“You should’ve left something hanging on the doorknob. Don’t you know that?”
He had to laugh. “Right. Because I was planning on that happening. And this isn’t a frat house.”
He couldn’t help wondering about Marnie. She wasn’t that sort of girl, the one who could get caught making out on the couch—just about ready to peel his clothes off, just on the verge of true passion and pleasure—and laugh it off. That wasn’t her at all.
“She’ll be fine,” Jace assured him, not needing to ask what had Sledge so concerned. “Kara’s good at this. Maybe it was growing up in a political household or something like that—knowing how to read people, how to put them at ease. It comes naturally to her.” He tossed a bunch of bananas Sledge’s way.
Sure, but Kara had never dealt with someone like Marnie. It was almost enough to make him scream, the way she refused to loosen up, to stop being so hard on herself. Part of her had shut down years earlier, maybe when she was in her early teens, and she’d never caught up.
For a moment there, just the briefest, sweetest moment, he’d been able to touch something deeper. He’d found that part of her she tried so hard to hide—almost as hard as he worked to hide his wolf. There was a river of desire, sensuality, lust running through her. She could pretend all she wanted that it wasn’t there, but it was.
And now, he’d never be able to forget that, that moment of being with the real Marnie, the essential Marnie, the Marnie he knew he couldn’t live without. It was a drug, the sound of her sighs, the touch of her hands, the sweetness of her lips.
And to think, he was the one who had unlocked it all. If there was a more potent drug in the world, he had no idea what it was.
“Are you about ready to talk about something besides getting to first base?” Jace laughed.
“I was halfway to second before you came in,” Sledge muttered, defending himself like a kid trying to defend his prowess. “Some things need to be finessed, especially the first time.”
“Anyway,” Jace grinned, rolling his eyes, “Hawk managed to, ahem, access the report on the explosion at Dan’s house. The cops are calling it a gas leak.”
“It could’ve been, for all we know,” Sledge allowed. “But not one that happened on its own.”
“Of course not,” Jace agreed, and he wasn’t joking anymore. “Big surprise, the cops want to put the whole thing to rest before they look into it.”
“Another thing our group depends on. They know how to work around what the police expect and how they see things,” Sledge mused, leaning against the counter. At least he wasn’t worried about Marnie’s feelings anymore.
No, he’d gone back to worrying about her life and whether he could keep her in it. No big deal—though at least he knew how to navigate this. It was his job; it was what he was good at. Not that he wasn’t good at what might’ve happened if they hadn’t been interrupted, but he wasn’t so good at feelings and emotions and all that.
He hadn’t been good at it even before the wolf came into his life, the wolf that was now howling in frustration in the back of his head. Wolves didn’t care about much more than the basics: eating, sleeping, taking what they wanted, protecting what was theirs. The nuances of trust and intimacy were lost on them.
“There’s something else.” Jace glanced toward the doorway, and Sledge knew from the way he cocked his head—with his ear angled upward—that he was listening to be sure they wouldn’t be interrupted in the next few moments. He braced himself for what was coming.
When Jace was satisfied, he continued. “We obtained footage from the parking lot across from Marnie’s office building. A black SUV rolled in there roughly five minutes after you arrived. The plates were covered in too much filth to be read—though the car itself was spotless—and the windows were heavily tinted. The car rolled out a minute or two after the time you made the call to report the shots being fired.”
“Our assassin.” It was a miracle the wolf didn’t burst out of Sledge’s consciousness and into the real, physical world right then and there.
“Easy now,” Jace warned, sensing his surge of rage. “Yeah, that’s who it appears to be.”
“How would they know when to be there?” Sledge asked, staring up at the ceiling. He focused on a single crack in the plaster, so thin it was barely visible. He stared at it, studying it, homing in on it and pushing everything else out of the way for a while. It was the only way he’d ever learned to keep the wolf in check when he was on edge like this, turning his consciousness toward something simple, something mundane that didn’t matter much.
Once he could breathe normally again, once his head didn’t feel like it was about to split from the pressure building up inside, he muttered, “They were keeping tabs on the alarm system somehow.”
“That’s probably it, yeah,” Jace agreed, practically whispering in an effort to keep Marnie in the dark. To Sledge, this felt like cheating, like he was violating her trust by keeping something from her. He knew on a higher level that there was no need to involve her in speculation which might end up leading nowhere, but on a personal level, he knew she’d resent him muttering in secret.
He’d never disliked his job before, but she was starting to make him do just that. She made him question himself too much, made him doubt his abilities. His tactics, the tactics they all exercised.
“Wonderful,” Sledge sighed. “Well, now we know how they knew where to be, and when. Though we still have no idea who this is, so what good does it do?”
“We know to keep an eye out for the car,” Jace reminded him.
“A black SUV. Yeah, that’s a real lead.” Sledge scoffed at this.
