sliding right back into that role. The self-possessed, know-it-all assassin who thought she had the upper hand, but she’d made a mistake, hadn’t she?

  Because now he’d seen how vulnerable she could be. Maybe Logan was right, that vulnerability wasn’t such a dirty word since it might have done him a favor.

  Whatever had taken place between her and Marnie had shaken her big time, much worse than he’d managed to do so far. He knew he wouldn’t get anywhere if he asked what was said, so he decided not to waste his time.

  “No, I don’t,” he admitted. “So until I know exactly who did what, I’m just going to assume it was all you. What other choice do I have? You’re literally leaving us with no other choice but to assume you were behind all of this.”

  “You know that’s not fair.”

  He grinned. “I’m sorry; since when were we playing fair? Nobody told me anything had to be fair in all of this. I wish I’d gotten the memo.”

  “You think you’re so funny.” She ran her hands over her face as she spoke, obviously trying to wipe away tears as discreetly as possible.

  “I’m not always funny. I can be serious when it counts.”

  “Oh, can you? That’s fascinating.” She ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it down. She was a hot mess, to use the parlance of the times, and part of him wanted to point that out. Just another way of getting under her skin, shaking her up a little. Granted, this wasn’t exactly the time for a person to really care how they looked, but he had the feeling she would.

  Because again, she had to look like none of this mattered. Just another day at the office.

  “Sure.” He leaned against the doorframe, watching her every move. “For example, I’m smart enough to know that whatever happened between you and Marnie freaked you out. Big time. She’s a smart girl, isn’t she? She knows just what to say to get to somebody. Maybe we should train her to work with us.”

  “Maybe you should,” Aimee countered. “You might actually get a brain on your team for the first time.”

  “I know a certain researcher on our team who would take great offense to that,” he drawled, imagining Val’s response to that little allegation. For a second he considered calling her, telling her to come over so he could sit back and watch the fur fly.

  “She got you, didn’t she? She really did. She got through to you. What did she do? Don’t worry. She didn’t say anything to me,” he added. “She was so upset she rushed right passed without a word, really, so all I have to go on is what you tell me. What happened? What did she say that broke you down?”

  The girl had the nerve to toss her head like all of this was beneath her, like she was anything better than a cold-blooded killer who preyed on innocent people for a paycheck. “I don’t have to tell you anything, and she didn’t break me down. You have no idea what I was upset about when you came in here.”

  “Oh, you’re right. I’m sure that in the half a minute it took for Marnie to leave the room, something totally unrelated occurred and made you cry. Possible but not plausible. Try again.”

  “I don’t have to do anything you tell me to do. You need me, and you know you do. Or else I wouldn’t be here. So unless you plan to torture me, you’re wasting your time, and even then, it isn’t like I’ve never been tortured before, and nobody has ever managed to get a single word out of me that I didn’t willingly give out.”

  Tortured. He filed that one away. There he was all this time thinking she’d dabbled in the freelance world of hitmen for hire.

  He was wrong. Her experience ran deeper—Logan’s theory was probably right, and Zane asked himself why that should come as a surprise. Logan had a way of homing in on key truths it sometimes took a lot longer for the rest of them to figure out.

  “I’ve never had much of a stomach for torture,” Zane admitted with a shrug. “Sure, some people can handle it. Some people even like it. There’s a certain sort of person who can disconnect themselves from what they’re doing, from the pain they’re inflicting, because it’s all for a higher purpose, a bigger good. Still, I’ve never been too good at that.”

  “Fascinating. I’ll be sure to add that to my notes on the book I’m writing about you.”

  He laughed. “It wouldn’t be a very interesting book,” he chuckled.

  “I don’t know. You’re all pretty fascinating people.”

  Once again, his wolf responded. Just like he had before. Only this time, Zane wasn’t sure he could get away with slamming her against the wall. That was the wolf’s doing too, and it was a sign of his weakness. He couldn’t go through life letting the wolf slip through whenever something happened that he wasn’t a fan of.

  Even if that something was the implication of someone knowing all about his team and their biggest secrets.

  He let it go, seeing the comment for what it was—another way of getting to him, of stirring him to the sort of anger she’d stirred in him before. He wasn’t stupid enough to give her what she wanted. “Anyway, if any torture is to be done, it won’t be by me. Maybe I’ll have Marnie do that too. Maybe she’ll just talk to you until you can’t take it anymore, until it’s too painful.”

