Brandi: Nano Wolves 2

Chapter 3

3

Brandi showed her badge to the guard at the check-in desk. His eyes widened at the bypass code on it, but he politely ushered her around security and through the express lane. She didn’t often have to come in to the main office and knew she was unrecognizable as the woman who’d visited last time. Fortunately, all that was necessary for the guard to know was that she had earned the three digit code gaining her fast entrance today.

Four more guards stood straighter as she neared her target destination. She stopped outside the office per protocol and pulled her g*n from the back of her jeans. She held it in the air while suffering a silent pat down from two of them.

Efficient hands slid down and between her legs. She thought she heard a low, frustrated growl nearby. Her thoughts went instantly to the male she’d left lying in bed early this morning, which elicited a snort about her imagination obviously working overtime. What did it say about her that she missed Gareth already?

Brandi glanced around as she tucked her weapon back into its place, feeling silly when all she saw—and smelled—were human men doing their jobs.

One of the two guards who hadn’t felt her up finally opened the door for her. She walked inside the room and shook her head as the man behind the desk swore and stood.

“Black hair sucks with your complexion. Nice jacket, though. The shades make you look like you stepped out of a spy movie.”

“I decided to update my agent image after I woke up n***d and strapped to a mad scientist’s gurney. Obviously, the guy didn’t get what I was from the park ranger look I had going on in my backpacking clothes.”

“I see. Where’s the mad scientist now?”

Lies and rationalizations sat easily on her tongue just waiting to be said. All the mental rehearsal she’d done on the plane ride was now going to pay off.

“Randall Crane’s ashes are spread across Anchorage. Thought you said investigating Feldspar was going to be a vacation?”

Flashes of their past hit her when she was treated to her handler’s full-wattage smile over her sass.

“I don’t believe I used that exact term… ”

Brandi laughed then. “I got damn lucky when someone cut loose a wolf Crane had captured. A s**t show happened during the rescue attempt and the resulting commotion gave me the first opening I’d had to escape. Weird thing was I barely got my a*s out of the damn building before the whole place exploded. Who do I have to talk to around here to get a new handler?”

“Holy s**t, I’ve missed you, Brandi. You’re the only person with nerve enough to talk like that to me. I half expected the person coming in was someone trying to use your identity. Whoever faked your death did a damn good job.”

“Me die? You know me better than that, Lane.”

“I thought I did. Why did you wait so long to contact me?”

Brandi snorted. Now the questions were getting real. “Why are you asking me something so obvious? It’s certainly been a while since I landed in your hot seat.”

“One—I wanted to make sure you were really alive. And two—I wanted to personally hear what the hell happened. Now take the hot seat and start talking. Who the hell tried to kill you this time?”

Brandi sighed as she slid into the chair across from him. She noticed Lane sat back down too. Though she sometimes worked with supervisors in the field, Lane Nelson was her handler and the man she ultimately answered to about assignments. He was also the one who decided where she went next time… and what she got to do.

As she mentally ran through what she intended to share with him, a part of her couldn’t help noticing he was just as handsome as ever. Once upon a time…long ago, before Lane’s promotion to the position he now occupied, he’d been her preferred bed partner. The man had been talented between the sheets and had asked little in return for his generosity. Their relationship had been for physical relief, pure and simple, but his performance was always well done. Plus, he’d seemed to care about being discreet, something she’d learned to value in her line of work. Out in the field, she had sometimes even missed him.

Well, she had before Gareth.

As if summoned, thoughts of last night ran through her head. Lane’s presence didn’t cause a single familiar flutter. Not that those kind of flutters happened all that much for her.

Well, they happened with Gareth routinely, but she figured her increased libido was just a werewolf thing. Everything physical was more intense since her conversion. Her craving for raw meat was the only aspect she hadn’t yet learned to enjoy. But better s*x? That was a real perk, which was interesting since she wasn’t feeling the slightest inclination to assuage her now stronger urges with the still handsome and proficient male sitting across from her.

Brandi barely fought back a sigh over her mind taking a conversation time-out to conduct a s*x comparison in the middle of a debriefing. It was just one more way Gareth had changed her. She was officially female.

