Chapter Twelve #2
He kept his attention on the highway and gave me nothing else until I pushed again.
“That still sounds vague.”
“It’s not supposed to be complicated.” His fingers shifted against the steering wheel. “A yes means more from someone who can say no.”
My attention dropped to my wrist before I could stop it.
“You did not exactly follow that rule with me.”
“No,” he answered without trying to soften it. “I should have.”
I did not want this conversation turning into another apology for something we had already dragged into the open.
“So if she says yes?”
Wolf glanced at me. “If she gives me control, Mercer, I am not giving it back.”
My stomach flipped.
“So restraint?”
“Sometimes.”
“Wrists?”
“Sometimes.”
“With the webbing?”
His eyes flicked briefly toward my hands before returning to the road. “If she wants it.”
“T-toys?” I felt myself rushing my words now.
“Sure, why not.”
“Blindfolds?”
“Occasionally.”
I hesitated before the next one, which was pointless considering he already knew the answer.
“Hair?”
Wolf looked straight ahead. “You already know that one.”
I shifted in my seat and tried to decide how much farther I was willing to take the conversation. Curiosity won before good judgment had much chance to participate.
“What else?”
He was silent.
“You can’t tell me one word and then act mysterious again.”
“I can.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“More than once because you keep earning it.”
He passed another truck and settled back into the right lane. “If I actually told you everything I’m into, you’d spend the rest of this drive deciding whether to move closer to the door.”
I glanced at the passenger door, then back at him. “That’s a lot of confidence for a man wearing a mask while he says it.”
“You asked.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t move.”
His hands stayed steady on the wheel, though his shoulders tightened slightly beneath the jacket. I knew him well enough now to catch the smaller changes, and from the brief glance he gave me, he knew I had caught this one.
“Maybe,” I repeated, quieter this time, “I’d be interested.”
Wolf took a slow breath through his nose. “We’ll see.”
For several seconds I forgot every clever response I had ever had in my life.
Then I smiled and turned toward the window before he could see too much of it. “So you admit I might be able to handle it.”
“No.”
I looked back at him. “Seriously?”
“You being curious doesn’t prove anything.”
“You are unbelievably arrogant.”
“You keep asking questions you don’t like the answer to.”
“I like some of the answers.”
His fingers tightened around the wheel.
Wolf did not respond and I let him have the silence because, for once, I was enjoying it.
◆
We reached Strasbourg a little after noon.
Moreau met us in a quiet office near the river that looked exactly like the sort of place nobody would remember visiting, which I assumed was intentional.
Moreau was a French liaison with dark blond hair and somewhere in her forties, who looked visibly relieved to hand responsibility for the records to somebody else.
The packet turned out to be even simpler than we thought.
A transport company connected to one of Varga’s contacts had used the same storage address on several handwritten forms, and Moreau had kept the originals because two of the signatures did not match the names entered into the electronic system.
I spent less than forty minutes with her as she showed me where the forms had come from and explained which clerk had flagged them, then gave Wolf the sealed packet for transport.
Though I might have been silently hoping for it, there was no dramatic revelation waiting inside the office.
We had a new address to check and the name of someone Raven could verify once we got back.
But after this week, I was beginning to appreciate intelligence that arrived without anybody bleeding on it.
Wolf waited until we were back in the car before asking, “Useful?”
“Yes. The storage address is probably more important than the names on the forms. Moreau thinks the signatures were copied from older paperwork, so Raven can compare them before we treat either person like a real lead.”
He started the engine. “Good.”
I buckled my seat belt and glanced at him. “That’s all I get?”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a sticker.”
“For asking questions in French?”
“You should encourage your analysts.”
“Raven seems encouraged enough for both of you.”
I laughed and settled back as he pulled away from the curb.
The return drive felt different even though neither of us mentioned the conversation from earlier.
I had expected embarrassment once we had to sit beside each other afterward, but it never quite arrived.
Mostly, I was aware that I now knew what the word control meant when Wolf said it, and that he knew enough about me to make the webbing on his belt impossible to treat like ordinary equipment again.
We stopped outside Baden-Baden when the rain picked up, hard enough that the service station disappeared behind a gray curtain almost as soon as Wolf pulled beneath the overhang.
We ran inside for coffee and he returned with a protein bar that looked like it had been designed by a group of dudes who put “macros” before flavor.
I bought a honey bun covered in enough icing to make up for both of us.
Wolf looked at it as we quickly crossed the parking lot. “That’s food?”
“You bought compressed protein wrapped in plastic.”
“It has twenty grams.”
“Mine has icing.”
“Not a nutrient.”
“Neither is misery, but you seem committed to getting your daily amount.”
He opened the driver’s door without answering, which was about as much acknowledgment as most of my jokes received from him.
We climbed back into the Mercedes and stayed parked while the rain beat against the roof and streamed across the windshield faster than the wipers could clear it.
For once, Wolf seemed willing to wait rather than drive through weather bad enough to erase half the road.
My white shirt was soaked through enough to make me regret the color choice, though my hair had plastered itself across my chest and shoulders, hiding anything particularly indecent.
I tore a piece from my pastry and glanced over when I heard the wrapper of his protein bar open. Then I looked at his mask.
Wolf noticed almost immediately. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I was wondering how you planned to eat that.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “With my mouth.”
I gave him a look. “Helpful.”
“You asked a stupid question.”
“I asked a practical question.”
“You’ve been here long enough to know the difference,” he replied.
I went back to my honey bun before continuing the argument made it obvious that I was more interested in the answer than I wanted him to know. I had seen Wolf adjust the mask enough to smoke, but even then, he kept most of his face covered and I had never seen his full jaw.
Beside me, fabric shifted.
I looked over before I could stop myself. Wolf had hooked two fingers beneath the bottom of the mask and pulled it just far up enough to uncover his mouth and the front of his chin.
His nose remained hidden, along with most of his cheeks and the full shape of his face. Even sitting less than two feet away, I still only had pieces of him to work with: brown eyes beneath thick lashes, dark wavy hair and now, finally, his mouth.
His lips were fuller than I had expected, especially the lower one, with a defined curve through the upper lip that softened when his mouth relaxed. Dark stubble covered the exposed part of his jaw and disappeared beneath the fabric.
That was when I noticed the scar.
A thick, pale, slightly jagged shape cut along the left side of his chin, starting higher than the portion he had uncovered and becoming clearer as it reached toward the corner of his mouth before disappearing beneath the mask again.
I had never seen it before. For all the time I had spent staring at him, trying to build a face out of whatever scraps he allowed me, there had been an entire large scar hidden underneath.
My eyes lingered on it before I could stop them.
He took a bite of the protein bar and somewhere during that process, I stopped chewing.