Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Then again, he didn’t need to say it. Logan understood without having to be told. “What was the message?” he asked, sounding more alert than he did before.

  “That’s the thing, I don’t know. I know,” he was quick to add when Logan grunted in frustration. “I know, it’s a pain, but I’m telling you something’s still off. There’s something we’re missing. I think that’s what the wolf was trying to tell me. There was danger nearby, though I couldn’t see it. I was in the woods, I heard movement, I saw it. I saw trees moving, branches swaying, but I never saw what was causing it. And then I heard a scream, and I know it was her scream. I sound like a scared old woman, don’t I?”

  “Maybe not that bad,” Logan allowed. “I think we’re all on edge right now. Don’t dismiss your instincts—whatever you do, make sure it isn’t that. Instinct is all any of us have right now. It’s all we ever have. It’s how we survived. There’s got to be a reason the wolf was reaching out to you. Do you think maybe you could shift, get back into that state of mind?”

  He was almost embarrassed that he hadn’t thought about it himself. He was a scared, witless old woman after all. Like finding his mate—who he thought was his mate, anyway—had stripped him of everything he used to know, his identity, his decisiveness.

  He glanced toward the bedroom door. “I hate to leave her alone, even for a minute.”

  “Is she sleeping?”

  “Yeah. She is.”

  “Then you aren’t really leaving her. It doesn’t have to be for long. The beach is secluded—you have privacy out there. Do it. You know I don’t normally tell you what to do, any of you, but this could be important. We can’t afford to take chances, can we?”

  No, they couldn’t. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks for helping me get a grip.”

  “I didn’t do that much, did I?” Logan chuckled. “Call me later. Doc and Val have been tearing through the information Marnie forwarded and the files you got from Beth’s computer. It’s like Greek, even to them. But you know how they are. It’s a challenge, and they won’t give up until they figure it out.”

  He knew that was supposed to grant him a little peace, to reassure him somehow, but it didn’t because they didn’t have a lot of time. This wasn’t a crossword puzzle or a code they could work on together as a way to amuse themselves. Lives were at stake. Marnie’s life was at stake.

  And he knew he didn’t have to say that, so he didn’t. He wasn’t going to beat a dead horse by stating the obvious.

  He checked her one more time to make sure she was asleep before padding downstairs barefoot, being careful to avoid the floorboards he knew were creaky. One of the benefits of having used the house as home base before was knowing little things like that.

  It was a humid morning, and the air was unsettled. The pressure was low, the sort of weather that would’ve left his head splitting back when he was human. He had never reacted well to summer storms back then, the pressure making his sinuses swell and pain him.

  Now, not much affected him that way anymore. He thanked whatever higher power was responsible for it since he needed to have his wits about him right now. He couldn’t have been helpful to her with his head in a vice the way a weather headache would have left him feeling otherwise.

  He felt like he was being watched as he walked across the lawn, past the pool, and toward the beach. That couldn’t be true, could it? There was no way. His nerves were all over the place—that had to be it.

  The waves were choppy, strong, the sort of thing he didn’t think he could’ve fought against even with his strength and ability. He wouldn’t have stepped foot in it for any money, for any reason unless Marnie needed him, in which case he would’ve been there in a heartbeat.

  He stripped down until he was naked, and for a second, it was enough just to enjoy the salt air against his skin. But he was out there for a reason, and he shifted quickly, falling on all fours.

  Just like that, everything slid into focus, became more, sharper, stronger. There was more salt in the air, the waves louder, the sand grittier under his paws.

  Think, think. He had to get back to where he’d been in the dream, at least mentally. He had to remember what it was he’d been fearful of. What was it that he’d been afraid to face? What was he dreading just before he woke up when he heard that scream? He closed his eyes, willing himself back to that place.

  It was gone, though. It had been nothing but a dream. He ran up and down the beach, reveling in the thrill of movement, enjoying his strength, his power, trying to find that place again, the mental state he’d been in. The approaching storm sent wind blowing through his fur as he ran.

  The dream itself was gone and with it the growing dread he’d battled.

  Maybe he was trying too hard. He deliberately let his human consciousness slip away, fading into the background so the wolf could really take over. And the wolf knew it, the wolf felt it, the wolf was grateful for the chance to be in the driver’s seat, so to speak.

  And as soon as Sledge was able to release control, instinct drove the message home—not in words, but in pictures. Images in his mind.

  Things he’d done his best over the years not to revisit. The little bit of human consciousness lingering at the edges of his mind reminded him that no matter how someone tried to avoid a memory, it was no use. Running away didn’t make things better. Avoiding the truth didn’t make it go away. Only babies believed things like that.

  The lab came back to him. The ever-present sense of dread. He didn’t smell the salt air anymore. Instead, he smelled the inside of the lab, the rooms they’d been kept in—nothing more than cells, really. The smell of bleach, other chemicals, and under it all a mustiness like a basement or cellar, someplace for something rotten, decomposing.