“The bottom line of what happened is Crazy Crane tried to kill me and failed. After Feldspar’s wolf retrieval team tagged me, I got locked in a cage for more than a week. From what I pieced together of the timeline, they executed my faked death while I was locked up. All around me were an assortment of captured wolves in cages just like mine. It was like being held in a zoo. Gradually, the wolves started disappearing, like one or two a day. Later I discovered they were being dissected and thrown out in the trash. At the end of my time, the bastards came back and tagged me with the tranquilizer g*n again. I woke up several hours afterward, strapped down n***d on a medical gurney.”

“What exactly were they planning to do to you? Assault you?”

Brandi shrugged, snorted, and set her gaze on her hands. “No. They didn’t touch me, unless you count Crane’s leering assistant feeling me up as he checked the straps. He and Crane talked like I was going to be part of some sort of experiment. I kept expecting the two of them to pull out a scalpel and slice me open like they had the wolves.”

Internally wiping away sweat when she finished, Brandi knew she was bypassing Lane’s questions as best she could. Instinct warned her to say as little as possible about knowing the scientist’s real motives. It was odd to now feel such instinctive distrust for a man who had sent her on many dangerous missions. So much had changed for her—it was hard to accept all at once.

“Who broke the wolf out?”

Brandi ordered her mind back to the conversation. “One of the scientists who worked there. Crazy Crane and his assistant tried to stop it from happening. It didn’t work out well for any of the people involved. I think the scientist may have ultimately killed him. Crane had given me a sedative and was dead by the time I woke, got loose, and found him. I took his vehicle keys from his pocket and next thing I knew the place was on fire. The building blew all to hell as I was driving away. I ended up wandering around for a while in Crane’s stolen jeep. Don’t worry about car jacking charges. I scraped the vehicle identification number from both the window and the engine. I also destroyed the plate to cover my tracks.”

She winced inwardly when Lane ignored her teasing, looked away, and started tapping his pencil again. She narrowed her eyes as realization hit. He was fishing for information. It looked like the distrust she was feeling went both ways.

“So where have you been all this time, Brandi? Your death was registered a couple months ago.”

Brandi blinked in mild shock over Lane’s extreme nervousness as he asked the question. What the hell did Lane know? Or think he knew?

“I’ve been staying with someone I met just outside Anchorage. Given my headaches and mind wanderings, I figure I had some sort of undiagnosed concussion going on. I made friends with some of the locals and just laid low while I investigated Feldspar’s meltdown. A few days ago I gave up and decided to call in for help, which is why I’m here.”

She watched Lane nod, but his jaw was tight.

“Look Lane, I don’t know what kind of Intel you got about what happened, but all signs of Feldspar’s previous existence got completely erased just days after the s**t storm passed. The ground was practically vacuumed during cleanup. That means evidence of my capture story is nil. The dead wolf bodies are long gone and nothing of interest is left in Anchorage. I came back here to pick up the pursuit… or at least that’s what I want to do. I want your permission to keep looking for whoever was funding Crane.”

She watched Lane nod absently as he started tapping his pencil more rapidly on his desk. She’d never seen him actually use his tapping pencil for writing. The noise he was making was especially annoying to her sensitized werewolf hearing. She had to restrain herself from snatching the t*****e device from his fingers.

But it wasn’t just the pencil tapping that bothered her. Her senses suddenly went on a four alarm alert. Lane smelled funny—like adrenaline funny. Now why would her long-time handler—the man who put her in Anchorage to begin with—be generating those chemicals just talking to her?

Then she noticed Lane was staring at something over her shoulder. She turned and looked in the same direction. Only the closed door met her gaze. She turned back and gave him a confused look… mostly on purpose. She was on edge and wanted to know what information he was keeping from her.

“Expecting company, Lane?” Brandi frowned when Lane shrugged and looked away. Her inner alarms went off again… and were even louder.

“When I passed along your s********e interesting individuals got wind of it. So the short answer to your request is yes—you get to keep investigating this situation. Whatever Dr. Randall Crane was doing with those wolves, it was a hell of a lot more than just studying them. You don’t kidnap and hold a federal agent hostage without having a bigger agenda—one worth risking jail time in his case.”

