Wolfe Read online

“If the CIA doesn’t find out what he is first.”

  “Yes.” He settled into the upholstery then mirrored the laptop drone screen onto the TV screen in the dashboard. “Mind control...does anyone need this?”

  “Not our job to think that,” Guera interjected, before he said more.

  She was right. This still felt wrong.

  * * * * *

  With Arbie’s help, he and Guera found them leaving New York, heading south. After the messing around and going in circles inside the city, they were low on gas.

  “We’ll have to stop soon, an hour at most left in the tank.” Guera added.

  “I have a plan.”

  The drone was doing its job but if they stopped for too long, their car would go outside the drone’s range and they’d lose control of the drone, or track of the car, and Wolfe.

  “Care to elaborate?” She tilted that elegant brow of hers. After all the screwing he’d almost seen – a pity Wolfe was out of sight for most of it – it took a lot of effort to not look at her mouth and think of kissing her. Okay, he was thinking it. She had lips Michelangelo would want to paint.

  He wrenched his attention back to the job. “Stop here. We get the drone down, load it with the sticky bug, and let it loose again.”

  “Then?”

  “Pray they stay on this road while we’re loading the drone. Pray they have to stop for gas too, eventually. The drone can go faster than their car. We can catch up and plant it.”

  She nodded. “As long as we can find them again to plant it. Then, when we get gas, we can scan for the transmission.”

  “Yes.”

  “We should’ve thought of this earlier.”

  “Yes.”

  The tiny battery in the surveillance bug wouldn’t last forever and the bug had a short range, but it gave them a better chance. They weren’t going to ram them off the road or get involved in a public shooting war. Wolfe was possibly one of the most dangerous men they’d tried to apprehend and they were on foreign soil. Softly, softly, and sneak up on him when he was off guard would still be the aim.

  If they lost him, they’d find him again.

  He crossed his fingers.

  Chapter 7

  Kiara

  I doubt I’d slept for long, but when I woke, we were stopped at a gas station though parked away from the main refueling area.

  “Stay put.” Wolfe climbed out.

  He ambled to a grassy picnic spot with benches and tables, though nobody seemed inclined to use them this late in the day. This wasn’t the biggest highway gas station ever, or the smallest, but I was sure it’d have CCTV and that Wolfe was staying out of range.

  Was it our car registration or his face he worried about, I wondered, watching him, as he watched the cars pulling in to get gas.

  My hand itched to open the door and run. My rear end stayed planted on the seat. Sometimes, I’d felt his...aura weaken – I couldn’t think of a better word than aura for that control he had over me. So far, I hadn’t found a way out of being made to do what he said.

  But, he had chinks in his armor. I bit off a ragged piece of my thumbnail then let my head sink back onto the headrest. It was just the right firmness under my head. The interior was beautiful and of understated design. Everything in a BMW seemed to work exactly so, as intended by its German manufacturers.

  Didn’t change my predicament. I sighed. I would survive this.

  Even if he was the nicest man on Earth, I’d deliver him to my superiors, because I had to.

  I had to. If I kept saying that enough times, it might make me feel better about my resolve.

  My family’s welfare versus that of a man I didn’t know half as well as I’d thought I did?

  What had happened to him in the past to make him this aggressive and able to do what he did to me and other women? More drugs? Brainwashing?

  Had to be more than that.

  Next time he weakened, I’d try to run. No, I would run. I blinked, recalling the strength in his arms. Okay. Maybe...maybe, I should wait for him to sleep too.

  The drug seemed all that kept him somewhat normal and time was forever ticking down on the levels of it in his bloodstream. BID dosage – twice daily. If I could get even once-daily dosages into him, would that be enough?

  I could tell him about the drug? That idea made my stomach cramp. It might be suicide to give him that information.

  The kidnapper abducted... Poetic justice some might think. I was just a nurse. By now I’d be on a wanted poster, alert, whatever they called them.

