Without being ordered to do so, Mica rolled to the side of the wall, flipped the comforter back from her face, and stared at the scene before her in shock.
Mica crouched, the large, laser-powered handgun clenched in his hand as the bedroom door flew open.
Cougar stood in the doorway, his gaze narrowed on the room, obviously taking in the fact that she and Navarro had been doing a hell of a lot more than discussing the weather.
“We have company,” he growled. “We have a vehicle waiting for us outside the fire entrance, but we have only seconds to get there before our friends show up. Let’s roll.”
Before she could move to extricate herself from the comforter, Navarro was jerking it from around her, even as he shoved the thick robe into her hands and grabbed the packs of weapons and supplies he’d thrown to the floor earlier.
Having jerked the robe on, Mica was tying it quickly as Navarro grabbed her hand and began pulling her through the door that opened from the bedroom portion of the suite into the empty hallway.
“Jonas has feelers out in the city,” Cougar stated, voice hard as they pushed through the stairwell. “Word came through minutes ago that they’d located us, the name of the hotel and the suite you were in.”
“And how the fuck did they find us?” Danger thickened Navarro’s voice.
“He hasn’t learned anything further.” Cougar pushed communications headsets into both their hands as they moved quickly down the stairs.
Mica had trained with them, but she wasn’t as good as even the lowest, youngest Breed. She couldn’t put that damned headset on and activate it as they rushed down the stairs.
She was aware of Navarro doing it, his hard voice rumbling as he requested Jonas.
The night wasn’t over, she thought. It was going to be wet out. Wet and cold, and she didn’t have shoes or clothes. She had no defenses, nothing but Navarro to protect her.
And it looked as though whoever was after her was damned serious. They were going against Breeds to take her.
“Get her out of town. We’ll cover the hotel once you leave and attempt to neutralize them, but we’re working blind. We have no idea where they are, what they know, or who they are,” Jonas stated as Navarro pulled Mica behind him down the stairwell to the vehicle waiting outside the doors.
“Stygian will follow you until you pass the tunnel, after that you’ll be on your own. Get to base two, that’s the closest point of safety for her. As soon as we can, we’ll have a heli-jet out to you.”
Base two being Sanctuary. As Jonas stated, it was the closest, safest point.
“Navarro out.” He cut the transmission as they hit the final floor and Cougar moved carefully to the exit door.
Pulling Mica against the wall, Navarro waited, his weapon ready as the door was eased open.
“Clear.” A dark, low snarl in the dark.
A Breed’s anger was typified by a snarl, a growl, or a rumble of danger. For a Cougar Breed, though, to show any of the three meant the situation had already passed the point of pissing him off.
The door was open just enough to allow them to pass through, and a second later Mica was pushed into the back of the dark SUV, lying full length along the back while Navarro sat imperiously in the upright seat beside her.
“This is ridiculous,” she stated as the vehicle pulled away from the hotel in a sedate, unhurried manner. “It would look much better if a couple were sitting up front.”
How the hell she had become stuck lying down while he sat like the reigning Breed prince, she hadn’t quite figured out.
Navarro snorted at the statement. “The impression is one of wealth,” he informed her. “A driver and his employer in the back. The impression is less suspicious than a couple, especially when they’re looking for a woman.”
Her lips thinned. “Is Jonas still on link?” She hadn’t bothered to pull the communications set on or activate it.
Navarro gave a quick shake of his head. “We’re on communication blackout until we reach Sanctuary, except for emergency. Bitching about the riding conditions doesn’t constitute an emergency.”
She rolled to her side and stared back at him. For all appearances, he wasn’t the same Breed that had been between her thighs driving her crazy with pleasure minutes before. And she was obviously not the same woman, because she hadn’t so much as ached as she strained toward him. Now her ribs were simply giving her hell. As were the questions that had raged through her mind earlier.
“Why?” she suddenly asked. “Why would they want me so bad they’d risk going against Breeds to capture me?”
CHAPTER 4
It wasn’t her they wanted.
Navarro glanced down at her. Her pale face, the soft green of her eyes, the dark blond hair splayed around her, disheveled and falling around her like thousands of tiny ribbons, straight and tempting with their silken sheen.
As beautiful as she was, as intelligent, it wasn’t necessarily Mica they wanted. It was Phillip Brandenmore. Somehow, the bastard had managed to escape Sanctuary’s secured cells, and for over twelve hours he had been free. Long enough to contact the men he had been working with, long enough to tell them he wasn’t dead and where he had been. Long enough that before he was recaptured, he’d managed to create a mess Jonas still hadn’t been able to clean up.
That was why they wanted Mica. She was the only weak link within the main hierarchy of the Breed societies. She wasn’t a Breed, but she was Cassie Sinclair’s best friend and Dash Sinclair’s goddaughter.
If they had Mica, then they would try to use her to secure Brandenmore’s release, as well as the research he was demanding from the Breeds. Research they didn’t have.
In Brandenmore’s crazed state, he refused to believe that research didn’t exist.
“No answer?” The edge of fear in her voice, the scent of her still-simmering arousal mixed with that fear, had his fingers clenching on the hilt of the weapon he held at the side of his leg.
“It’s not a question I can answer,” he corrected her. “Jonas doesn’t share the details with his enforcers, Mica. Sometimes, he just gives the orders.”
That wasn’t necessarily the truth. Jonas hadn’t told him why, but he hadn’t needed to. Navarro had known Mica would be at risk. That was the reason he’d made certain his comm link was tuned to Wyatt’s. If it happened, he wanted to know.
“Sometimes he just fucks lives up too,” she retorted, anger flashing across her expression now and filling her scent.
God knew he preferred her anger over her fear. For some reason the scent of her fear seemed an affront that threatened to send him into a rage.
He, who had been created and trained to have no emotions period. And for the better part of his life, he’d assumed his creation and his training had been successful.
Until he had laid eyes on her, ten years before, no more than a child herself, facing off against irate young Breed males with nothing more than bravado and fury.
He heard the heavy sigh she tried to hide, and fought to keep from comforting her. Hell, he wanted to pull her into his arms, warm her, ease her, and it simply wasn’t possible.
He couldn’t risk her being seen. He could risk no suspicion whatsoever that she was in the vehicle, heading for Sanctuary.
“I should have stayed at Haven,” she finally said softly.
“Why didn’t you?” She would have been safe there. There would have been no way in hell the group searching for her could have reached her inside the main compound protected by the majority of the Wolf Breeds in existence.
Looking down at her, he saw the flash of vulnerability in her gaze, the aching need, the feminine awareness of an attraction she couldn’t fight.