Chapter Twelve
MIA
Wolf pulled through the compound gate and headed toward the highway while rain streaked across the windshield, blurring the trees at the edge of the road into dark green smears.
For the first part of the trip, we talked about Moreau and the warehouse as I took notes of more questions to ask.
There was not much more to it than what Raven had already given us.
Varga’s phone had led us to Strasbourg, Moreau had handled the bills there and somewhere inside those records might be a name that brought us closer to the people Varga worked for.
Closer to Kade, if we were lucky.
Once we reached the Autobahn, Wolf settled into the drive while I watched the rain trickle on the passenger window and tried very hard not to think about the conversation we had left unfinished that morning.
I lasted maybe twenty minutes.
“So what did you mean earlier?” I closed my notebook and kept it on my lap.
Wolf did not turn his head. “Earlier when?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you don’t know exactly what I’m asking.”
He checked the mirror before moving around a truck. “You haven’t asked anything yet.”
I watched the side of his face for a moment, trying to decide whether he was being difficult because he enjoyed it or because making people say exactly what they meant was simply how his brain worked.
With Wolf, both explanations were possible.
“The thing you said at the compound,” I told him. “About what you’re into.”
“What about it?”
“You said I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“I remember.”
“Then why are you making me repeat it?”
“Because you want to talk about it.”
I gave him a flat look he did not bother returning. “You started that conversation.”
“You made the comment about the webbing.”
“I made a joke.”
“About my sex life?”
“I said, if that’s what you’re into. You were the one who leaned over and told me I couldn’t handle whatever twisted little private life you have.”
His thumb moved once against the steering wheel. “Twisted.”
“Sorry if your word choice invites interpretation.”
“That wasn’t my word.”
“You know what I mean.”
He stayed quiet.
I sat back against the seat and looked through the windshield.
The rain that had followed us out of Stuttgart had thinned to a mist, leaving the road dark and reflective while traffic moved in long clean stretches ahead of us.
I could have let the conversation die there and saved myself whatever embarrassment was waiting on the other side of it.
Instead, I heard myself ask, “So what are you into?”
Wolf finally looked at me, and only then did I register that I had just asked my masked commanding officer to explain his sexual preferences while he drove us across southern Germany.
“You’re actually asking me that,” he said.
“You told me I couldn’t handle it. I would like to know what I’m supposedly incapable of handling.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like people deciding things about me when they don’t know me.”
“I know you.”
“You probably know what I drink in the morning and that I argue with you. That’s not the same thing.”
“You also don’t stop when you should.”
“That goes in the category of arguing with you.”
He let the road fill the silence for a few seconds before saying, “What are you into?”
I turned toward him. “That’s not how answering works.”
“You want to know what I based the assumption on.”
“Yes.”
“Then give me something better to base it on.”
The answer was irritatingly reasonable, which made refusing feel more childish than I wanted it to. I tucked a loose section of hair behind my ear and tried to make the question less ridiculous by treating it like one I would answer for anyone else.
“Normal things.”
Wolf kept driving without offering anything else, which only made the silence feel more deliberate. I waited for him to respond. He did not.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You have an opinion.”
“Normal things doesn’t mean anything,” he said calmly.
“It means normal sex.”
“Still doesn’t mean anything.”
“Do you need a diagram?”
“No. Keep going.”
This didn’t sound like an obvious attempt to embarrass me. He sounded annoyingly serious, as though I had given an incomplete answer during a briefing and he expected the rest before we moved on.
“Fine. Um, I like kissing. I guess I also like being touched by somebody who knows what he’s doing, which sounds obvious until you remember how many men seem to be learning in real time.”
Wolf let me sit with the answer without helping me out.
“You had told me to keep going,” I followed.
“I did.”
“You could contribute.”
“You aren’t finished.”
I looked down at the closed notebook on my lap and ran my thumb along the edge. “I like confidence. I don’t want somebody asking me if every single thing is okay before he does it.”
“There’s a difference between confidence and guessing.”
“I know. I’m saying I don’t like hesitation over every little thing. If we’re already there and I want you touching me, I don’t need a committee meeting before your hand moves six inches.”
