by Lora Leigh
e knew it. Her father knew where it was hidden, and how he had hidden it. He had died to keep it secret.
"It wouldn't take Einstein to figure out he entrusted me with it." She shrugged easily. "I wasn't there, the chip wasn't there, and one and one equals two. Big deal."
Marx laughed. "And Daddy died begging us for his life and swearing to make you give it up to us. Don't bother lying, sweetie, we know you hid it. Just tell us where it's hid."
Her gaze flicked to Gena, catching the other woman staring suspiciously out the picture window behind Storme's chair.
"They're out there, aren't they?" she asked the other woman softly. "Styx isn't dead, Gena. I'm his mate. He'll never let me go."
She would have laughed at her own statement if they hadn't seem so damned serious about it.
It was beginning to make her wonder. Hell, it might be scaring the hell out of her. Because she knew she wasn't his mate.
Gena's gaze flicked to the windows again.
"Ghost Team," Marx whispered. "They were the ones that came out at us when we tried to grab the felina and her brats."
"They've not found us." False bravado filled Gena's voice now. "We may not have gotten the prized princess or their brats, but we got this little whore. Once we get that chip ..."
Storme shook her head. "Styx has that chip, Gena."
"You're a lying little tramp!" Gena came to her feet in a burst of fury, came across the room and slapped Storme full across the face with all the fury of an enraged demon. "I want that fucking chip!" she screamed.
Storme could hear her ears ringing from the blow as the side of her face burned with a fiery numbness and the taste of blood filled her mouth where her lips had split against her teeth.
Storme blinked against the dizziness that filled her head and fought to hold on to her consciousness.
Swallowing tightly, she focused on Gena as she paced back to Marx, reached up, grabbed a handful of short hair and jerked his head down for a deep, tongue-tangling kiss.
Hell, maybe Storme would get lucky and they'd entertain themselves long enough for her to figure out a way to escape this time.
This was becoming ridiculous. In ten years she had never been captured until Styx had managed it. He had jinxed her or something, she decided. In ten years, she had never been so damned unlucky, and she had always been smarter than to allow herself to be caught the first time.
She had learned how to hide. She had changed her name several times, her hair. She had worn colored contact lenses and padded her clothing with shape-altering prosthetics. And still, sooner or later, she was always found, but she was never caught.
Through the years, there had been one constant though. No matter who found her, no matter the trouble she was in or how hot the situation, Gena had always managed to pull her ass out of the fire with a smile and a friendly warning to keep her head down.
At least, that was how Gena had made it appear. There had been times Storme couldn't figure out exactly how Gena pulled off some of the things she had pulled off to get Storme out of a tight situation, but now she knew. Because she had been slowly reeling Storme in, gaining her trust, believing Storme would betray her father and tell her best and only friend where the data chip had been hid.
Storme now thanked God that over the years she had never followed through with the urge to confide in the other woman.
"Storme, I will hurt you." Gena turned back to her, raging again. "Trust me, once Marx starts playing with you, you'll be begging me to let you tell me the location of that chip."
Gena's hazel green eyes narrowed, spat in fury and glittered with an almost insane rage. How in the hell had she managed to hide this side of herself from Storme for so long?
Oh yeah, right, they only saw each other a few days at a time, perhaps once a month. Gena had pretended to help her all these years, which likely made controlling it easier.
Storme forced herself to stand, aware of Gena and Marx watching her suspiciously. Pacing back to the glass doors, she stared into the night, watching, waiting.
"The past six years have been nothing but a lie." She turned back to the other woman quickly, but rather than catching any hint of guilt in Gena's expression, she found only mocking amusement mixed with the anger.
"You were eighteen when I found you outside that bar in Dallas," Gena sneered back at her. "Starving, dirty and stinking. Tell me, Storme, did you really think I helped you out of the kindness of my heart?"
There had been those who had tried to help her out of the kindness of their heart, and they had paid for it. Which left Storme staring into the face of the one person she had actually trusted until Styx.
How could she have been so wrong? And did it really matter now?
"It doesn't matter." Storme forced the words past her lips as she rubbed at her arms, feeling lost and alone. Styx wasn't out there, he wasn't going to rescue her or he would have already done so.
How was she going to face life without Styx now? Without the chance of feeling the warmth of his arms.
Rubbing at her arms, she felt the ache centered in the pit of her stomach, and could have sworn she felt the subtle taste of cinnamon in her mouth.
Why had it taken her so long to realize so much? "I trusted you," she whispered to the other woman as she stared into the dark once again and fought the overwhelming grief.
She had tried to assure herself he was okay. The few moments of consciousness before she'd fully awakened, she'd kept expecting that when she finally managed to escape the heavy darkness surrounding her, then Styx would be there.
