by Lora Leigh
have just let Thor carry her bags last night after all. Then she could have gotten used to that edge of suspicion in their gazes.
She couldn’t deny the charge though. The sudden opportunity the wounds provided her couldn’t be wasted. That didn’t mean she had to take Aaron’s insults.
His eyes opened slowly. “If you were a man . . .”
“What?” She actually laughed at him. “I kicked your ass the last time, Aaron. You’re stronger, but I’m smaller, and your balls are damned vulnerable. Remember that one.”
His nostrils flared with instinctive anger before he glared at her with silent resentment.
“Anyone else?” She met each man’s gaze steadily.
“That’s all well and good, Di,” Brick said softly. “You control the money and you can put us on the ground, we get that. But there are other ways to be weak, and right now, those Breeds are making you weak.”
Diane shrugged. “Your opinion. Now, I hope you all enjoy your vacation. I intend to enjoy mine.”
“We will.” Malcolm nodded slowly, the amused quirk at his lips only slightly mocking. “We might be available when you call us back.”
“Your choice,” Diane assured him, as though she didn’t doubt for a moment they would all jump at her command.
Turning her gaze to Thor she lifted her brow inquisitively. “You have anything to say?”
Thor nodded slowly as he watched her, his eyes narrowed, the icy blue intent, thoughtful. What that nod meant, she wasn’t certain and she wasn’t about to ask.
“I’ll be waiting, boss,” he finally stated. “I suck at vacations, just like the rest of these morons do.” He nodded at the other men. “But today ain’t my stupid day, so I’ll just say we’ll miss you.”
She almost grinned. Damn smart-ass. At least they didn’t suspect her of having plans of her own. After the meeting with Jonas, she would head out and see if Honor Roberts was where she suspected her to be, without anyone being the wiser.
If Lawe wanted to convince himself that she was on her way to Sanctuary, then hell, whatever helped him sleep at night, right?
But she wasn’t going to Sanctuary.
She was going hunting.
And she would go alone. Her uncle had trained her how to protect herself first. How to track alone, hunt alone, how to slip out of sight and do what had to be done if something happened and his men weren’t with her.
Working alone wasn’t her preferred course, but the only man she trusted at this point was Lawe. And Lawe would never allow the hunt for which she was preparing.
Malcolm drew her attention. “I wonder how long your Breed has been watching your back. I wondered how we were all so damned lucky these past six months. A few of those jobs you took us on should have been suicide missions. His Breeds were protecting us though, weren’t they?”
“Not to my knowledge at the time, Malcolm, but if he and his men want to save us from a few bullets, then that suits me fine.”
Malcolm gave a mocking snort. “Didn’t save us this time, did he? Makes me wonder if maybe he didn’t arrange it. Keeps you out of the line of fire, doesn’t it?”
It did.
“Only for the moment,” she told him shortly. “That I promise you, only for the moment.”
•CHAPTER 5•
Lawe had been watching her all along.
She hadn’t been protecting herself and her men as she had assumed. Her careful preparations and alternate plans could only lend confidence to her men if no one interfered.
Lawe had interfered.
That knowledge swept over her once she had her men taken care of and returned to their rooms with medics.
The old-fashioned bullet wound was cleaned and the bullet dug out of hard male muscle and flesh and bandaged within the hour. The Breed heli-jet was on its way from Sanctuary and it would fly her men home before returning to fly her and Rachel back to Sanctuary.
Or so Lawe and Jonas thought.
She sat back in the wing-backed chair in the living area of the lower-floor penthouse suite Jonas and Rachel had taken at the hotel, after the attack on Diane and her men. She knew other high-level Breeds were now in residence as well. It was becoming a damned Breed military stronghold. With one boot-shod foot propped on the coffee table, her elbow propped on the arm while her chin rested in her palm, Diane watched silently as Jonas and Lawe talked on the other side of the room.
Her sister stood next to her mate, and unlike Jonas and Lawe, watched Diane worriedly. Her sister knew her. Diane’s lips quirked at the thought. Rachel would know damned good and well that Diane wouldn’t be going anywhere near Sanctuary.
But Rachel hadn’t come over to her since they had arrived in the room either. She stood next to her mate, silently aligning with him, and for the first time, Diane realized that her sister no longer turned to her first.
Lawe had a team of highly trained covert Breeds trailing her for—she didn’t know how long, she thought as she watched them.
Oh yes, she did know. Because she knew how long it had been since she had so much as scratched herself during a mission. She hadn’t been wounded on a mission since the night Lawe and a very small team of men had rescued her from the Middle East dungeon she had been held in. Bar fights, though, were another story. Diane had been recovering from a bar fight in Asia when Thor had told her about Brandenmore’s nearly successful abduction of her niece.
Come to think of it, she had taken a few brawling injuries since her abduction and what she suspected was Lawe’s decision to place a team on her for protection. Those injuries had involved bar fights—usually begun by Malcolm the hothead.
Diane had immediately pulled out of the current job, returned the client’s advance and walked out on his screaming insistence that she make the scheduled pickup Thor had arranged. She had flown straight to the States and immediately begun shadowing her sister.
It had been weeks of hell afterward as she attempted to follow Rachel and provide backup for the Breeds attempting to protect her.
Thor had replaced the stitches in her leg more than once, cursed her for her stubbornness and railed at her when she had collapsed in exhaustion.
And when Lawe had found out, he’d nearly gone ballistic.
She clearly remembered walking away from him as he growled in rage at the two Breeds who had been part of her team at that time.
Those Breeds had since left and joined Sanctuary. She’d been smart enough to confront them and demand their loyalty when she’d learned Lawe expected them to tattle on every move she made. That demand had been one they had been unable to meet. Their first loyalty, they had informed her, was to their people. Diane suspected they had already assumed she was Lawe’s mate. That meant their highest priority was her protection.
