Zane shook his head, muttering under his breath, but he went around to the driver’s side and opened the door. He muttered something to his prisoner—too soft for her to make out, but the tone was threatening. Not that it came as a surprise, and she certainly didn’t feel bad for the guy either.
It was so strange being on this side of things—the hunted one, instead of the hunter. At least her targets—or victims, though she couldn’t bring herself to entertain that word for long without it turning her stomach—hadn’t known she was coming. She’d always done what she could to make it as quick and painless as possible. Only situations like the one in which she’d killed Beth had taken more than a few seconds total.
Beth was one of the only ones who’d felt real fear in her final moments. Tears stung behind Aimee’s eyes.
Zane joined her, holding out a phone. An old model, but it was definitely a phone. “That’s it?” she asked, skeptical.
“He said that once I turn it on, it would ping because you’re right here.”
He looked down at it, holding it away from himself. “I don’t know. I don’t like this.”
“Turn it on, then drop it right away,” she suggested. Who knew what would happen?
“This was the only thing in his bag that I couldn’t identify,” he murmured. “It’s the only thing he could've used. I mean, he says it is, but it’s not like I’m going to believe him easily.”
“All we can do is try.” Still, she took a few steps back, away from the phone or device or whatever it was. It could explode, for all she knew, or burst open and splash acid on everything near it.
“One… two… three.” Zane pressed the button on the side of the phone before tossing it away from himself.
He braced herself, holding her breath… but nothing happened. Nothing that seemed too dangerous, anyway. The screen lit up the way a phone normally did when it was turned on.
Then, a single, blinking light flashed. A red light, one which slowly focused down, shrinking. Soon it was nothing more than a single dot in the center of the screen, still blinking steadily.
Zane glanced at her before taking one cautious step toward the phone, then another. He reached it, looking down on it with his hands on his hips, then crouched to pick it up. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, looking at her and down at the phone in turn.
“It’s what he said it is?” she whispered, holding herself again. She was sure she would shatter into a million pieces if she didn’t physically hold herself together.
“Yeah. It looks like it. There’s a map here, with a blue dot for the phone and a red dot for…” He looked up at her. “You. The dots are practically overlapping.”
She looked down at herself, horrified. “How am I doing it?” she whimpered, past the point of caring how she seemed or how it looked, what he would think of her for losing control of herself. How else was she supposed to react?
“There’s only one thing I can think of,” he murmured.
She met his gaze and soon found herself wishing he didn’t look so sympathetic. “Is it wrong that I sort of want you to be mad at me, still?”
He sighed, leaning against the truck. They stayed that way for a minute, their butts against the grill, staring out into the darkness.
With this one little twist, everything was cast in a new light.
Before this job, Aimee had been a contractor. She’d worked for hire. Did what people told her to do. It was all she was good at.
Until now, she’d imagined herself as independent. She’d made her own way, decided for herself where to go, which job to take.
“What a joke,” she whispered. “What an absolute joke.” What was she talking about, exactly? Nothing less than her entire life, which up to this point had been a lie.
“They must’ve planted it somewhere inside you when you didn’t know,” he murmured, softer and kinder than before like the Zane who’d kissed her—if a little gruffer. Probably because he felt like a jackass for treating her like he had.
“No kidding,” she snickered.
Somebody had planted a device in her body and never told her about it.
She’d been theirs from the beginning.
And there was nowhere to hide.
Chapter Twenty-One
He had no idea what to do for her, what to say to her.
How was he supposed to comfort someone who’d just found out their body wasn’t completely theirs? That somebody else had been tracking them for who knew how long?
Zane wanted so much to tell her how he understood, that they’d taken his life and turned it into something he could barely recognize, that none of them had been equipped to handle what had been done.
It was bad enough that dick in the back seat had babbled on and on about the wolf. He wasn’t about to make things worse by assuring her he understood.
Besides, she’d never believe him unless he gave specifics how just how much they had in common. Otherwise, it would sound like an empty platitude, the sort of thing someone said to comfort a person in pain.
She was in pain. He could feel it, could practically hear it. Now that she wasn’t working so hard to shield herself and her emotions, she was like a radio turned up to nearly full volume. He picked up on everything.
“They’ll be here soon,” he murmured after texting Logan. “Doc’s coming too. And Val.”
“Okay.” She stared at the ground, kicking the dirt with the toe of her boot. Her arms wrapped around her.
“You chilly?” he asked. He wouldn’t know the feeling since his body ran so hot. It was tough to tell what normal humans were feeling. He had to tune into their physical cues.
“Yeah.” One-word answers. He knew it was nothing personal though it pained him anyway. How dare they? What gave them the right to toy with people?
“Here.” He extended his arms, moving closer. She flinched, which pained him even more. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I was hoping to warm you up a little.”
“Oh.” She relaxed, her eyes still downcast. He wrapped his arms around her trembling body and held her close to his chest.
Even now, in the middle of the woods, not knowing how the hell they were supposed to move on from this, something relaxed in him, in his body, in his mind. The wolf calmed, quieter than he’d been all night because here she was, where he wanted her to be. For the moment, she was safe. She was his.
