“Shhh,” he whispered, leaning in close to her ear, placing a hand on her back and leaving it there a moment, to allow her to get used to his touch, before he scooped her up and charged through the smoke-filled room, toward what were thankfully still the open elevator doors.
Once he had her inside the compartment, he set her on the floor—leaving her gagged to prevent a telltale scream, while he keyed the security code. Holding the car open with his booted foot, he cut the ties on her arms and legs. “When you get to the next level, get out, and send it back to me.” He moved out of the doorway, let the steel panels seal shut, and stepped right into a gust of wind so powerful he swayed.
The wind funneled out the front door as if sucked from a pipe, the room clearing almost instantly. Michael stood in the cabin’s entrance, his long black hair rushing around his shoulders. His unique GTECH skill allowed him to control and communicate with the wind. Michael wouldn’t know to be here if someone—Lara—hadn’t told him there was trouble. Lucian and Sabrina were nowhere in sight. Too bad they’d been smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge. Damion had been looking forward to killing them both.
Even more so when he realized Chale wasn’t moving, nor was his loud mouth spewing smart-ass attitude. Still tied to the chair, he lay on his back, blood spilling to the floor from his gut, darkening the bandages that had been used to help keep him alive until they didn’t need him anymore—like now. Damion’s and Michael’s eyes met from across the room, all their differences cast aside in a rare moment of understanding, in what, at its core, was brotherhood. Neither wanted to know Chale was dead.
“How about… untying me?” Chale grumbled, with a squirm of discomfort that had him hissing in pain.
Michael and Damion both smiled, and in unison wind-walked to Chale’s side. “I’ll take him to Sunrise right away,” Michael said, cutting the restraints around Chale’s arms. “He needs immediate medical attention.”
“How about not talking about me like I’m already dead,” Chale complained. “I’m not, in case you didn’t notice.” He eyed Damion, sucking in a wheezy breath, before adding, “I kicked that witch’s hot, little ass, even with my hands tied.”
“How do you still have attitude?” Damion asked, as he and Michael each grabbed one of Chale’s arms and helped him stand up.
“It’s a gift,” Chale whispered. “One that really pissed Lucian off.” He wheezed. “Ate… that shit… up.”
A tight ball formed in Damion’s chest. “For once, no jokes.” He didn’t even try to keep the snap out of the order. War was serious, deadly, and joking got you killed. Damion had learned that the hard way, the day his baby brother had died. His brother had been just like Chale, a smart-ass, even as he’d been wheeled toward the ambulance after the car accident. Next time I’m driving, Damion, he’d said. You need training wheels. But there had been no next time. “Lucian would have killed you in the blink of an eye.”
“Are we talking about the Lucian I think we’re talking about?” Michael asked sharply, ignoring the rest of the exchange.
Chale’s head dropped and lifted. “Yeah,” he said in a barely there voice. “Not Zodius we are dealing with. Don’t know who… they are… besides ass… holes.”
Michael’s eyes sought Damion’s, steely with demand, though his voice was low, without emotion. “We need to know who we’re dealing with here. And we need to know now. If you can’t find out, if your morals keep you from pressing…” Translation, make Lara talk, or he would.
“I’m handling it,” Damion said tightly. Michael wasn’t getting anywhere near Lara. “And how you manage to have a Lifebond who is full of those so-called ‘morals’ and not find any yourself, I will never know.”
“Cassandra is a constant reminder of what I have to protect, and why I’m not ready to die. If that means pressing one woman beyond your comfort zone, then so be it.”
“And if that woman were Cassandra?” he demanded. “Would you press her then?” He had no idea where that had come from, the comparison of Lara to Michael’s Lifebond, but it jolted him to the core, and apparently, it got Michael’s and Chale’s attention as well.
“What are you saying?” Michael asked. “That Lara is your—”
“I’m saying she’s hands-off,” Damion said. “Mine to deal with.” He cut a look between the two men. “Chale needs a doctor. Get him out of here.”