But he wasn't here.
Gena and Marx had managed to destroy the beauty of the courtyard, as well as the security of Haven. Just as Gena had managed to destroy any security Storme had thought to find in the past years.
Gena's low rasp of laughter raked over her nerve endings.
"You trust too much in human compassion," the other woman informed her censoriously. "There is no such thing as that, just as there is no such thing as Breed mercy. I would have thought you had learned that lesson years ago, Storme. I kept expecting you to get a clue, and you never did."
Storme flinched at the sarcasm in Gena's voice while quickly considering her options, and the best route for escape.
"And the reason the Breeds and Council soldiers and Coyotes kept finding me was because of you." She should have realized that years ago. All the signs had been there, but as Gena had said, she just hadn't gotten a clue.
"Not hardly, sweetheart," Gena grunted. "The last thing I needed was a team of furry Breeds on your ass when the Council grew tired of trying to reason with you. I work for the Genetics Council, not those fucking upstarts that think they deserve some sort of respect." She sneered. "No, Storme, I'm no Breed lover. What I am, is your worst fucking nightmare if you don't tell me where you hid the information your father stole from those labs ten years ago." Her voice slowly rose until she was screaming and Storme turned to face her.
The business end of that damned laser-powered handgun stared back at her as Gena's face twisted with renewed fury and Marx glared at her as though she had actually cut his dick off rather than just wishing she could.
She was so tired. She was tired of running, tired of being hungry, alone, and hurting. And she couldn't forget the few short weeks that she had been safe, warm. When Styx had kissed her, held her. When she had felt as though the next day would bring more than just additional danger.
She stared at the weapon and knew the end of the road was here. She had run as far as she could run, and at the end of the road she found herself exactly where she had begun at the tender, too innocent age of fourteen.
Alone.
"Look, don't make me have Marx hold you down and rape you, Storme. Styx mated you. You're aware by now that another male's touch is going to be agonizing." She glanced to where Storme was still rubbing at her arms. "It still hurts, even now, hours after he hauled you out of Haven. Imagine how it's going to hurt when he fucks you until
you're screaming."
God, she would love to ask Gena what the fuck she was talking about. One thing was for sure, something was wrong with her. Just beneath her skin was a tingle of pain, as though she should be bruised. And that didn't go along with the fact that there were no bruises on her arms, only her face and possibly her ribs.
Storme stared back at the former friend and the weapon she pointed, as she fought to find a way out of this particular mess. She had never entertained the nightmare that Gena could possibly turn on her.
She had been suspicious of everyone else in her life, but never Gena. Gena had found her when she was hurt, hungry, dirty and at the end of a mental rope.
She had been running for four years the night Gena had walked behind that bar and found her cowering in fear. Storme had been panicked, terrified and grappling with her conscience as she fought the need to disobey her father then as well.
If she turned over the information her father had stolen, to either Breed or Council, then the danger would just go away. How many times had the Breeds sworn they would protect her, compensate her, provide any payment she asked in return for the data chip?
"Do what you have to, Gena." She blinked back the tears that threatened to fill her eyes. "I gave Styx that chip. By now, Jonas Wyatt has it. That's why the Breeds haven't come for me, Gena. That's why they don't care if I live or die now."
"Tell me that fucking bitch is lying," Gena turned to scream at Marx.
He was watching Storme carefully, breathing in deep and slow as his brown eyes glittered back at her in anger.
She could only pray she'd learned to lie without that particular response.
"I can't be sure," he growled. "She stinks of fear, pain and Styx. Mating changes the scent too much at first to be able to detect something as subtle as a lie."
If she managed to get her hands on Styx, and she prayed she did, then she was so going to make him hurt for the confusion she was feeling at the moment.
The more they mentioned that damned mating heat, the more it made the tabloid stories sound true rather than the product of a reporter's fanciful imagination.
And all that aside, as she watched Gena's face, she slowly sat back down in the chair and allowed her fingers to slide between the seat cushion and the arm, where she had hidden only one of the many weapons in the house during her last visit.
This was her refuge. The only place she had been able to escape for a few days of peace. She'd used it rarely, but she'd kept the house prepared, just in case.
"Then I say she's lying." Gena decided with a cold, hard smile. "And I've decided she needs to be convinced to tell us the truth."
Storme shook her head slowly. "Don't do this, Gena. It's not going to get you what you want."
Gena's lips curled in furious mockery. "Six years I've had to shadow your skinny ass and pull it out of the fires you were too stupid to keep from walking into." Gena shook her head in disgust. "You won't kill a Breed, even when they're running you to ground like a hound would a hare. Still, you just tuck your little tail and run like the frightened little rabbit you've always been. Well, bitch, your running days are over. I'm so going to enjoy listening to you scream as he rapes your skinny ass."
