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The child. She had to protect the boy. As the jeep finally lost its battle to stay upright, she pitched herself toward the little boy, hoping to cushion him, to break the roll as it came.
Her elbow connected with Tamber’s head, her fingers grasping frantically to grab hold of David as she bounced, her back hitting the seat, before she was tossed again, slamming her into the dash as she heard Tamber scream and the mini-Lion’s almost grown-up roar.
Another flip of the jeep and her head slammed against the windshield, darkness flickering over her consciousness as she fought to keep from being sick or passing out. Or both. She could have easily done both.
Dammit, where was Tanner anyway? He was supposed to keep this from happening, wasn’t he? Protect her and all that macho stuff?
Moaning, she felt her fingers curl into something soft, cool. Dirt. She struggled to shake off the paralyzing pain that seemed to blaze through her body. It wasn’t the stupid mating heat either; she had just been bounced around a jeep like a frickin’ soccer ball.
David.
She forced her eyes open, seeing first dirt, crushed leaves, a hint of grass and trees. Moaning again at the effort, she turned her head to stare directly into David Lyons’s golden gaze.
The kid was crouched beside her, his eyes, very much like his father’s, peering into hers as he tilted his head, his shaggy light brown hair falling over his eyes before he pushed it back.
“Lady, we need to move,” he seemed to sigh. “That stupid cat is just knocked out, I think. ”
“I have to move. ” Why didn’t she figure that one out? “Where is a damned Breed when you need one?”
Damn. She hurt. She hurt bad. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the gown she was wearing was ripping further up her thigh with each move she made and she had lost both shoes.
Forcing her arms beneath her, she struggled to sit up.
“You could help,” she muttered.
David frowned a little. “You smell like Uncle Tanner when he’s really mad,” he pointed out. “I aint touchin’ you for nothin’. ”
“Not touching me for anything,” she automatically corrected him.
“That’s what I said. ” He chewed at his lip worriedly, sharp little incisors poking out. “But we got to go. We’re too close to the boundary. ”
“Okay, we have to go. ” She nodded.
“Uncle Tanner will turn the lions loose when he knows we’re gone. Uncle Kane will have his soldiers out on the motorcycles. If we can get close enough, then we’ll be okay. Uncle Tanner says the lions only eat people that are too close to the boundary. ”
“Oh great. Let me guess, they only eat my kind, not your kind. ”
He paused as she wobbled to her feet, his frown deepening as he stared back at her with a hint of hurt confusion. “Aren’t we the same kind?”
Scheme winced as she tried to smile in agreement. “Yes, David, we’re the same kind. But Breeds have a different scent from non-Breeds, just like a male smells differently from a female. ”
“Oh. ” He moved around her, nodding thoughtfully before he picked up a thick stick lying on the ground and handed it to her. “Here. We better hurry. I can feel a chopper in the air, and I know our heli-jet isn’t in Sanctuary right now. ”
“Great,” she muttered. “How far away is it?”
And it was dark. Cold. The moon was full, the canopy of trees above them was pretty thick.
“We need to hurry. ” He hitched his jeans up on his lean body and moved ahead of her. “Uncle Jonas says the sound of a heli-jet carries for a ways for a Breed. But we can’t stay here. ”
“Uncle Jonas, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah, he smells kinda like Daddy, but Daddy doesn’t like it when I say that, so I don’t tell him. ” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I can hear the lions. Let’s go this way. ”
Lions. They eat people. Scheme whimpered. She was not having her best week here at all. Just not at all.
CHAPTER 29
“Tanner, we have a heli-jet on radar coming over Buffalo Gap and moving in fast,” Kane reported over the earwig Tanner wore. “We’re putting the chopper in the air, but it’s not going to be much defense against it and our heli-jet is currently unavailable. ”
“We caught their trail,” Tanner shouted above the din of the dirt cycle’s motor as he raced behind Dawn and her Lionesses. “The lions are moving in fast now, so we believe they’re stationary. ”
He gunned the dirt bike harder, skidding around fallen logs as he raced up the incline of the old logging road that cut through the mountain.
In the distance he could hear Sanctuary’s armed chopper lifting into the air and he prayed. He had been praying since the moment he realized Scheme was gone. Praying like he had never prayed, even during those horrifying years in the labs.
“Tamber’s tracker was deactivated, as was David’s,” Kane barked in his ear.
Callan’s snarling voice cut across the line. “The lions will find David. ”
Callan, his pride brother, Taber and Jonas were just behind him, gunning their bikes just as hard as Tanner was his. They hadn’t spent the hours riding these mountains that Tanner and Dawn had. Tanner would get there first, and when he did, he would kill Tamber.
It was almost impossible to believe that the quiet, soft-spoken Lion Breed female had been part of Tallant’s organization. The lab she had been rescued from had been one of the worst. The conditions had been horrid there for the Breeds. The Coyotes that oversaw them were some of the most vicious, the scientist depraved.
Tamber had been rescued as a teenager; she couldn’t be much more than twenty-five now, and she had been betraying them all along. Her position in the communications shed, given complete trust simply because she was a Breed, would have given her all the access she needed to keep Tallant apprised of every move the Breeds made.