“Yeah,” Chale agreed softly. “Good… idea.”
Michael studied Damion a moment longer. “Jesse and Houston have the exterior of the cabin covered. I’ll contact you as soon as Chale’s in surgery.” And then he was gone, fading into the wind, Chale with him.
For a moment Damion stood there, thinking about his reference to Cassandra. Correction. His comparison of Cassandra to Lara. He remembered Sterling doing something similar with his new Lifebond, Becca, before they were fully bonded. Damion’s hand covered his face. Lara couldn’t be…
The thought was lost to a sharp prick of warning, a premonition of trouble. His gaze jerked to the cabin door, which sat dangerously open, an invitation to a wind-walker. Everything seemed to go into slow motion as wind gushed through the entryway, and at the same moment, the elevator dinged.
Lara. And whoever was in that wind had come for her.
Backing up to the elevator door, Damion reached behind him, withdrew the two guns resting there, and stiff-armed them in front of him. The elevator doors creaked and opened slowly—too damn slowly to suit Damion, who fully intended to grab Lara and wind-walk her the hell out of here. A plan that shattered into a million pieces when three things happened at once. Sabrina appeared by the cabin door and slammed it shut, sealing out the wind he needed for escape. Lucian materialized in front of Damion, two of his own weapons aimed at him. The doors behind him fully opened.
“It’s a good day to die, Lucian,” Damion declared, praying Lara had the sense to stay behind him. “Take a step closer. Just lean closer, and give me a reason to show you just how good.”
“I still have my GTECH armor,” Lucian said, looking amused. “Your bullets can’t hurt me, but mine can hurt you. I have Green Hornets. We want Lara.”
“And the Russian wanted to see his kids tonight, but he won’t have that pleasure, now will he?” Damion’s hand lifted, his aim now at Lucian’s forehead, a vulnerable spot, and they both knew it. “I’m a bulls-eye shot, so I say to you again—give me a reason to prove it.”
He’d barely issued the warning when the sound of the windows shattering cracked through the air behind Lucian, to the left and the right, and blessed strands of wind mixed with the glass. Thank you, Jesse and Houston. Damion fired at Lucian, or rather, at empty air. Lucian had faded into the wind—and holy shit—Damion knew where Lucian was going to reappear. In the elevator with Lara… to kill her. And Lara couldn’t wind-walk to safety.
CHAPTER TEN
Lara launched herself toward the elevator exit, not about to risk the seconds a failed wind-walk would cost her with Lucian coming for her. Even if she got off the lethal head shot it would take to put him down, she wasn’t likely to escape injury herself.
At the same moment she moved toward Damion, he rotated toward her, and in doing so, made the potentially lethal choice of giving Sabrina his back. Never slowing, acting on pure instinct honed from years of training, Lara recalculated her actions, taking the risk Sabrina represented into consideration. Rather than avoiding Damion’s weapons and ducking, she ran straight at him, their eyes locking in a second of understanding before they both began firing to the sides and behind one another. The instant their bodies collided and a solid connection formed, Damion wind-walked them out of the cabin.
They materialized moments later, breaking apart, each using their guns to scan for danger, and finding all was clear. Lara found herself on top of a hill. The cabin was a mere speck in the dim glow of newly formed moonlight and stars.
“My men will keep Lucian and Sabrina occupied for a while,” Damio
n said, shoving one of his weapons in his back waistband, the other in the holster under his pant leg. “But they won’t give up, Lara. Lucian and Sabrina are going to keep coming until you die, or they die trying to kill you.”
Yes. They wanted her dead. Not just Sabrina now, but Lucian—Lucian was Powell’s personal bodyguard, whom Powell presumably trusted. Lara let her weapons fall to her sides, squeezing her eyes shut as the adrenaline of battle faded, and her headache returned with nauseating intensity. Or maybe this time it was the hum of defeat.
“What is it they don’t want you to tell me, Lara?” Damion asked.