Diane had already begun to suspect there was something drawing them together that wasn’t entirely normal.
Mating heat.
And she’d made it a point, just as it seemed he had, to steer clear of any chance of it flaring to full, burning life.
How long had it been since he had taken her out of that hellhole? Sixteen months? There were times she still felt as though she were recovering from the weeks she had been held and questioned about her deceased uncle and his activities before his death.
And since that rescue, she hadn’t been wounded once conducting a mission.
It was no damned wonder the Bureau of Breed Affairs was coming up short on Enforcers to spread around on the missions they were contracted for. They were sending their Enforcers on too many damned personal missions, she thought caustically.
And she hadn’t put two and two together and come up with four by herself in all these months. She felt the sting of self-disgust at that thought.
She had seen the looks in her men’s eyes earlier and she knew they too had sized up the situation correctly.
Lawe had had a team covering her without their knowledge too. Which meant they were more than damned good.
They were dam
ned fucking good.
The number of “accidents” had increased though. The knife wound during a bar fight, a fall from a cliff when her equipment had mysteriously failed.
The first time Rachel had needed her, just after she had learned she was pregnant while in Switzerland, Diane had been in Syria having the shit beat out of her.
The second time, when Amber had been taken by Brandenmore that evening, Diane had been recovering from a knife wound inflicted during a bar fight.
The third time, when that deadbeat bastard who fathered Amber was attempting to legally take Amber from her mother, Diane had been recovering from injuries sustained when her equipment had failed during a mountain climb.
Strangely her so-called accidents coincided with events that had involved her sister or her niece at a time when they had needed her most.
And she was piecing this together finally why?
Because only this past week, after the Executioner—which was what they called Gideon Cross—left that message for her in Argentina had she begun to suspect that one of her men could be attempting to ensure she was no longer a part of her sister’s life, or her protection.
She simply couldn’t make herself consider Thor, for the simple fact that he had been the one to pull her ass out every time. But, neither could she make herself completely trust him either.
“Did you know they were on my ass?” she asked Thor as he stood silently behind her, his arms crossed over his chest as he too watched the small group.
“Nope. Didn’t,” he said shortly.
He was pissed, but he wasn’t the only one. The rest of her men were as well.
Aaron, Brick and Malcolm were in the other room. Aaron had taken a bullet to the thigh, Malcolm had taken one to the back of his leg. Brick had taken one across his outer thigh, a flesh wound that required advanced skin patches along with two stitches. He had stated he was just too damned disgusted to put up with Breeds tonight. Thor had insisted on staying with her. As though she needed someone to protect her.
Had her command already begun breaking down, or was Thor more concerned with any information that he may miss?
He was the one she trusted the most. He helped plan every mission, knew every move she made and was the one most insistent that she never went anywhere, or did anything, alone.
And she had a spy close to her.
“I didn’t even suspect they were there until they started pouring out of the woodwork like cockroaches today,” she muttered resentfully.
“That’s not the only problem we have,” Thor said softly. “I don’t like surprises. I checked our rooms while they were treating the others. We were bugged, and they weren’t Breed devices.”
So that was why he had slipped away from the rest of the group.
“Why?” she asked. “What made you suspect we were bugged?”
“Because whoever the fuck was out there trying to put a hole in your head knew exactly what time to be waiting on you.” Low and rumbling with fury, his voice rasped above her. “We never leave at the same time, we never take the same exits twice. There’s no fucking way to predict your movements, boss. That’s why we follow you rather than lead, because only you know which way we’re going.”
That had been her uncle’s way as well.
“Were you able to identify the device?” she asked.
“Not yet, but I’m working on it,” he told her.
She nodded slowly as Lawe’s head suddenly jerked around, his blue eyes narrowing on her and Thor.
“You’re not going back to Sanctuary,” Thor stated, the suspicion in his tone assuring her that he didn’t entirely believe the plan she had given him.
“Yes, until more information comes in.”
She hated lying to him. Thor was the one she knew the best. He was the one who had arrived with her uncle when her parents were killed, the one who had helped her uncle slip them out of the States and into Africa when her and Rachel’s safety had been at risk.
She frowned at that.
Her uncle, Colt Broen, had taken her and Rachel to the only place he’d been certain they would be safe while he investigated their parents’ death.
“I’m meeting with my contact at midnight. He called. There’s a report you have a shadow on your tail,” Thor told her. “He heard about the shooting and informed me someone is trying to separate you from your team but we haven’t sussed out the reason why. Something’s not right here, Di, you know that.”
“Let me know before you leave and I want your report the minute that meeting is over,” she ordered. “Keep working on why someone wants to separate me from my men.”
“I’m all that’s left to cover your back, Di,” he stated worriedly. “Don’t do something stupid and run off on your own.”
If she knew Thor, then he knew her just as well. That could become a problem when she made her own move and headed west.
“Don’t worry, Thor,” she murmured, covering her lips with her fingers as her sister looked back to her once again. “I’m trying really hard not to do stupid things this month.”
He grunted in disbelief at the comment.
Lawe moved from Jonas and Rachel before she could say anything more, striding to where she sat and stopping only inches from her as he stared back at Thor with icy intensity.
“I guess he wants me to leave, boss,” Thor drawled, his tone thick with sarcasm.
Diane let her lips curve into a cold smile.
“We’ll finalize the arrangements later, Thor.” She covered their conversation, her voice low as she remained locked with Lawe’s gaze. “Make certain you have the accounts in order and let the accountant know we’ll have to change our appointment to tomorrow evening.”
They didn’t really have an appointment yet, but it was the best she could do on such notice. “Got it, boss.” Thor nodded sharply, gave Lawe a hard glare then turned and walked quickly to the door.