Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Chapter Seven

  She was swimming.

  The scent of chlorine mixed with sunscreen and filled her head. It brought back so many memories, a lifetime’s worth. Her body floated easily on the water, bobbing up and down.

  She was wearing swimmies on her arms. Inflatable, bright orange. They kept her afloat even though she didn’t kick her legs or wave her arms back and forth. When was the last time she’d worn them?”

  “Kara!” A high-pitched voice, one she hadn’t heard in a long time, but it was still familiar.

  “Krista?” She looked around, desperate. “Where are you?” The pool was so big. She should be able to see the ocean from where she swam, over the white railing. Instead, all she saw was more pool and more water all around her. She was so small, and it was so big.

  “Kara! Here! Over here!”

  “Krista! I can’t find you!” She started to kick. She had to reach the pool’s edge, had to get out of the water, had to find her sister. “Stay where you are! I’ll find you!”

  She couldn’t move—or she was moving, but it didn’t matter. There was no edge. The pool went on and on. She kicked harder, harder, moving her arms to cut her way through the water that used to be so still but now moved in waves, sweeping her back and forth.

  She was powerless against it. She couldn’t fight. She was starting to sink.

  “Krista! Help me!” But when she called out, water got in her mouth and made her sputter. She started to go under even with the swimmies on her arms. Kicking harder kept her head above the surface but just barely. “Help me, please…”

  She went under. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to help her. The water was angry now, churning, pushing her further down. She fought against it with all her might. Her lungs were about to burst. She had to breathe!

  “Krista!” She woke up coughing, gagging, gasping for air. Her hands were around her throat, clutching it, practically clawing at it.

  She was in her room, of course, because that was a dream. Maybe the most vivid dream she ever had but still just a dream, all in her head.

  Even if she could still smell chlorine. She could almost taste the water.

  “You all right?”

  She sat bolt upright at the sound of a second voice. Jace sat in the armchair by the window, and he had the nerve to grin. “Good morning.”

  Yes, it was morning, with weak light filtering in through the gauzy curtains that had hung at the windows since she was a little girl, one of the few frilly things she’d kept in her room once she got a little too old for cutesy, girly stuff.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked when she remembered how to speak. Her heart thudded painfully. His being in the room didn’t help matters much.

  “I told you I’d see you in the morning, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t know you meant practically at sunrise.”

  “That’s how we live.”

  “Who’s we? Not that I care.” She worked her way back on the bed until she was sitting up against the padded headboard.

  “You’re in a mood. I wonder if you normally wake up that way or what.”

  “I only wake up this way after I have a nightmare that some dickhead feels the need to smirk at me over,” she replied with a toothy smile.

  “You dreamed about your sister.” It wasn’t a question.

  “What’s it to you?” She folded her arms, then realized her camisole had worked its way down a little until it barely covered her. One arm shot out to grab her blanket, which she used to cover herself better.

  “Nothing. But you woke me up with that nightmare of yours, so…”

  “You were sleeping in the chair? There’s nowhere else for you to sleep?” Dear God, had she said something stupid while she was sleeping?

  “There’s plenty of room in the house,” he allowed with a shrug. “But this is the room you’re in, and you’re my responsibility.”

  “So I’m not allowed to sleep alone now? Is that what you’re telling me?” Only when a sly grin worked its way across his mouth did she catch any sort of double entendre, and naturally, her cheeks went hot because of course they would, and of course they’d give this brainless dick the idea that she was thinking things she most definitely wasn’t.

  “I don’t know many people who prefer sleeping alone,” he murmured.

  “I do.”

  “That’s a shame. What a waste.”

  “I don’t think so. Not if it means getting a decent night’s sleep. I don’t do well without sleep. Some people do. Some people wear it like a badge of honor, don’t they?”

  “They do,” he allowed, nodding.

  “I bet you do.”

  “Me?”

  “Military and all that. Sally’s that way. Sal, I mean.” She frowned, looking away. “Don’t tell him you heard me call him that, okay?”

  He snickered. “Okay.”

  “No, I mean it. Don’t.”

  “I said okay. I won’t embarrass him or you.” When she found it in her to look his way again, she saw he meant it. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile or a smirk. She only nodded, turning her face away again.

  “So. What’s this make you? My new bodyguard?”

  “Something like that, yes. Until this blows over.”

  “I don’t want one.”

  “I don’t remember asking whether or not you did, but that’s my job.”

  “I don’t get a say in it?”

  “Do you want to live?”

  She rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”

  “Then there you go. I’m your bodyguard since you want to live. That’s your say in it.”

  “And I guess you think you’re the only person living who could possibly protect me, right?” She blew a strand of hair away from her face, then realized she probably had a ton of eye crusts or dry drool going on. At least it was still a little bit dark in the room.

  When he looked out the window, she did a quick check of her face and smoothed her hair out. Everything seemed to be in place.