With a twist in her gut, she turned away from him, offering him her profile, pretending to stare at the stars and moon, before she did something stupid like actually tell him about Serenity. She couldn’t do that. Wanting to trust Damion and doing so were two different things. She’d trusted Powell, even Sabrina. Now… she didn’t even know if she could trust herself.
“I know you aren’t working for Adam,” Damion said. “Not with Lucian involved.”
She had no idea what Lucian’s history with Adam was, but apparently, it wasn’t good. “You guessed wrong,” she said, training telling her to deny, divert, and repackage her cover.
Tense seconds ticked by, and though she didn’t look at him, she could feel his gaze—heavy and probing. He didn’t believe the picture she was painting. She wouldn’t have believed her either. It was time to leave him now, time to escape, and go on her own.
“Talk to me, Lara,” Damion urged, pulling her from her thoughts back to the moment. “Before more people die.”
“More?” she asked, daring a look at him, and trying not to sound as affected as she felt. “Who died? Not your Renegade friend, right? Your people came and saved him.” She shouldn’t care about the Renegade named Chale, nor the fact that he was injured because of her. He was, after all, Renegade. But she did care, and she cared that he mattered to Damion.
“He’s been taken to Sunrise City and into surgery.”
“He’s GTECH though,” she said relieved. “He’ll be okay.”
“GTECHs aren’t indestructible, especially where Green Hornets are concerned. Your friends pumped him full of them.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not possible. We don’t have Green Hornets.”
“The bullets in Chale’s gut say differently. I guess Adam, or whoever you work for, only gives his favorites the good bullets. Clearly you aren’t one of his favorites, at least, not anymore. I guess you should have killed the Russian.”
She drew her spine stiff. “I know what you’re doing,” she said. “And fishing isn’t your sport. Maybe you should try hunting, and preferably, something other than me this time.”
“Let’s hunt the people trying to kill you, Lara,” he said, reaching for her before she could stop him and pulling her close, lowering his voice. “Together. We’ll do this together. Tell me what I need to know, and let’s go get them before they get you.”
Lara would have shoved him away, but the guns in her hands were a disadvantage, unless she wanted to shoot him and… she lost the thought as sudden realization overcame her. The pain in her head was easing with Damion’s touch, as it had in the bathroom. If she stayed, she would give him her trust. It was almost out of her control, it was so certain. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’re in this thing too deep,” he said, his hands reaching down to her gun, closing around her hands where they clutched the steel. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t even trust you,” she said. “Why would I want your help?”
“Yet you called Caleb. You were worried about me.”
“Self-preservation,” she countered in what was only a half truth. She had been worried about him, and not in a small way. “I had a better chance of getting out of there alive with you, than without you.”
“Then you’ll understand me wanting you to put the guns down,” he said. “Self-preservation and all.”
“I thought you wanted me to shoot you?”
“Not so much right now.”
“Fine,” she said, bending her knees and disposing of the weapons on the ground. Then, straightening, her gaze lingered on his chest, avoiding eye contact for fear he’d read her sudden agreeability for what it was—a plan to attempt wind-walking to a public place where guns wouldn’t be acceptable. “I don’t have a macho complex like you do.”
“Just a Renegade complex,” he said, his hands settling on her waist. “I’d think the fact that we saved your life and that your people tried to kill you would have changed that.”
Her gaze jerked to his, her hands covering his at her waist, intending to remove them. “You want something from me. They don’t want me to give it to you. Let’s not pretend that protecting me is anything but what it is.”
He studied her a long moment, calculating, shifting to a topic he clearly believed would get to her. “They killed the Russian,” he said. “He’s dead.”
Her fingers, still covering his, tightened uncontrollably before she could stop them. Damn it! His kids, his wife. Her heart bled at the idea that they’d seen it happen, or that they, too, were dead, but she didn’t dare ask Damion. Already she’d showed her hand. Already he believed she was working for someone other than Adam. She still clung to hope that she worked for the good guys, yet she didn’t want Damion to be the enemy either.