The way it was supposed to be.
He closed his eyes against the sheer strength of it, the certainty of it. Just his luck, finding his mate and having her be a trained assassin. Of course, he wouldn’t find somebody uncomplicated.
Then again, everybody was. Everyone had their baggage. This was hers, and he wanted so much to take some of it away, to bear the weight on his shoulders so hers wouldn’t have to hold so much at once.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against the top of her head. “I am. I shouldn’t have treated you that way.”
She sighed. “You didn’t know. I can’t blame you. I would’ve jumped to the worst conclusion too. It’s the only way to be safe.”
Her head tilted back, eyes meeting his. “What are you gonna do with him?”
“What do you think we should do?”
She scoffed. “You know what I think, and I know it makes me a terrible person—”
“It doesn’t because I was thinking the same thing.”
“Just because you were thinking it doesn’t make it less terrible,” she pointed out with what might’ve passed for a weak smile. “Maybe you’re terrible, too.”
“Maybe I am.” He touched his palm to her cheek, and something inside him sang when she leaned against it. Such a simple gesture, but it spoke volumes. She trusted him. She needed his support.
He was just about to bring her face closer to his so he could kiss her again when headlights washed over them. Aimee stiffened, but he held her tighter. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s the good guys.”
“You know, when I said I wanted to get out of the office more, this wasn’t
exactly what I had in mind.” Val took absolutely no pains against being noticed as she trampled through the woods. “I had sort of a resort with a beachy feel in mind.”
“What about camping?” Hawk asked, walking behind her.
“Camping is gross.” The two of them emerged, followed close behind by Doc. Zane thought he’d never been so glad to see anyone in his entire life.
“He’s in the backseat,” he muttered to Hawk, who nodded in passing as Zane handed over the keys.
“Wait a second. What’s he going to do?” Aimee looked around him, to where Hawk was getting behind the wheel of the truck.
“Don’t worry about it,” Zane assured her, but it was clear she was shaken as Hawk drove away with the arsonist still tied up in the back.
“You must be Aimee.” Val held out a hand to shake.
“And you must be Val,” Aimee murmured, smiling. “I’ve heard really good things about you.”
“I’m sorry to say I haven’t heard the same about you.” Even then, she sounded so cheerful it didn’t come out as an insult. Zane could’ve kissed her for that though he didn’t think Hawk would enjoy it very much if he got word.
“Come on, then,” Doc muttered, gesturing toward the van he’d driven into the woods. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Get what over with?” Aimee looked around wildly, and when Zane took her wrist, he felt her pulse fluttering like mad.
“Listen to me.” Rather than drag her to the van, with her panicking, he turned to her and took her face in his hands. It looked good that way, her face, and he did what he could to memorize it. He had never been so glad for his heightened sight as he was just then since it made him able to see her clearly even in the dark.
He glanced toward the van, then looked back to her. “We call him Doc because he was a medic. He knows what he’s doing. He’s going to find whatever they put in you, and he’s going to take it out.”
“What?” she snapped, eyes and mouth both wide.
“Listen, please. You wanted me to listen to you before, and I did. Do me the favor of listening to me now, okay? Odds are, it’s in one of your arms. They wouldn’t have implanted it in, like, your abdomen or your neck—someplace important where things could go wrong. Doc has a light he can shine over your skin, and it will show if there’s something beneath it. That’s it. Then, he’ll take it out for you. Easy as that.”
“In the back of a van?” she gasped. “Are you kidding me?”
“Aimee. It’s the only way. Wherever we go now, they could find you again. Let’s end this here, at least this part of it. We can take it out now, right here, and be done. They won’t be able to track you anymore.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “Okay. Whatever it takes.” He kissed her forehead and wished he could do more before sliding an arm around her waist and guiding her to the van.
Doc was already set up back there with a cot and a set of instruments—scalpel, tweezers, all of it—plus alcohol and a needle and thread for stitching.
He held up a hypodermic. “Just to numb you a little once we find where the device was implanted,” he explained. He sounded a lot gentler and more sympathetic than normal—it seemed like women had that effect on him.
“Okay,” she whispered, looking to Zane for support.
“It’s going to be fine.” Zane stood outside the van keeping watch just in case. Aimee stretched out on the cot, her feet facing him.
Doc reached up to turn out the overhead light, then flipped on the blacklight in his hand. “This isn’t just a blacklight,” he explained as he began running the light up the length of Aimee’s right arm. “It detects the presence of foreign devices under the skin. Almost like ultrasound.”
“Cool,” Aimee replied in a flat voice. Zane had to bite his tongue to hold back a laugh.
Val tapped his arm. “She’s our Amelia?”
He nodded. “Yeah, she is.”
“My record remains perfect.” She folded her arms, self-satisfied, and he tugged one of her braided pigtails.
Doc finished with the right arm, then moved to the left. All the while, he spoke quietly with Aimee, and she murmured responses. “Hold on a second.” Doc waved the light once, twice. “I think I found it.”
