Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “How do you know I don’t have a dog?”

  “For one thing, I don’t hear them barking at you from inside. For another thing, you never mentioned one. You haven’t been home since at least yesterday morning. I would think you’d be concerned about them.” Plus, there was the fact that he didn’t smell or sense a dog, and the dog would very well have sensed him.

  Her shoulders fell. “Okay, fine. I admit I haven’t done everything I could to make myself secure. Okay? Does it make you happy now that I’ve admitted that?”

  “No, because I’m not trying to be right. I’m trying to make sure you’re safe.”

  “I’ll call a company today if it makes you feel better.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to be here when you do it.” Her cheeks flushed darker than before, and this time he could feel it was anger rather than embarrassment. He flashed his widest, most winning smile. “That struck a nerve.”

  “Oh, you think? Sorry if I’m unique in not being crazy about somebody hovering over me all the time.”

  “I’m not hovering.”

  “Yes, you are! You don’t even know me, and you’re inserting yourself into my life. Could you please stop? I don’t want your services.”

  “And once again, I never tried to sell you anything. Maybe I’m just trying to be friendly because you’re here all alone, and your best friend was killed last night, and maybe you could use somebody to talk to, somebody to be here if you need anything. You know, I do have other things to do with my life.”

  Her mouth opened, and her brows drew together like she was about to tell him off—but she never got around to it. Her mouth closed. Her eyes welled up with tears that she quickly blinked away. He watched her straighten her posture, throwing her shoulders back, lifting her chin. He didn’t have the words to explain to her what it meant to see that, to watch her pull herself together. She was trying so hard to be brave, but she was starting to slip. Who wouldn’t, given everything she’d been through?

  “How do I know you’re not the person who ran me off the road last night?” she whispered.

  Just like that, his admiration weakened. That was the last thing he’d expected—though the question made sense. She was as smart as he’d heard. “You’ll just have to trust me. If you want, I’ll give you the number of my firm. You can talk to anybody there. They’ll completely corroborate my story. We were on the road at the same time as you were, and we happened to see the accident. I won’t even talk to them. You can talk to him yourself.”

  She considered this, then shook her head. “I’m too tired for all of this.”

  “I understand. I do,” he insisted when she raised an eyebrow. “Believe me. If we ever get the chance, we can talk about some of the things I’ve been through. Life isn’t all sunshine and roses, not for anybody.”

  “Finally, we can agree on something.” She eyed him up and down one more time before relenting. “Do me a favor, and don’t touch things. I don’t like it.”

  “I got the feeling already,” he assured her, trying hard not to sound sarcastic. She was a very particular sort of person who wanted things a certain way. He guessed that helped her in business but probably nowhere else. No wonder she was alone.

  He could hardly fault her though. He’d never been a fan of people going through his things, invading his space. He knew it meant pushing people away, but that was the name of the game. Sacrifices had to be made sometimes.

  He couldn’t help but let out a low whistle as they entered the bright, sunshine-filled house. “Very nice,” he murmured, appreciating the job her decorator had done. He only guessed it was a decorator, but what were the chances of a busy CEO having the time to turn her home until something that looked like it had come out of a magazine spread?

  Unless he’d done that herself, researching pieces she liked, finding exactly where they’d come from, putting the rooms together one at a time. Maybe that was what she’d done. It fit with her exacting personality. “Did you do this yourself?” he asked, looking around.

  “Yes, I did.” She sounded so proud of herself, too. His instincts were on the money.

  “You did well. It’s really beautiful.” He was careful not to touch anything. “What quality are your windows? Are they new, old?”

  She shrugged. “Newish, I guess. I’ve never had trouble with them.” She dropped her purse on the coffee table, flipping through mail. Anyone looking at her would think this was just another day, that nothing terrible had happened recently. Habit was important in situations like this, he knew from his training. The mind fell back on that which it did reflexively to keep a person from thinking too much on what they would rather avoid.

  It was a defense mechanism, a way to keep a person upright and aware. Otherwise, they would shut down.

  The living room was open and spacious, sitting to the left of the front door. Directly across from the door was a wide staircase and to the right was a dining room with the kitchen beyond. Everything was neat, tidy, without any sense that there had been disruption. That was a good sign.

  “Have you ever tested the locks?” he asked, going to one of the windows and examining the lock in question. It was sturdy enough, telling him the windows couldn’t be very old.

  “If you mean did I go from room to room, window to window, making sure the locks were strong, no. Who does that?”

  “People who want to make sure their house doesn’t get broken into?” he retorted. “I have to ask you, did you come from a small town? The sort of place where people didn’t lock their doors at night?”

  She shook her head. “No, I grew up in Brooklyn. In an apartment.” Brooklyn was hardly the mean streets, but still. She should’ve known better.

  In his head, he assessed her the way he would assess any client or target. She was a genius, but oftentimes geniuses fell short on common sense things such as a security system when they lived alone. She wanted everything inside her home just right, but it never occurred to her to take care of the basics. She was too busy thinking of the big picture, the higher-level things in life. Her business, for one thing.

