Brandi

by Donna McDonald

“Forget love—Brandi doesn’t let herself feel anything—period. But I couldn’t force her to stay here just so I could teach her. That was never going to work. She’s… ” Gareth paused, swore, and raked a hand through his hair.

  “She’s… what?” Ariel prompted.

  “Brandi’s like I was a hundred years ago, and just as green about what’s important. I understand what makes her tick even if I don’t like it. Being around her is like seeing a mirror of my past. Brandi’s all about duty and little else. One way or another, she was going to find a reason to go back to her job.”

  Ariel flexed her fingers, making fists and releasing them. She wanted to beat up on something or someone. It was her default reaction to mental pain since her conversion into an Alpha werewolf. Her eyes flashed when she heard her mate growling at her show of angst in front of a pack member.

  “Listen to Gareth. Getting worked up and angry won’t help Brandi… or us,” Matt said firmly, turning back to the window and crossing his arms.

  Ariel glared at Gareth without knowing why she was so angry at the calm man. There was no clear enemy for her to hate, so maybe Gareth was just a handy target. But when she spoke, she turned and directed her comments to the only man she’d ever met besides Reed Black Wolf who seemed to intuitively understand her internal conflict.

  “I watched Brandi coldly kill a man she considered a threat to us when we escaped from Randall Crane. Since I had just killed two before that, who was I to pass judgment on her actions? I admit I put it behind me and forgot what she was. But no matter what kind of life the woman has led, nothing could have adequately prepared her to deal with a scientist doing what Crane was doing. He abducted and experimented on us without a shred of remorse. My gut says Crane’s benefactors have found out about us and know what we are.”

  Gareth watched Matt nod in agreement with his mate, but his friend and leader thankfully didn’t say anything to confirm her suspicions. Matthew Gray Wolf was a solid rock. When he’d returned home to Wasilla after his retirement, Matt’s pull on him had been something he couldn’t ignore. Being the pack’s Beta had been the last damn thing in the world he had wanted… or needed at the time. But Matt had calmed a side of him he’d had a hard time living with after all he’d done.

  He looked away from the honorable man he served to stare down his equally honorable, but less-in-control-of-herself mate. “My gut says the same, Ariel. I think Brandi is in trouble. That’s why I’ve decided to go after her.”

  At the window, Matt barked out a triumphant laugh and pointed. “There they are—those sneaky bastards in their black suits and dark glasses. They think they’re being so stealthy. Why the hell did you call in the half-ass cats, Gareth?”

  Gareth grimaced. They weren’t cats. They were panthers—well part panther. They were also highly trained and had very sensitive hearing. He hoped like hell Fallon and Lars weren’t listening too closely to Matt’s voice which had a tendency to project well beyond the walls of his house.

  Sighing over drama he didn’t want, but couldn’t avoid, Gareth fished the keys to his truck out of his pocket and held them out to Ariel, who frowned but took them.

  “What are these for?” she demanded.

  “Mechanical parts freeze up fast here. Drive my truck while I’m out of town. I called in a favor to get to the lower forty faster than a commercial flight. With luck, I’ll get there around the same time Brandi does. The people she works for are going to want to find out about what happened to her. I just hope she’s smart enough not to tell them what she’s become.”

  Ariel snorted, but walked with Gareth as he started toward the door. “I didn’t have a clue about werewolves before Crane experimented on me. From what I gathered from Brandi and Heidi—they didn’t either. I guess I’m glad you’re going after her, but who’s going to be Beta while you’re gone?”

  Gareth stopped for a moment and grinned. “Matt will tell Quentin he’s standing in for me, but you’ll be the one doing any real helping if it’s needed. Quentin’s young for a werewolf. He tends to choke when he has to do something unpleasant.”

  He opened the door and started out, then stopped and stepped back to Ariel. He put his arms around her and hugged, ignoring her surprise. When the distrustful female pulled away, he laughed at the stunned expression on her face.

  “I forgot what it was like wanting someone to approve of me… or trust me. Other than Matt, I typically don’t give a damn what anyone thinks. It was hard enough when I found out I wanted approval from Brandi. Now I discover I want it from you too.”

  Ariel frowned. “What form do you expect my approval to take?”

  “Let go of the anxiety you have about her. Give Brandi’s care over to me—at least while I’m gone. I’ll be in touch with you and Matt as soon as I can to give you some sort of status about what’s going on.”

  Ariel nodded, unable to give him the words, but she had already moved into acceptance of what Gareth said. Glancing at Matt, she saw him still glaring out the window.

  She looked back at Gareth. “They have slow human heartbeats, not rapid shifter ones. What the hell are they, Gareth?”

  Gareth sighed in resignation. He’d kept the truth quiet all these years, but now it was finally coming out. “You’re right about their human heartbeats, Ariel. They’re not full shifters… just damn close.”

  “You’re telling me Crazy Crane wasn’t the only mad scientist doing experiments, aren’t you?” Ariel demanded.