“We can also get in touch with the alarm company, check and see if they were hacked at any point. Someone found a way to monitor the activity, the way Marnie can keep an eye on things through her phone app. Either they’re doing something like that, or they’re going straight through the system itself. Either way, they should be able to tell us which parties have access to that particular alarm system. Hawk’s on it right now.”
“They’re all gonna need serious overtime pay by the time this one’s over,” Sledge mused with a snort.
“Don’t think Val hasn’t already hinted at that—which means she didn’t really hint at all but rather came straight out and asked for time-and-a-half,” Jace chuckled. “And she’ll get it. They deserve it.”
“Now we just need to find a way to take all the information they’ve found so far and do something with it,” Sledge pointed out. “I wish it didn’t feel like there were so many locked doors around us. I wouldn’t even know which door to choose first.”
“I know what you mean. I felt the same way during Kara’s case—remember? We couldn’t figure out who could possibly have found their way to the beach, lured Sal down there, killed him, then escaped without being seen. It was like a ghost had done it, a phantom.”
He fixed Sledge with a hard, unflinching look. “It wasn’t a ghost or phantom. It was a human being, using a boat and an understanding of camera angles. That’s it. Krista knew her way around that beach; she knew how to move around without being seen. It was really pretty simple when push came to shove. We were the ones who tried to make it more difficult than it was, more involved because we’re used to things being so difficult, so layered. Sometimes, it’s just not that deep.”
“All right. Let’s say it’s not that deep now. We still don’t have the first idea where to find this assassin—if there’s only one of them. There could be more than one.”
It hit him then, and he asked himself why he hadn’t considered it before. “We have to set a trap. That’s it. We have to trap whoever this is.”
“What do you mean? Like luring them to the house?”
Sledge nodded, both energized and more miserable than ever. “We went about this the wrong way. We’ve been following all our usual rules, but this case doesn’t follow the rules. We can’t pull out the playbook and go step-by-step. This assassin knows
what they’re doing, and they might already know we’ve removed Marnie from the house. Granted, we could take her back there, but that might look suspicious. Still, it could be our only option.”
“Would you really want to put her through that?” Jace hardly looked convinced. “It would be traumatic, to put it mildly. You don’t want her there while trying to secure this person, do you?”
“It might be our only chance at getting our hands on them,” Sledge argued.
“They know she has help now. Whoever’s doing this, they’ve probably seen you. Right? If you were there in Marnie’s office when shots were fired, they had to have seen you with her.”
“Yes, and they would’ve known even before then that we were around. The floodlights in the backyard, remember?”
“At the time, we didn’t know how far this would go,” Jace reminded him.
It didn’t help. “We knew what they were capable of. They set that Maria woman up to make it look like she’d fallen and broken her neck on the stairs. The other guy, the one they killed before we came on the scene. Michael. He was killed when his electric razor fell into the tub while he was showering. The cops didn’t question either of those deaths. They looked innocent, like accidents. We knew from the word go that whoever was behind this knew what they were doing, that this wasn’t just some ordinary, run-of-the-mill hit.”
He shook his head, his heart sinking. “It’s my fault, too. I jumped into this too quickly, without thinking.”
“It didn’t help that the girl was terrified when she found out somebody broke into her house,” Jace pointed out. “We did what we felt like we had to do, and we all had the option of taking a step back and asking to think things over a little more clearly before we went ahead with plans. None of us did because none of us was prepared for this. It’s not just you. You can’t do this to yourself.”
It didn’t matter whether or not he could do it. He was going to do it, and he was going to keep doing it until the assassin was found out.
He straightened up, determined now. “I’m going back to headquarters to talk with Logan about this. I’m hoping he might have an idea of how we could draw the assassin back into our web. I don’t wanna do it over the phone while I’m here with her—I don’t want her overhearing, especially if he gives me pushback.”
“And I’m going to check on Alex,” Jace informed him. “He’s about an hour away right now.”
“Okay. Keep me posted.” He barely paused in the living room, only glancing over his shoulder at Marnie. She was on the couch with Kara, the two of them talking quietly. She’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt—he couldn’t help but feel just a little disappointment, remembering the silky softness of her skin, the way she’d trembled under his hands.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Just going to headquarters.” He tried to sound reassuring, tried to offer a smile. He suspected it looked more like a grimace, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. Sometimes, a person just didn’t feel like bolstering another person’s spirits.
Not when the real challenge involved saving their life.
And he would save her, come hell or high water. Now that the wolf had tasted her, there was no going back. He’d protect her or die trying. Either way, there would be no living without her now.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The second the front door closed, Kara turned to Marnie. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispered.
Marnie’s laughter was nervous. “Do I look worried?” She probably did—she’d never been any good at hiding disappointment.
“He came off really brusque just then,” Kara muttered, sounding angry with him. “Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.”
Marnie shrugged. “So what? I’m used to that by now.”
“You don’t have to pretend,” Kara assured her with the same sympathetic smile. Something about that smile made Marnie’s skin crawl. She hated to be the object of pity.
