Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Marnie reeled back like she’d been slapped. Her instinct was to offer an argument, to deny there had ever been any complications due to her intelligence. It was a gift, wasn’t it? Being so smart. It was something she’d always been thankful for, something she’d wrapped around herself and worn like protective armor since the day she found out she was smarter than the other kids in class.

  Yet even though her mouth opened, nothing came out. Now that she thought about it, framing her experience the way Kara just did, she saw a very different side of things: how lonely her life had been, how different she’d always felt from the other kids. They didn’t want to accept her, those kids, making fun of her and bullying her, deliberately excluding her in the schoolyard, never inviting her to parties at all the fun places they used to go.

  “Now that you mention it, I guess it made me a little lonely,” she admitted.

  Kara nodded. “I know how that feels. Being different. I’m not anywhere near as smart as you—”

  “You’re pretty smart,” Marnie smiled. It wasn’t a polite lie either. It was clear the girl was intelligent and savvy when it came to other people, something Marnie had never been good at.

  “Thanks,” Kara winked. “Anyway, I know what it’s like to be on the outside. My parents kept me on the outside my whole life. My sister supposedly died in an accident when we were little—but she didn’t really die. It’s a long story, but a group of people my father had a past association with kidnapped her and used her against him, against us. That’s why she tried to kill me and why she’s getting treatment now. She’s doing great, don’t get me wrong. She’s doing well. The doctors have a lot of hope that she’ll be able to live a normal life. Anyway, even my mom thought she was dead all those years. Only my dad knew she wasn’t, but he had to pretend she was, and because of that, plus the fact that he was afraid his group would take me away too, they treated me like I was made of glass, like I could break at any moment. I wasn’t even allowed to dance anymore, to take classes in the city, because my dad was afraid they’d come for me. Isn’t that crazy?”

  Crazy? That was a word for it. It was almost enough to make Marnie’s head hurt. “Just when I thought I had it bad,” she murmured, turning the computer on. It seemed like there was no end to the perspective she was getting from these new people she’d just met.

  She was about to say something along those lines when the laptop’s fan started spinning louder and louder. Both she and Kara leaned in, examining the machine, before a bright, white light flashed across the screen and a series of characters—code, it had to be—started scrolling, on and on.

  Kara jumped forward, slamming the laptop shut before standing and pulling her phone from her pocket. “I don’t like this,” she muttered, punching a number into the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Marnie asked with her heart in her throat. She didn’t like it, either. Dread seeped into her bones, spreading until it filled all of her.

  “Val? It’s Kara. Something weird is happening.” Kara explained what happened with the laptop, pausing only once or twice to grunt in response. Marnie waited, barely breathing, every once in a while glancing at her machine. What was wrong with it? What had happened to it?

  “Okay. I’ll take her to my place.” Kara dropped her phone into her purse, waving Marnie into the bedroom. “Come on. Get your things. Let’s go.”

  “Wait, what? What are you saying?” Marnie followed her, panicked.

  “That was Val, she’s on the team. She said somebody might’ve planted something in your machine to track you. We have to get out of here now before somebody shows up.”

  For a moment, Marnie froze solid, like a block of ice, her feet too heavy to move. This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t about to leave another place in a hurry, frantic to escape before somebody caught up with her. Just when she’d started to relax, something like this happened to throw her out of whack all over again.

  Kara looked up from where she’d heaved Marnie’s suitcase onto the bed. “Did you hear me? Let’s go!”

  It was either the way Kara shouted—sharp, the sort of command a person didn’t argue with if they valued their life—or the understanding that Kara was innocent in all of this and would get caught up in anything that happened there at the house—that finally got Marnie moving. “I didn’t really unpack,” she explained, now relieved. There were only a few things to toss into the bag before they were ready to go.

  “What about Sledge? What’s he going to think?” she asked as they dashed through the living room.

  “Val will let him know. We’ll go to my house. My parents’ house. It’ll be okay,” she added when Marnie gasped, stricken.

  “I don’t want to bring you into this if I can help it,” she explained.

  Kara shook her head as she opened the front door, poking her head outside and looking both ways before venturing onto the porch. “It’s okay. Nobody will think to look for you there. But we need to go, now.” She ran down the stairs, toward a little red sports car at the curb. There was barely any time to admire the thing before Marnie was already inside, with Kara jumping behind the wheel moments later and pulling away from the curb.

  Marnie’s heart beat frantically as they rode down the street, her thoughts moving a mile a minute. Had they led somebody to the safe house? How could anybody have access to her machine without her knowing it?

  “Shit!” Kara quickly pulled into a driveway near the end of the street, cutting the engine. “Duck!” she hissed, pulling Marnie down.

  “What’s happening?” Marnie asked, but a moment later she got her answer. A car pulled around the corner, a black SUV. She could just make it out through the back window of Kara’s car.

  “Just wait. Quiet.” They were maybe five or six houses down from the safe house by then, which meant they could both peer out the window to see what the driver of the SUV was doing.

