Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Of course, if she didn’t stop drinking, she’d look like hell come morning and would stumble through her videos. Crap. Would Braxton be there for those? He’d think they were stupid, pointless.

  Why did she even care? He was nobody.

  Her phone rang. She rolled her eyes but answered anyway, even when she knew what she’d get from Angelica. “Hey,” she sighed. “What’s up?”

  “Where are you?” She had to shout to be heard over the background noise.

  “At home.”

  “You should come here!”

  “Where’s here?”

  “My place! Come on. It’s not the same without you! Get your ass over here.”

  Serenity rubbed the bridge of her nose. A headache was starting to show itself. “I’m really tired.”

  “What?” Angelica shouted.

  “I’m tired!” She looked out to the patio, almost guilty for yelling and hoping Braxton didn’t come running.

  “So what? It’s not even eleven! Don’t be like that. Come on!”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got a long day tomorrow.” And today hadn’t been easy either. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Have fun. Be safe.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Angelica’s laughter was obvious as she ended the call. She meant well, Serenity knew, but she was used to living with nothing to worry about, nothing to work for, nothing to care about, no goals outside of what would fill her time until tomorrow came and tomorrow after that.

  There were times when growing up poor was an advantage. At least she had something to do with her life, something to work for, something to get out of bed for besides an appointment for a waxing or a mani.

  There she went again, thinking about people the way Braxton thought about her. She hated the way he saw her, even though she thought the same things about most of the people she knew.

  What did that say about her? And did it even matter?

  She went back to her wine, still watching him, still wondering why it mattered what he thought when he was just one person out of so many. So many people who loved her.

  Didn’t they? Her fans, her followers. They loved her.

  She had that much, anyway.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the smoke that first caught Braxton’s attention.

  His head snapped up. He sniffed the air, swinging his head this way and that. Not wood smoke. Not burning plastic or rubber.

  Tobacco. Somebody was smoking.

  It was just past eleven, and he hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary before now. Somebody was smoking somewhere very near the house. Where was Serenity? And who would be stupid enough to light up a cigarette if they were trying to keep their presence secret?

  Stalkers weren’t necessarily geniuses, he supposed, approaching the rear of the house—the side facing out over the hill—with silent footfalls. A quick flip of the snap and his gun was free. He drew it, holding it low, sliding along the wall until he reached the corner. Once he turned it, he’d be on the back patio. The scent of smoke was stronger than ever.

  Whoever this was, they were close.

  He held his breath, weapon at the ready, prepared to do what had to be done.

  Yet instinct held him back, warned him.

  Rather than burst out into the open then, he peered out from around the corner, his head darting in and out in a flash.

  “Jesus.” He holstered the gun and snapped it in place. He’d been a moment away from charging at Serenity with a damn gun pointed at her head.

  She’d sprawled out on a lounge chair in a t-shirt and drawstring pants, her hair in a bun on top of her head. In one hand was a glass of red wine and in the other was the cigarette she was smoking.

  Her eyes moved his way when he stepped out from behind the wall into the open. “Don’t tell Melody.” She took another drag, inhaled. “She’ll lose her mind.”

  He watched her exhale, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Only a smoker thinks they can get away with pretending they don’t. Everybody else can smell it on them.”

  “I don’t smoke when I know I’m gonna be seeing her later,” she explained with a grim smile. “Like that same day. At night, when I’ll be showering in the morning and in fresh clothes and whatnot? I can get away with it.”

  “You’ve given this some thought.” He took a few steps toward her, the way he’d approach a scared animal while he was the wolf.

  “Sure. I don’t want her to catch me and give me hell over it.”

  “Would she really do that?”

  “Are you kidding? You’ve seen her at work. You’ve seen how she gets.” Another drag. “Don’t get me wrong. I know she means well, and I could never handle everything on my own without her.”

  “So don’t smoke if you know how she’ll react.”

  “Yeah, okay.” She rested her head against the back of the chair, looking at him with one eyebrow arched. “Like you would do that if you were in my place.”

  “We’re not talking about me.”

  “I know we’re not. Still, tell me you wouldn’t do whatever you felt like doing anyway, especially if having a single cigarette helped calm your nerves and kept you from taking a Xanax or a sleeping pill.” So she tried to stay away from that stuff. He made a mental note of it.

  “You don’t have anything to be worried about. Don’t you know that?”

  “What?” she snickered. “You think you can protect me? Just because you’re here, everything’s okay? You can’t be with me every minute of the day. Besides,” she continued, “it’s not that. I wasn’t even thinking about the email until you just mentioned it.”

  “Okay. What were you thinking about? What has you so anxious?”

  She looked up at the sky, her face blank. “You were there today. You saw how it can get. Do you think it’s going to get a lot easier for me as time goes on or worse?”

  “You don’t need to do this. You’re a smart person. Melody told me how smart.”

  She snickered, still staring upward. “She gave you my full rundown of credentials? Why am I not surprised?”

