Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Somehow, even though that should have scared her worse than anything else, his reaction had the opposite effect. It calmed her. He could take care of this.

  “I will find you,” he continued. “You will regret this until your final breath. Trust me. I will make you regret ever considering doing this.”

  The only response he received was a series of beeps, signaling the call’s end.

  For a second, she assumed he would comfort her. God knew she needed it after what she had just heard, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what that awful, screeching voice had been trying to say.

  Whoever they were, they’d killed Paul for her. At least, that was what they told themselves. That was what they wanted her to believe, what they wanted her to blame herself for.

  Instead of taking care of her, however, Braxton ran with both her phone and his in hand, the blender forgotten on the stairs. He flung open the front door and whistled, a sound which carried surprisingly far. Serenity waited, holding her breath, until she heard a faint whistle in reply.

  He then came back in, tucking her phone into his pocket before typing something into his. “I’m sending this recording to the team at headquarters,” he explained in an offhand sort of way, though she hadn’t asked what he was doing. Like he assumed she was going to ask—and she would have if her brain was working correctly, which it definitely wasn’t. She couldn’t get that voice out of her head. She couldn’t imagine going to sleep later, knowing she would hear it over and over.

  Jace came back first, then Sledge, followed by Zane. All three of them looked a little dirty, a little rumpled, but eager to know why Braxton had signaled for them.

  He looked up at her, where she still sat on the same step as before. “I’m gonna play it for them,” he warned.

  “Be my guest,” she whispered. The instant he started to play the recording he’d made using his phone, she buried her head in her arms and wished she could block it out. Taunting her. Accusing her. Who hated her that much?

  “Jesus Christ,” Sledge muttered when it was over.

  “I sent the recording to Val. Who knows what she’ll be able to make of it? I was hoping she might be able to manipulate the sound, to find any background noise or anything at all. It’s obvious whoever it was used something to change the sound of their voice, but I don’t know how far she’ll be able to get with a recording I made off a second phone.”

  “It’s worth a shot anyway,” Zane murmured.

  Slowly, all four of them turned their attention to her. She knew she must look like a mess, tear-stained and red-eyed.

  “I was right,” she whispered with a weak smile. “It was them who killed Paul. You should send the recording to the police too. To Santiago. He’ll want to know. Maybe we should take my phone to them. Maybe they’ll be able to, you know, find out who the last call came from.” The number had come up as being unknown, meaning the caller had blocked themselves, but she guessed the police would have ways around that.

  At least, she hoped—she prayed—because she didn’t know how much more of this she could take. How much more could anybody take?

  “Sure, we’ll do that.” Braxton went to her, sitting a few steps below where she sat, trembling. “From now on, maybe I should answer any calls that come in from blocked or unknown numbers.”

  “Yeah, you should.” Normally, she would’ve fought against this. There was no reason for anybody else to answer her phone, but this wasn’t any ordinary situation, and she would do whatever she had to so long as it meant avoiding ever having to hear that voice again. It was bad enough she would hear it in her dreams.

  “I’ll call the detective,” Jace offered, already on the phone.

  “I’ll look around,” Sledge offered, and he and Braxton exchanged a meaningful look. She didn’t have it in her to ask exactly what they meant. They had a job to do, and they knew how to do it. She was content leaving it there for the time being.

  Especially if she had no idea how to move forward from this. What was she supposed to do? Paul Bergman had died because her stalker thought they were doing it for her. Even though she was the one who’d first guessed it, that didn’t mean she wanted it to be true. It didn’t mean that hearing it for herself wasn’t a shock. A huge, horrifying, disgusting shock.

  “Do you want to maybe go up and lie down?” Braxton suggested in a soft voice. “We can take care of things down here for the time being.”

  “Oh, God, no. I don’t want to be alone. It’s not like I would manage to fall asleep—I might never sleep again after hearing that.”

  “You’ll sleep again,” he assured her. “I know it doesn’t seem that way now, but you’ll get through this.”

  “Are you so sure?” She looked him in the eye, unflinching. “I’m not trying to insult you, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t personal. But are you sure I’m going to get through this? I’m starting to doubt it.”

  They were alone or as good as. Jace was on the phone in the other room—she could hear him talking to somebody even if she couldn’t make out what he was actually saying. Maybe that sense of privacy gave Braxton extra courage.

  He moved further up the stairs until they were sitting side-by-side and wrapped his arms around her. She melted against him, her muscles turning to water—at least that was how it felt. Just like she had on the way back from Paul Bergman’s office, she let him support her.

  Just like before, he did, even after she’d been so mean earlier.

  “There’s one thing I don’t want you to doubt, not for a minute. Are you listening carefully?” She nodded, not bothering to speak. “Okay. I don’t want you to doubt that you’re going to get through this because you will. And you’ll be just fine when it’s all over. I’ll see to that, and I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise. You’re going to be just fine. Repeat that to me.”

  She felt like a little girl having to obey a grown-up, but she did it anyway. If anything, there was something comforting about letting him handle things. Something comforting in handing her fate over to another person—especially when that person happened to be somebody she already trusted.