  Fuck.

  I swore a few more times in my head and blinked back tears.

  When would this end?

  The stickiness remaining on my thighs and the echoes of what he’d done returned to mock me. He had me wearing an old, plain black, summer dress with a curved neckline that revealed cleavage galore, barely minus my nipples, if I had no bra. I’d found my boobs didn’t suit the style and that was why it’d been sent to the back of the closet.

  A whirr, a shadow passing over the dashboard, and a faint thunk from behind made me gasp and swivel in my seat.

  A UAV drone was buzzing away, climbing skyward.

  In the side mirror, I could see a black spot on the SUV that didn’t quite blend in.

  Well now. I was pretty sure I knew who was steering that drone. And what was stuck to the paintwork. If an opportunity came up, I should see if I could relocate that thing to somewhere under the car, maybe? Somewhere less obvious, definitely.

  We had followers. I smiled, feeling light enough to float.

  Some woman from one of the line of cars had parked her Winnebago next to Wolfe and was standing beside him. I knew that attitude, that posture – attentive. What was he getting her to do?

  I sat up and noticed her handing something to him, money, I guessed, then a bunch of things she’d removed from her vehicle. He turned and stalked toward me while she headed for the building.

  Wolfe had camping gear – two sleeping bags, plus another sack, and a backpack filled with god knows what.

  “You stole from her?” I accused as he slipped behind the driver’s wheel. I felt the need to be outraged.

  His only answer was a pointed look.

  “You did,” I muttered. As if he hadn’t stolen the BMW. This was the least bad of his actions for the day.

  We drove over and filled up with gas, with Wolfe wearing a new, face-hiding baseball cap while he was outside the car. It didn’t surprise me when the same woman exited the building and gave Wolfe a thumb’s up. She’d paid for us.

  Then, to my amazement, she came over with an icebox and put it in the trunk of our BMW.

  Why plan for trips when you could take from random women? The man was smart when he needed to be, even if he was thrifty with his words. From the size of her Winnebago, she wasn’t poor, and that made me feel better. Take from the rich, etcetera, etcetera.

  It suddenly occurred to me that his ability might be better than winning the lottery, if you were him...

  We drove for another hour before we went past a sign that stated we were headed into the Pine Barrens. I remembered hearing about this. An isolated yet huge nature reserve. Millions of square miles of poorly inhabited territory.

  He wanted somewhere quiet to think...and to question me.

  Crap. My toes curled and I let them dig into my shoes.

  I wanted to click the heels together and go home and over the rainbow.

  I wanted to be anywhere but with him, in the dark, in the middle of some god-forsaken forest that, I also recalled, was featured in a murder in The Sopranos.

  That thing stuck to the car had better be a tracking device. If I pretended, hard, I could almost hear it ticking.

  There was a rest area beside a lake and a sign that indicated camping facilities and showers. Wolfe eyed me. “We both need a shower. I’m going to let you go in. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like. Come back in fifteen minutes.”

  Towel in hand I approached the toilet bl
ock. The showers turned out to be freezing cold but the water felt good on my body. Surely, I was getting a fever. I felt so hot around Wolfe, like he gave off some sizzling energy that leached into my muscles. I stood under the shower and contemplated drawing a help message over the wash basins. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like. Those words crawled around inside me but I brushed away the memory. Test it out. I raised my hand to write among the water dribbling down the tiled wall and couldn’t even make my shaking finger do the first stroke of the H.

  Crap. I almost cried, but I washed my face again, turned off the water, and picked up the towel. I’d find a way. I would.

  Fifteen minutes later, we turned onto some paltry side road made of one part dirt and one part prayer. An owl drifted past overhead, then some shadows – witches probably, given my damn luck.

  * * * * *

  Night fell quickly. If the sunset was pretty and purply orange, I barely noticed it for the surrounding trees, and for being more concerned with Wolfe’s slowly increasing wariness. I wouldn’t say feral, he wasn’t that bad, but I could see the change. How many hours had it been? Five? At most. He hadn’t swallowed the whole dose at my apartment.