Tanner’s hands clenched around the handles of the cycle, one wrist bending back, giving the cycle more speed as he raced up the logging road.
If they didn’t get to Tamber’s jeep before the heli-jet reached the boundary of the property, then Scheme and David could be gone forever.
“The lions are catching scent,” Dawn called out on the channel. “We’re moving in. The alpha is roaring his challenge now. We better hurry. ”
Releasing the lions with Scheme out there was a risky venture. They were trained to only respond to certain non-Breeds, only those who lived full-time within Sanctuary. Scheme was in just as much danger from the big cats as she was from Tamber. Unless she went to the ground and became completely submissive, making no sudden moves and not looking the animals in the eye. That would be the only way she could save herself.
“The jet is clearing Buffalo Gap, Tanner,” Kane barked. “You have approximately five minutes before it reaches the only possible launching site. ”
Time was running out.
“We’ll make it,” he snarled, pushing the bike harder. They had to make it; he couldn’t live otherwise.
Scheme stumbled on the incline as she tried to hurry away from the jeep and the psychotic Breed hopefully bleeding to death inside it. Though she doubted it. For the most part, Breeds, even the foul ones, were amazingly resilient.
Holding on to the stick David had provided, she followed him as fast as she could, feeling her legs trembling, the pain racing through her body and the overwhelming knowledge that she might have failed.
“We have to hurry. ” David turned to stare back at her worriedly, his head lifting, scenting the air around him. As small as he was, as young as he was, he was already showing traits of an alpha Breed male. Sure of himself, confident of his surroundings and his family’s ability to find him.
What would it be like, Scheme wondered sadly, to have that confidence? To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if your family was near, then you were safe.
Her father was most likely near
, coordinating the capture with his smug smile and self-satisfaction. But it wasn’t for her protection. It was for the destruction of others. The Breeds who had escaped the torment he could have inflicted on them.
“Go. ” She waved her hand back to David weakly. “Get out of here, David. Find Tanner. He’ll come and get me. ”
The boy didn’t have many self-preservation instincts. If he did, he would be running like hell away from her.
He chewed at his lips in indecision, clearly eager to be on his way down the mountain. “The lions will eat you, lady,” he explained as though speaking to a dimwit, his shoulders straightening and an invisible mantle of responsibility seeming to settle on them.
“Then let the damned lions eat me,” she snapped desperately. “Do you think I went to all the trouble to get into Sanctuary just so they could take both of us?”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re being melodramatic. ”
Melodramatic? A freaking nine-year-old had just called her melodramatic?
“Excuse me here,” she snapped. “I’m stuck in the woods, I think I broke bones, and I’ve lost my shoes. This is not melodrama, kid. This is me getting ready to have a meltdown. ”
He stared back at her with a patronizing, totally male gaze. Good God, this kid was a hazard to himself.
“Meltdown when we get home. Mom keeps chocolate for meltdowns. Daddy always has them when Uncle Jonas visits. ” He frowned, glancing at the sky while he grabbed a handful of her sweats to steady her as she stumbled over something barky. A rotten piece of a tree maybe. She shuddered. Anything rotten should be kept well away from her.
“I don’t blame your daddy,” she muttered. “Jonas is a pain in the rear. Now run and tell him I said it. Go on. ” She waved her hand imperatively. “Go. ”
The kid shook his head.
“Uncle Jonas is cool. He knows neat stuff, like guns and knives and how to fight. ”
“So does your daddy,” she reminded him impatiently. “Would you leave already?”
“But teaching hurts Daddy,” he sighed, ignoring her once again. “I can feel it. So I asked Uncle Jonas to help me, and Uncle Taber and Uncle Tanner. It hurts them too though, but not like it does Daddy. ”
“It’s for your protection,” she pointed out.
“I know. I think that’s why it hurts them,” he shrugged. “It’s why I can’t go to the regular school or play baseball. ”
There was a note of sadness in the boy’s voice, of loneliness. Hell, the Breeds were no freer now than they were in the labs; they just weren’t tortured. Unless they were caught.
“We have to move faster,” she muttered, trying to force her legs to obey her. It was obvious the kid wasn’t going anywhere without her. “We don’t have much time. ”
She could hear something coming herself now, could feel the vibration of it.
“The lions are close. ” David’s voice rose in excitement as they passed a thick growth of foliage. “All we have to do is get to the—”
Scheme stopped in shock as Tamber erupted from behind the brush and jerked David to the side, her pistol lying at his temple as his eyes widened in alarm and fear.
Blood smeared the other woman’s face and hands as she blinked several times to clear the sweat that dripped into her eyes.
“Oh man, Daddy’s going to be really mad now,” David mumbled.
“Brat. ” The gun slapped the boy at the side of the head as Scheme flinched, reaching instinctively for him.
“You stupid bitch. ” The weapon turned on her. “Your father said dead or alive. I’m just going to kill you and get it over with. ”
“You kill her and I won’t be nice. ” David struggled, though his eyes were a little dazed now, his face pale. “And my daddy is going to kill you. ”
“Shut up, you little bastard. ” She whacked him again, causing him to stumble as she dragged him closer to her.