sat in the chair that she had thankfully moved this morning. If Thor was unaware of who the tracker was following, then he couldn’t have seen her the night before making herself a willing target.
“Did you catch sight of him?” she asked Thor.
For long moments Thor stared back at her in mocking disbelief that she had even asked such a question. He indicated her window with a jerk of his head. “I managed to catch sight of him with the long-range binocs we procured from those Coyotes last year.” The binoculars were a hell of a lot more than long range, with night vision, heat sensing and several other tricks Diane hadn’t yet been able to try out. “He has a nice, powerful sniper rifle trained right in here is my guess. I saw the shadow and the rifle, but I couldn’t get close enough to glimpse his features or keep him from pulling the trigger.” The last was snapped out furiously. “What the fuck were you doing propped up in front of the window daring that fucker?”
She rolled her eyes at him, before her gaze turned wary at the sound of the rumble of pure displeasure she heard vibrating in Lawe’s chest.
“Stop that.” She hissed the order as her nerves went immediately on edge.
She did not like that sound.
“I’m ready to imitate him,” Thor bit out in irritation. “For God’s sake, Diane. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”
“Wonderful.” Diane propped her hands on her hips again and stared around the room as she said mockingly, “And here I was hoping he would settle for binoculars to watch my girlish figure.”
Not that either man took her mocking amusement for what it was.
“That assassin is still tracking you and you insist on remaining on this mission?” Lawe turned to Diane, incredulity shooting past any control he could have considered enforcing on his scent. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Well, he hasn’t shot me yet.” She ignored the flash of a wicked incisor at her exclamation.
“Well, fucking give him time,” Lawe suddenly yelled at her. “He’s only made his first attempt. If at first you don’t succeed—right?”
Her eyes widened.
She had never heard Lawe yell, and she had seen him and Jonas go head-to-head on more than one occasion. Lawe was always calm, collected and cool. The three C’s. She’d always envied the hell out him.
All three of those C’s were gone this morning, though. That Breed standing before her was ready to blow with the force of the anger raging through him.
“You need Valium,” she stated in irritation. “If he wanted to kill me, then you would still be cleaning my brain matter from the side of that hotel in D.C. Get a clue, Lawe. He didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to get me away from my team to keep me from getting killed by whoever is betraying me. The best way to do that was make certain they couldn’t follow me.” She glanced at Thor. “It’s a damned good thing you’re the only one I know I can trust. But I want to know who it is. I was hoping to convince Gideon to join me long enough to tell me.”
She turned to her second-in-command. It was too late to hide anything from him now.
A sizzling curse slipped past Thor’s lips a second before his expression turned to stone.
“I’ll kill the bastard,” he swore, his voice rumbling with near Breed violence, and he was stone cold serious. “When I find out who he is, he’ll be dead fucking meat, Diane. He’ll only wish I had turned him over to your mate, because there’s no Breed on Earth that will make him suffer as I will.”
“Fine, you make him suffer,” Lawe snapped as he gripped Diane’s arm and pulled her around to face him. “What the fuck made you think you could trust anything a feral Breed had to say? And just when did he inform you of anything—”
“And why the hell didn’t I tell you about it when it happened?” she asked sweetly as she batted her lashes at him and affected a passable Southern Belle accent. “Why, Lawe, could it be because of all those raging Breed hormones going nuts inside your body right now? Or could it be the fact that little ole me could handle it just fine by myself?”
“Oh did you now?” All teeth. His smile was frankly disconcerting. “Well, Mate, let’s see how well you handle me, now that I know about it. And I promise you, it won’t be near as easy as you’ve had it the past. You can fucking bet on it.”
• • •
Gideon pulled the slim wireless receiver from his ear and tossed it to the table before wearily wiping his hand over his face. He almost smiled.
Damn, she was smarter than he had given her credit for. But, when it came to her mate, she wasn’t showing the most sensible manner in how she was handling him. Challenging a Breed was simple idiocy. Especially a Breed male. That was the height of idiocy. Especially when it came to their mates.
Hell, maybe he should have met with her before Commander Justice arrived. But it had been his intent to save the information for a more useful time. Perhaps when he needed to distract her after stepping between her and his prey. Well, their prey.