Storme's fingers curled over the butt of the weapon tucked at the side of the chair cushion. She didn't have much of a chance. It was going to be damned close. And bullets weren't always a good bet against a laser-powered weapon.
"You're not going to beg me to believe you?" Gena tilted her head, the short spikes of her dark blond hair throwing an odd shadow across the room as she advanced on Storme.
Just a little closer, Storme thought. She hadn't anticipated that Gena would be the one to come closer to her. She'd expected Marx. But this was even better.
"Get up, Breed tramp," Gena ordered as she extended the weapon and motioned furiously. "It's time to find out how a Coyote fucks. While I watch." She came closer. "And he follows orders so well. He'll fuck you just like I tell him to."
An inch closer. Gena laughed and pushed the barrel of the weapon into Storme's shoulder.
Storme moved.
Her hand lashed out, gripped Gena's wrist and twisted. The laser-powered weapon discharged harmlessly into the wall as Storme threw all her weight into the surprise move, twisted and slammed the other woman into the wall as she jumped to the back of the chair, covered her face with her arms and launched herself through the window.
CHAPTER 18
Hitting the ground, Storme barely managed to smother a cry as she felt a sharp, raking fire along her side, where her shirt had shifted high and revealed vulnerable flesh to the glass raining to the ground ahead of her.
She would check it later, she promised herself as she struggled to her feet and began praying. It wasn't the first wound she had taken, and it would likely not be the last. If she survived, that is.
She could hear the discharge of laser fire even now, as she raced into the forest surrounding the cabin. Raised voices and automatic rifle fire began to echo in the distance as she ran as though the hounds of hell were snapping at her heels.
The sounds of laser fire and bullets combined were echoing behind her as she raced through the night and the thunderstorm that had threatened opened up in the heavens above.
Rain poured to the ground, making the ground slippery, wet. The sounds behind her indicated that there were others besides Gena there. Others who were possibly delaying Gena and Marx from following her.
Breeds. Breeds had been hiding in the night, but it hadn't been Styx. If Styx had been there he would have saved her. He would have been there in the cabin. He wouldn't have waited.
Her breathing hitched on a sob as she stumbled, went to her knees and fought to hold back the tears and the pain welling inside her.
He would have been here, if he could have been. He wouldn't have made her run through the night as she fought for her life.
"You whore!" Gena's enraged scream echoed in the darkness as weapon fire broke, then began the rat-a-tat-tat once again.
It was like hearing hell. Like being in the middle of a war that she had no idea how to fight.
Her fingers curled around the butt of the weapon she had managed hold on to. Forcing herself back to her feet, she kept running. She had been running for ten years, it was the only thing she knew. Maybe, if she kept running, she would forget. She would forget that for a while she had been warm and safe. That for a while she had known something she had never known before.
She didn't have much of a head start. Hell, she probably didn't have a head start at all considering how fast a Breed Coyote could run. If Marx was behind her, then she would be lucky if whoever had delayed them gave her a few minutes at best.
But if she were lucky, very very lucky, she might be able to flag down a car on the busy road and get a ride to the nearest town. It would be easier to lose Marx and Gena in town. It was harder for a Breed to track individual scent when faced with so many scents, she knew that. It was one of the reasons Council members, former trainers under warrant by the Breeds, and soldiers that had been a part of brutalizing Breeds had moved to such locations as New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas.
All she had to do was reach the main road.
Luck. If luck were on her side, then the Breeds and the Coyote Gena had brought with her would still be fighting it out at the cabin, neither side any wiser to the fact that she was once again on the run.
Styx wasn't with the Breeds. He couldn't be. She knew he wasn't. He wouldn't have left her like that, alone and frightened.
If she could get a ride into town and find a hole to hide in for just a few hours, then maybe she could figure out where to go next, what to do next and how to get the ring to Jonas Wyatt safely.
One thing was for certain, the information her father had left in her care was going to get her killed if she didn't do something. Just as it may have gotten Styx killed.
She had to give it to Jonas, she couldn't allow the Council to take it from her. That le
ft her stuck between a rock and a hard place, with no room to turn in, and she was so tired of running.
As she raced up the steep incline before her, the soil beneath her feet gave, throwing her off balance for precious seconds. Grabbing a slender branch on a nearby bush, she couldn't stop the cry that passed her lips when thorns dug into her flesh.
Instinct and pain had her jerking back, completing a disastrous arc that sent her spinning on the wet dirt and tumbling down the slope.