  “Maybe she’s proud of you. It sounded like she was.”

  “Why would she be proud of me? She barely even knows me.”

  “If not proud, impressed. And it was important to her that Zane and I understand who we're dealing with here. You’re not some empty-headed thing who can barely spell her own name. Far from it. She wanted to make sure we knew you’re a substantial person.”

  Her head turned until her eyes met his. “Would you say I’m a substantial person?”

  “I think you have the potential to be.”

  “I’m not good enough right now. What would make me substantial? What would I have to do to meet with your approval?” He heard her voice and saw in the sarcastic tilt of her mouth that this wasn’t a serious question. She didn’t care to meet with his approval. In fact, he liked that about her. She wasn’t a people pleaser unless and until she absolutely had to be.

  Putting up an image for the public was probably more than enough for her to deal with. She didn’t need to put up an image for him too. He didn’t want her to. He wanted her to be real with him.

  “I know. I can tell you’re not like the girls you were with today. Luke told me about them and about how hard you’ve worked to get where you are. Melody talked about that too, but she didn’t go into details about your personal life. You’ve been through a lot.”

  “Plenty of people have.” She turned back to the sky, studying it even though there was no chance of seeing the stars with so much light pollution at the foot of the hills.

  “It’s nothing like Kansas, is it?”

  He’d hoped to startle her out of her fog with that question, and he succeeded. Her head snapped around, her eyes boring into him. “Exactly how much do you know?”

  “I know you come from Kansas.” He sat at the edge of a lounge chair, facing her with a few chairs between them. “And I know you were poor. I know you’re adopted, and both of your parents di
ed before you graduated high school. I know you took care of yourself.”

  “It’s a pretty good abridged version of my life up to that point,” she admitted with a wry smile. “I’d say you hit all the highlights, but they’re really the low lights, aren’t they?”

  “Why don’t you give me the highlights then?” Because he wanted to know. She was fascinating—and the last person with whom he should become fascinated, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help it any more than the wolf could help wanting her.

  “I would give you the highlights if there were any highlights,” she admitted. “I guess one of the highlights was actually being taken in at all. It could have been worse. Granted, it could’ve been better, at least financially, but if I’d been left to the system, anything could’ve happened. At least I was raised with love.”

  She paused before adding, “By my grandparents.”

  That was news. “What?”

  “My grandparents raised me. They weren’t my adopted parents. I made that part up or, rather, let people believe what they wanted to believe. They were my grandparents, my mom’s parents. She went to prison less than a year after I was born, and that’s where she is now.”

  Only the fact that he knew how she’d close herself off from him if he reacted the wrong way kept him from expressing surprise. “What about your father? Was he not in the picture?”

  She finished her cigarette and tossed the butt aside. “He was until I was around eight months old.”

  “What happened? Did he run off?”

  “No, he wasn’t doing much running by the time my mom got through with him.” She shot him a look that spoke volumes. “Which is why she’s in prison.”

  It was like being kicked in the chest. Why this revelation affected him so—she was a stranger, to say nothing of her parents—was a mystery. “She killed him.”

  “Boy, you’re quick on the uptake.” He let that one go, seeing as she had just admitted a dark secret that many people probably didn’t know. She was feeling vulnerable and more prone to sarcasm.

  “You can imagine why I keep that a secret,” she muttered, looking out over the pool. “Somebody might actually go try to talk to Mom, which would drive her nuts. I can’t have that. She’s already been through enough.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  There was a catch in her breathing, a hitching of her chest. He’d hit a sore spot. For a second, he expected her to lash out at him, to throw what was left of her wine his face before storming back into the house and slamming the door hard enough to shatter the glass.

  Instead, she whispered, “The day before I left for college. I told her I probably wouldn’t be able to come back. She was glad.”

  “Glad to not see you anymore?”

  “Glad that I wouldn’t be back to see her. She always hated when I visited. She didn’t want me to come to the prison.”

  “I’m sure she only wanted what was best for you.”

  “You don’t know her,” she spat. “Don’t act like you know just because you, what, studied psychology so you can get inside the heads of the people you’re trying to protect.”

  He took this in stride. “Actually, it’s to get inside the heads of the bad guys. That’s what we do. That’s why we’re different from just a private investigations firm. We’re more than just muscle.”

  “Then tell me about the person who sent that email if you’re so smart about why people do what they do. Wow me with your skill.” She lowered the glass to the patio and folded her hands over her flat stomach, brows lifting in silent invitation.

  “I’m not some circus freak here to entertain you. I’m not gonna do a little dance. I don’t have anything to prove.”

  “You don’t really know anything about who might’ve sent it. That’s the problem.”

  “Wait a second.” He fought against the impulse to let her get to him. If he lashed out, he’d lose whatever small bit of respect he might’ve earned. “I don’t know anything about your personal life because I can’t get a straight answer out of you. I haven’t had the chance yet to ask you about the three people named in that email. I haven’t had much of a chance to ask you anything worthwhile.”

  “I have a busy schedule,” she shrugged.

