He sat back, exhaling heavily. “She had to work, right? It’s not that she didn’t care. Kids think that, but—”
“No, it was more than that,” she whispered, staring at the TV because it was easier than staring at him, watching without really seeing. Anything was easier than looking at him, even the act of opening herself to somebody for the first time in so long. “She didn’t care. She wasn’t meant to be a mother. Not all women are. I know I’d be terrible at it. Maybe it’s genetic.”
“Or maybe you didn’t have a great example to follow.”
“That could be true,” she admitted. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. My life doesn’t exactly lend itself to domestic stuff.”
“It could.”
“Stop it,” she warned, not only because he was starting to annoy the hell out of her but because he had a point. He was saying out loud the things she’d barely dared consider in the deepest, darkest corner of her heart.
It was scary hearing things out loud that she’d only ever thought to herself, things she’d shut down, pushed away into the deep corners, things she’d held away from herself with all her strength.
Dreams. Soft, pretty dreams. Dreams that had nothing to do with her hermit’s life and nothing to do with death.
“It’s not like you can go back to them, right?” he reasoned, unaware of what he was doing with every new word he spoke, how he twisted her into knots without raising a finger.
“They aren’t the only game in town,” she shrugged.
“No, but it isn’t like you can put your experience with them on your resume. You’re not going to get any great recommendations.”
“You don’t know how this work goes,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Trust me. I could find more work if I needed to. It wouldn’t take me long. And I’m not hurting for money.”
“Murder pays well?”
“Very,” she smiled, overly sweet. “So I’m not worried about it. Maybe I’ll go someplace else. Somewhere far away. I’ll start over.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He gestured to the TV. “So long as you have cable, right?”
“Right.” Because that’s all she’d ever had. TV. Books. They were all she needed, along with herself. And she could have them anywhere. She could live halfway around the world if she felt like it.
Somehow, she had the feeling she’d never get that far.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest. What else did you learn about us? The team?”
“Nothing more than what I said. Your first names—no last ones, I don’t ask why when I get my folio of names. Where and when you served. What you do for a living now.”
“They knew what we do for a living?”
There was an edge in his voice, a tightness like he was barely breathing, or something had gotten lodged in his throat. “Yes. How do you think I knew the sort of cases you’ve picked up lately?”
“Address?”
She sat up, shaking her head. “General location. That’s all. I kept telling you—”
“You didn’t know much, but you didn’t describe what you do know. What they know about us.” He got up, pulling his phone from his pocket as he marched into the bedroom. The door slammed hard enough to make the TV sway on its stand.
He hadn’t even thought to keep the door open so he could watch her.
What had she said?
Chapter Seventeen
This was impossible. Every passing minute was torture.
Being near her, wanting to not be near her, wanting to be as close to her as he could be—even inside her, yes, inside her until they were one. Everything the wolf wanted, he wanted too. He wanted to pass the time without talking or watching TV.
He wanted to be in bed with her. On the floor. Against the wall.
He grunted when Val answered the call, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate it very much if he didn’t find a way to calm down the rising tide of lust threatening to drown him. “Hey. It’s me.”
“Hey, yourself,” Val chirped. “Long time, no talk. Tell me there are no emergencies or any complications holding your attention.”
Complications. That was a good word for the hard-on straining against his zipper, threatening to burst through. He almost laughed. “Nothing urgent. Nothing I can’t handle. Have you found anything yet?”
“I think I’ve landed on something,” Val admitted.
He cursed under his breath. “Ever thought about sharing it with me?”
“Hold on a sec.” It was rare for Val to get serious, to take a sharp tone with her teammates. Especially with him—they’d always gotten along so well, their senses of humor very much alike.
He flinched like his mother had just yelled at him. “I’m—”
“No. I don’t wanna hear you’re sorry. Not right now,” she warned. “I told you I’ve found a little. And I have. But you’ve been back and forth for days. You haven’t shown your face at headquarters. I never know if you’re at Marnie’s or the safe house or someplace else, and the last time I checked, I don’t report to you—”
“Okay. Okay. I tried to apologize before you cut me off. And I’m sorry. I’m… I mean, it’s not about you, of course. I’m not irritated with you.”
“I would hope not since I haven’t done anything wrong, and I can only find what’s left out there for me to find.” He imagined her straightening herself out, taking a few deep breaths, sitting up straighter in her chair.
“I know. I’m a dick for acting that way. This is a challenging assignment.”
“They’re all challenging,” she reminded him before sighing. “But this is particularly tough. Have you managed to make her talk?”
“Not about her career,” he murmured, praying she wasn’t standing by the door listening. He hadn’t heard her get up from the sofa, so he guessed the odds were slim. “About her personal life, though. The usual. Single mother, never met the father. No siblings. Raised herself.”
“In other words, the perfect candidate to be trained up as an assassin,” Val sighed. “No connections, a sense of separation from the rest of the world.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, and he tried not to think of the little girl Aimee had described. The girl whose only friend was the television, with no parents at home.