  We’d cooked sausages over the campfire, had a beer each, and were sitting on two logs that made an L shape before the fire, and still I hadn’t found a way to sneak a top-up dose of Keppra into his food or drink.

  If I were too obvious, he’d know. A tight pain grew in my chest. Tell him the truth – that the drug seemed to inhibit his crazier self. He might just go, hey, yes! Give me some. He might throw it all in that lake that glinted through the trees, when the moon deigned to come out from behind the clouds.

  “Lucky it’s early fall.” As the coolness had swept in, I’d added yoga pants under my dress and a light sweater. He’d been so quiet and I needed words, even from him. I took the last swig from my beer and set it aside.

  We probably weren’t supposed to camp here, or park here, or make a campfire, but I’d let him deal with the angry park rangers.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he began, voice all gravelly – a man’s voice added natural gravitas to anything he said. He could get a philosophy gig, if he spoke low and serious...and scary, like he just had.

  His words had made my next breath stick in my throat, and all he was doing was thinking.

  We were lost, metaphorically, in this immense forest, lit by the flickers of a campfire, only darkness around us, and here I was talking to a beast of a man who might do anything if I didn’t get more drug into him.

  I swallowed my unease. “What have you been thinking?”

  He brought his gaze down from the stars and looked at me. His hands were clasped in his lap, though I noticed them tensing then relaxing. Maybe he was nervous too? “A lot.”

  “Really?” Flippant, but I figured lightness was my only defense. Make this seem normal and I might get him to lower his guard.

  “Are you mostly innocent, Kiara? Or are you to blame?”

  For what? I shrank back.

  Something rustled in the bushes over to the right. The remains of a crumbled building lay forty or so yards away in that direction. Was it a beaver? A bear? A bear trundling in might be preferable to his questions.

  “I feel like I’ve woken from a dream or a bad fairy tale.” He opened his hands. “I don’t know who to trust or where to go.”

  “Sleeping Beauty?” I chuckled. I understood, though. This was a bit sleeping beauty, except he was no Disney princess.

  “Who am I? Who are you? Why did you take me from the village?”

  I wanted that beer bottle back in my hands, so I had something to clutch. “I don’t know everything. Pick one.”

  I heard him inhale.

  “Who are these bad guys?”

  “That wasn’t one of the –”

  “Just answer.”

  I tried not to say – I was ashamed, scared, afraid for my family if I failed – but the answer popped into my throat and spilled.

  “Russian intelligence.”

  “Fuck. The GRU?”

  First swear word I’d heard from him in ages. I knew the abbreviation but couldn’t help him.

  “I don’t know. I was contacted, when I went to leave Russia to come here, but not told which branch they were. They threatened my family – if I disobeyed, things would happen in Russia.”

  “Okay. Next one. Why?”

  “Why do they want you? They never said, but I can guess.”

  He kept watching me and I knew he’d make me say it, but I’d stalled. Saying the next bit out loud seemed odd, wrong, humiliating.

  “Guess then.”

  “This.” I grimaced. “You being able to do mind games. Stuff like that. Months ago, I wondered what you’d done to attract attention. I thought it must be to do with your military service, but now I’m not even sure if you’re a soldier. Are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why aren’t you more worried about this? Most people with a foreign country’s spies chasing them would be worried.”

  And here I’d flipped things and was interrogating him. His eyes narrowed in realization and he gestured to me.

  “Come here.”

  “Why?”

  Though I twisted my mouth, I’d been standing even as I’d said why. I walked over to wait before him. My heart thudded in my ears and I watched him raise his hands, then he rested those big hands on my hips. The contact jarred me with the most delicious sensation. When he pulled me to him, I barely dragged my feet.

  “I can feel how terrified you are.”

