“Not this well,” he laughed, running his hand over the leather seat. “Our clients pay us well, sure. And Logan makes sure we get our share. He’s not stiffing us if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, he doesn’t seem like that type of person.”
“Besides, there’s a ton of overhead. You’ll see when we get there.”
Her pulse picked up speed. “You mean I can come in? I can see where you work?”
“For the most part, we work in the field. Right now, that would be your house. But yeah, I don’t think Logan would mind if you came in. Why not?”
Why not?
She took it easy on him for most of the drive—it was obvious how tired he was, and she didn’t want to make things worse by talking his ear off or making him answer questions. Still, there was one thing she felt she had to say.
“I really am sorry about last night,” she murmured. “I hope you didn’t get in trouble. If you did, I would be happy to talk to anybody for you. It was all my fault.”
“It was my fault, too,” he sighed. “I have a job to do. You are my job, or you were at the time. Jace left me with you in my protection. If anything, he would be the one to talk to about it, not Logan.”
“Why is that?”
“Jace is lead on your protection. He’s the one in charge.”
“Was he mad at you?”
“Actually, he seemed pretty cool with it. If anything, it seemed like he was in a hurry to get away.”
“Away from the house?” she asked, though that wasn’t the question she had in mind. Was he in a hurry to get away from her?
The thing was something had changed between them. It was obvious, and he must’ve felt it too. No matter how many times she had thought things over after running up to her room and locking the door, she couldn’t make sense of the shift.
Was it because he had defended her?
Or because when they danced together, her body had felt like it was on fire? And not in a bad way? To call it dancing was generous too. They had moved. Swayed.
She had wanted more. So much more.
But now, here was Zane telling her Jace had wanted to get away. That he’d been in a hurry. What did that mean? Was he trying to get away from her?
Did he feel like he’d taken things too far? Maybe he wasn’t supposed to do things like dance with his client. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to beat the crap out of a stranger in front of her either.
Hours later, a little thrill ran up her spine when she thought about it. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. He hadn’t even seemed winded.
There was no helping it. She had to wonder if he showed that same sort of passion and energy in other areas of his life. One in particular. What would it be like being under his control? With no way to defend herself?
She didn’t hate the idea; that much was for sure.
And it was unlike her.
Or was it? Maybe this was who she really was, who she’d always been. Maybe there was a lot of her that she had never understood before.
And he was revealing these parts to her, one bit at a time. Unwrapping her. Exposing her.
Had she felt it from the beginning, when she’d first set eyes on him? That he would challenge her, force her to look at herself a new way?
It was never easy or comfortable learning new things about herself, especially when those new aspects of her personality went directly against what she’d always thought of herself. There she was, seeing herself as strong, defiant, unwilling to bend under somebody else’s idea of who she should be.
And most definitely not the sort of girl who got a thrill from the image of being under somebody else’s complete control.
They were coming close to the group’s headquarters, and that was a relief. She could stop asking herself these uncomfortable questions for a little while in favor of exploring.
“This is it?” she asked in disbelief, eyeing the completely average looking building in a completely average looking industrial park out in the middle of nowhere. They had crossed through New York to get here, in the very northern part of New Jersey
Zane laughed. “What? Were you expecting neon signs? Arrows pointing to us?”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Okay, now that you put it that way…”
“Blending in behooves us,” he winked. “Can’t have everybody and their mother knowing how to find a group like us.”
“Is what you do so dangerous?”
“Honestly, it can be. I could try to be evasive right now. I could joke and play word games, but I’m too tired. The truth is, yeah. What we do can be very dangerous. We were just finishing up a pretty dangerous rescue when word came in of your…” He cleared his throat, his brows drawn together like he was in pain.
“Death threat,” she concluded. “You can say it. It’s okay.”
“You don’t always have to be strong, you know. Sorry if that’s more than I should say, but it’s true.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She pulled into the parking lot, which seemed pretty empty for a Monday morning. Then again, did anybody actually work here? Besides Logan’s team? Maybe he owned the entire complex. Maybe they had to be that secretive if their work was so dangerous.
She pulled in beside a line of familiar-looking black trucks. No variety. It made sense. “Are you sure nobody’s going to be mad about me coming in?” she asked before they climbed out of the car.
He ran a hand over stubble-covered cheeks, grinning. “What? You scared?”
“Of course not,” she fired back, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I’ve had enough fighting over the last couple of days to last me the rest of my life. I don’t want to ruffle any feathers.” Needless to say, there was one person whose feathers she wanted to ruffle less than anybody else.
The memory of what Jace had done in the garage was enough. She was dealing with a very dangerous person—not that she thought he’d ever hurt her. That was one thing she believed, that he’d never hurt a woman.
Zane led the way through the completely normal, unremarkable glass door which only led to a second door maybe ten feet away. This door was metal, set in a metal wall. A small camera sat at each upper corner, pointed down at where they stood.