  “I’m sorry for what I said before,” she whispered, her head against his shoulder. It was so nice, being there.

  “I know,” he murmured with a sigh. “You don’t have to apologize. We all say things when we’re in that sort of mood. You’ve been through a lot. I don’t hold it against you.”

  “They really hate me, whoever this is.” She straightened up, looking at him in awe. “How could I have made anybody hate me that much, but I didn’t know it?”

  “Who’s to say?” he shrugged. “The mind can be twisted in all sorts of ways without anybody being the wiser. There are all kinds of ways for a person to sort of fall into madness—jealousy, contempt, obsession. There are all sorts of reasons. When left unchecked, they can do terrible things.”

  No kidding. A man was dead because of them.

  “Ben.” She jumped to her feet, her heart racing. “What if it’s Ben?”

  “Wait a second. I thought Ben was as dumb as a rock. You said yourself he was incapable of doing this.”

  “Right, but we can’t dismiss the coincidence, can we?” When he still looked confused, she groaned in frustration. “Look. It was a coincidence that Paul Bergman ended up martyred hours after I met with him. And this is a coincidence, too. I threw Ben out and told him never to come back, and now look what’s happening. I don’t want to dismiss this as being just coincidence. Don’t you see?”

  He still didn’t look fully convinced, but he didn’t dismiss her either. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. I’ll go take a look at Ben, see what he’s up to.”

  “Wait a second. We’re both going.”

  “I don’t think so.” But she was already halfway up to her room, ignoring him. No way was she about to let Ben get away with this. And if it wasn’t him, she wanted to know for herself that it wasn’t him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five


  “You’re sure you want to do this?” He pulled up in front of a house much closer to what Braxton imagined Serenity’s home would be like before they’d met. It was the sort of house referred to by some as a McMansion, and it was clear no expense had been spared in mashing a half-dozen architectural touches into the same, ugly patchwork of a structure.

  It was like she was reading his mind, knowing exactly what he was thinking as he thought it. “I hate this house,” she whispered, her nose wrinkling. “It’s so tacky. But he loves it because it’s the biggest house of anybody he knows—anybody our age, I mean.”

  Braxton figured it was a safer bet to do nothing but grunt since there really weren’t words for what the house inspired in him. Pity? Disgust?

  “And he likes his cars, too,” Jace noted, nodding toward the row of cars sitting outside in the driveway.

  Braxton recognized the black Lambo which Ben had driven to Serenity’s house earlier. “Looks like he came home,” he muttered. There was a sense of satisfaction knowing he’d be there—though still, he couldn’t help but wish she hadn’t insisted on coming along.

  He looked at her from the corner of his eye, sitting beside him. She didn’t say a word, only stared at the house. Granted, she’d been quiet for most of the ride except to give directions, but this seemed to be a more profound sort of silence.

  “You okay?” he asked, putting the truck in park. Normally, he would’ve been more concerned with the element of surprise, but she was more important than that. So he took his time, waiting rather than jumping straight out of the car.

  She sat ramrod straight, stiff as a board. “Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.” He didn’t believe her but was willing to let it go for the time being. It couldn’t have been easy pulling up in front of the house again and remembering what she’d found the last time she took Ben by surprise.

  She took the lead, marching up to the house. Then, to Braxton’s surprise, she walked straight in without bothering to knock or ring the bell. There was barely time to exchange a look of surprise with Jace before they had no choice but to follow her inside.

  “Ben! Get down here.” She stood in the center of the foyer, looking up the stairs. “Come on! I know you’re up there.”

  “What are you doing?” Braxton whispered, one eye on the stairs. She didn’t hear him, or she didn’t care. Maybe she was beyond the point of caring. Jace stood at her other side, looking over the top of her head at Braxton as he spoke to her. “You know, you have us here because you think he might be a dangerous person, but you’re challenging him. What’s going on?”

  She didn’t have to answer. All she had to do was nod up the stairs with a sick, triumphant sort of smile. Both Braxton and Jace followed her gaze to find Ben standing at the top of the stairs.

  He wasn’t wearing what he’d worn to her house. In fact, he didn’t wear anything but a sheet wrapped around his waist.

  “Now I know what he was doing,” Jace whispered, clearly noting Ben’s mussed hair and a slight sheen of sweat covered his skin.

  He ran a hand through his golden blonde curls, looking down at the three of them. “What is this all about? What are you doing here? Since when you show up at the house screaming at me?”

  Braxton wanted to know the answer to that question, too. So far, she’d been quiet since Ben appeared. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to see your phone,” he announced.

  “I do mind. Unless you have a warrant, I don’t see any reason why you would show up at my house demanding anything from me.”

  Funny. He sounded tough, but he wouldn’t look at Serenity. No matter how she glared at him—and she never took her eyes from him, not for a second—he found a way to avoid looking back.

  That was their problem. Braxton had a job to do. “Serenity received a threatening call not long after you left the house. We just want to make sure it wasn’t you the call came from.”