Her body hit hard, her face slamming into the ground as she hit the bottom and dug her nails into the dirt, fighting to push herself to her feet.
One more try.
Breathing hard, weakness slamming through her, Storme stumbled again as she struggled to drag herself up the hill to the road above. She could see the lights of the passing vehicles, smell the asphalt and the heat of the tires racing over the road.
It wasn't that far, she told herself desperately.
She could make it.
Just a few more feet. She was just a few more feet to safety.
Digging her fingers into the wet earth, she clawed her way up the slope, stumbled onto the shoulder and swayed as lights pierced her vision, blinding her for precious seconds as the sound of squealing tires streaked through her senses.
A vehicle, dark and large, slammed to a stop in front of her. A van of some kind. Storme swayed dizzily as the side door slid back with a thud and she found herself hauled into the darkened interior.
Dizzy, exhausted, there was no way she could fight the too strong grip, or the male bodies that shifted around her, blocking the exit before the door slid closed with a bang and the vehicle accelerated quickly from its position.
All she knew was the fact that she was fucked. So well and truly dead that she might as well go ahead and say her final words to her maker, because sure as hell, she was getting ready to meet him real damned soon.
Only Council soldiers or Breeds could have staged this. And she knew the Breeds were busy protecting their own now.
She wasn't one of their own, therefore she wasn't protected.
Styx hadn't come for her.
The flight, the dizziness, the terror and the sheer heart-break that suddenly suffused her raced over her senses then. She felt the darkness, felt the blessed oblivion, and sank willingly, gratefully within it.
Mating heat.
Styx held his mate against his chest, feral fury pouring through him as the scent of the other Breeds became offensive to his senses.
The animal howling inside him demanded that he get his mate to safety, that he check the wounds on her body, that he do something to ease the heartrending agony he had felt inside her before she passed out in his arms.
The rage that had burned inside him when he had regained consciousness at Haven, only to learn his mate had been taken, was something Styx never wanted to feel again. He never wanted to feel that bloody primal fury overtake him, control him.
The Wolf had been acting on instinct alone. Nothing had mattered to him, nothing had existed in his world but finding his mate.
The glands beneath his tongue had instantly pumped full of the mating hormone. His mind had filled with the need for her, the possessiveness and overriding protectiveness that had obliterated any other thought or instinct in his mind.
When he had learned Ghost Team had allowed Marx Whitman and Gena Waters to escape with his mate, he had nearly gone mad.
God help those bastard Breeds if he ever learned who they were. God knew he would kill them himself. It was a damned good thing they were rumored to be able to control their scent markers, because if he had known or ever recognized their scent, he would have been unable to resist the urge to kill.
Staring down at his mate, he could feel the mating hormone spilling to his mouth. His cock was so damned hard he was certain he could pound railway spikes with it. His flesh was sensitive to her warmth, soaking it up and spilling more back to him as every cell in his body seemed to reach for her.
"We have company coming in behind us," Mordecai called out as the van began to speed up.
"McCrae, contact Brogan and give him our ETA to the heli-jet," Styx ordered quickly, instinct moving to give the appropriate responses required to get his mate to safety. "I want Haven appraised of our position and situation and a team sent out immediately to capture Gena Waters and her Coyote bastard."
Marx Whitman was a dead Coyote.
"Alpha Delgado has already sent a team out," Mordecai responded as he took a curve with enough force to leave the tires screaming as they fought to keep contact with the road. "Our ETA is one minute."
"And our company is getting closer," Navarro spoke from the passenger seat as he armed a laser rifle. "Delgado's team might not have to worry about collecting them."
There was murder in Navarro's tone now. His gaze glittered with savage death, and as it flickered to Storme's unconscious form, compassion seemed to soften it.
"Get ready to roll," Mordecai announced as the van sped toward the lights of the heli-jet as it waited in the large clearing just off the road. "I'm coming in close. Jump and run."
The doors to the van were thrown open as the vehicle slid to a rocking stop within six feet of the opened doors of the black heli-jet, which hummed with power.
Styx was out of the vehicle at a dead run, jumping into the craft as the others came in behind him, the van left to idle and block the motorcycle bearing down on them.
Before Marx and Gena could reach them, the craft lifted off, the laser fire aimed at it striking harmlessly into thin air as powerful jets engaged and they were streaking across the sky.
"She's bleeding," Navarro commented as Styx laid his head back along the long seat at the back of the jet.
"A wound at her hip," Styx replied. "It had just healed. I'm going to have to discuss with her this penchant for jumping from windows, it appears."
As they had sped to the cabin, reports had come in by the second from the one member of Ghost Team who had followed Marx and Gena after they kidnapped Storme.
The Breed had stayed on their ass