He looked up into one camera, then the other, raising a hand in greeting to whoever sat behind the monitors, watching.
But when he reached for the door handle and tugged, nothing happened.
Her heart sank. “They won’t let me in?” she whispered, staring up. Who was back there? Was it Jace?
“Come on,” Zane called out. “She just wants to see how we work.”
“I won’t get into anything. I promise.” She had the sense of being a little girl again, promising Daddy she wouldn’t go through his private papers were mess anything up in his office so long as he let her sit behind the desk and pretend she was a big, important grown-up.
Another silent second. Then another. Finally, a faint buzzing noise rang out, and Zane grinned as he opened the door. “Welcome,” he smiled, stepping back so she could go in first.
There was nothing of immediate interest when she walked in, but what did she expect? Buzzers and flashing lights? All she saw stretched ahead of her was a hallway, painted beige, polished wood flooring and brass light fixtures on the walls giving her the sense of a warm, welcoming environment.
Definitely not the sort of thing a person expected to see upon entering a high-priced private investigations firm.
There was another door at the end of this hall. So many doors, so many hurdles for a person to overcome before they were allowed inside the inner sanctum. Zane opened this door too, since Kara was afraid to touch it before he did. She couldn’t shake the mental image of getting a little shock if her hand touched the metal knob. After all, she wasn’t welcome here.
She was completely out of her depth in this world, and she wasn’t used to feeling that way.
That sense didn’t ease when Zane led her into exactly the sort of room she’d
expected on first entering the building. Monitors everywhere, people calling out to each other from their computer terminals. She walked with her arms folded, terrified of touching anything even accidentally.
“Welcome. Here’s where we do a lot of what we do.” He looked proud, smiling. In that moment, Kara’s heart tightened a little. What would it be like to feel so proud of what she did?
“It’s overwhelming,” she admitted with a shaky laugh. She wasn’t used to being at a loss for words. She wasn’t used to walking into the new place and feeling completely lost.
The strangest thing happened. As her overwhelmed mind reached out, flailing around for something to hold onto, only one name came to mind. “Where’s Jace sit when he’s working here?”
All Zane did was lift an arm and point across the room.
What she found stole her breath.
There he was, at his desk, arms folded over the top and his head resting on top of them. His eyes were closed. He didn’t flinch when a girl whose strawberry blonde hair hung in thick braids over her shoulders walked past close enough to stir some of the loose paper stacked at his elbow.
He had to sleep sometime, she guessed.
“I’d better check in with Logan,” Zane murmured. It seemed like he was in a hurry to be away from her. How could she blame him? She’d already been more trouble than she was worth.
Besides, this allowed her to tiptoe over to where Jace slept and cover him with the jacket slung over the back of his chair.
Chapter Sixteen
“So, whenever a case comes in, you do the research on the people involved?”
Jace stirred, eyes still closed. It would be so easy to slide back into sleep—that was all he wanted, to be left alone in this happy, semi-comfortable haze.
“Yup. I mean, it’s a little deeper than that. I do the research, along with Doc here, and Hawk is the go-to guy when it comes to tracing and tracking.”
“That’s fascinating. Do you ever get tired of it?”
The one voice was Val’s. He’d heard her enough times through his earpiece to know her anywhere.
“No way. Every case is something new. How could I ever get tired of that?”
“You have to go to school for something like this?” Who was that? The way they talked, they were a stranger to the team, to the work the team did. What did that mean? To say it was unusual for an outsider to enter their personal world was an understatement. An extreme understatement.
“In a sense—this is what I specialized in when I served.”
“Ohhh, I see. Of course. That makes sense. Thank you for your service.”
“Thank you for yours,” Val countered. Who the hell was she talking to? If his eyelids hadn’t weighed roughly a hundred pounds each, he might open his eyes to see. They didn’t let strangers into their command center—or into the building itself. There was no tour, no ‘take your kid to work’ day.
“My service?”
“Sure. It can’t be easy being you. You’ve done through a lot, all because your dad is in the public eye.”
Oh, Christ. So that was it. She’d convinced Zane to let her come along with him. No, not quite. She’d driven him since Jace had his car. Sneaky little thing.
Though in spite of himself, he couldn’t help but smile a little. She had her ways.
Now, he was fully awake—though he wouldn’t have raised his head from his desk for anything in the world. He had to know how she would respond. If she thought he was awake, she wouldn’t be fully honest. His wolf sensed that in her.
“It’s not easy,” Kara admitted after a long pause. “But I wouldn’t put it on the same level as what you’ve done—not to mention what you do every day. I’m sure that can’t be easy, either. And it’s way more important than me dealing with reporters and photographers and, you know, putting on a happy face for the world.”
“I would suspect that was a great deal more difficult when you were young.” Doc must’ve entered the room at some point. It was rare for him to insert himself into a conversation that had nothing to do with running down the facts of the case.