  Nodding abruptly, Gareth closed the door behind him, shutting out Ariel’s shock. There was no time to wonder why he’d blurted it all out like that. Maybe it was because he knew Matt wouldn’t keep any truth from the female sharing his life. His Alpha was the only creature alive who knew about his former job… and what he’d done because of it. All most of the pack remembered was he’d disappeared for about forty years, then suddenly came home and taken his place as Beta. It was mostly the truth.

  Right now he couldn’t worry about what effect his revelation might have had on betrayed scientist, Dr. Ariel Jones. He also couldn’t concern himself with what Matt was going to have to deal with when his intelligent mate put it together and started hammering him with questions.

  Instead of keeping peace between his pack’s mated Alphas, he had to save the fledging werewolf he’d accidentally fallen in love with. His personal epiphany after she left this morning had knocked the complacency right out of him.

  The sense of dread he currently carried about Brandi’s situation was all he had energy for.

  Chapter 3

  Brandi showed her badge to the guard at the check-in desk. His eyes widened at the bypass code on it, but he politely ushered her around security and through the express lane. She didn’t often have to come in to the main office and knew she was unrecognizable as the woman who’d visited last time. Fortunately, all that was necessary for the guard to know was that she had earned the three digit code gaining her fast entrance today.

  Four more guards stood straighter as she neared her target destination. She stopped outside the office per protocol and pulled her gun from the back of her jeans. She held it in the air while suffering a silent pat down from two of them.

  Efficient hands slid down and between her legs. She thought she heard a low, frustrated growl nearby. Her thoughts went instantly to the male she’d left lying in bed early this morning, which elicited a snort about her imagination obviously working overtime. What did it say about her that she missed Gareth already?

  Brandi glanced around as she tucked her weapon back into its place, feeling silly when all she saw—and smelled—were human men doing their jobs.

  One of the two guards who hadn’t felt her up finally opened the door for her. She walked inside the room and shook her head as the man behind the desk swore and stood.

  “Black hair sucks with your complexion. Nice jacket, though. The shades make you look like you stepped out of a spy movie.”

  “I decided to update my agent image after I w
oke up naked and strapped to a mad scientist’s gurney. Obviously, the guy didn’t get what I was from my park ranger look in my backpacking clothes.”

  “I see. Where’s the mad scientist now?”

  Lies and rationalizations sat easily on her tongue just waiting to be said. All the mental rehearsal she’d done on the plane ride was now going to pay off.

  “Randall Crane’s ashes are spread across Anchorage. Thought you said investigating Feldspar was going to be a vacation?”

  Flashes of their past hit her when she was treated to her handler’s full-wattage smile over her sass.

  “I don’t believe I used that exact term… ”

  Brandi laughed then. “I got damn lucky when someone cut loose a wolf Crane had captured. A shit show happened during the rescue attempt and the resulting commotion gave me the first opening I’d had to escape. Weird thing was I barely got my ass out of the damn building before the whole place exploded. Who do I have to talk to around here to get a new handler?”

  “Holy shit, I’ve missed you, Brandi. You’re the only person with nerve enough to talk like that to me. I half expected the person coming in was someone trying to use your identity. Whoever faked your death did a damn good job.”

  “Me die? You know me better than that, Lane.”

  “I thought I did. Why did you wait so long to contact me?”

  Brandi snorted. Now the questions were getting real. “Why are you asking me something so obvious? It’s certainly been a while since I landed in your hot seat.”

  “One—I wanted to make sure you were really alive. And two—I wanted to personally hear what the hell happened. Now take the hot seat and start talking. Who the hell tried to kill you this time?”

  Brandi sighed as she slid into the chair across from him. She noticed Lane sat back down too. Though she sometimes worked with supervisors in the field, Lane Nelson was her handler and the man she ultimately answered to about assignments. He was also the one who decided where she went next time… and what she got to do.

  As she mentally ran through what she intended to share with him, a part of her couldn’t help noticing he was just as handsome as ever. Once upon a time…long ago, before Lane’s promotion to the position he now occupied, he’d been her preferred bed partner. The man had been talented between the sheets and had asked little in return for his generosity. Their relationship had been for physical relief, pure and simple, but his performance was always well done. Plus, he’d seemed to care about being discreet, something she’d learned to value in her line of work. Out in the field, she had sometimes even missed him.

  Well, she had before Gareth.

  As if summoned, thoughts of last night ran through her head. Lane’s presence didn’t cause a single familiar flutter. Not that those kind of flutters happened all that much for her.

  Well, they happened with Gareth routinely, but she figured her increased libido was just a werewolf thing. Everything physical was more intense since her conversion. Her craving for raw meat was the only aspect she hadn’t yet learned to enjoy. But better sex? That was a real perk, which was interesting since she wasn’t feeling the slightest inclination to assuage her now stronger urges with the still handsome and proficient male sitting across from her.

