“How do you think this will convince me to let you shed it instead, Dane?” Quizzically, she watched him, seeing the calculation, the gentle manipulations the Breed used as others would use a weapon. Efficiently, unmercifully.
“I was merely hoping.” He shrugged.
“Strangely,” she told him, “I really don’t give a fuck who cuts his throat, as long as someone does. And as long as they wait until I get the answers I want. Then I don’t care how he’s sent to hell.”
“Understandable,” he agreed before breathing in deeply and straightening against the wall. “Do me a favor, dear, don’t tell anyone but your mate I was here, if you don’t mind. I rather enjoy my American family, and learning who you saw the night your contact met with Dog and me could endanger our slowly merging bonds.” His grin was mocking. Too mocking.
“None of my business, Dane,” she promised him. “As long as Jonas gets what he wants and my parents walk away from this, then it’s really none of my business.”
“And they deserve to walk away?” he asked as she turned to leave.
Gypsy lowered her head, all too aware of the fact that she’d linked her fingers in front of herself nervously.
“They don’t deserve it,” she answered honestly. “But no one was hurt, Dane. No harm was done. And I don’t think I could survive seeing them punished when I should have known what was happening. When I should have remembered what Mark was trying to tell me.”
If she had, then she would never have spent nine years believing in a guilt she hadn’t owned. And maybe, just maybe, her mother wouldn’t have ended up hating her.
With that, she turned and moved along the short hall to the main room of the facility where her parents were being held. There, Lawe and Diane waited along with half a dozen Breeds to escort her back to the hotel.
“Ready?” Lawe came to his feet, his expression concerned.
“I’m ready.” She nodded before turning to Diane. “Has my sister been found?”
“She’s still at the hotel.” Diane nodded. “She’s refusing to see them.”
Gypsy understood that one. She wished she had stayed at the hotel herself now.
“Has anyone contacted Jonas yet?” she asked Lawe then, knowing Dane had been there for a reason.
Lawe grimaced. “Sorry, Gypsy, not yet. Are you sure they will?”
She nodded shortly, remembering the look in Dane’s eyes as she turned away from him.
He was a calculating son of a bitch, she suspected, but his compassion, the empathy she sensed he felt and his love for not just his species, but also the family he spoke of, had been like a flame refusing to be quenched.
“They will,” she stated resolutely. “Someone will. They can’t afford not to.” Then, squaring her shoulders, she moved for the door. “I need to leave now, there are things I have to do.”
She had to see a man about a betrayal and the blood he owed her. But first, she had to find the man stroking her senses from a distance that should have made such a thing impossible.
The Breed who owned her heart.
...
Rule stepped into Jonas’s suite, finding the director instantly where he stood, staring through the tall windows onto the desert below.
“I should fucking kill you.” The animalistic growl in Jonas’s voice should have filled him with wariness. It was a sign, a signal that Jonas could be making a trip to a hungry volcano very soon.
He wasn’t a fit meal for Madame Lava, though, Rule assured himself as he stared at the stiff set of the other Breed’s shoulders.
“You have all the information he has, Jonas,” Rule assured him. “I’m certain of it. There’s nothing the Unknown, or the Bengal Judd has, that can help Amber or the Bureau.”
“And you know this as a fact, how?” Jonas turned then, the pupils of his eyes obliterated by the dark, stormy swirls of color flickering there.
Freaky as shit, Rule had always thought, but he was used to it.
“I made sure of it,” he reminded the director. “It’s all in my report. Nine years’ worth of notes as well as everything Judd stole from those labs. He was never a threat or a link back to Gideon. He was a tool, nothing more. He drew Gideon here but you and I both know that Judd can’t force Gideon to show himself. If Gideon wanted him dead, then no doubt, he’d be dead.”
Aristocratic nostrils flared as Jonas’s features seemed to tighten further. Rule couldn’t detect any emotion, tension or intent in the Breed. It was rare that Jonas let anything free with anyone except his mate and his child.
“Do you know what Gideon was in those labs?” Jonas asked then.
“A guinea pig?” Rule had a feeling he was not far from the actual answer, though.
Jonas inclined his head in agreement. “Of sorts,” he revealed before stepping forward and moving to his desk.
Not that the danger was past, Rule knew better than that. The animal Jonas was lurked far too close to the skin.
Moving to the comfortable desk chair, Jonas took a seat and stared up at him for long moments before nodding to the chair across from him.
Rule sat down slowly.
“Gideon, like many Breeds actually, was simply exceptional in his creation. What made Gideon unique, though, was the fact that rather than living up to his killer genetics, his mind took a far different route.”
Jonas paused, his lips pursing for long moments before he relaxed back in the chair and turned slowly to stare back at the windows. Rule glanced that way, wondering what drew the director’s attention.
“Do you feel him watching?” Jonas asked quietly then.
“Gideon?” Rule asked.
The Breed nodded. “He watches, waits, and I suspect he listens as well.” Turning back, Jonas glared back at Rule. “He wants Judd bad, Rule. He thinks Judd took something that belongs to him. He would draw him out.”
Rule shook his head. “Gideon’s been here for a while now, Jonas. If he wanted Judd, then he would have had him. Now what are you trying to decide to tell me where Gideon is concerned?”
Jonas’s expression never changed. “Gideon’s genetics held a single ancestor known for his exceptional intelligence and driving curiosity in the world of science. It was Gideon who helped on each phase of the Brandenmore serum. He knows the code, the formulas, the encryption, and I suspect that if he wanted to, and likely he has, he could re-create it exactly from memory alone.”
Rule sat back, surprised. “This isn’t in his file.”
Disgust flickered in Jonas’s gaze. “Is that information I would allow free, Rule?”
“No, it isn’t,” Rule agreed. “But information I should have known. With the game you’re playing with Gideon, sending me against him without that information was stupid.”
Jonas’s brows lifted. “Do you think I wanted you to bring him in?”
Rule nearly chuckled. “No, Jonas, whatever game you’re playing has nothing to do with capturing Gideon. So why not tell me what you are after?”
“My daughter’s life.” Jonas straightened in his chair. “Nothing more, Rule, nothing less.”
And that was such a lie Rule swore he could nearly catch the scent of it. But he merely nodded. He had a feeling he knew what Jonas was after and if he was right, then the game the director was playing would be far more reaching than anyone imagined.
“I want Stygian to take two teams and head to the safe house we set up for his mate. I then want two teams to take Claire to the one we set up for her as well. I want it taken care of tonight.”
“Very well.” Rule nodded. “But tell me, when Gideon makes the move you’re after, Jonas, how will you ensure he survives?”