That girl was gone. The woman in the living room was who remained. The woman he had to drain every last bit of information from.
And then what? He wouldn’t allow himself to think about it.
“I have an Amelia Niles here,” Val reported. There was still tightness in her voice, a brusqueness that wasn’t usually there. “Twenty-eight, raised outside Philadelphia.”
“She doesn’t have an accent.”
“Would she? Trained the way she is? I’m sure they beat it out of her quickly enough.” Val cleared her throat before continuing. “The woman in question is an orphan—rather, maybe an orphan.”
“What’s that mean?”
“No father listed anywhere, so who knows who he might’ve been. Mother disappeared years ago. A secretary at the Federal building in Philly. Never came home from work one night. Just… vanished.”
His heart sank. He knew it shouldn’t, knew he couldn’t let this have any effect. People disappeared all the time. Kids were orphaned all the time. It didn’t mean anything. “When was this?”
“Ten years ago. She would’ve just been out of high school by then or as good as. Eighteen, so she wasn’t an aimless minor. Enlisted months later.”
“It’s not unusual,” he murmured, looking at the closed door again. “She wanted to punish the bad guys who might’ve hurt her mother. Killed her, even. People in these situations normally go into law enforcement or the military. They need to feel less helpless, like they can control their world.”
“Right,” she confirmed. “She was discharged honorably after two tours. That’s literally all I have on her. We don’t even know for sure this is her, that she’s the Amelia we’re talking about.”
“But what you�
��ve told me so far jives with what she described to me earlier. Lonely childhood, mother working, no father. I feel good about this.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re glad. I’m a little pissed that outside what I just listed, this girl seems to not exist at all.”
“There’s nothing else about her? No employment history, no addresses?”
“Nope.”
“Huh. She makes herself out to be a freelancer, somebody who worked as part of a team without actually being part of it, yet there’s nothing else to be found about her. What’s that tell us?”
“Somebody thought it would be important to hide her from the world,” Val murmured.
“Right. She must’ve been recruited like we’ve already assumed. And whoever they were, they knew what they were doing. They hid her, wiped her history.” After a moment, he added, “And they keep doing it. They have to. Or else why wouldn’t you be able to find addresses and that sort of thing?”
“You’re right. Either she’s somebody’s favorite little assassin and they’re pulling the strings without her knowing it, or—”
“Or she’s aware of what’s being done. She knows more than she’s told us. She’s in deeper.”
When he spoke the words out loud, he listened for his wolf. The wolf would tell him whether or not this was true. He’d feel it in his gut whether Aimee was holding out on him.
And the wolf believed her. There was no protest, no howling, no tugging at his awareness to alert him to danger.
“I’d go with the former, rather than the latter,” he decided.
“You mean it?”
“You sound surprised,” he snickered. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I assumed you’d go with the latter, that she’s aware of somebody watching over her, uh, career. If you wanna call it that.”
“Maybe I’m turning over a more understanding leaf.”
“Maybe you’re a split personality,” she countered. “Just a few minutes ago, you were ready to bite my head off. Now, you’re giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
He didn’t know how to explain this—and the fact that Val saw through him didn’t come as a surprise since that was what she did. She was the most perceptive person he’d ever known.
“I’m tired of fighting and second-guessing,” he confessed with a sigh. “And he’s not arguing with me if you get what I mean.”
“Gotcha,” she replied. “Good. Maybe she’s not a complete monster.”
“Jury’s still out on that one,” he reminded her with what tried to be a chuckle but sounded nothing like it should have.
He then remembered why he’d called in the first place. “I need to get back out there with her, so I’ll need you to pass something on for me.”
“What’s up?”
He gave her a brief rundown of what he’d learned. “They don’t know exactly where we are—yet—but they know what we’ve been doing. It doesn’t seem like she knows everything there is to know about us either. I guess they didn’t feel like giving out that information.”
“No, because it would mean explaining how they knew it and what part they played in turning you,” she surmised. “Did she share the motive?”
“Motive?”
“For why they were supposed to kill you and Sledge, and I guess everybody else.”
“No,” he grunted, wishing he’d stuck around to learn about that while she was still in a chatty mood. He’d given her more than enough time to close herself up again. “Damn it.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll find a way to get through to her again. You’ve already done it. Just… do it again.”
“Sure,” he snickered. “I’ll also build the pyramids in my free time since that’s already been done.”
“Funny,” she groaned. He could imagine her rolling her eyes.
“Hey. Thanks. I mean it.”
“I know,” she sighed before the call ended. He grinned to himself, looking down at the phone.
A grin which slid off his face moments later. He had more work to do. He had to get through to her again, to get her talking. At least she seemed like a genuinely interesting person—it would’ve been so much worse if she’d been nothing but a vapid, brainless thing who only cared about which filter made her selfies look best.