And just like that, Kara’s expression changed. “I’m sorry. I’m overstepping my bounds right now, and I would hate being talked to the way I’m talking to you. If our roles were reversed, I would’ve lashed out at you by now and told you to mind your own business.”
Marnie blushed furiously. “I wasn’t going to do that.”
“No, but you were thinking about it.” Kara giggled, clapping. “It’s okay! It’s fine. You’re entitled. God knows you’ve been through enough already. Anyway,” she continued, “really, don’t worry about Sledge. Or any of them. They’re all like this when they’re intensely focused on something.”
“Well, he is definitely intense,” Marnie sighed. So intense she’d almost thrown all caution to the wind and let him take her right there on the sofa. She never thought she liked intense people, not even a little bit. Alpha energy had always turned her off, mostly because all the so-called alpha males she’d ever known were complete jerks who weren’t worth her time.
But he was different. Yes, he possessed that same energy, but it complemented hers. Rather than trying to fight against her, he wanted to work with her. Oh, God, could he work with her.
She blushed again thanks to the dirty direction her thoughts had taken.
When Kara settled back, opening a book she pulled from her purse, it was a welcome distraction from the softcore porn now playing in Marnie’s imagination. “I’m so sorry. Don’t you have something better to do? Here I am, taking up so much of your time.”
“Don’t even worry about it. Now that you mention it, I don’t have all that much going on. My parents are out of town, visiting the center where my sister is getting treatment. This is just where they live during the summer, anyway.”
“Oh, that sounds nice.”
“It can be,” Kara allowed, “and sometimes, not so much. Anyway, I’ve enrolled in dance classes in the city, which keeps me out here, but that’s pretty much everything I have going for me right now. Hey,” she added when Marnie’s face fell, “it’s more than I had before.”
Marnie shook her head, embarrassed. “I don’t want you thinking I feel sorry for you or anything like that. You don’t have to defend yourself or explain things to me. But I’m sure there’s gotta be something you would rather be doing right now other than sitting here with me, being a babysitter.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Kara assured her. Either she meant it, or she was the best actress Marnie had ever seen. It didn’t seem like she minded. Heck, she was a girl who obviously had enough money that she didn’t need a full-time job. Maybe she didn’t mind, then.
“I’ve never been very good at accepting help,” Marnie confessed. “It’s a real problem for me sometimes.”
“I know what you mean. I was a real handful when the team first came into my life. Somebody was threatening to kill me, but I refused to believe there was anything to be worried about. Even then, when I was good and worried and I knew the threat was real, I still tried to push Jace away. I was completely confident that I had what it took to protect myself. Pride is a terrible thing. What’s the rest of the saying?”
“Pride goeth before the fall,” Marnie murmured. “I can relate. Believe me. It was stupid and prideful of me not to tell the rest of my team—the ones who were still alive—what was going on, how much trouble we could all be in. I could’ve spared Dan’s life, but I was so sure I knew best. Look where it got me. Look where it got him.”
“I really am sorry,” Kara whispered. “But it isn’t your fault. I’m sure I’m not the first person to tell you that. It isn’t. You couldn’t have done anything to stop this.”
“I know. I honestly do. I can’t shake the feeling that I could have done better, though.”
“I guess that’s just how you’re going to feel for a while,” Kara shrugged. “Time will make it easier to deal with.”
Time. Sure, if she had time.
Kara seemed perfectly content with her book, but Marnie was way too jittery for that. She went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea but stopped when she thought o
f Dan. Maybe Dan was doing something like that just before the explosion, turning on the stove or the oven, never considering what might happen. Never imagining someone had rigged it to explode.
She decided to get her laptop from the bedroom and check her email. Maybe there was something there, something she hadn’t seen yet, a new message from her contacts at the so-called company she’d been working with. That would be a laugh, wouldn’t it? If they’d reached out and pretended not to know anything about what was happening, about the nightmare her life had become thanks to them.
“Do you have any games on there?” Kara asked when she saw Marnie firing the machine up, sitting on the coffee table.
“No. I never usually have the time to play games and stuff.”
“I wish I had your work ethic,” Kara admitted. “Maybe I would’ve gone to law school after all.”
“Yeah, but there’s something to be said for relaxing too. I haven’t done much of that since I… Geez, maybe my whole life?” Marnie laughed at herself.
“I heard you have a high IQ. I hope you don’t mind my bringing it up.”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to make it sound like I was talking about you behind your back or something like that.”
“I didn’t think that until you said it…” Marnie giggled softly at Kara’s reaction, which was a mixture of horror and regret. “I’m only teasing. Maybe I’m not very good at it—I haven’t done much of it. Only with Beth. She was my best friend.”
“I’m really sorry about her too,” Kara whispered. Just like that, the mood in the room took a nosedive. Even the sun coming through the windows dimmed like clouds had moved across the sky.
“Anyway,” she said, trying to turn things around again, “I do have a high IQ. I was tested when I was five or six years old, I think.”
Kara nodded slowly. She looked thoughtful, her brows drawing together. “That must’ve been hard for you.”
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