Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  She was probably the most beautiful, most alluring vision he’d ever set eyes on, not only because she was beautiful but because she was challenging, because she kept him guessing. Because there was a freshness to her smile in spite of everything she’d been through.

  He blamed this all on the wolf as he shrugged. “Sorry. Long day at the office.”

  The waitress came over, picking up two menus and waving them in the direction of one of the tables. “Let’s get you guys seated.”

  Neither of them said a word until they were alone, the waitress in the kitchen. They were the only customers, and thank God for that. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding himself not to get too comfortable with her. The girl might still have some tricks up her sleeve.

  Which brought to mind the trick she’d already pulled on him. “How did you do it?” There was no need to explain what he meant.

  “I have my methods,” she shrugged.

  “Tell me you haven’t been here all day waiting.”

  “Do I strike you as being an idiot?” She rolled her eyes. “I got an alert when you started the car.”

  “I’m not going to lie. That’s a little unsettling, the way you can do that.”

  “No kidding,” she laughed. “Gee, I never intended to unsettle you.”

  “Is this fun for you? I’m asking sincerely. Are you having fun?”

  “Maybe a little bit.” She held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Cut me a little slack, okay? There hasn’t been much room in my life for fun in a long time.”

  “There’s something we can relate on.” He opened the menu, scanning the items in front of him. “So, if you got here before I did, that means you live nearby.”

  “Clever,” she admitted. “I considered letting you wait here for a while, leaving you hanging, but I’m not the most patient person. One of my few character flaws.”

  That got him laughing almost a little too hard. “Just one? A few?”

  “Sure, sure. Laugh all you want, but I’m the one who knows how to hack into your truck’s system. So, you know, don’t be surprised if it suddenly shuts off while you’re driving it.” She lifted her slim shoulders, and it didn’t exactly thrill him to find she wasn’t smiling now.

  “You wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “You don’t know me very well, do you?”

  “But we’re on the same side. Right?”

  “Who knows? Maybe when this is all over, I’ll decide to have some real fun with you. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just leave you guessing for the rest of your life. Always wondering when I’m going to choose to wreak havoc. Always hovering over you, like a storm cloud. Yeah, that sounds like fun.”

  “But how much fun would it be if you weren’t with me to watch the torment unfold?”

  “I have a very active imagination,” she whispered with a wink. “Trust me, I can have plenty of fun on my own without having to see for sure what happened. Heck, it might even be more fun to imagine you looking over your shoulder all the time.”

  It was almost too much fun, going back and forth with her. He could almost forget what was at stake, that both their lives were in grave danger and only the other one could help them.

  He sat up straighter, knowing he would have to be the responsible one. The one who did what was right, even if it wasn’t any fun. Fun would only distract him, anyway. He had more lives than just his own to consider.

  “So, let’s get down to business—while we eat, of course.” The waitress was coming, and he intended to order right away. No sense delaying things.

  He couldn’t shake the idea that he’d failed some sort of test as Jenna frowned in reply, sinking a little in the booth. He couldn’t shake the regret this stirred in him.

  Chapter Ten

  Well, that was abrupt.

  Just when she thought they might start to build a bridge to—what? Not friendship, they would never be friends. At least some sort of kinship, then.

  Just when she thought they might get closer to that kinship, he went and acted weird. God forbid he loosen up and enjoy himself a little bit. No, he was all business, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he felt like he was putting her in her place when he shut down so abruptly.

  After all, why would an honorable person like him want to be friends with somebody like her? She was just a hacker to him. Even though his friend Hawk did the same things she did and even though he collected a paycheck from Logan for those skills of his, Logan still held himself above her.

  One thing Jenna had never been able to stomach was hypocrisy, and it practically rolled off Logan in waves.

  “Mushroom swiss burger, medium, and fries.” She made her order without looking at the waitress, focusing on Logan instead. “Oh, and a Coke, too.”

  “That sounds good. I think I’ll have the same, with a double order of fries.” He flashed the waitress a winning smile, the sort of smile that melted woman’s panties and turned her knees to mush. The woman in question was late middle age, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t giggle like a teenager. Like anything her customer had just said was even remotely funny.

  “How do you do that?” she asked him when they were alone again, studying his every movement, every twitch of muscle in his remarkably muscular body.

  “Do what?” Darned if he didn’t look genuinely confused. Was it possible he had no idea of the effect he had on women? Or was he just that oblivious?

  “Flash a smile and turn every woman around you into a giggling sycophant.”

  He raised an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth twitching upward. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a sycophant.”

  “Then you weren’t paying attention. That’s the only explanation.”

  “You sound jealous.”

  “Trust me, the last thing I am is jealous. Curious, mostly, but not jealous.”

  He leaned in a little, his arms resting on the table. When he did, he moved into the pool of light cast by the overhead lamp, and his arresting eyes seemed to jump out of his face. She didn’t know whether she should look away or fall into them completely. Either option seemed equally dangerous.