  It came back hard enough to knock him sideways, and even on four legs, he almost lost his balance. He turned in a circle, confused, overwhelmed by information hitting him all at once. All of the locked-up scents and sights and feelings, things he hadn’t dared revisit for fear of losing himself in those memories. Of losing his mind, even. It was so easy to get caught up, to put himself back in those times and go through the horror all over again.

  Was this what the wolf was trying to warn him of? The connection between the people who’d done the worst to him and the people trying to kill Marnie?

  Was that what this was all about, all along? Was it not just about Marnie and her team?

  Was it about his team too?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “I’m told you, I don’t know. It all came to me in memories and images. You know how he processes things—I mean, you should know by now. Not so much in conscious thoughts and words but in images and feelings and instincts. I’m telling you, there has to be a reason why I remembered the lab as clearly as if I was standing in the middle of it while I was standing on the beach.”

  Marnie wished Sledge would stop talking, wherever he was, whoever he was talking to. She was so comfortable, so perfectly content just then.

  Well, maybe not perfectly. Perfection would’ve come with Sledge’s return. If he had rejoined her in bed, wrapping her up in his arms again, she would’ve felt total contentment.

  Was it selfish, feeling contented in the middle of a situation like this one? Was it wrong to even search for contentment when so many others were struggling, suffering? When families were in pain, missing their loved ones, wondering how they were going to survive?

  She reminded herself of what Sledge had already reminded her. Her life didn’t need to end just because theirs had. And she doubted Beth would want her to spend the rest of her life mourning, wallowing in guilt. It wasn’t selfish to want to be happy, to want to take whatever little bit of happiness she could wrap her hands around. There were so many opportunities for unhappiness, for misery even.

  Making herself miserable didn’t bring anybody back, and it didn’t make anything easier in the aftermath.

  So yes, she did want him to come back. She also wanted him to
stop sounding so angry with whoever he was talking to.

  She rolled onto her back, stretching, noticing the crashing of the waves against the shore whenever Sledge stopped talking long enough to let her hear anything else. The storm would hit that morning, maybe within hours. It was supposed to be a strong one. She’d already checked the kitchen when Kara was busy with Jace, and she’d found plenty of supplies in case they lost power.

  She couldn’t help but grin just a little to herself at the thought of being trapped in a powerless house with Sledge. No distractions. Nothing but candlelight and him and her…

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Sledge’s voice, practically a bark, cut through the hazy fantasy beginning to form itself in her mind. “I don’t want to believe it any more than you do, but this is where we are. This is all we have to go on. I think there’s a real possibility that this was more than just a way of covering up what they’d done by eliminating Marnie’s team. I think they might have been trying to flush us out, too.”

  Flush them out? Who? Why?

  Now, candlelight and romance were the last things on her mind. She pushed them aside in favor of concentrating on whatever Sledge was talking about in the next room. He might not have known how thin the walls were—then again, he wasn’t trying as hard as he might to keep his voice low.

  Normally, when he talked to Logan—she could only imagine that was who he was on the phone with—and they were talking about important things, he would keep his voice low like he was trying to keep her from overhearing. He didn’t do that this time. Either he didn’t care, or he was too worked up to even think about it.

  Which meant whatever he was talking about was very important.

  She worked her way up the bed, pressing her ear to the wall over the headboard. Not that she needed to—his voice carried. “No, even if she saw me, there’s no way she knew who I was. There’s no way for any of them to know who we are. That much I’m sure of.”

  He paused. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how they could make the connection. That’s what we need to find out. Until Doc and Val can manage to unlock whatever code was used to obfuscate the data and the results, we don’t even know for sure what these people were studying, but if it was anything like what they did to us, we know it’s them for sure. Then we can start working on the theory of them using this to cover their tracks and flush us out at the same time.”

  Marnie’s palms went sweat slick against the wall. What was he talking about? He couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the work she’d done—could he? No. No, there was no way.

  And yet…

  Didn’t he tell her there was something done to him, some sort of experiments? He had never gone into detail, but it had to be something scientific. Yes, he’d mentioned scientists. What were the odds that he was one of the subjects? Or that the testing her team had been hired to process was related to the testing done on him? Could it have been the same group of people?

  Why would they need to be flushed out, his team? Why would anyone care after the fact, after the tests were done? Was he hiding from them? If so, why?

  It seemed like every question she asked left her with two more questions until there was nothing but a minefield of confusion and suspicion and unanswered questions in her mind.

  No, not a minefield. A maze. And no matter where she turned, there was nothing but more maze in front of her. She went deeper and deeper into that maze and wondered if and when she would ever hit the center.

  “I’ll do what I can, but there’s only so much more I can tell her without telling her too much.” He could only be talking about her, and even now, she didn’t appreciate his tone of voice. Like she wasn’t anybody special, just a responsibility he had to be aware of. Something holding him down. Someone he had to keep in the dark.

