“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.