  “I think it might have something to do with what was done to us. No, honestly,” he added when she snickered. “Maybe it’s not the same for you, but you don’t know since you’ve suppressed it all this time. Maybe there’s something to be said for animal magnetism. I know it sounds corny, but you are the one who brought it up.”

  “I’m starting to wish I hadn’t.”

  “Then why did you? Here I am, trying to relate to you, and you shut down on me.”

  “I shut down on you?” she asked, blinking hard. It wasn’t her eyes she was having problems with, though, but rather her ears. She must’ve heard him wrong. “Au contraire. You’re the one who just threw up a brick wall at me and completely shut down. Here I was, thinking we could have a pleasant meal together—no, it’s not fancy, but the food is good—and you got all huffy and buttoned up all of a sudden.”

  “We have a job to do. I’m trying to keep this professional.” If the man had been wearing a tie, he would’ve adjusted it just then.

  “And what do you think I’m trying to do?”

  “I still think this is a game for you. I really do. Don’t get me wrong,” he insisted when she just about exploded in frustration. “The stakes are high for you, just as high as they are for any of us. But you still have this way of playing around like this is all fun, like this is something to joke about.”

  “I haven’t had anything to joke about in years.” She said this in a flat voice, stripping away all pretense. “And you guys are among some of the only people I’ve interacted with face-to-face. I’ve been hiding. Can’t you see that? Even with the pills, I never know if I can trust myself, and I’ve been terrified of showing my face, fearful of who might be watching. I rarely leave the house without some sort of half-baked disguise. Hats, wigs. Bulky clothes to hide my shape. I go through rental cars like nobody’s business, a
ll of them rented under an assumed name. Just like my bank accounts, my driver’s license, all of it. All of it is under somebody else’s name. I haven’t been myself in years. I have no friends, no social life. Dating is about as unrealistic for me as a trip to the moon.”

  She paused for effect, noting the way his face had fallen like he felt sorry for her. That was the last thing she wanted—being the object of pity wasn’t exactly high on her list of aspirations. Still, there was something to be said for getting a little bit of her dignity back.

  “Forgive me, then, if I want to inject a little enjoyment in my life. I’m like a kid who hasn’t had any playmates for years. Maybe I come on a little strong, but that’s not because I think this is fun. It’s because I’m relieved that I don’t have to go through this alone anymore.”

  Their drinks came, finally—it seemed to Jenna that the service should have been a lot quicker seeing as they were the only two people in the diner. Logan took a gulp from his soda, probably stalling for time. “I’m sorry,” he muttered eventually. “I never thought about it that way.”

  She lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I can’t blame you, I guess. I dropped a lot on you today. And you don’t know me, so I couldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “It’s really been like that for you?” He lowered his brow, staring at her with the sort of intensity that should’ve made her skin crawl but instead sent goosebumps rising all over her arms. What was it about him? There she was, criticizing the waitress in her head for reacting like a goofball, but she was doing the same thing—maybe more quietly, maybe not so obviously, but the reaction was there.

  She nodded. “Sure. I’m not only protecting myself. I’m protecting Dad. I don’t take chances.”

  “Plus, bringing anybody else into your life would only mean subjecting them to possible danger.”

  How surprising. Tears filled her eyes when he said that. What was that all about? It was like finally having met people like herself, people she’d been trying to find four years, had sent her emotions on a roller coaster. She ducked her head, blinking back her embarrassment. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s with me today.”

  When he snickered, she shot him a look. But he wasn’t being mean. No, there was sympathy written all over his face, his gaze softer now. Not so intense. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You had a big day. We all have. And you’ve been at this for a long time. Naturally, it’s going to take a toll on you.”

  “How have you managed for so long?”

  “Because I didn’t have a choice. Just like you haven’t had a choice—honestly, I’m not sure I could do what you’ve done. I mean that,” he insisted when she rolled her eyes. “I don’t know that I could have been as strong as you’ve been. That’s not lip service. I’m not trying to flatter you. I mean it sincerely. You managed so well all on your own. I give you a lot of credit for that.”

  Her poor, broken heart was so lonely, so bruised and battered. All it took was the slightest compliment, the littlest bit of empathy, and she was a wreck inside. It was all she could do to keep herself together on the outside, to project at least some semblance of control of herself.

  She could wait until she got home to cry.

  When the food came, she could’ve kissed the woman who brought them their plates. Eating would give them something else to do besides staring at each other for much longer than they should. She never could’ve predicted this would go the way it was going with her hopelessly tongue-tied and on the brink of breaking down at any moment, with him studying her like she was some rare species he’d never seen before.

  She wasn’t used to people looking at her, asking her questions.

  “I have to ask you something,” he mumbled over her mouth full of burger.

  “Are you sure you have to? Or do you just want to?” She grinned when he growled.

  “Anyway, what I want to know is have you ever considered not taking the pills?”