  That seemed to get through to him—at least he didn’t have that arrogant look on his face anymore, which clearly was his way of overcoming his embarrassment at being caught with his pants down. “A call? I didn’t do it! I was… busy.” Just like any guilty person, his eyes cut to the subject of his guilt. Braxton wasn’t familiar with the layout of the home, but he would’ve bet good money that Ben had just looked in the direction of his bedroom.

  “Oh, I bet you are,” Serenity snickered, nasty. “You come to my house, talking about getting back together, and you come back here. You come back to her, or with her, or maybe you called and told her to meet you here.”

  She then raised her voice again, even louder than before. “I know you’re here, Lola.”

  “Oh, damn.” Jace practically squirmed out of his skin with discomfort. Braxton understood the feeling.

  Moments later, a shamefaced Lola appeared at the top of the stairs—and she was holding two cell phones. “Seriously, take a look. I was with Ben this whole time. He called me earlier, and yeah, we met up here. We’ve been together for at least an hour.”

  Serenity snorted. “A whole hour, hmm? This must be a special occasion or something since an hour’s about fifty minutes too long.” Jace snickered quietly, but Braxton didn’t.

  “Are you okay?” Lola whispered, chewing her lip while she did her best to smooth her mussed, tangled hair. “Did they say anything awful?”

  “Shut up. Don’t even pretend to be a friend. And don’t pretend this is the first time this ever happened—you don’t just fall into bed with somebody and stay there for an hour the first time they call you up for a little comfort. Consider me dead because I am dead to you. Just like you’re dead to me.”

  “These look clean,” Jace whispered to Braxton, who was still staring up at the couple on the stairs. He didn’t know how he felt about this—not that any of it was his business, but he couldn’t help but feel for Serenity. She was learning a lot about herself and about the people around her in a very short span of time. He only hoped the whole thing didn’t blow up in her face.

  “Come on.” Braxton took her by the arm. “Let’s get out of here. You don’t need to be here right now.” For once, she didn’t fight him, but she never took her eyes from her ex-boyfriend and her ex-best friend as they left the house.

  “You knew it when you saw the cars out here, didn’t you?” he murmured, looking her way as he climbed into the truck beside her.

  She nodded, looking out the passenger side window. “Yeah, I saw her car sitting there. I could’ve told you guys, but I guess I wanted to see for myself. Sorry for putting you in an awkward position.”

  It was rare for her to apologize for something like that. He looked at Jace in the mirror before replying. “I’m just sorry you had to see it.”

  “Whatever. At least now I know she was sleeping with him too, and she’s not worth my time.”

  She looked at him, then looked into the back seat toward Jace. “You must think I’m the world’s most gullible person. Here I am, thinking my life is one way when it’s something totally different. I feel like I’m always the last one to know.”

  “The one who’s being cheated on is generally the last one to know,” Jace reminded her in a sympathetic tone. “That’s not just you. That’s everybody in the whole world.”

  “I guess no one ever cheated on you, ha? Either of you. She’d have to be completely stupid if she did.”

  “It wouldn’t be so sure of myself if I were you,” Jace chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve been on the receiving end of infidelity before. It’s never fun. I’m sorry you have to deal with it.”

  “What about you?” she asked Braxton. Was there more interest in her voice than there’d been before?

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he admitted. “But who knows? It could’ve happened and I just didn’t know about it. That’s the sort of thing you have to take a chance on, I guess. Whenever you get into a relationship with somebody, you have to walk into it with your eyes open. Ideally, of course, you choose a person who would be faithful to you regardless, but you’ve also
got to know there’s a chance something could happen someday. I guess it’s sort of like living knowing we’re all gonna die one day anyway. You have to live regardless.”

  “Wow, this got very dark all of a sudden,” Jace murmured.

  “Yeah, and we were having such a happy day before this.” Serenity started laughing, a helpless fit of giggles that managed to infect both of the fully grown, badass wolf shifters in the car with her. It was the last thing Braxton would’ve imagined himself doing just then, but he couldn’t help it.

  At least they’d managed to take her mind off the stalker, which he guessed was a good thing even if the distraction meant knowing Lola had been going behind her back.

  Naturally, they couldn’t avoid the topic forever. The phone rang, the sound reverberating through the car thanks to the Bluetooth connection. Just like that, Serenity stopped laughing. They all did.

  Amazing how the ring of a phone could snap a person back to reality.

  “We’re here with Serenity,” Braxton answered, warning Logan before he began to speak. Just in case.

  Logan’s voice was much warmer and friendlier than it would’ve been otherwise. “Hi, Serenity. How are you hanging in?”

  “By the skin of my teeth,” she admitted in a dark voice. He longed to reach over and offer what comfort he could, but he thought better of it at the last minute.

  The last thing he wanted to do now was to confuse her even more. She’d already been through enough.

  “I wanted to check in and let you know Val managed to isolate a little bit of background noise in the recording—unfortunately, it was coming from the background in Serenity’s house. Was the TV on in another room, maybe?”

  “Yeah, it was.” She slapped her forehead, making Braxton reach out and shake his head in silent reproach. It wasn’t her fault. He hadn’t thought of it, either, and it wasn’t like either of them had the clarity of mind to run back to the living room and mute the TV when that voice was screeching at them.