  Well, I was...and I wasn’t. That effect of his screwed with my perceptions. I was no longer certain which was my real emotion and which was not.

  Sitting on his lap, with his arms around me and his mouth on my neck or in my hair...I wriggled into a better position and let out a sigh...it was heaven, with just a smidgen of hell.

  Chapter 8

  Wolfe

  I stared past her at the fire and the embers floating into the night. The crackling of wood burning, the scent of smoke, and this soft, sexy woman in my arms, it rendered me speechless again.

  Words came easier than before, but not as easily as thoughts.

  Kiara was right. I was the man version of that sleeping girl in the forest, waking after losing years of his past. Or was I Rumpelstiltskin? Now he was some Russian fairytale. I didn’t even know how long I’d been in the US, or how I’d gotten overseas, or why I was there.

  That worried me more than having Russian spies chasing me. I had a rock-solid confidence that I could deal with them. My fuzzy past was different. I needed it back but there were vague memories of terrible things, of blood and killing. Was I capable of murder? Maybe the Russians wanted me for killing people and not because of what I could do with women?

  This ability had settled into my hands like a weapon I’d trained to use, for years. Locked, loaded, fire away.

  I could tell, mostly, which women I could deal with. A few I couldn’t, not many, and sometimes it seemed that was more a result of a temporary malfunction.

  I wanted my lost past. What if someone had decided to drug the hell out of me rather than let me loose on society? That made sense. Except this power was something any military would give its left nut for. They’d never leave me rotting in a drugged haze in a low-security rehab village.

  “Tell me all the facts you know, Kiara.”

  “About Andy Carruthers? He was lost in Afghanistan in 2012 but you said you aren’t him.”

  “Yes. What about me, though?”

  “Only that you were shot in Thailand less than a year ago. Doctor Hass believes you may not be that man even, because the injuries seen then, well, you don’t have them.”

  “And you think that too?” When she didn’t answer, I jostled her.

  “I think...maybe you’re him, but you healed.”

  Which isn’t normal. No wonder she was sounding unsure.

  “So you think I’m some supernatural be
ing?” I really wanted to know this one.

  She lowered her head. “Maybe. But...I think you’re probably just a man who has changed somehow. I don’t know why or how. Nothing in your records suggested anything unusual. Wait. No. Your sight came back early on. That was miracle one. You’ve always healed better than a normal person.”

  And the other things made me not normal. Not just this...ability, but what I felt, things I felt in my gut, that made me crave what anyone would call sinful.

  I’d fucked her at her apartment, even if my memory of it was mostly gone. Maybe I’d hurt her in ways no man should hurt a woman, and yet...I looked inward, feeling the flare of lust in my groin. The thought of making her squeal in pain while she came, it’d turned me on, instantly.

  Impossible not to get an erection with her on my lap.

  I needed to keep a close rein on myself until I sorted myself out. Had she betrayed me? Sure. She had reasons for it that made sense. Didn’t make me like it, though.

  The firelight limned her hair in a halo of orange. I put my hand to her nape and stroked her there, feeling her shiver, knowing she was already aroused.

  A dark shape on her neck had me curious so I pushed her head forward while holding her hair out of the way. Reflections bathed her neck.

  “You have a mark here,” I said, tracing it.

  “Ouch!”

  “It’s deep enough to have bled in some places.”

  “I think it’s where you licked me.”

  Jesus. How rough had I been? Seriously, what the fuck, and...I wondered what her neck had tasted like.

  Bouncing from caring about her to grim, dark, and macabre bemused me, amused me, made me curious about my own mind.

  Why had I lost memories when I fucked her? Forgetting the best parts was cruel.

  I let her go and she raised her head.

  “Anything else I need to know like...how many of these bad guys were after me?”

  “I don’t know. I contact my handler by a thumb drive left in prearranged places and, sometimes, if an emergency, email. Here? I can’t. I was to hand you over after an hour of surveillance at my apartment.”