  Funny, but Marnie didn’t want to believe the appearance of this car was connected with whatever was going on with her computer. It had to be a coincidence, right? But why would a strange car pull down that very street when nobody lived there? A sob bubbled up in her chest, threatening to make itself heard, but she managed to bite it back in favor of watching the SUV roll to a stop.

  “Dammit,” Kara grunted. “Val was right.” Yes, Val was obviously right, and Marnie didn’t even want to think about what would’ve happened had Kara not thought quickly and called her right away. When this was all over, she would have to sit down and make a list of all the people she had to thank and all the reasons she had for thanking them.

  They clasped hands, squeezing hard as the door to the SUV swung open. Marnie gasped in shock when she saw who climbed out, who took a box from the passenger seat of their car and walked it up to the porch.

  “Oh, my God,” Kara breathed. They watched, both of them horrified, as the stranger looked both ways before delivering a single kick to the front door of the safe house and ducking inside.

  The second they were out of sight, Kara started the car and pulled out of the driveway, then sped around the corner. Only then did she really put on speed, practically flooring the gas pedal. The car leaped forward, flying down the road.

  Marnie could still hardly breathe. She’d set eyes on the person who’d tried to kill her, who very well could have killed Beth and the people she worked with.

  Never in a million years would she have assumed the assassin was a woman.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Sledge!”

  Something in Val’s voice said Sledge’s stomach into freefall like he was on his way down the first big hill on a roller coaster. He ran from Logan’s office out to the control center, where Val was just hanging up her phone.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said first, which naturally made him think the opposite was true.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded, stopping short of taking her by the arms and shaking her. The temptation was strong though.

  “It looks like the
re was a tracking program installed on Kara’s computer. I don’t know for sure, but from the way she described it, it seems like some sort of program ran the minute Marnie turned it on. I told her to grab Marnie and her things and get the hell out of here.”

  “Shit!” Would they ever get ahead of this person? “Where are they going?”

  “To Kara’s parents’ house. Neither of them is there right now, and I think we can all say with a degree of certainty that our assassin has no idea about Kara or any connection to her. It’s the safest place right now.”

  “I agree.” Logan had followed Sledge.

  “I don’t,” Jace growled, standing behind Val.

  “Val’s right,” Logan argued. “There’s no way they could know to look there. And now we know better than to let Marnie do anything that could be traced back to her location.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Jace insisted. “Having Kara keep her company is one thing, but this is ridiculous.”

  “Listen. I understand how worried you are about this, I do, and I don’t blame you. I would probably feel the same way if I were in your shoes.” Logan clamped a hand on his shoulder. “But really, the odds of Marnie being found there are slim to none.”

  “There should’ve been no odds of her being found at the safe house, either,” Jace reminded him. “And now that entire arrangement is destroyed.”

  “All right, all right.” Sledge held up his hands. “I take responsibility for this. I never thought to warn her against starting up her computer. I should’ve told her to leave it at home, but we were in such a hurry I never thought about it.”

  “It seems like you haven’t thought about a few things,” Jace retorted, growling slightly at the end.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” From the corner of his eye, Sledge noticed Val slowly backing away from the situation, afraid to get in the middle of two wolves when their hackles were up.

  “You know what I mean. You haven’t thought clearly since we started this and look where we are now. Now, I’m putting Kara and her family’s home at risk. This assassin is like the freaking Terminator. They won’t stop until they get to her.”

  “Which is exactly why we were just discussing how to lure them in,” Logan murmured. He wasn’t about to let his wolf get in on the increasingly hostile energy. He kept his voice even, warm, soothing—at least, it would’ve soothed a normal person. It did not do much for the wolf, however.

  “And how are we going to do that?” Jace demanded, his chest expanding. Another minute of this and the wolf would burst free. Less than a minute, even.

  “We just will. If we need to parade Marnie around town a little bit to let whoever this is know she’s back, that’s what we’ll do. That might be just what it takes, honestly. We can follow her from a distance so she’s not alone, then wait for whoever this is to go back to the house, or we can lure them to some other place, somewhere that’s neither her home nor Kara’s. We were just trying to work out the details when that call came in. It’ll be okay.”

  Jace didn’t look like he believed it. Now that Sledge understood what it meant for another person’s well-being to matter more than his own, he understood where his friend was coming from. Before meeting Marnie, he would have assumed Jace was just being difficult.

  Now, only minutes after he’d just about torn Logan’s head off at the suggestion of using Marnie as bait, he couldn’t hold anything against his friend. It wasn’t personal anyway. It was concern for someone he loved.

  “Come on. We can drive out there together.” Sledge tried to sound at least somewhat upbeat, though Jace wasn’t having it. Sledge ignored his wolf’s growls as he walked out to the car. Jace followed at a distance, slamming the door a little louder than he needed to before climbing into the passenger seat.

  Again, Sledge did what he could to ignore his wolf’s anger at this. The wolf didn’t appreciate being challenged, and a challenge was exactly what this felt like—challenge as to whether Kara or Marnie was more important in the long run. Clearly, both girls were equally important to the men who cared about them, though Kara was not as important to Sledge as Marnie was and vice versa when it came to Jace’s opinion.