  “Grow up,” she sneered. “You got me. I’m human. Sometimes, the things I’ve done catch up to me, and don’t pretend to be a saint, either,” she added. “You’ve killed plenty of people. I’m sure not all of those killings were exactly humane.”

  “I wasn’t trained to be humane. I was trained to be efficient.”

  “I guess we have that in common, then. Don’t we?” Her head fell to the side, as she gave him a pointed stare.

  Trained to be efficient. Did she have any idea what she just admitted? Telling him they had something in common?

  “Eat your sandwich,” he advised, nodding toward the nightstand. “Can’t have you starving to death.” He closed the door behind him and only released his held breath when he reached the hall.

  Logan wasn’t the only one on their team who had a problem staying on track when an idea suddenly hit him.

  If they had something in common, and that happened to be the thing they had in common, she probably wasn’t CIA or FBI or any of the other initialed agencies.

  She was ex
-military, just like the rest of them.

  Chapter Eight

  She had to leave.

  This was a mistake, the result of acting out of horror, fear—the sort of fear she hadn’t known it a very, very long time. Otherwise, she would never have made the mistake of thinking this group was her only shot at protecting herself.

  Hadn’t she always done better alone? This wasn’t any different. She would work alone, hide out for a while. Everything would be fine.

  All she’d managed to do was get herself mixed up with this group of shadowy figures, men who lived life a lot like she did: off the grid, at least somewhat. Careful about who they allowed into their confidence, which was another thing they had in common.

  It didn’t mean they had to work together. That didn’t make them her only hope. Now, her unseen, unknown bosses would have more of a reason than ever to attack. Two birds with one stone—though there were a lot more than two birds in the scenario.

  Although, thinking about it now as she sat alone with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, she knew there was only one other bird at the front of her mind.

  Marnie.

  She had to put distance between herself and Marnie. Marnie didn’t deserve this, and she was the reason why Aimee planned her escape while eating lunch.

  It wouldn’t be that hard, really. A quick trip down the wall outside the bedroom window—there was a rose trellis there that would serve as a ladder. She imagined Marnie had arranged for that trellis thinking it would be a deterrent against thieves looking to climb in through the window.

  Well, maybe if she was nothing more than an average thief it would have served as a deterrent against using the trellis to escape the house.

  Nothing about Aimee was common. Nothing about her had ever been common.

  She took a bite of what was left of the sandwich. Tuna had never exactly been her favorite unless she was the one making it. She didn’t like too much mayonnaise in hers, and for some people, it seemed like tuna salad was nothing more than an excuse to eat copious amounts of it. Disgusting, as far she was concerned, not to mention unhealthy. If she was eating unhealthy food, she wasn’t about to waste the calories and fat on mayonnaise. Cake or chocolate or a big bowl of pasta was more her speed.

  If she played her cards right, she could be back at her apartment enjoying such delicacies by the end of the day.

  Of course, with it being summer, the sun wouldn’t set until roughly seven-thirty, and the sky wouldn’t darken for another half-hour at least. But she could wait. She had all the time in the world. That was the only way she could ever think about a mission like this, the only way she could calm herself, center her thoughts.

  She went through the motions then, settling back against the pillows, drawing a contented sigh. She had all the time in the world. She could afford to sit back and enjoy her sandwich while going over her plans for breaking out.

  It would have to be well past dark, of course. Probably even past bedtime—sure, they would probably have a guard on duty, but that would only be one person instead of all of them at once. She could handle a one-on-one fight if that was what it came to. Even now, with her back aching and her knees sore from their collision with the dashboard, she could manage just fine.

  When a person was fighting for their life, pain had a tendency to fade into the background.

  Granted, these particular opponents were way bigger than anybody she’d ever faced before. Adrenaline had a way of leveling the playing field, just the same.

  She could probably rule out the one with the long hair, the one who seemed to be dating Marnie—Sledge, one of the two she and Price were supposed to kill on the road.

  If they weren’t dating, Aimee figured the guy needed to be told because he certainly looked at Marnie and hovered over her like she meant the entire world to him.

  Marnie would need to sleep, which meant he would be at her side. So that worked. One down.

  That left her with another four choices. None of them seemed any more threatening than the others, so she guessed her chances were roughly the same no matter who she happened to encounter.

  She stopped chewing, scowling when she considered Zane. He was more of a threat, come to think of it. Not that he was any better than the others, not that he appeared much stronger.

  But just like adrenaline could get past pain, anger could go a long way toward turning a strong, skilled fighter into a killing machine. It was like back when she used to play video games as a kid, and the character she was playing as received some sort of power-up or whatever they were called in that particular game. It made the character stronger, faster, if only for a limited time.