  “I could check them for you if you want,” he offered.

  “I told you,” she sighed, brushing past him on her way to the kitchen. “I’m not in the market for security services. The next thing I know, I’ll say yes, and you’ll present me with an invoice.”

  “You don’t know me,” he reminded her in as gentle a tone as he could manage given the circumstances.

  “And you don’t know me,” she reminded him as she poured a glass of water. “Yet here we are. You want something to drink?”

  “I’ll take a water,” he relented, having drunk nothing but coffee for most of the day. “And I wouldn’t give you an invoice. I don’t know how to convince you I’m not in this for money.”

  “I don’t want anybody feeling sorry for me either. I’m not a charity case.”

  He looked around with a grin. “Not in a house like this, you’re not. Before the accident, that was a very nice little car.”

  “It was,” she whispered, looking down into her glass. So that had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have mentioned it.

  “Sorry, I guess you don’t want to think about that.”

  She shrugged. “It is what it is. Like I said, I don’t want anybody feeling sorry for me.”

  “I got the message.”

  “And yet you’re still here.”

  “I never said I felt sorry for you. You’re the one who said that. I can’t explain it, but I’m the sort of person who doesn’t walk away from someone when they need help—and you do,” he continued when it looked like she was about to argue. “You need help. I can help you. I want to. Wouldn’t you rather know someone’s on your side in this? Or would you rather leave yourself wide open for whoever did this to come at you again?”

  “I don’t appreciate you trying to scare me!”

  “Maybe you need to be scared!” he fired back. “Nothing else seems to be getting throu
gh to you. Maybe if I remind you how one of your employees fell down the stairs and broke her neck, that will do it for you. What about that?”

  Her eyes went wide, the flushed, hectic color draining from her face. “How do you know about that unless you had something to do with it?”

  “There are all sorts of ways to find information. I’m sorry to throw that sort of thing in your face, but something finally has to get through to you. You’re vulnerable here just like Carla Murphy was in her home.”

  “Get out of my house,” she whispered, her hands shaking until water sloshed out of the glass she still held.

  “I won’t leave you,” he insisted. “I won’t. Not when there’s a chance of something bad happening.”

  “I demand you get out of this house now!” Her voice was like the cracking of a whip. For someone so small, there was a lot of fire to her. She barely came halfway up his bicep, but he had the feeling she could tear a man apart if given the opportunity.

  “I only want to help. I’m sorry.” He didn’t get a chance to finish before she darted around him, out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He barely made it halfway up before a door slammed hard enough to shake the house.

  The sound of her sobs was a clenched fist tightening around his heart. Was he ever going to get this right?

  Chapter Eight

  He was still out there. She knew it. The thought of him staying around even after she tried to throw him out made her bury her face in a pillow and scream as hard and as loud as she could.

  Even that didn’t help. All it did was exhaust her more.

  She lifted her face away from the pillow and found it soaked in tears. She didn’t even know who she was crying for anymore. Herself? Beth? Everyone who’d died?

  For all she knew, somebody else could’ve had an accident by then. Dammit. There was no denying the correlation.

  Correlation is not causation. How many times had she reminded her team of that very thing while they were analyzing data? How many times had Beth reminded her when they were in school together studying for exams?

  Still, it was all too neat. Too tidy, if death could be called tidy. She couldn’t deny there was something underneath it all, something at work in their lives.

  She rolled onto her back, wiping away the wetness on her cheeks. Light danced on the ceiling, filtering into the room through her lace curtains. It was almost hypnotic, and after a few minutes of staring and doing nothing but breathe, she felt a little better.

  What was she supposed to do? Everything was falling apart. Sledge was right. She hadn’t taken the proper precautions, and if somebody really was after her and her team—though she couldn’t imagine why—even her home could prove dangerous.

  She was so proud of it too. The house was everything she’d ever dreamed of growing up living in an apartment with walls thin enough to give her front row seats to every argument, every sibling battle, every TV show her neighbors watched.

  It was supposed to be her sanctuary, this house. And there he was, this is Sledge person, telling her she wasn’t safe, making her question every choice she’d made, choices she’d deliberated over for ages.

  Maybe he would leave if she stayed in her room long enough. She’d locked the door, though she guessed he could get in if he wanted to. Crap, what was he doing while she was in there?

  She got up from the bed slowly as quietly as she could and tiptoed to the door, pressing her ear against the wood. There wasn’t so much as a footstep to be heard out there. What was he doing? Had he left? No, her luck wasn’t that good. Anybody with even a grain of common sense would’ve left long before now, but common sense didn’t seem to be one of his strong points.

  She guessed he probably felt the same way about her.

  From where she stood, she could see herself in the mirror over her dresser. Who was that wide-eyed, pale-skinned girl? The one with the lank, limp hair, the one whose hands shook?