The corner of his eye tightened slightly. I could not tell whether it was amusement or restraint, and asking would only make the conversation worse.
“Keep going,” he said.
I let out a quiet laugh and shook my head. “You really like saying that.”
“Mercer.”
“Fine. I guess I also… like someone stronger than me. Maybe like when a man takes charge but without turning it into some weird performance where he needs to remind me every five seconds that he could overpower me. That’s no fun.”
Wolf was quiet for long enough that I turned my head toward him again.
“What?” I said in a more irritated tone than I intended.
“Nothing.”
“You keep doing that.”
“Keep going.”
Heat crept into my face, mostly because he had managed to make the conversation feel less like banter and more like an interview I had volunteered for without reading the questions first.
I shifted in the seat and folded my arms loosely.
“Rough… sometimes…” I trailed off before the embarrassment caught up to me.
His eyes stayed on the road.
I turned toward him. “That’s all you’re getting.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I almost laughed. “Excuse me?”
“You wouldn’t have said it if that was all you meant.”
He kept making it harder to dismiss him.
“Um, maybe being held down?” I said after a moment. “Not every time. Sometimes…”
Wolf’s hand moved higher on the wheel as the highway curved. “Anything else?”
I knew exactly what he was asking about before he said another word, and the memory arrived with enough detail that my fingers tightened around the edge of the notebook.
His hand low at the back of my head. My hair caught around his fist. The anger of that night had never erased the reaction underneath it, no matter how much I wanted the two things to fit into a single clean answer.
“Hair pulling,” I said confidently.
Wolf’s posture barely changed, though his hand settled more firmly around the wheel.
I turned my face toward the window. “You can stop looking pleased with yourself.”
“I’m not looking at you.”
“I can hear it.”
“Well, that’s impressive.”
“You know why I said it.”
A few seconds passed before he answered. “I do.”
I rested my hand over the opposite wrist, more from habit than discomfort, and the movement drew his attention for less than a second before he returned it to the road.
“What happened in my room doesn’t suddenly become okay just because I liked one part of it,” I said quietly.
“I know.”
I studied him, waiting for an explanation that never came.
“That’s it?”
“We’ve already had this conversation. You said no. I ignored it. I was wrong.”
I had expected more resistance because arguing with Wolf had trained me to expect resistance from him everywhere. When none came, I found myself rubbing my thumb once over the inside of my wrist again before dropping my fingers back to the spiral edge.
“Okay,” I said.
He gave a small nod.
The highway opened ahead of us, and for a while the only sound inside the car came from the tires against wet pavement.
I should have returned to the Strasbourg file.
I had already told him more than I had planned to, and Wolf had somehow managed to get through the entire exchange without giving me a useful answer of his own.
“Your turn,” I said.
“No.”
I turned toward him so quickly the seat belt tightened across my shoulder. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“You volunteered all of that.”
“You repeatedly told me to keep going.”
“And you did.”
“Wolf.” His name came out strained and breathless, almost embarrassingly so.
He glanced briefly in my direction as I took a slow breath and settled farther into the seat, trying to let some of the tension leave my shoulders.
“What are you into?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
He still did not answer immediately. Traffic thickened near an interchange, and he waited until we were clear of it before speaking.
“Control.”
I turned my head toward him. “That’s your whole answer?”
“You asked what I’m into.”
“I gave you significantly more than one word.”
Some of the calm I had worked myself into started slipping away as I watched the side of his mask, irritation warming underneath the curiosity that had gotten me into this conversation in the first place.
“That was your decision.”
“I am starting to understand why nobody invites you to normal social situations.”
“I get invited.”
“Do you go?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
He ignored that, which I took as permission to keep pushing.
“What does control mean?”
“You know what it means.”
“I know what it means when you’re running an operation. I’m asking what it means when you’re sleeping with someone.”
Wolf’s jaw moved once beneath the mask before he answered. “If she gives it to me, I use it.”
“That is still vague.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
I waited him out this time. Cars moved steadily around us, and Wolf seemed perfectly willing to let the question sit there until I either dropped it or asked something better.
“Why control?”
He was quiet for a few seconds before answering. “Because I want her to choose it.”
“Choose what?”
“Giving the control to me.”