  Jace, on the other hand, was perfection. She wasn’t blind. Sure, he was a jerk, but he was also gorgeous. The faint morning sunlight highlighted the dark stubble covering his cheeks, his sharp jaw. It only made him more rugged, more drool-worthy. The girls would freak if they ever met him.

  Note to self: do not introduce him to the girls. She would never hear the end of it. And knowing them, they would all bend over backward to get in his pants.

  Like she needed that. It was bad enough he had already inserted himself in her life and refused to leave. If he had even the slightest idea her friends looked at him with anything more than passing interest, she’d never hear the end of it.

  “Well, I have plans today,” she informed him with a smile. “Something tells me I’ll be doing things you’re not interested in.”

  He snickered, turning back to her with a lift of his shoulders. Broad shoulders. Extremely broad, extremely muscular. Enough to make her mouth go dry. “If you’re the one doing them, that means I’m interested. I don’t know any other way to explain it. Whatever you’re doing, that’s my business for the day. Simple as that.”

  “Has anybody ever told you how annoying you are?”

  “Plenty of times,” he grinned.

  “So, what? You’ll wait in the car for me while I do what I have to do?”

  His brows drew together over those dark eyes of his. She wished it didn’t look like they were smoldering when they met hers. “Exactly what did you have in mind?”

  Crap. Was there time to suddenly become a deep, valuable sort of person? Because that was exactly who he didn’t expect her to be and who she was starting to suspect she wasn’t. All he would do was laugh at her if she told him what she had planned for the day. She could practically already hear it.

  Something inside her flared to life. Screw this guy if he didn’t think her life was worthwhile. He didn’t know the first thing about her. He’d never lived the way she did, just like she’d never li
ved the way he had. If he was so dead set on going off of what he saw in front of him rather than looking deeper, that wasn’t her problem.

  Bitterness rose up in her throat, but she managed to push it back just barely. Rather than lashing out at him for something he hadn’t done or said yet—even though she fully expected him to—she replied in an even tone. “Well, I have a yoga class.”

  He didn’t laugh at this. That was a point in his favor. All he did was incline his head a little bit. “Okay. I think I can handle that.”

  “And I have brunch with my friends.”

  “Great. Good for you. I haven’t had a good brunch in a long time.”

  She gulped. “Well, you’re not gonna go in with me. You’re not gonna sit at the table with us.”

  “Why not?” One corner of his mouth pulled up in what he probably thought was a sexy smirk. “What, are you scared I’ll discover some great secret of womankind that men aren’t supposed to know? You don’t want to reveal your secrets in front of me?”

  “Could you try not sounding so condescending?” she snapped. “Sorry if I don’t feel like walking around with some musclebound brainless jerk and feeling you staring at me the whole time.”

  “Brainless? You look at me and assume I’m brainless?”

  “You look at me and assume I’m worthless. You did all you could last night to make me out to be some spoiled, worthless little brat. You knew I don’t have a job, but you made a point to ask me if any of my coworkers were a threat. Don’t even pretend you didn’t deliberately do that.”

  “Fine. I won’t pretend.” He didn’t even have the decency to sound apologetic, the jerk. That got to her worse than anything else, really. The fact that he didn’t care.

  “What’s it feel like? Sitting up on your high horse, looking down on the rest of us? What, just because you work for a private investigations firm? Big deal. That doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t mean you’ve given anything back to the world. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m involved with.”

  “I served as a Navy SEAL,” he reminded her in a quiet, firm voice.

  “Well, whoop-dee-doo.” She raised one finger and spun in a circle next to her head. “Let’s have a parade in your honor. Gee, who you think will play you in the story of your life?”

  Even this wasn’t enough to break him. “I’d think somebody like you would be a little more respectful toward someone who served our country, seeing as how your father has for so long.”

  “Just because you serve doesn’t mean I have to respect you.”

  “I wonder how your father would feel about that.”

  “Since when are we talking about my father? Since you’re so interested in him, what do you think he’ll think of you treating me like a worthless piece of garbage just because I’m not toiling away at some go-nowhere job, paying off a hundred grand in student debt, and living off ramen noodles? What, would you like me better if I was that sort of person?”

  “It’s not my job to like you. It’s my job to keep you alive.”

  What was it about this guy? And what was about her? Why was there a stinging sensation behind her eyes and in her nose, like she was either going to sneeze or burst into tears at any second?

  Never, not even once in her life, had it made a single bit of difference whether or not a person liked her. Sure, they were all about the image of the Collins family, which was probably why she didn’t give a damn in her personal life what anybody thought. A lifetime spent trying to please an entire country would do that to a girl.

  What was it about this particular person, then? Why did she care how he looked at her? Why did she care about his opinion when, as she well knew, he didn’t know anything about her?

  It didn’t matter why she cared, only that she did and only that she resented herself for it.

  It was a fire in her belly, a fire that propelled her out of bed and sent her scrambling for her robe, hanging on the back of the bedroom door. “That’s it. This is over.”