  “They’re both going to be okay,” Sledge murmured as they pulled onto the interstate.

  “Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?”

  “Cute,” Sledge sneered. “I’m not trying to convince anybody. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. They’ll both be fine. Logan’s right. There’s no reason for the girls to be connected outside of us, and as far as we know, nobody even knows we’re involved. We’re still a secret or as good as.”

  “But you’ve been seen.”

  “Fair enough, but it isn’t like I was wearing a Wolf Shield, Inc. badge on my shirt. There was no logo on the back of it. We’re okay. The agency is okay. Kara is okay. We can always find somewhere else to hole Marnie up until this is settled—taking her to the house on Long Island was a stroke of genius on Kara’s part. If she hadn’t thought so quickly, who knows what would’ve happened?”

  The question hung heavy in the air. Who knew what would’ve happened? Once again, Sledge had let Marnie out of his sight, and something terrible could’ve happened as a result. He wouldn’t be away from her again. No more trips to headquarters unless he brought her with him—Logan and the others would just have to deal with it.

  “I can’t leave her alone again,” he muttered, furious with himself.

  Jace sighed after a silent moment. “I know it seems that way, but that isn’t always possible. You can’t hold yourself responsible for this.”

  “Tell that to my wolf. He won’t shut up.”

  “Yeah, I can hear him,” Jace assured him. “He’ll come around. This will all blow over. I have to believe that.”

  “You and me both.” They passed the rest of the ride in silence, a silence which slowly became easy, companionable, until the energy the car picked up again once they pulled down the familiar driveway to the Collins’ summer home.

  Sledge found Marnie standing in the window when they pulled up, and he shook his head to warn her to stay inside. Until this was settled and they had a solid plan in place, he didn’t want her to step foot outside. There was no telling who might be out there, watching. No matter how certain he was that no one could make the connection between morning and any of them, he wasn’t about to leave to chance.

  Just the sight of her made his heart sing with gladness. He never knew something so simple could leave him overjoyed, weak-kneed with relief. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever set eyes on—no doubt about it. The world could keep turning because she was breathing and unhurt.

  Jace practically tackled Kara the second they were in the house, while Kara reminded him over and over that everything was fine. Sledge wondered how Jace managed to function knowing she was in the world and she was human and so fragile, that anything could happen to her at any time. How did he manage to hold a thought in his head that didn’t have to do with the fragility of his mate? No wonder he seemed so distracted sometimes.

  Marnie, meanwhile, looked like she wished she could melt into the floorboards, her shoulders up around her ears, dark circles under her eyes. The mussed state of her hair told him she’d been playing with it, nervous and fidgeting. He went to her, wrapping her in his arms and holding her as tight as he dared, and felt her relax against him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered against his chest.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he assured her. “I keep telling you that.” It would be so good to kiss her, to really show how much it meant to find her unharmed.

  “But I keep doing stupid things. I should’ve known better.”

  “No, I should have warned you. I’m the one who should know better. I didn’t think to warn you against doing anything like that. It just never occurred to me that you would. Not that I’m blaming you in any way.”

  “I saw her.” Marnie pulled back slightly, staring up at him. �
��I saw her. She got out of the car and went into the house.”

  “Her?” Jace and Sledge exchanged a look.

  “Yeah, her. The person who got out of the car and went into the house was a woman.” Kara’s voice was tight, grim. “No doubt about it. Our assassin is a woman.”

  “And now, she might be able to look into who owns that house.” Marnie’s blue eyes swam with tears. “I never thought. I don’t want to leave you guys open to exposure.”

  Jace peeled away from the group, pulling out his phone. No doubt he was calling Logan that very minute. Sledge rubbed Marnie’s shoulders, reminding himself to be gentle. It would be so easy to forget himself, wouldn’t it? The hands he wanted to run over her body, to give her pleasure and make her forget her problems for at least a little while, could easily tighten and crush her bones if he didn’t guard against it.

  “Don’t worry about it. Logan’s smart enough to make sure it doesn’t lead back to him,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he believed it. Anyone savvy enough to install a tracking program on someone’s computer without the owner knowing it, someone working for a company employing people who’d been dead for years, might know how to bypass the intricate web Logan had created when purchasing those homes.

  It was for Marnie’s sake, and for Kara’s, that he maintained his composure. “Everything will be fine,” he reminded them both, though he was believing it less and less as time went on.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “This is their summer house?” Marnie whispered once they’d reached the bedroom which Kara assigned her. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I know,” Sledge chuckled. “We all had pretty much the same reaction when we first got here.”

  She whistled softly between her teeth. “I’d like to see their regular house then if this is where they only live in the summer.”

  The bedroom’s windows overlooked the beach, flanked by rock on two sides so only the people on the grounds of the estate could access it. She gazed out without getting too close, afraid somebody might see though the odds of it were practically nonexistent.