  What hadn’t he told her? Did she even want to know, especially if he tried as hard as he did to keep things under wraps? There was a note of fear in his voice—yes, fear. Whether it was fear for her or for himself and his team, she didn’t know. All she knew was that the sound of it curled her blood because she hadn’t heard him sound that way yet. She might’ve fooled herself into thinking he never felt fear.

  Only when his footsteps rang out in the hall did she realize he’d ended the call. She scrambled away from the wall, sitting cross-legged on the bed and doing everything she could to make it look like she’d only just woken up.

  When he entered the room, it was obvious she didn’t need to try too hard. He was distracted, barely even glancing her way. Instead of turning to her, he went to the window. “It looks like we’re really going to get slammed today,” he muttered, his voice dull like he didn’t even have it in him to make it sound like he was fully engaged in what he was talking about.

  She had no idea how to navigate this. All she could do was groan. “Yeah, it sounds that way. That’s what they’re saying.”

  “We’re safe here. Even at the water’s edge, we’re safe.”

  “I have no doubt. What were you talking about in the other room?”

  His head snapped around hard enough that she wondered if it hurt his neck. “What?”

  “You heard me. And I heard you. I heard you talking with who I guess was Logan. You sounded upset, and you made it sound like there was something I wasn’t supposed to know—something nobody was supposed to know. Why would anybody want to flush your group out? What does anybody have against you?”

  The way he blinked, his eyelids fluttering so rapidly, she got the sense that he could barely keep up with her questions. She wasn’t about to apologize for overwhelming him though—she was overwhelmed too, and now she had the feeling that she’d been playing this game at a disadvantage all along. He’d always known more than she had.

  “Which question do you want me to answer first?” he finally muttered, folding his arms, planting his feet shoulder-width like he was ready for a fight.

  She was so tired of this. He didn’t even intimidate her, towering over her the way he did. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  She waved a hand, vague. “That whole thing. Changing your posture, being the big, tough guy. I’m not in the mood for it, and it’s a waste of time too. I’m starting to get the feeling that time is something we’re running out of. So please, let’s cut to the chase?”

  He drew a deep breath, forcing it out through flared nostrils. “Okay. Let’s cut to the chase. I had a thought this morning when I came out of a dream. Did you ever figure something out in those moments between being asleep and being awake?”

  “There are actually studies that show we have our clearest thoughts when our conscious mind is quiet.” There she was, spouting some mumbo-jumbo at him. Falling back on old habits, being the smartest girl in the room.

  He didn’t call her out for it, though, not that she expected him to. He only nodded his head. “I think that’s what happened this morning. Anyway, it occurred to me that this group of yours, the ones hunting you, might be hunting us too. My team.”

  Her heart hammered painfully, and the blood that rushed in her ears threatened to deafen her against anything else he was going to say. She grabbed the blankets in her clenched fists, tightening her grip until it hurt. Anything she could do to center herself, to keep from flying off in a dozen directions as her panicked thoughts overwhelmed her.

  The first questions tumbled out before she could stop them. “Why would anyone want to hunt you? What have you done?”

  “Nothing. We haven’t done anything.” And she believed him, too. There wasn’t so much as a hint of a lie either in the way he spoke or the way he looked at her. He didn’t avoid her gaze, holding it steadily.

  “Then why would anybody want to find you? Why would you feel like you had to hide from them?”

  “Let me ask you a question, as a way of answering yours. I’m not trying to be evasive. But think about it. What did you do that was so bad? They’re hunting you, right? An assassin went so far as to plant something o
n your computer so she can track you, hunt you down, and kill you. She also found a way, either on her own or through this shadowy group we’re dealing with, to hack into your alarm system. She probably got an alert whenever somebody entered the office, and she knew to be there when she got that notice. What did you do to deserve this?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing. Only what I thought I was supposed to do. My job.”

  “And that’s all any of us ever did—the job we were supposed to do.”

  “Are you telling me you used to work for them?” She gasped, horror chilling her blood.

  “No, that’s not what I’m telling you. I never worked with them. I never did business with them. I never even learned any of their names. None of us did. That was by design. We weren’t supposed to know who we were dealing with any more than you were supposed to know the real people behind the fake names they gave you.”

  He scowled, grunting, then turned away. She watched his broad back expand and contract with each deep, heavy breath he took. “They took us. I mean, they rescued us—to a degree. They used us in experiments. I told you that much.”

  “Yeah, you did. Do you think it’s the same group?”

  “I honestly have no idea. Until we’re sure of the sort of data you were dealing with—you know, the nature of the work these people were doing—we won’t know anything, but let’s say they’re the same people. They have a reason for wanting to find us, just like they have a reason for wanting to find you. They want to shut us up. We’ve been hiding from them for years, ever since we… came home.”

  She caught that catch in his voice, the way he paused. She had a split second in which to decide whether she should pursue that, ask him what he wasn’t saying, or let it go.

  “If they wanted to keep you quiet, they wouldn’t have let you go. Right? So either you escaped, or this isn’t what you think it is. Which is it?”