Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  She didn’t think she had never been so scared.

  Chapter Eleven

  “And then what happened?”

  Logan shrugged. “That’s it. She ran. I haven’t heard anything from her since. Granted, it was just last night, but still…”

  “So what’s your take on her?” Doc settled into the straight-backed chair on the other side of Logan’s desk.

  What was his take?

  Where to begin?

  “She’s been alone a long time, so she has difficulty interacting with others. She uses sarcasm and humor to mask what she’s really feeling. She’s ridiculously intelligent, resourceful. Imaginative. She’s had to be if she hopes to keep herself alive. She has strong character, is fiercely devoted to her father. I think that speaks well of her. I can’t say how I feel about her father, honestly—I’m still sort of mixed, but it’s not important that I approve of or even like everyone we try to protect.”

  “I can imagine. After all, he was one of the architects of what was eventually done to you.” Doc pursed his lips, eyes narrowing behind round glasses. “That’s not what I asked. And bringing up her father is just a way for you to avoid the topic. Why do you keep wanting to avoid talking about her?”

  “What do you mean?” All the righteous indignation in the world couldn’t cover up the fact that Doc made a good point. Logan didn’t especially like talking about her. She stirred up too many conflicting opinions.

  “I’m trying to help you put together a profile on her, the way we would profile anybody who comes into our world. Both client and foe alike. And you keep wandering off in other directions. Why can’t you focus on talking about her? Is there something about her that throws you off?”

  He hated the way Doc’s pointed questions made him bristle. “Why are you shrinking me again? What is the problem here? You want to know what I think about her? She’s just as much a victim in all this as we were. I think she’s pretty damn resourceful if she managed to find us—not to mention the fact that she found the names and addresses of all the other people involved in the project. I can understand why she feels the need to hide. We’ve all been hiding, all this time, but we didn’t even think to live under assumed names. We might’ve been safer if we had. So I give her credit for that. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

  “Do you think she’s trustworthy?”

  Did he? That was a tough one. “I want to trust her,” he mused. “I want to believe she’s completely on our side, that she wouldn’t stab us in the back if it meant freedom for her and her father. I don’t know if I’m quite there yet, though.”

  “And that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to get at,” Doc sighed. “It’s like pulling teeth try to get a straight answer from you about this girl.”

  “I don’t like the implications behind what you just said.”

  “I don’t like having to imply it, but facts are facts. Let’s face it. The girl hacked into your truck, sent you a location where you could meet her, and you went. You didn’t bother telling anyone that you had made this decision. She could’ve been leading you into an ambush.”

  “Are we talking about the same person?” Logan snickered. “I would like to see her even try and ambush me.”

  “Fine, so what if you both headed into an ambush? What if the great hacker got herself hacked? Or what if she was followed? What if somebody has known all along where she lives and is just waiting for her to lead them to us?”

  Doc barely waited for Logan to absorb this before making his conclusion. “I’m sorry, but I have to wonder about your objectivity here. It’s not that I don’t believe in you or that I’ve lost faith in you as a leader, but she has you all mixed up like a new challenge you’re trying to work out—a new diversion, maybe—and it’s dangerous.”

  They locked eyes, and to Doc’s credit, he did not back down under the weight of Logan’s stare. He might not have been a wolf, but he was no pushover.

  It was Logan who backed down first, despondent. “I don’t know how to explain it. She isn’t like anyone I’ve ever met before. All this time, I assumed the hacker had the worst intentions, that they were an agent of this group, that they were trying to find us so we could be exposed. And all the while, who was it? Somebody like me. Somebody who’s been alone all this time.”

  He looked away, afraid of what might be lurking behind his eyes. Something he wasn’t willing to give voice to, not yet. “It’s enough to make me question a lot of things. My judgment, for one. My assumptions. It makes me question my leadership.”

  “Which is what I was afraid of,” Doc sighed. “I’ve been trying to see whether this girl has shaken you up, and it’s clear she has. That’s not a weakness on your part, not at all—everything you’ve felt—but this isn’t the time. It’s never been more important for all of us to focus up and do what has to be done. This isn’t the time to sit back and navel gaze and review every decision you’ve made over the last several years.”

  It was rare for a member of his team to put Logan in his place like that, and he guessed that if it was anyone else, he would’ve snapped back. But not Doc. If anything, he regarded them as equals. Logan might have been the financier of their little group, but Doc was the brains behind how it all came together.

  “What do you think would’ve happened if we hadn’t crossed paths when we did?” Logan asked out of nowhere.

  “You mean if you hadn’t so generously donated money to veterans in need of prosthesis when you had more than enough to deal with, hiding from the world?” Doc replied with a shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “I needed to feel like I was giving something back, like I still had the backs of my brothers,” Logan explained, looking back on those early days of having just gotten home, hiding the rest of the team at his father’s hunting cabin—more like a hunting mansion, which had been the only reason they could all fit.

  And it had given them the chance to stretch their legs, as he’d described to Jenna. They’d been able to exist in relative seclusion.