  “Sure,” she shrugged. When his eyebrows shot up in frank surprise, she shrugged again. “Of course, I’m curious about what it would be like if I lived the way you guys live. You learned to control it, at least I guess you have.”

  “What makes you guess that?”

  “Because you’re all productive members of society,” she snickered. “Because none of you flew into a snarling rage when I showed up at your office today. Yeah, there was tension in the air, but you all managed to work with it.”

  “We’ve had practice.”

  “That’s my point. At first, I was terrified. I didn’t ever want to lose control of myself again the way I did back there.” She couldn’t possibly be any more forthcoming than that, since even though they were the only customers the diner they still weren’t alone. “So yeah, I reacted in panic. When Dad brought home all those bottles, it was a godsend. I wept I was so relieved.”

  “And now?”

  “And now, I can’t risk losing control when I have somebody to take care of. Maybe if it was just me, I could experiment—that’s not the right word, but you know what I mean.”

  He nodded. “You could stretch your legs, test things out.”

  “Right. But I can’t. I have to take care of him, and I have to be in my right mind at all times. I remember shifting before. I wasn’t myself anymore. I couldn’t think like myself. It’s really scary for me.” By the time she finished speaking, her hands trembled. “I’m not used to confessing so many things at once like this. You’re the only person I’ve ever been able to talk to about it, so I’m sorry if—”

  His throat clearing was another godsend, giving her an excuse to shut up before she went and said something even more stupid. “You have nothing to apologize for. Really. If anything, I’m glad I can be here. I can imagine what it would’ve been like to be completely on my own with this. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse…”

  He shook his head, shoving a handful of fries into his mouth. Maybe to shut himself up. She didn’t know. Was he struggling with this as much as she? He didn’t strike her as a huge conversationalist, and it was clear there was a brick wall around him that he’d built to keep the world out. How she knew it, she couldn’t say. It was the sort of thing a person felt. Maybe there was something to be said for animal instinct, just like the animal magnetism he’d talked about earlier.

  “I have to admit something.” She wiped her mouth on her napkin, almost embarrassed that she’d practically shoved the burger into her mouth without chewing. She’d forgotten to eat lunch, too busy dealing with all the emotions her meeting with the Wolf Shield group had stirred in her like a beehive somebody had shaken up, leaving the bees to buzz around in a panic.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t exactly know how to proceed from here. We haven’t talked about this yet since we arrived, but I think it’s time.” She glanced around to make sure nobody was listening before leaning in, dropping her voice to the barest whisper. “I have addresses—last known addresses, anyway—for the people on my father’s team. I managed to find a memo on his computer that hadn’t been wiped. Almost everything else had been by the time I got to it. I don’t know if he was the one who did it or if somebody looked into his machine and did it. There was one memo he saved to a private folder. I researched the names on it. That’s how I ended up with profiles on each of the five people included. One of them was Lydia, and we all know what happened to her.”

  “Which leaves four.”

  She pressed her lips together in a fine line, barely holding back a smart remark. Yes, five minus one equals four, idiot. “Anyway, I have the names. I have addresses, but I don’t know what to do with the information. Nothing in that memo suggested which of the people included in it was the leader of the group. I don’t know who to go to first, or even if I should go to them at all. I’m flying blind.”

  “Hence you trying to find us.”

  “Hold on a second,” she warned him. “Yes, that was one of the reasons I was looking for you, but I was tellin
g the truth earlier. I knew there had to be more like me. He told me so, my dad. I wanted to find you if only because we shared something. I wanted to see if you survived. I wanted to see if I could trust you.”

  “I take it you’ve decided you can trust us.”

  “It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice, does it?”

  “Well, just in case you’re still on the fence.” He leaned in again, and again, the overhead light illuminated his face. “You can. I’ve got your back.”

  I’ve. Not We’ve. I’ve.

  She couldn’t breathe. Something was swelling in her chest, her throat. The bees that had been buzzing around her head earlier were now buzzing around inside her stomach, which was unfortunate since she’d just stuffed herself in record time. She was either going to throw up all over him or pass out from lack of oxygen.

  Neither option seemed more appealing than the other, which left her with only one course of action.

  She shot up out of the booth, lingering just long enough to whisper, “I’ll be in touch. Thanks for dinner.”

  “Wait a second!” But it was too late. She was already pushing the door open, relishing the cold night air on her overheated face as she fled to her car.

  This is too much. It was all too much. Too many emotions, too many discoveries, too many conflicting images running through her overwrought mind.

  Images from her imagination. A free life. Contentment, peace. Happiness. The chance to breathe free, to be herself instead of skulking around under an assumed name, moving from place to place always with the specter of her father’s health and safety looming overhead, weighing her down.

  Being happy. Being with somebody who’d have her back. Somebody who used to be nothing but smoke, a faceless specter in her mind, a specter now beginning to take shape. One with Logan’s eyes.

  These images, these imaginings, had always seemed about as far away from her grasp and anything could be.

  Until just then. Until meeting Logan. Until she had looked into his eyes as he told her he had her back.