Truth was, he’d wanted to meet with her. He’d wanted to see if he could draw any information from her, perhaps trick her into telling him more than he already knew, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t happen. Useless effort had never appealed to him. It would have been amusing though, he thought as he held back a chuckle. They would have both been playing the same game. It would have been interesting to see if either of them had won or if it had only come out a draw, as he suspected it would. He actually respected her. Her strength and daring were almost legendary, her integrity unimpeachable. Like her uncle before her, Diane Broen led her men on missions that never harmed innocents, only saved them. She went after the monsters in the world and tried to make living just a little bit easier for those she helped.
Gideon despised treachery and traitors, and Diane had a traitor in her midst. Someone she trusted had been feeding her uncle’s enemies information until they had finally caught up with her in Syria and managed to kidnap her.
Gideon had been in the area tracking down one of Brandenmore’s clerical assistants when he’d caught wind of the abduction. He’d made certain Thor had the information and knew where he could find a Breed team that may be willing to help.
He’d owed her uncle that much.
Funny, how small the world could be. It had been her uncle, Colt, who had helped him during one of the few times he had managed to escape Brandenmore’s labs.
Gideon had been in Europe when he had run into the team of Coyotes searching for him. Colt Broen had been following the Coyotes on a rumor that they were after a very special research project. His curiosity had been dangerous. It had also ended up being the reason for his death.
At that time, though, the mercenary had helped Gideon and even allowed him to join the team and share in the payments. Hell, he should have stayed with them rather than believing he would find safety at Sanctuary at the time.
He hadn’t even made it to the small town of Buffalo Gap before he was ambushed, proving that even Sanctuary wasn’t safe. Because only he and the Breed he had talked to there had known he was coming and the route he was to take.
He had paid for that escape. It hadn’t stopped him from trying again, though. And again. And again. Except, Colt hadn’t been there to rescue his ass. Perhaps it was for the best, he thought. Not that Thor would recognize him now, nor did he know who he had met with the night Diane had fled D.C. Shadows were wonderful things sometimes, and Thor was just smart enough to be suspicious, and intuitive enough to put the information Gideon had given him together.
She would need the Swede, he was afraid. Gideon couldn’t protect her, and he was afraid Lawe would be too intent on forcing her to safety to watch for her little tricks when it came to slipping away from him.
The sound of voices raised in anger from the earpiece drew his attention back to the confrontation in the other room.
He knew what the outcome would be, though he was certain Commander Justice had no idea he was going to lose this round.
Diane wasn’t a woman any man or Breed could protect by locking her away from the world. She was a woman that would always feel the need to find a way to fight at her mate’s side. If the Breed had wanted a wallflower, then he should have mated some shy little miss and stayed the hell away from the warrior he’d found.
Because there was no doubt in his mind that the woman would find a way to freedom. And if she couldn’t find her own way out, then the men who were loyal to her would find it for her. Especially the one they called Thor.
Lawe pushed his fingers through his hair as he rounded on Diane once again. Disbelief spiked his blood pressure—who had ever heard of a Breed with high blood pressure—then mixed with the arousal already biting at his balls, to create a conflagration that threatened to explode within him.
He stared at his mate. She was as serious as hell when she stood and discussed a traitor in her group as though she hadn’t nearly died sixteen months before because of his betrayal.
And she was discussing it with one of the very men she should have been suspecting.
He was thirty-four years old and he’d never been so close to losing his control as he was now. Even as a babe, or cub as they were called in the labs, he hadn’t been so close to complete mindless rage as he was now.
He had watched friends and littermates die.
He’d been betrayed over and over by his trainers.
He’d been betrayed by Breeds he’d believed were his friends.
He’d watched his mother die by vivisection and had seen countless Breed children suffer until their deaths were a mercy.
And still, he’d maintained his control because he’d had no other choice. And now, when that control was even more imperative, he could feel himself losing his grip on it.
“There’s no way to set a trap when the last thing I need right now is to have any of them know what I’m doing.” Diane shook her head at Thor’s suggestion that they find a way to trap the traitor within their group. “Besides, it can wait. I want to concentrate on finding Brandenmore’s research subjects right now. As far as the others know, I’m at Sanctuary and Rachel will cover for me if by chance one of them attempts to contact me.”
“You know where she’s hiding then?” Thor asked as he leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and watched his commander somberly.
Diane breathed in slowly. He could sense the battle she waged within herself for a moment before resignation settled in. Her shoulders straightened as her head lifted proudly at whatever decision she’d been silently contemplating.
“I know where they’re at.” She nodded. “Window Rock, Arizona. The night the Breed they called Judd and the young human girl, Fawn, were supposed to be terminated, Judd somehow managed to cause the guard to wreck the vehicle and took the girl and ran with a Native American who had been contacted by an anonymous source several days before. He found them, hid them for several days, and then took them to Window Rock.”