  But it hadn’t been enough for Logan. He’d visited hospitals, asking questions about soldiers returning home from war. What did they need, these people without the benefit of millions of dollars at their disposal? No matter how traumatic his experience, there were others who had it still worse.

  Like Doc.

  “I couldn’t have done any of this without you. I want you to know that I know that. I’ve had the sense for a while now that we’re coming to the end game, and who knows? We might all make it through. I thought it was important that you know I’m well aware of your contributions and how lost we would all be without you. You found Val and Hawk. You practically wrote the book on how we do things. If I ever had to walk away for any reason, I would most definitely want you to take my place.”

  Doc removed his glasses, making a big deal of wiping them on the hem of his shirt—a way to stall, to buy time as he tried to figure out what to say. They’d been together long enough for Logan to understand his little tics. It was rare for Doc to be left speechless. “I wish I knew where all of this was coming from,” he murmured, staring down at his glasses.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it too. We now have names, addresses. We can go right now, one by one, and knock these bastards out. We could completely destroy them, but that sort of thing doesn’t come without more danger than we’ve ever faced. We wolves aren’t invincible. If anything were to happen to me, I would want you to carry on. Val and Hawk and anyone on the team who survives… they’re all too good not to put their talents and skills to use. I know how corny it sounds, but we’re a family. I wouldn’t want the family to fall apart because I went and got myself killed.”

  Rather than offer argument or insist such a thing couldn’t possibly happen, the way some people did when presented with the sort of scenario Logan laid out, Doc simply nodded. “Okay. Done.”

  “Thank you.” Logan cleared his throat in preparation for changing the subject. “So. Nothing left to do now
but wait for her to stop acting strange and reach out to me again. I have to admit, I hate being on this end of things. Waiting. I’ve never exactly been patient.”

  “None of us is, and now that she’s found you, it won’t be long. She’s waited long enough.” Doc rose. “By the way, I thought you’d want to know though it doesn’t come as a surprise: Val came back with no one matching Jenna’s age and background. Are you sure she gave us her real name?”

  “I’m no surer than anyone else. I don’t have some unique insight into her mind. I wish I did.” He ran a hand over his face, his jaw, noting the stubble. He’d let his self-care fall by the wayside, for sure. For him, that meant basic grooming. “It might make things a hell of a lot easier. Let’s say it’s her real name—she was overwhelmed at the time. What are the chances she was able to come up with a fake name so quickly?”

  “You said she goes under an assumed name when she’s out in the world.”

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “She told me that. But still, let’s say she wanted to be honest with us. With us, if nobody else. Would it come as such a great surprise that all trace of her was erased from military records?”

  “Of course not,” Doc admitted with a scowl. “They’d do that. They would’ve done it to you too.”

  “Exactly. Something tells me no matter what name she gave us, we wouldn’t find anything. I’ll make it a point to ask when she reaches out again.”

  “No.” Doc leaned over the desk. “You’ll get the names of the people involved. We have to do our own research on these people, see what we can see. None of us can run the risk of walking into some unknown situation once we decide the time has come to strike.”

  Yes. That made sense—and if he were thinking clearly, it would’ve been Logan’s priority. What had come over him? It was like he’d completely forgotten how to lead.

  And at the worst possible time, too.

  “Of course,” Logan agreed. “That’s the first thing I’ll mention the next time I hear from her—and I expect that to be today.”

  Doc raised a skeptical brow. “Now you think so? What makes you so sure?”

  “I’m telling you. There isn’t much I understand about this girl, but there’s one thing I know without question: now that she’s found us, she’ll find it impossible to stay away. She’s finally found people who are like her who she can trust. And after so much time spent on her own, caring for her father, doing everything she can to protect him? She’ll want to lay down her burden, so to speak. She doesn’t have to handle everything on her own anymore.”

  “I only hope you’re right.” Doc started to leave but turned in the doorway. He fixed Logan with a knowing look. “Are you sure you didn’t say something to her to throw her off? You didn’t come on too strong and too intense?”

  “So this is my fault now? That she ran away?”

  Doc snickered, the worry lines on his brow smoothing out. “No offense, but none of you are exactly masters when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. You tend to come on a little strong, and I don’t mean romantically. When I found you surrounding her yesterday, it looked like you were about to draw straws to see who had first dibs when it came time to tear her to pieces.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s amazing she talked to you at all,” Doc mused with a sardonic little smile. “Maybe keep that in mind. She’s not a criminal, and she is not the enemy. And a person can draw more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

  Rather than deride his friend over that little bit of homespun wisdom, Logan fell into deep thought. How could he finesse Jenna into giving them the information they needed while still letting her feel like she was in the driver’s seat? Because that was what she needed. She had to feel like she was in control, like she was calling the shots, like they would be lost without her.

  In fact, they would. If her intel was correct, she’d already unlocked a door they’d been banging their heads against for years.

  Exactly who was behind their transformation, and where could they be found?