Zane leaned into the van, looking. Sure enough, there was a bump no bigger than the size of an average pill beneath the skin, on the underside of the arm close to the armpit. “Are you right or left-handed, Aimee?” Doc asked.
“Right-handed.”
“And they would’ve used this arm since she would’ve noticed any weakness in the right arm,” Doc muttered to him. They exchanged a glance, nodding.
“I just wish I knew when they did this,” she whimpered. This wasn’t the first time she’d shown weakness in front of him, and it killed him to see it, to hear it in her voice.
Just when he thought he had every reason in the world to want to burn down this group, whoever they were, the universe saw fit to give him one more reason.
“Were you ever wounded? Did you participate in any studies, maybe?” Doc asked, rolling up her shirtsleeve to keep it out of the way before applying alcohol to her skin.
“Well, yeah. Sort of. An IED went off. I was close enough to get thrown to the ground. I had a concussion. I woke up in the medic tent.”
“Did you lose any time that you are aware of?” Val asked.
“I don’t know. It was dark, and it was morning when the device went off. So yeah, I guess a few hours at least.”
“They might’ve done it then.”
“Wait a second.” She sat up slightly, looking past Doc to where Zane waited outside. “That would mean they planned this even back then. How can it be possible? I didn’t know anything about these people back then. Not until I was discharged.”
“And how long did it take for someone to get in touch with you after your discharge?” Doc asked, using the hypodermic to inject a numbing agent into Aimee’s arm.
She winced a little, then replied, “Not long, now that you mention it. A few weeks.”
“What did they say?” Val asked. Zane, meanwhile, practically held his breath in anticipation.
“That they were aware of my skills. I was an expert marksman. They worked with an agency affiliated with the government, and they sought to place talented veterans in positions suited to their skills.”
Zane and Val exchanged a look. “Was there additional training involved?” she asked.
“Sure. Months of it. All fully paid. I mean, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. Who wouldn’t? I left the Army with no job. I was considering going to college for a while—I enlisted right after I graduated high school—but then they called, and it was like an answer to every question I’d been asking since I got my papers.”
“Okay, Aimee. I’m going to make a tiny incision—very, very small. I probably won’t even have to stitch you up. Still, you’re going to feel pressure.” Doc picked up the scalpel, the metal gleaming in the overhead light.
Aimee’s right hand shot out, and Zane took it without asking. He squeezed as hard as he dared, wishing there was a way to tell her everything—how sorry he was somebody did this to her, how brave she was for coming out now and telling the truth about everything, how brave she’d been to go against them, these nameless people with all their connections, all because she didn’t think Marnie deserved to die.
“Okay, I think I have it. Stay very still,” Doc murmured, his voice almost hypnotic. Zane felt Aimee’s hand relax in his. He made a mental note to congratulate Doc on his bedside manner at some other time.
“Here we go.” Doc held it up. It was the size of a gel capsule, something normally found in over-the-counter medication. No wonder she’d never known it was there.
Doc left it sitting beside the rest of the instruments while he went about putting gauze over Aimee’s incision and wrapping her arm in a bandage. “You did great,” he praised.
“I wish I felt that way,” she chuckled softly. “Thank you.”
> “What now?” Val asked. “Where are you going to go?”
“I have no idea,” he confessed. And neither did Logan, which was the most unsettling part of all. Nobody could figure out where to go, where they would be safe.
“I still think my apartment is a good bet,” Aimee insisted.
“No, they probably would’ve tracked your presence there before,” Zane reminded her as gently as he could. “So they know it exists, they know where it is. They’ll be waiting for you to show up there.”
“Oh. Right.” She looked up at the ceiling of the van, blinking rapidly trying to push back the tears.
“What about your place, Zane?” Val asked. “The odds of them knowing where you live are slim.”
Aimee lifted her head slightly. “There were no addresses with the information they gave me,” she pointed out. “They didn’t know exactly where any of you lived, where you did business. Just the general area.”
“It’s as good a place as any,” Doc sighed. It was clear he didn’t love the idea, but they had to go somewhere, some place where they wouldn’t put dozens or even hundreds of lives in jeopardy just by their mere presence. That ruled out a hotel or motel or anywhere other people were saying.
Which made the fact that he lived in the middle of nowhere feel practically serendipitous. He’d never been one for neighbors—years spent living in an apartment, even a nice apartment, had left him wanting to never have neighbors again. He could remember the cooking smells, the sounds of people upstairs walking back and forth even in the middle of the night. For the most part, his childhood had been almost ideal: loving parents, if a little strict, siblings he got along with, a stable household.
They’d always had really shitty neighbors. That was the only drawback to living in their building throughout his youth.
“How do you feel about farms?” he asked, smiling at her obvious confusion.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“This is not what I expected.” Aimee stared out the windshield to the farmhouse in front of which Zane had pulled up and parked.
It was still the middle of the night, but she could see enough of it thanks to the headlights, and what she saw was downright breathtaking.
Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset Page 89