“And just how do you know this?” Lawe could feel himself tensing, the pit of his stomach tightening at the look in her eyes.
“Because I’m smart like that,” she drawled mockingly. “And once I had that bit of information I began investigating him. He’s known for disappearing regularly and he’s known for his habit of attempting to help Breeds. He was also near the area where Judd and Fawn Corrigan were being transported for termination the night they escaped.”
Lawe stared back at her.
He could feel the ice battling against the mating heat to take over once again. To wrap around his soul, to freeze the emotional abyss waiting to spread through him and destroy him once and for all.
Window Rock, Arizona. A Native American who would be willing to help Breeds. One Lawe knew for a fact had been searching for a particular young woman who had been kidnapped decades before by the Council. Terran Martinez, his uncle. But neither Terran nor his father had been there for Morningstar Martinez. His sister.
Lawe’s mother.
“All the evidence we have verifies the termination,” Lawe pointed out.
“Because no one was left living to un-verify it,” she reminded.
“Remains were found in the cremation unit,” he argued. “Enough to prove there were at least two bodies.”
“And every guard in the building was dead,” she reminded him. “Did you find teeth? Bone matter? Anything to verify the DNA? Sex? I know how thorough Breeds are. There was nothing there or I would have known about it when Jonas gave me the file on Honor Roberts.”
“And how did you hear about this?” he asked, his tone grating. “That information hasn’t come up anywhere else.”
To which Diane smiled. “No one could verify their deaths, not even the Brandenmore scientists and research assistants I managed to talk to. I was probing into the suspicion of their escape when Gideon left his little note for me in my hotel room informing me that I had a traitor on my team and if I wanted to find who I was looking for, I should head to Window Rock and pay close attention to Terran Martinez.”
“And you trusted this information?” Thor asked, surprised.
She didn’t blame him; she was normally the most suspicious person she knew.
She breathed out heavily. “There had been too many accidents, Thor. I was already suspicious. And once I began checking into the information and Terran Martinez’s past, it began adding up.”
“Why didn’t you give Jonas this information in your report?” Lawe grated. “You didn’t tell me?”
Diane smiled back at him knowingly. “Because I didn’t trust the encryption for the digital files and I wanted to make certain the Martinez name or Window Rock didn’t get picked up by the wrong ears or listening devices. When I saw you had no intention of allowing me to complete the search for her, then I kept it to myself. This is my job, Lawe. Gideon Cross may be a killer as well as a feral Breed, but whatever caused him to give me that information kept me alive. Someone wants me out of the way so Amber or Rachel, possibly both, will be more vulnerable. Each “accident” has coincided with an event where Amber has been in danger. She needs all of us, not just Breeds, to protect her.”
“Have you considered the fact someone could be using you to draw your sister out?” Lawe demanded, his voice rough, tortured. “For pity’s sake, what in the hell makes you believe you can trust a Breed that’s carving up Brandenmore scientists like pork at a picnic?”
She rolled her eyes. Lawe had a tendency to become irritatingly caustic as he grew angrier.
“I didn’t say I trusted him. I said so far, he hasn’t lied to me,” she pointed out.
“Why tell you anything about the Roberts girl, or about the Breed?” Thor mused.
To which Diane stared at him then back to Lawe with knowing mockery. “Because he wants them too. For whatever reason, he’s after the same goal and he obviously believes I have a much better chance of drawing them out. He’ll shadow me. Watch me. He’ll try to get to them first once they’re identified. And I intend to keep that from happening.”
“How?” Lawe snapped. His patience was seriously wearing thin.
“I’ll let you know when I’ve figured that one out.” She shrugged in unconcern. “Until then, I’ll just do what I do best, Lawe. I’ll question, watch, listen, and pull my facts together. If all else fails, I’ll introduce myself to Mr. Martinez as his future niece-in-law and see if that helps.”
She was joking.
Unfortunately, Lawe wasn’t in a joking mood.
“Don’t even try it.” The growl in his voice sent shivers racing down her spine. “If you treasure that independence as highly as you claim to, Mate, don’t even fucking try it.”
She had a feeling facing the past was the last thing Lawe intended to do and the very thing that would end up happening before this mission was completed.
Just as she had a feeling, a very bad one, that before it was over with, her heart just might end up broken, or perhaps her neck instead.
•CHAPTER 11•