“The family’s safe,” he said, seeming to read her silent questions. “Under our protection and about to get the bad news, if they haven’t already.”
So they hadn’t seen it happen. Lara squeezed her eyes shut, relieved, but rattled by the fact that Damion had read her hot points so well. There was only one way she was going to keep this man—this Renegade—at a distance, to sort through fact and fiction before she told him everything, regardless of consequence.
She inhaled, and ironically, his touch had made her stronger, her head clearer. At least right now, she wasn’t hallucinating. She wasn’t seeing flashes of images. She wasn’t even dizzy as she had been during her previous failed attempts to wind-walk. Maybe… just maybe… she could pull off an escape.
Not giving herself time to think about what happened if she failed, or what would happen when he followed her, and she knew he would, Lara willed the wind to her. The familiar tingling sensation slid into her limbs, a moment before she faded into its depths.
Lara materialized several minutes later in the alley behind the mall, out of sight. At least now she knew the wind-walking disability came with the dizziness. In its absence she was still mobile, but then, so was Damion. Her skills were back. Her head was clear. She had a window of opportunity to decipher fact from fiction, friends from enemies, Damion included. If he was intentionally using some GTECH skill to create her illness, she had no idea how close he had to be to do it. She didn’t linger, didn’t dare, knowing he’d be seconds behind her. Rushing onto the sidewalk speckled with shoppers, she charged toward the mall’s main entrance, stumbling slightly as the hum in her head returned with full force, a rush of dizziness suffusing her.
She shoved it aside and entered the mall, urgently maneuvering to get out of the main corridor, and any chance of being within Damion’s visual. Darting inside a large department store to her left, she headed past the makeup counters and straight to women’s clothing.
Grabbing a few things off the racks—jeans and T-shirts—that she could change into, she headed toward the dressing rooms, which were unattended. As she hurried down the hall, she realized that the idea of changing clothes, and her appearance, though a good one, was hampered by a problem—she had no money, no purse, no resources—but she knew how to create an identity, even garner credit cards. She just had to get out of this mall and get to work.
Lara swayed, her steps uneven, but she didn’t dare stop walking until she was at the room farthest from the entrance. She could feel the mental images, or hallucinations, or whatever these episodes were, coming on again. The f
act that Damion wasn’t here and couldn’t be intentionally causing them was cold comfort. Or could he? How powerful was he? Enough to attack her mind from a distance?
Desperateness rose inside her to find a place that was secure where she could try to sleep off her weakness, a place where she wouldn’t end up in a ball on the floor in public.
She opened the dressing room door and struggled with the slide lock, which didn’t fit together properly, until she just gave up. At least it was a solid door, not a curtain.
Lara tried to hang the clothes on the wall hook, missing, but not caring. She couldn’t settle onto the built-in bench fast enough. The hum in her head, in her ears, grew louder again, inescapable, and she had the impression of having a bad seat in a small plane.
Drawing her knees to her chest, she used them as a pillow, letting her head droop and her lashes lower. She just needed to rest a second, hide here until Damion gave up on the search for her. Out of sight, out of mind. Yes. Perfect. She’d rest, and he’d give up searching. If he was near, if he was causing this, maybe he’d just pass her by, and she’d be okay again.
No way was Damion allowing Lara to get away from him. There were too many unanswered questions about what she was involved in, and truth be told, this reached beyond duty and honor. Everything male inside him screamed “find her and protect her,” and yes, “mine” in a ridiculous, primal way—feelings that were really going to bite him in the backside if she betrayed him.
Determined, driven to find her, he walked through the entrance to the mall and into the scurry of busy shoppers without really seeing them, stretching his mental feelers for Lara, seeking the familiar strand of energy a Tracker used to locate a target, usually an injured GTECH who couldn’t maintain their shields, betting that Lara didn’t have hers up. And if Damion could find her, so could Lucian.