  “You have a real talent for avoiding a topic.”

  “It’s part of what makes it possible to get through interviews when everybody wants a piece of you.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about them now? We’re alone. There are no makeup artists here, no hair people. No manager. Nobody to get in the way. Nobody who shouldn’t hear it. I’m gonna have to know, and I’m gonna have to know soon. Very. Or else there’s no hope of getting the job done.”

  She cleared her throat before sitting up straight, one leg on either side of the chair. She looked at him straight-on. “Ben is my ex-boyfriend. I caught him cheating on me a week ago with some stranger. He’s nothing, nobody. Pathetic. Only thinks he’s a man—and don’t even make a crack about what’s wrong with me if I dated somebody who only thinks he’s a man.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” He was.

  “He doesn’t have a violent bone in his body, and it would take more than one or two brain cells to write an email that can’t easily be traced. I don’t even think he knows my private email address. At least, I never shared it.”

  “So you’re not worried about him?”

  “Not even a little.” There was a firmness to her voice.

  “What about the others? Who are they? Who were they to you?”

  She looked away. “Nobody. Not anymore. They were people I knew when I first got out here. Nick, Kennedy, Darcy.”

  “You don’t know them anymore?”

  “No. They, uh… We drifted apart.”

  “You used them somehow. That’s what the email said.”

  “I didn’t use them. I… got to know them back when I first started out. They already had followings online. They knew the ins and outs. We got to be friendly. They featured me on some of their videos. Their followers found me.”

  “And once you got all you could get, you dropped them.”

  She clenched her teeth and growled through them. “Like I said, we drifted apart.”

  “Because they had nothing left to offer.”

  “Shut up. You don’t know.”

  “Could it be one of them who sent it?”

  “You’d have to ask them, wouldn’t you? Or should I do it? Maybe I’ll call them, ask if the three of them got together and decided to terrorize me over some stupid stuff that happened two years ago.”

  “It might not have been so stupid to them. It might’ve been important. Did you sleep with any of them?”

  “That’s the line. I won’t cross it.”

  “Which means you did.”

  “Go to hell.” She stopped short of throwing her wine in his face, choosing to throw the rest of it down her throat instead. She then rose from the chair. “This conversation is over.”

  “Whether or not it’s over isn’t the point. The point is who did you piss off enough to drive them to this? Understand something,” he continued, standing and stepping in front of her. “I don’t care either way. Your issues around this are your issues. I need to know what we’re looking at—the level this person feels betrayed, if they feel betrayed at all. It could be a mutual friend. It could be one of them. I don’t know, and I won’t unless you come out and tell the truth.”

  Her pulse throbbed, jumping in her throat. She was warm from the wine and the night air and her anger, leaving her flushed and cranking up the intensity of her scent. Each mad flutter of her heart sent a wave of her essence flowing straight to his nose, into his awareness. Somewhere in his mind, his wolf panted, desire stirring low and dangerously tempting.

  “I don’t like the feeling that my private life is up for grabs,” she whispered, her lip curled in a snarl. Beads of perspiration lined her upper lip.

  He tore his gaze from her mouth. “I’m not
judging you,” he grunted.

  “You’re such a liar.”

  He could’ve continued to lie. He could’ve insisted it didn’t matter either way what she’d done with her personal time up until this moment—not personally, anyway. Strictly from a professional standpoint.

  He didn’t because she was too smart. It would only drive the wedge deeper, pushing them further apart, and since he knew instinctively that it would be him who guarded her, who watched her back, who confronted anyone who dared come too close, that would be counterproductive.

  “I won’t anymore. Not at all. Your life isn’t any of my business outside of keeping you safe and finding out who sent that email and why. Okay? That’s the best I can do.”

  She pursed her lips—again, he avoided looking at them for fear of what his wolf would drive him to do. “Okay. I’ll hold you to that.”

  “Good. I want you to. I also want your word that you’ll be forthcoming from now on. I won’t ask for details unless they’re important to the case. When I do ask for them, I want them. No games. Okay?” He lowered his brow and his voice. “You can trust me.”

  Something flickered behind her eyes. Was it the word trust? Was that the problem? She’d just been cheated on by her boyfriend. Trust probably wasn’t high up on her list of attributes just then. Who could blame her?

  “Yeah,” she breathed. “Okay. I’ll be straight with you. No, I didn’t sleep with any of them, but I always had the feeling Kennedy liked me more than she wanted to let on. I’ve never been interested in girls. I know some girls will experiment or whatever, but I’m not into that. It’s embarrassing when I think about her because I knew she liked me, and I used that to gain exposure to her fanbase. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “Thank you for trusting me with that.” He stepped aside. “Maybe you’d better get some rest. You have a long day tomorrow.”

  “You’re telling me.” She walked past him, her elbow barely brushing his arm, but even that slight bit of contact was electric. The wolf howled in his head, loud enough to deafen him. It was a surprise she couldn’t hear it, but of course, she couldn’t.