“Oh, when I was a kid? It was confusing. I couldn’t understand why I had to smile and wave and all that stuff. And when reporters shouted questions, I wanted to answer them. You know?” She chuckled. “I thought they were really talking to me. It took a long time for me to understand that they were trying to get to my dad. And when Dad would shush me and warn me not to pay any attention to them, just to ignore them, I figured that meant I could ignore him whenever I felt like it.”
What was that noise? It couldn’t be Doc laughing, could it? Jace had never heard him laugh before. It was stupid, and he knew it, but laughter and all other such things seemed to have been lost along with the lower half of Doc’s leg. He was always serious, always stern. Until now. All it took was a pretty, witty blonde.
“I guess he didn’t take well to that,” Doc chuckled.
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Kara giggled.
Jace had no choice but to open his eyes then and pretend he’d been asleep longer than he had. If the entire world had turned on its head while he was sleeping, he needed to know what other changes he’d face.
There was something on top of him. His jacket. Yet another strange occurrence—they didn’t go around doing things like that for each other. Was it her? No, that wasn’t her style.
But things had changed for them, hadn’t they?
He lifted his head. It wasn’t tough, acting confused. He was just about as confused right then as he’d ever been. There she was, chatting with Val and Doc like they were old friends.
He liked seeing it, which was even more difficult to make sense of. It was good to see her looking relaxed, at home. Asking questions about the information flashing across the wall of monitors, the pictures and notes stuck up on another wall of bulletin boards.
He’d already known she was smart, with sharp intelligence and a keen eye. Good luck to anybody who took in the expensive purse, the supernaturally smooth, shining hair, the flashy car and took her for an airhead.
The way he pretty much had.
“Good morning,” Val grinned when she noticed him sitting up. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” he grunted, running a hand over his face. Had he drooled all over himself? He did that sometimes, especially when he fell asleep at his desk.
“You want some coffee?” Val offered.
“Only if you can hook up an IV and run it straight into my veins.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Val was chuckling softly as she left the room, heading for the kitchen.
Kara, meanwhile, was either pretending not to care that he’d woken up or trying to be discreet, letting him come back to his senses on his own time. Regardless of the reason why, she turned away after a brief smile. “So I guess my entire family history has been up here at some point or another, right?” She jerked a thumb toward the monitors, then nodded to the bulletin boards which just then held a lot of photos relating to her family.
Including a copy of the image sent to her family. Her graduation picture, the red slash across the throat.
If it bothered her, she did a good job of pretending otherwise. Had she gotten used to it? Was she already so jaded? It wasn’t the first time he’d asked himself if she was more accustomed to death threats than anybody had let on so far.
If the senator was withholding information for the sake of his image or his family’s privacy…
“Some of it,” he answered, even though she hadn’t been talking to him. “Not all. It’s impossible to put an entire family’s history on a wall.”
“I don’t know. You seem pretty thorough.” She walked over to the monitors, studying them. What was she thinking? With her face turned away, he couldn’t tell, though her body language told a pretty definite story.
The tension in her shoulders and back spoke volumes. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I’d better get back to my work,” D
oc muttered. He looked and sounded embarrassed, like he’d forgotten himself. Like he hadn’t meant to spend time getting to know a stranger—a stranger he already knew a lot about, granted, but someone he hadn’t become personally acquainted with.
It was one thing being able to access a person’s entire past at the stroke of a key. It was something else to talk to them, to hear the cadence of their voice and watch a smile or a frown spread across their face.
To watch them react to their life, laid bare on a series of monitors.
“You okay?” he murmured once he drew nearer.
“Hmm? Sure. Fascinated, if anything.” She was lying, but he didn’t want to call her on it. He didn’t like to punch down—and he’d already punched down more times than he wanted to admit.
“Why did you come?”
She looked back, over her shoulder. There was a deliberate sort of casualness about her now. She was working hard at containing her feelings about what was on those monitors, large as life. “Zane needed a ride. I felt bad since he was up all night because of me.”
“That was his choice—staying up all night, I mean. That was all him. He didn’t need to.”
“He felt like he had to.” She turned to him, arms still folded. She was wearing what he’d heard called a romper, a one-piece thing with thin straps covering toned shoulders. Her legs were lean and golden, the shorts ending halfway down her thighs.
If she wore a parka and ski pants, he still wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off her.
“What about you?” she asked, jerking her chin at him.
“Me?” Could she hear the direction his thoughts had taken? No, that wasn’t what she was talking about.
“Did you feel like you had to stay up all night? Was it penance?”
“No,” he snickered. “What would give you that sort of an idea?”
“I just figured, after that guy—”
“I haven’t given that guy a second’s thought since we stopped talking about him last night, and that’s the truth. He’s nothing. A bug I stepped on. A bug who should’ve stayed away.”
She nodded, accepting this—though there was no telling how she felt, hearing him talk about somebody that way. It was harsh, hard, and he knew it. But the guy had hardly been a sweetheart either.
Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset Page 12