Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (12 page)

“
She’s in trouble,” Kane
growled. “You want to just ignore it?”

“
I’d like to, yes. Because
I know where this is headed and Lucien and Damien are going to kick
our asses if I let you talk me in to doing something I know damned
well Lucien won’t like.”

Kane sat up abruptly and stared at
him. “How the fuck can you know where this is going? And what has
it got to do with Lucien and Damien?”

“
You were thinking about
helping her out by going to her place to get her stuff?”

Kane gaped at him. “Holy hell! You can
do that now, too?”

Basil frowned at him curiously. “Do
what?”

“
Read minds.”

“
You can really be a dumb
shit sometimes, Kane,” Basil said dryly.

Kane looked indignant. “What the hell
do you mean by that?” he growled.

Basil rolled his eyes. “Forget it. I’m
going to try to get some sleep. We have to stand watch again in a
few hours. You should try to sleep, too.”

“
I don’t like her being so
unhappy. She’s right. She’s an innocent in this. Why should she
have to pay for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? I mean,
I don’t see that we can do anything about the job or even the
apartment, but we could get her stuff so the bastard can’t put it
on the trash heap.”

“
How did I know that was
coming?” Basil muttered.

“
I don’t know. You said
you couldn’t read minds. You think it’s a good idea?”

“
Hell no I don’t think
it’s a good idea!” Basil growled. “That’s exactly what I thought
you were going to suggest and Lucien will eat us for dinner if we
jeopardize the mission by doing something that damned
stupid!”

“
I’m going to pound you
into mincemeat, asshole, if you keep calling me stupid! What’s
stupid about it?”

“
You don’t think her
apartment is staked out? I mean, they had somebody there before.
You think we just chased them off and they decided to forget about
it?”

Kane shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t
really think about that.”

“
Ok so how about this—if
we go to her apartment and move everything out, then the landlord
is going to think she left and he’ll rent her apartment out. So
we’d be making the thing she dreads happen.”

Kane frowned. “Maybe. I
see your point. But she said he’d been trying to get her out so he
could rent to somebody else. He could still say she’d abandoned the
place and move her stuff out like she said. And then she wouldn’t
have the apartment
or
her stuff. We could at least save that much for her if we
went over there and cleaned the apartment out. Females get real
attached to their stuff. It’ll be easier to replace the apartment
than stuff she’d been collecting for years.”

“
You make it sound so
reasonable,” Basil said dryly. “And yet it isn’t. We’ve only got
four men to cover twenty four hours of protection. If me and you go
AWOL then that leaves just Lucien and Damien to cover things. And
we sure as hell can’t take off in the middle of our
watch!”

“
So we skip down time. How
long could it take?”

“
A long ass fucking time!”
Basil snapped. “We’re north of Atlanta. She lives four hours south
of Atlanta! We’re talking a bare minimum of twelve hours travel
time plus whatever it takes to pack her stuff up and move it to a
storage unit. We don’t have anything we need to pack the place
up.

“
And
we don’t even know if it would be necessary! Or appreciated!
What if we get down there and pack all her shit up and move it and
the next day she gets called to testify and she goes home? She’s
not going to be happy. She’s going to be pissed off.”

Kane was silent for a little while.
Just about the time Basil decided he’d made his point and Kane was
going to drop it, he spoke again.

“
Good point. Guess it
would be better to ask her than to surprise her. I suppose it won’t
hurt to wait a few days anyway. We definitely need to wait until
Lucien cuts us back to eight hour shifts.”

Chapter Nine

Laurie was pretty sure she would’ve
gone stark raving mad if she hadn’t had books to keep her mind
occupied. Except for the books, there wasn’t a lot else to do
beyond lusting over the guys. She wasn’t allowed outside. She
wasn’t even allowed to stand at the window and stare at the
greenery and whatever wildlife decided to wander close to the
cabin. Not that she would’ve been all that entertained with that
sort of thing for long, but it would’ve beat the hell out of
sitting on the couch staring at the floor.

A week went by without a word from the
DA.

Laurie didn’t know if they’d even
finished picking the jury. The waiting without a word was nerve
wracking in and of itself!

She got used to the routine, as
accustomed to it as she could given the fact that it wasn’t
‘normal’ in any sense of the word.

She got used to the guys, enough that
she could actually relax around them as if they hadn’t all been
every woman’s dream of a hot, high testosterone male!

When they finally relaxed their high
alert vigil, she discovered they were actually a lot of fun to be
around. She’d never been in the middle of a group of males and
gotten the chance to interact as if she was one of the guys. She
hadn’t had a clue that they could be so interesting!

There was another plus to the
situation that she hadn’t considered. She’d had time to think about
the murder without being scared to death, too upset to try to
figure out things.

And the more she thought about it
calmly and rationally, the less sense it made to her.

Not that she had all the facts. She
didn’t actually have any beyond what she knew and had experienced
herself. She’d been asked not to read about the murder or listen to
the news about it so that she couldn’t be accused of having become
‘tainted’ by what she’d seen and heard since.

As it happened, that wasn’t really a
problem for her. She’d never been inclined to keep up with the
news. It was seriously depressing. She didn’t see much point in
watching and/or listening to things that were just going to upset
and depress her, particularly when, for the most part, there was
nothing she could do to change things and/or however bad it was it
didn’t really affect her personally.

