Brandi Read Online Free

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 shit 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 torture 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 story, some 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