  Brandi barely fought back a sigh over her mind taking a conversation time-out to conduct a sex comparison in the middle of a debriefing. It was just one more way Gareth had changed her. She was officially female.

  “The bottom line of what happened is Crazy Crane tried to kill me and failed. After Feldspar’s wolf retrieval team tagged me, I got locked in a cage for more than a week. From what I pieced together of the timeline, they executed my faked death while I was locked up. All around me were an assortment of captured wolves in cages just like mine. It was like being held in a zoo. Gradually, the wolves started disappearing, like one or two a day. Later I discovered they were being dissected and thrown out in the trash. At the end of my time, the bastards came back and tagged me with the tranquilizer gun again. I woke up several hours afterward, strapped down naked on a medical gurney.”

  “What exactly were they planning to do to you? Assault you?”

  Brandi shrugged, snorted, and set her gaze on her hands. “No. They didn’t touch me, unless you count Crane’s leering assistant feeling me up as he checked the straps. He and Crane talked like I was going to be part of some sort of experiment. I kept expecting the two of them to pull out a scalpel and slice me open like they had the wolves.”

  Internally wiping away sweat when she finished, Brandi knew she was bypassing Lane’s questions as best she could. Instinct warned her to say as little as possible about knowing the scientist’s real motives. It was odd to now feel such instinctive distrust for a man who had sent her on many dangerous missions. So much had changed for her—it was hard to accept all at once.

  “Who broke the wolf out?”

  Brandi ordered her mind back to the conversation. “One of the scientists who worked there. Crazy Crane and his assistant tried to stop it from happening. It didn’t work out well for any of the people involved. I think the scientist may have ultimately killed him. Crane had given me a sedative and was dead by the time I woke, got loose, and found him. I took his vehicle keys from his pocket and next thing I knew the place was on fire. The building blew all to hell as I was driving away. I ended up wandering around for a while in Crane’s stolen jeep. Don’t worry about car jacking charges. I scraped the vehicle identification number from both the window and the engine. I also destroyed the plate to cover my tracks.”

  She winced inwardly when Lane ignored her teasing, looked away, and started tapping his pencil again. She narrowed her eyes as realization hit. He was fishing for information. It looked like the distrust she was feeling went both ways.

  “So where have you been all this time, Brandi? Your death was registered a couple months ago.”

  Brandi blinked in mild shock over Lane’s extreme nervousness as he asked the question. What the hell did Lane know? Or think he knew?

  “I’ve been staying with someone I met just outside Anchorage. Given my headaches and mind wanderings, I figure I had some sort of undiagnosed concussion going on. I made friends with some of the locals and just laid low while I investigated Feldspar’s meltdown. A few days ago I gave up and decided to call in for help, which is why I’m here.”

  She watched Lane nod, but his jaw was tight.

  “Look Lane, I don’t know what kind of Intel you got about what happened, but all signs of Feldspar’s previous existence got completely erased just days after the shit storm passed. The ground was practically vacuumed during cleanup. That means evidence of my capture story is nil. The dead wolf bodies are long gone and nothing of interest is left in Anchorage. I came back here to pick up the pursuit… or at least that’s what I want to do. I want your permission to keep looking for whoever was funding Crane.”

  She watched Lane nod absently as he started tapping his pencil more rapidly on his desk. She’d never seen him actually use his tapping pencil for writing. The noise he was making was especially annoying to her sensitized werewolf hearing. She had to restrain herself from snatching the torture device from his fingers.

  But it wasn’t just the pencil tapping that bothered her. Her senses suddenly went on a four alarm alert. Lane smelled funny—like adrenaline funny. Now why would her long-time handler—the man who put her in Anchorage to begin with—be generating those chemicals just talking to her?

  Then she noticed Lane was staring at something over her shoulder. She turned and looked in the same direction. Only the closed door met her gaze. She turned back and gave him a confused look… mostly on purpose. She was on edge and wanted to know what information he was keeping from her.

  “Expecting company, Lane?” Brandi frowned when Lane shrugged and looked away. Her inner alarms went off again… and were even louder.

  “When I passed along your story, some interesting individuals got wind of it. So the short answer t
o your request is yes—you get to keep investigating this situation. Whatever Dr. Randall Crane was doing with those wolves, it was a hell of a lot more than just studying them. You don’t kidnap and hold a federal agent hostage without having a bigger agenda—one worth risking jail time in his case.”

  Brandi blinked a couple times at Lane’s conclusions before nodding. “I agree. Someone was financially backing Crane’s kookiness because he kept talking about earning two more years of funding. He liked to brag about how smart he was and how famous he was going to be.”

  Lane’s derisive snort made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It was all she could do not to turn around and look at the door again. The only reason she didn’t was because she didn’t want to reveal her intuitive apprehension to him.

  “You’re going to get to look into the matter further, only you’re going to have a partner helping out. The powers above us have sent an expert down the food chain. In fact, the man they sent says the two of you have already met.”