Living under the
protection of the guys might chafe—well, did. She wasn’t used to
being idle unless she was on leave or vacation and this wasn’t even
close to either one. But the guys made her feel safe, safer than
she’d felt
before
she became an eye witness to murder.

They’d been hired. She knew that, but
they still made it feel as if she was important and nothing was
more important to them than keeping her safe. They made her feel
absolute confidence in their ability to keep her safe.

That was what finally gave her the
courage to take her memories out and really look at them when
before she’d merely taken quick glances because she couldn’t handle
more than that. Like peaking at something from between her fingers
so that she didn’t have to see all of the ugly at one time, she’d
avoided remembering some things that were crucial. And when she
calmly summoned the memories and looked at them with the distance
of having her fear removed, the story didn’t play out the way she
thought she’d remembered it happening.

Smith, the murderer, hadn’t attacked
the federal agent that had been killed. It was the other way
around.

Now she recalled that she’d caught a
glimpse of the fatal confrontation as it happened. Smith had been
heading toward her, walking briskly. Randal, the man she now knew
was a federal agent, had seemed to come out of nowhere and two men
had collided. When it had happened, she’d glimpsed the collision
and dismissed it as accidental. Later, she hadn’t recalled anything
except catching a glimpse of the fight as Randal tried to overwhelm
Smith.

That
was why it had seemed to her that
she
was the target!

Because she had been. The agent had
attacked the man as he’d come at her and fought with him and then
died in her place. Smith had taken Randal’s gun. He hadn’t brought
one with him. And he’d used Randal’s gun to kill him.

Why hadn’t she remembered it that way
before?

Because she hadn’t wanted to believe
that she was the target.

But why had she been targeted? Random?
He’d just been looking for a woman to rob? Rape? Kill? She fit his
preferred victim type?

Why hadn’t he shot her with Randal’s
gun when he’d seen her dive into her car and grab her phone? He
must have known she would call the police!

Had he dropped the gun as soon as he’d
shot Randal with his own gun? Had it jammed?

She wasn’t going to get the answers
from her memories, she realized after a while, because they weren’t
there. She went over them bit by bit like someone collecting specks
of gold, but it was useless. She couldn’t remember because she
hadn’t seen any of it happen, none of the things she needed to
know. She didn’t know why the agent had been there. She didn’t know
who the man was that had targeted her or why he’d done so. She’d
never seen Smith before in her life. She was absolutely positive of
that.

She might get the answers in court,
but she’d finally accepted that that might not be anything that was
going to be resolved anytime soon.

* * * *

There wasn’t a lot to do
while standing watch besides think. Ordinarily, Damien did his
best
not
to
think. It was too easy to get so wrapped up in one’s thoughts that
you failed to notice things you were supposed to be watching for.
Thinking about anything too much was like sleeping on guard
duty.

But it had crossed his
mind to consider whether he actually
wanted
to go home and he hadn’t
really been able to push it out of his mind for very long
since.

He didn’t think any of
them had considered it—thought about what
they
wanted. They’d simply fallen
back on their training and they hadn’t been designed or trained to
consider that they had a choice in any matter.

The only thing any of them
had thought, he was pretty sure, since they’d figured out that they
weren’t on their own world anymore was that they needed to find a
way back. They knew they didn’t belong here—not in any sense of the
word. They’d considered that they might not be
able
to go back.

But they hadn’t considered whether
going back was what they wanted.

Frankly, they didn’t have a fucking
thing to go back to.

Even he hadn’t considered
that until he’d thought about the possibility of having Laurie—or
going back. Or getting Laurie
and
going back with her.

It was pretty unavoidable that he
wanted Laurie and, since he did, it had made him consider the
situation in a way he wasn’t certain he would have
otherwise.

What he wanted.

It was a novel concept for him—for any
of them.

They were used to thinking
of themselves as enhanced human beings, as citizens and protectors
of the rights of the people of the confederation. He didn’t think
any of them had stopped to consider that they were protecting
everyone else’s freedoms and that
they
had none.

He
hadn’t considered it.

He had a choice, though,
now.

He thought he had a
choice. He might not. None of them really knew or understood what
had happened to them and because they didn’t they also didn’t know
what would happen down the road. Considering what had already
happened,
anything
could happen. They might simply be walking along minding
their own business one day, satisfied with the new life they had,
and then ‘bam!’ the vortex opens up right in front of them and
sucks them back.

He wanted
something
by the gods
before that happened, though! He wasn’t willing to give up an
opportunity that had dropped in his lap for maybes.

Laurie was here and now
and he wanted her and he did
not
want to go home and he was going to go for
it!

Lucien and the others could chase
their tails if they wanted to. If they were determined to go back,
he couldn’t stop them, but he didn’t want to and he wasn’t going
to!

He felt better when he’d arrived at
that decision—briefly. As soon as he started thinking about the
others heading home and leaving him behind he felt an emptiness
open up that even thoughts of Laurie couldn’t fill.

And it wasn’t merely
because he didn’t
have
Laurie and had no clue if she’d have him even if he could
keep her from knowing what he was.

The truth was, he couldn’t imagine a
life without his brothers. He couldn’t imagine a life outside of
the military for that matter—small wonder when that was what he’d
been designed for, but he didn’t figure he actually had to give
that up and if he did, he thought he could figure it
out.