  She went to the mirror, examining herself. She needed a bath and a cup of coffee—maybe an entire pot. Something to eat. And at least a day’s worth of sleep at this point.

  But that wouldn’t help anything, not really. When she woke up, her problems would all still be in front of her. She’d sent emails to everyone on the team—everyone still living—and assured them the project they were currently working on was moving forward. They had a deadline. This was way too big a ball to drop.

  One of the worst things in the world was doubt. What if? What if everyone decided to quit? What if they decided the stakes were too high now? What if they blamed her? She couldn’t imagine why they would or how she had anything to do with all the terrible things going on, but people didn’t think rationally when they were grieving or scared. Wasn’t it her job to take care of her people? She wasn’t doing a very good job of it, was she?

  You can do this, she thought as she stared into her reflected eyes. You can do this just like you’ve done everything so far. You’re stronger than this. You’re better than this.

  If only she could believe herself.

  If only she could breathe. The air in the room was stale, dry. She went to the window closest to the bed and flipped the lock.

  Only it had already been unlocked.

  She frowned, pausing. She could be blamed for many things when it came to looking after herself—it annoyed her to her core how right Sledge was about the way she’d neglected her safety. But she always locked the windows when they were closed, and she never left them open when she wasn’t home. Certain habits die hard.

  The window lifted easily enough. She opened it wide, taking deep breaths of fresh air. It was a warm day, not humid at all, which made for a pleasant sensation. She couldn’t stand humidity—then again, who could?

  “Ouch!” she smacked a mosquito that landed on her arm. “What the heck?” Maybe they’d let the stupid thing in when they came into the house. But how in the world had it made it up to her room? The door was closed.

  That was when she saw it.

  She stepped away from the window, backing up with her eyes still glued to the screen—the screen that had been slit down one side and across half of the bottom. The screen in the window that sat above her back porch, a porch with a roof that sloped its way up the side of the house until it almost met the window frame.

  It wasn’t like that before. She would have known if it was. Certain things didn’t escape her attention—she might’ve been lax in some areas, but a slit screen was a red flag she would’ve picked up.

  “Sledge,” she whispered, though hardly anything came out. Somebody had at least tried to break into her house while she wasn’t there. “Oh, God. Sledge?”

  He was right. What were the odds of this happening around the time of the accident and so many deaths? Who was she trying to kid, pretending there was nothing larger at work here?

  Somebody had come into her house. Her house! The one place she’d ever felt truly safe.

  “Sledge!” she shouted, turning on her heel and throwing herself at the door. She tugged at it, turning the knob and pulling with all her might but nothing would happen. She was trapped. Trapped in a room where for all she knew, somebody was waiting under the bed she’d just laid on.

  “Marnie? Marnie!” Sledge was just outside the door. She couldn’t get out. She had to get out. She had to get to him. He’d do something about this. He’d protect her.

  She’d locked the damn door.

  “Damn it!” she whimpered, flipping the lock before flinging the door open and throwing herself into Sledge’s open arms. Yes. This was safe. Nobody could get to her if he was there. She could breathe again

  But not for long. “What happened?” he demanded in a voice that sounded like a bark.

  “The screen. The screen!” She didn’t even want to look. It was so much easier to hide her face against his chest.

  “Okay, calm down. I need to go take a look.” Even then, she couldn’t bring herself to let him go, choosing instead to go with him. He kept an arm around her sh
oulders while she wrapped hers around his waist. The fact that she had turned into a weeping, terrified little girl didn’t escape her, but in the face of her terror and that terrible, awful sense of violation, nothing really mattered.

  She looked up at him as he examined the screen, frowning. “Slit,” he muttered.

  “Somebody was in here. Maybe they’re here now?” she breathed, clutching him tighter than ever.

  “No, I would know.” He didn’t bother explaining just how he would know, and she didn’t have it in her to ask what he meant. It was enough that he sounded serious, sure of himself. She clung to that, told herself he knew what he was doing.

  “What am I going to do?” She couldn’t take her eyes from the screen, which somebody had taken pains to arrange that it looked like nothing was wrong. Whoever did this must have unlocked the screen, then broken the lock on the window, but she never would’ve noticed if it hadn’t been for that mosquito.

  In other words, this wasn’t some random act or some kid looking to steal something. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.

  It was like he read her mind. “This wasn’t an amateur.”

  “What am I going to do?” she asked again. Her pride didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered so much as staying alive.

  “You’re going to let my team come in and help you. That’s what you’re going to do. I won’t take no for an answer—we can work out the specifics later.” He then took pains to unwind her arms from around him, though even in her state of panic, she noticed how gentle he tried to be. “I need to call them now. Sit down here.” He guided her to the bed and pressed down on her shoulders until she sat.

  “Please don’t leave me,” she begged when it looked like he was about to leave the room, probably to have a little privacy for his conversation. Amazing how everything had turned around so quickly. What would she do right now if he had left the house the way she’d ordered? She didn’t even want to think about it.