  Zane would go from towering, hulking beast of a man—an already strong enough opponent—to a nightmare. He wouldn’t stop until he stopped her.

  All she could do then was hope Zane was not the team member she ran into as she made her escape. Hoping had never exactly gotten her anywhere—there was a reason why she had to rely on herself for everything, a reason why she’d never put much stock in the promises of others. Nine times out of ten, they’d let her down.

  Still, it couldn’t hurt to be hopeful, to believe things would work out in her favor this time.

  The hours passed. Aimee forced herself to get what sleep she could since she would need her faculties in place once she got started. It wasn’t easy to lull herself to sleep—she’d been lying around for two days, and her body was already getting sore and stiff.

  Still, she managed it, falling into a fitful slumber filled with dreams. Dark dreams, violent. When there was no violence, there was dread—the promise of something big, something terrible, something she couldn’t run from, no matter how she tried.

  She’d never run before. Not ever. Maybe she was out of practice then because she couldn’t get the slip on whatever it was that hung over her, whatever it was that waited for her. She felt it, large and dark and looming overhead.

  Even with all of this getting in the way, she slept until it was already getting darker outside. It was a relief to wake up from all that heaviness, that sense of doom. What did it mean?

  It doesn’t take a genius, she thought to herself with a smirk once she was fully awake. Why wouldn’t a sense of doom weigh on her with everything going on? There was no need to dwell on it. There were no secret messages in her dreams. Her subconscious wasn’t that creative.

  From her vantage point, she watched the sky turn from a brilliant amber-gold to deep purple. It seemed like no matter how hard she watched the sky this time of day, she could never quite pinpoint the moments when the colors and the light changed. When she was little, engaged in this sort of activity, she would challenge herself not to blink, convinced at a young age that the magic happened in the fraction of a second in which her eyes were closed.

  Years later, she hadn’t gotten any better at pinpointing those magic moments. They slipped past as she lay there, a pillow held in front of her body and another under her head, lying on her side in a protective position as she waited for her chance to get away.

  Nobody had been up to check on her. That was good. They would treat this like just like the night before with everybody going about their business except on the rare occasions when they remembered they had somebody upstairs who wasn’t locked in but wasn’t about to wander the house freely, either.

  It would be better for them to not think of this night as being any different than any other night. Let them fall into a routine. Let them lull themselves to a false sense of security. Let them think they were in charge, that they had her where they wanted her.

  She was quiet as she could be, sliding out of bed, careful to not make too much noise as she used the bathroom between the two guest rooms. Once that was finished, she stretched her neglected muscles. It wasn’t exactly fun, especially when she squatted, and again when she bent to do a spine roll. Everything cried out at once, demanding to know why she refused to play it smart and rest until she healed up.

  Even if she hadn’
t already been through a situation like this, Aimee would know from training that movement always helped the body heal. It seemed counterintuitive—after all, who wanted to get up and jump around when they were in pain? But blood flow made it easier for the body to take care of itself.

  Just because she knew it in her brain didn’t mean her body gave a damn. She forced it through the motions until her muscles felt supple enough to serve her well.

  The night flew by. At least that was how it seemed. That was the way it always seemed before it was time to do something important. It wasn’t that she particularly dreaded having to do what she was about to do, but she wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. There were too many variables, including questions of what she’d do once she was free. Where could she go that she wouldn’t be found? Would it mean starting over again?

  The image of the boxes she’d described to Marnie popped up seemingly out of nowhere, though of course no thought ever came up truly out of nowhere. It made sense for her to think of them so soon after talking about them.

  She’d have to leave them behind if there was no choice but to run. It was as simple as that. Now, she wished she’d taken the time long ago to open those boxes and reacquaint herself with what she’d packed inside. She couldn’t even remember having done it—no matter how she tried, all through that long, lonely day, she couldn’t remember anything about them.

  What could it be? She’d never been the sort of person who gave much time or consideration to nostalgia. She couldn’t afford to be nostalgic since so much of her youth wasn’t exactly the sort to be nostalgic about. Who in their right mind would want to sit around, looking back on years of sudden moves, of teaching themselves to cook and tend house and care for themselves in the absence of a parent to do it for them?

  If anything, she’d spent most of her life pushing those memories away. Whenever she thought about that little girl with her frizzy, strawberry curls and freckles and eyes that always seemed too big for her thin, underfed face, she felt sorry for her, and the last thing Aimee wanted to do was feel sorry for herself.