  Chapter Twelve

  “Logan, I’m sorry I ran out on you last night. I got spooked.”

  Jenna scowled what she’d just typed, deleting it. That was stupid. Spooked? He would only laugh at her. He would have more than enough reason to too. Heck, she would’ve laughed at herself.

  She pushed away from the laptop, fingers laced behind her head. How was she supposed to explain what happened? She couldn’t even figure it out herself.

  Now that he wasn’t in front of her anymore, she could step back and take a more objective look at how she’d reacted. It was anxiety coupled with years of loneliness, of doubting herself. Years of fearing what might happen if she’d lost her stash of pills, of who she would become without them.

  If it hadn’t been for her father and the responsibility she felt toward him, she might’ve ended it. It had been a very tempting thought more than once when she was at her wits’ end, looking over her shoulder every time a leaf fell to the ground, jumping at the slightest shadow, checking the locks on the doors late into the night when she should’ve been asleep.

  No wonder she got so emotional when she was around him. No wonder she immediately reached out to him, at least emotionally. No wonder her impulse was to rest her head against his chest and let him take care of the heavy lifting.

  Yes. That made more sense. She could understand that. She could believe it.

  Even if instinct told her it wasn’t the complete truth.

  She scowled at the thought, pushing herself up out of her chair. She was so anxious all of a sudden, filled with pent-up energy, energy desperate to be released. She could imagine going for a run—at least, she would if it wasn’t the middle of the night or as good as. This was the worst time to leave her father alone, not to mention for her own safety.

  If she was followed and attacked, it might’ve been ironic. Shifting into her wolf would’ve been a surefire defense tactic, but she wouldn’t be able to thanks to the pills she’d once considered a lifesaver.

  And they still were, no doubt.

  Though now that she’d seen it was possible to live a somewhat normal life without them, she had to wonder if she was holding herself back by suppressing the wolf.

  Of course! This was the wolf’s fault.

  Even though the wolf’s voice was suppressed, muffled, that didn’t remove her presence. She must’ve found some way to reach out, to influence Jenna’s thoughts. Maybe her wolf saw Logan’s wolf and decided she wanted him, exactly the sort of thing Jenna had dreaded for years, having to give part of her life, her consciousness over to a creature she hadn’t even begun to understand.

  She passed her dresser, the pill bottle sitting in its usual place of honor where she could see it always, though there was absolutely no chance of her ever forgetting a dose. It would be easy to blame this disconcerting turn of events on her wolf, wouldn’t it? There was more to it than that. She wasn’t just a wolf. She was a woman.

  And the fact was, Logan was the sort of man she could easily fall for.

  The attraction she felt toward him put every other crush she’d ever had to shame. Back in the day, she’d been so sure it was real love with her high school boyfriends. It was that aching, overwhelming, head over heels sort of love that can only be experienced by the young.

  What a joke when compared to the deep, primal yearning in her heart, a yearning that had practically screamed in desperate need when Logan assured her he had her back. There was no way he could possibly know how much it meant for her to hear that—and just what he had unlocked inside her when he did.

  The poor guy. He had no idea—walking through life, probably at that very minute wondering what her problem was.

  She hadn’t contacted him at all that day when both of them knew the clock was ticking. It caused her more than a little regret, the thought of him waiting to no avail.

  But the thing was no matter how anxious he was to hear from her, she was more anxious to get a hold o
f herself. She would be lost forever if she wasn’t careful, and the one thing she always tried to be was careful.

  Her stomach growled, and she checked the time. Twelve-thirty in the morning. If she thought there was even the slightest chance of falling asleep, she would’ve ignored the needs of her stomach in favor of shutting them out by going to bed. That would’ve been an exercise in futility, so she chose instead to go to the kitchen.

  Without the TV blasting one game show or another, the house was eerily quiet. She flipped on the TV out of habit, needing something to distract her from the creepiness of feeling so alone. Sure, her father might be sleeping in his room, but that wasn’t the same as not being alone.

  It didn’t matter what was on just then. She went to the kitchen without checking the program, only wanting some sort of noise to fill the emptiness. It occurred to her as she set the kettle on for tea that the work she was involved with—work not associated with her father’s secret group, anyway—was just another way to fill the emptiness. Sure, she’d kept her skills sharp, but more than anything, it was just something to do, something to give her a sense of purpose aside from keeping her parent alive and safe.

  She made a butter and jelly sandwich while waiting for the water to boil—comfort food if ever there was any, something her mother had made for lunch more times than she could count. One bite and Jenna was instantly transported to a simpler time, a better time, memories she could wrap around herself like a fluffy cloud when the world was too much to handle.

  The kettle whistled, and she jumped to move it from the burner before it woke her dad. Sometimes even the slightest noises agitated him, and there was no telling how long it would take to calm him.

  When the whistling died down, she lifted the kettle and sniffed it, holding it as close to her nose as she dared. Was something stuck to the bottom of it, something that had burned? No, it looked fine—so did the burner when she inspected it, again taking care against burning herself.