Focus. Concentrate. You can do this. He drew a deep breath, standing straight and tall before opening the door.
And finding an empty sofa.
“Damn it,” he growled, entering the room. The TV was still on. She hadn’t opened the front door—the alarm would’ve gone off, and she didn’t know the code to disarm it. Unless she’d managed to override it somehow.
A million things went through his mind in an instant. Hunting her down. Knowing that once she was in the outside world, she had the upper hand. A girl in the sort of shape she was in, probably skilled at survival, could make her way home. Especially a girl who looked the way she did: gorgeous, non-threatening. She could probably play up the innocent angle, too. Defenseless, just waiting for a man to save her.
He’d just about decided to call Logan when the upstairs toilet flushed. Aimee sauntered down the stairs moments later like she didn’t have a care in the world, only to find him struggling to catch his breath.
“What happened?” she asked, stopping at the foot of the stairs to gape at him. “You look like you just got the worst news of your life. Is there something wrong?”
“No—I mean, nothing outside what we already knew was wrong,” he allowed.
“Then why do you look like the world just fell in on you?”
There had to be something to say. Some excuse he could offer that would make sense. “I don’t know. I…”
She stopped frowning. “Ohhh.”
“Ohhh?”
“What?” she laughed. “Did you think I ran away? I had to pee, and you were in the bedroom, so there was no getting to that bathroom from out here. Besides, I’m not trying to have a private moment when you’re on the phone just outside the door. Sorry. I’m not into being listened to.”
It was so absurd, he almost had to laugh. Was this his life? Was this now the sort of thing he had to deal with? “Just, you know. Let me know next time you wanna vanish on me.”
“I was still in the house,” she reminded him in an overly patient tone, the way an adult would speak to a child who’d had a bad dream, who’d woken to find his parents gone—even when they were only in the next room, or downstairs, or on the front porch.
“Right. Well. Let me know anyway.” He flopped down in the armchair, focusing on the TV. “Looks like a new movie’s starting.”
Time to try to get through to her again. One old movie at a time.
Chapter Eighteen
“I’m gonna need pajamas. Is that too much to ask?”
She leaned over the side of the bed, looking down at Zane. “That’s a good-faith question. I’m not trying to cause trouble.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Wow. You’re loosening up. Not immediately assuming I mean the worst.”
“You’re pushing it.”
“Okay, okay.” She repositioned herself, pillow clutched against her. It was the only way she could relax. “Anyway, yeah. That would be nice.”
“I know. We’ll have to work something out. I’ll have somebody bring something in for you tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” Was this his way of buttering her up? Giving her a few crumbs, making her feel like they were on the same level? Even friendly?
He wasn’t fooling her. It was obvious he’d spent the rest of the day trying to get her to reveal more about herself.
If she could only get over the idea that he’d use it against her, the information he pulled out of her locked-down memory.
“Why do you sleep like that?”
She froze. Without being able to see him, lying on the floor like he was, it was impossible to know where this question was coming from. Genuine interest? Boredom? Trying to pry something from her? Or was he just being
judgmental? “What difference does it make?”
“I’m interested.”
“You wanna try to shrink me again.”
“No—though I could, if I felt like it. Wouldn’t you rather I not come up with a bunch of random theories?”
“I’d rather you think about something that actually matters. I can’t imagine this mattering very much. I sleep holding a pillow. Big deal. It makes me feel more comfortable.”
“Okay, okay. I didn’t expect you to get so touchy.”
“Bullshit. Don’t even act like we’ve never met or had a conversation. This whole thing, our time together, has been one big game of chess. Back and forth, one move after another.”
“Do you play chess?”
“I know how, yeah.”
“Me, too.”
“Wow. When do you wanna get married?”
“Why do you have to do that? I was honestly asking. It’s been ages since I’ve found anybody to play a match with. I got excited for a second there. I could have them bring a set tomorrow, too.”
“Hmm. I guess. I haven’t played in a while, either.” There had to be something besides watching hours and hours of TV. It was nice for now, the chance to relax—as much as a person could relax while waiting for somebody to try to kill them—but it would get old before long.
“See? That wasn’t so tough.”
“Stop pretending to be my friend,” she sing-songed. “I don’t like it.”
“You’d rather I be a dick to you?”
“I’d rather you be real with me.”
“Who says I’m not being real?”
She leaned over again, doing everything she could not to stare at his bulging biceps—he was on his back, hands behind his head, and there was nothing for his biceps to do but flex. It was a miracle his skin didn’t split. “Just last night, you practically taunted me over what I did until I cried.”
“You weren’t really crying, and don’t act like you didn’t give it back with that headbutt.”
“You deserved it. Anyway, now you wanna talk and get to know each other. Forgive me if I find it questionable.”
“What else is there to do?” he asked, his voice low, eyes traveling over what little of her was visible over the edge of the bed.
Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset Page 86