Brandi blinked a couple times at Lane’s conclusions before nodding. “I agree. Someone was financially backing Crane’s kookiness because he kept talking about earning two more years of funding. He liked to brag about how smart he was and how famous he was going to be.”

Lane’s derisive snort made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It was all she could do not to turn around and look at the door again. The only reason she didn’t was because she didn’t want to reveal her intuitive apprehension to him.

“You’re going to get to look into the matter further, only you’re going to have a partner helping out. The powers above us have sent an expert down the food chain. In fact, the man they sent says the two of you have already met.”

Brandi shrugged. “Maybe. I think I’ve worked with just about every department here at least once.”

“No. You’ve never worked with this one,” Lane said quietly, but firmly. “This department is different. No one knows what they do—not even me. Yet ironically, they were the ones behind wanting to send an experienced field agent to investigate the wolf abductions. Your need for a break made you the right choice in case things got crazy—which they obviously did.”

“Wait. You sent me into that crazy s**t blind and let it crash on me? If you would have told me what you were after, I might have taken different precautions,” Brandi exclaimed, her gaze raking Lane’s toned body. It was funny how s****l attraction never could make up for a man being an outright a*s.

“It wasn’t my choice. Orders were to let you observe what was there to see. The only survivors found after the explosion were two confused lab technicians. Both vaguely remembered seeing you and two other women just before the place blew. We found a record of your vehicle accident, but no body was found among the charred metal. There were no traces of the two other women either. One of them was a scientist on Feldspar’s payroll—probably your wolf rescuer. We don’t have much on the other female. Our assumption is both burned to death and their remains were removed by whoever Feldspar paid to do cleanup. What we still don’t know is why such extreme measures were taken to destroy all evidence at the building site.”

“I wondered that myself. I didn’t find a glass beaker shard, a piece of metal cage, or anything of value where the building used to be. I also checked the wooded area surrounding the place. There were a few emptied shell casings… nothing more.”

“But you got away.”

Brandi shrugged. “Sure. You know me—I’m pretty hard to kill. So when do I get to meet the expert I’m supposed to work with? I’m kind of anxious to get started looking before the trail gets any colder. Alaska is a very boring place, Lane. I’m ready to have something to focus on.”

“The expert is just down the hall. I tucked him away until I made sure you were really you. Are you sure you’re up to seeing him now? I could make him come back tomorrow if you want.”

Brandi shrugged again and frowned at his odd offer. “Why wouldn’t I be ready now?”

“No reason, I guess.”

She watched Lane tap a number on his intercom. When the person answered, Lane looked at her as he gave the order.

“Agent Jenkins is ready. Send our guest in.”

When Lane stood, she did too. They both turned to the door when it opened. She smelled him before he entered.

“Travis Black Wolf.” She spoke his name flatly as she glared.

“In the flesh. Hello, Agent Brandi Jenkins.”

“Why are you here, Travis? What the hell is going on?” Brandi demanded.

Travis ignored her questions and her glare, glancing between her and Lane. Finally, she heard him snort.

“I would say that’s kind of obvious, wouldn’t you?”

“You work here… like here?” Brandi demanded, unable to believe she was seeing him.

“Yes. Welcome to your past and my present,” Travis said sharply, frowning at Brandi’s wounded gaze on him. “I only figured out after I got here that we worked for the same organization… just very different branches.”

Brandi shook her head as she ran a hand over it. She turned to Lane. “How much do you know about Travis? He’s not what he seems. I know for a fact he tried to murder his grandfather. I know because I helped prevent him from doing it.”

She heard Lane snort before he turned a glare in Travis’ direction. “Hiring cold-blooded murderers is nothing new around here. Nobody from his department is ever what they seem to be.”

“What is this really all about, Lane?”

Her boss ignored her query and continued to stare at Travis. She rubbed her nose. Some competition thing was going on between the two men… something she’d walked into blindly. Did Lane already know what she was? She was still pondering how much Lane knew when he spoke again.

“Okay, Black Wolf. I want answers and I want them now. You want me to believe you just conveniently lived near Feldspar and found my wounded agent without reporting it to me?”