  At least that seemed to get through to him finally. “You don’t get to decide—"

  “It’s not your job to talk,” she snapped, flinging the door open and storming downstairs.

  He wanted to think of her as a spoiled brat? Fine. He was about to find out a spoiled brat was really capable of.

  Chapter Eight

  “I’m telling you I don’t want him. Anybody but him.” She didn’t even bother lowering her voice for the sake of discretion, and it wasn’t only Jace who could hear her, either. He would’ve bet anything she could be heard loud and clear all over the house. Every member of his team who happened to be on the property would know damn well just how she felt about Jace being assigned as her personal protection.

  Meanwhile, there he was, perched on a stool in the kitchen, trying to enjoy a cup of coffee while sitting at the marble-topped island in a space which any chef would be lucky to work in.

  Who needed a pizza oven in their kitchen? Or a six-burner stove? Or one of those refrigerators with a touchscreen on the front and a camera to let the person look inside without actually opening the door?

  What was so damn hard about opening a refrigerator door to see what was inside?

  At least the coffee was good, and that was as much for his benefit as it was for Kara’s. If she thought he was hard to deal with, she didn’t want to see him without his coffee.

  “My mind is made up.” Senator Collins’s voice was flat, stern. Jace could imagine him talking to her that way when she was a little girl. Maybe if he’d done a little more of it, she wouldn’t be the way she was now. The girl had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide.

  At least they had one thing in common.

  “Dad, come on. Why are you so set on him? The rest of the guys on his team look just as good as he is.”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you. Besides, how would you know anything about the rest of his team?” The voices carried down the hall from William’s office, even with the door closed.

  Of course, Jace knew she wanted him to hear her. She wanted him to know how much she hated him already.

  Stupid girl. Didn’t she understand that her juvenile reactions only made him more determined to go against her? Like he would give her her way now, after the shouted theatrics. He snickered to himself as he lifted the cup to his lips again.

  “When am I finally going to get the chance to make my own decisions? When do I get my own life?”

  “You can start when there aren’t death threats being made against you!”

  Jace winced. Kara didn’t have a snappy comeback for that one—he couldn’t imagine having one either. A question occurred to him then, one he hadn’t thought to ask before. Was this the first time such threats had been made?

  There had to be a reason why the girl wasn’t taking this seriously. Until just then, it had never occurred to him that this might be old news to her. Was it common? At least he could understand that. At least it would mean she wasn’t being deliberately willful and difficult.

  He’d heard of people cutting off their nose to spite their face, but this was ridiculous.

  Nothing in the file Val had managed to put together in the middle of a thwarted hack and the rescue they’d managed before alluded to this girl being suicidal or unbalanced in any way. They would’ve red-flagged her if that was the case.

  Either she was extremely good at hiding her suicidal tendencies, or it was a personal problem with him that was the issue here. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she care about her safety? Had she already forgotten what was on that photo? The red slash across the throat?

  Because she’d sure as hell fallen to pieces when she saw that.

  Now she had the same attitude she’d had when she first showed up and almost ran him over.

  “Morning.” Braxton wandered into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “Cameras are all set. Not a square inch of a blind spot anywhere on the property. The beach is covered too.”

  “Thanks for that. Sure you don�
��t wanna trade places?” They both winced when a crash came from the office down the hall. “How much you wanna bet she threw something?”

  “She threw something, obviously.” Braxton eyed up the coffeemaker like he was studying some alien life form.

  “It’s not that difficult. One of those pod things.” Jace lifted his cup. “They buy the good pods.”

  “See? There’s nothing so wrong with having money.” Braxton snickered like he was clever, even though he was the guy who couldn’t figure out a simple coffee pod machine.

  “What? Has Zane been talking? Now I know who to keep my mouth shut around.”

  “Hey.” Braxton joined him at the island counter. “It’s not like I love spoiled people, especially when they haven’t done a thing to earn their money.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I’m not gonna walk around holding a grudge against them. And from what I heard, you fired the first shot.”

  “Excuse me?” Just when he thought he had somebody on his side.

  Braxton snickered. “You’re the one who got snide over her not having a job.”

  “What the hell has this already devolved into? A sewing circle? It’s like when my mom’s friends used to come over and complain about their kids and their men and everything else under the guise of sewing or knitting or whatever they were pretending to do.” Jace got up to make another cup of coffee. There wasn’t enough caffeine in the world.

  “You know how it is. People talk. It’s not like I heard it from one of us, either.”

  “The guards?” Jace whispered, even more disgusted than he’d been before. “They don’t have anything better to do?”

  “I got the feeling that a few of them respect you a whole lot more than they would have if you hadn’t said it,” Braxton admitted. “I guess she’s rubbed a few of them the wrong way, too.”

  “Yeah, well, she almost ran me down last night, so I think I’m the one who deserves to have a problem with her the most. I can only imagine what a terror she must be otherwise.”

  “Still, at least they know better than to get mouthy.”