Travis shrugged. “That area is near the place I consider home. I was studying Feldspar’s activities, just like your agent was. What was going on there sounded like something my department needed to look into so I made a few calls. Though no one seems to have informed her yet, Agent Jenkins now knows too much to stay assigned to regular duty in your area. I’m sure my handler has gone over all that with you. I’m surprised you didn’t see fit to cover it with her.”

“Oh hell no. I’m not your department’s anything. I work for Lane. That’s final.” Brandi narrowed her gaze on Travis as she spoke. She listened to the steady rhythm of his heart. The traitor was telling the truth about his motives… or at least as much of the truth as Travis wanted Lane to know.

She looked back at Lane, scanning her handler’s angry face for clues about who she could trust. If Lane had any idea she and Travis were werewolves, it didn’t show itself in any fear he felt.

“You wouldn’t have watched my agent without investigating her background. Why don’t you tell me why Brandi is so interesting to your group?” Lane ordered.

She watched Travis’ gaze hold Lane’s without flinching. His presence here didn’t mesh with her memories of watching his a*s exiting the alpha challenge ring to get away from fighting Reed. The last time she’d seen him, Ariel had just killed Travis’s cousin and Travis himself had been running away from Reed like the coward he truly was inside his agent suit.

“Brandi showed up in Wasilla in a lab coat. She had no ID whatsoever. And she wasn’t talking to anyone. It took me a bit to match her up to the blown up truck and missing person. By that time, I’d guessed enough of her story to report it. We agreed only to me delivering that information to my handler and to you… which I did. The decision to recruit her was not my choice.”

Lane shook his head. “Brandi was never supposed to be abducted in the first place. You were supposed to keep anything from happening to her.”

Brandi’s gaze came back to Lane… her betraying a*s handler. “What am I missing here, Lane? I’m not stupid or deaf—but this is making me feel like both. What the hell was I really doing in Alaska? It’s past time to come clean with me.”

She watched a muscle ticking in Lane’s jaw. His anger was escalating. The more calm Travis acted—the madder Lane seemed to get. If she hadn’t wanted information so badly, she’d have found their pissing contest entertaining.

“Travis Black Wolf’s handler is the one who talked me into sending you up there. I’m going to make some calls. Watch yourself with this guy in the meantime. You probably already told Black Wolf too much.”

Brandi nodded as she turned and looked up into Travis’ steady gaze. His expression gave nothing away to Lane, but his eyes were speaking volumes to her. What power did Travis have in her organization? Did Ariel and Heidi’s fates hang on how she handled this surprise?

Glancing back at Lane, her gut warned her about letting Lane find out the real truth about what happened. She wondered why Travis hadn’t already told him. That would be a question for when she got him alone.

“While you talk to the top, I think I’ll have a chat with Mr. Expert here. He probably has a lot he wants to tell me, don’t you, Travis?”

Brandi smirked when both men snorted at her sarcasm. Damn it, her life hadn’t even taken a side trip in Alaska. The most interesting men always ended up being deceitful, manipulating assholes. Why was that?

Some days it was barely worth getting out of bed. That was especially true today. She should have just crawled back on top of Gareth and let the world go on without her. If she had realized she was returning to a job that had screwed her over royally, she might have done just that.

Brandi shrugged as she looked at the attractive young male watching her intently. She could tell he was a bit nervous, probably because he’d seen her kill his and Hanuk’s beta in the fight ring. According to werewolf sociology, she and Travis were related as well as being packmates. But Travis Black Wolf certainly didn’t seem like family to her, no matter how much he smelled like Reed.

“Come on. Let’s get something to eat while we talk. Airplane food sucks.”

“Absolutely. Lead the way… I’m still new in town,” Travis said, opening the door.

She could feel Lane staring a disbelieving hole in her back, but refused to let herself be bothered anymore by the emotions of either male. Whatever was going on, she would find a way to deal with it herself.

When the needle entered her hip on one sharp jab, Brandi swung instinctively to grab it, but it was far too late.

“You f*****g bas…”

She heard Lane calling her name in alarm as her limp body fell neatly into Travis’ waiting arms. Blackness claimed her as Travis laughed in her ear.