She wanted to hide it. She wanted to deny it. She would have denied it to hell and back if he confronted her over it. She would cut her nose off to spite her face and they both knew it.
She was so determined to be alone, to push him away, that she ran in the opposite direction of him every chance she had.
“Both of you stand down,” Jonas ordered, his tone harsh with irritation.
Turning to him, Lawe realized the other man hadn’t taken his eyes off the devices lying so innocently on the pristine gleam of the table.
“Why don’t you take your handler and leave,” she ordered him, the command grating on the animal instincts threatening to take over. “Then the two of you can moon over the electronics together.”
“These aren’t just electronics,” Jonas said as he reached into his pocket to extract a handkerchief before carefully wrapping it around the three bugs and pocketing it before turning his gaze back to them.
“Really?” Her arms slid down to allow her hands to prop on her hips defiantly. “Are they aliens disguised as electronics? Didn’t I see that movie already?”
Jonas’s lips quirked. “Only if you managed to find a copy that I couldn’t. That movie is over forty years old and harder to find than Casablanca. But these little babies are like fingerprints. I’ve only seen them twice before, which means if Gideon put them in place, then I may have a way of tracking him.”
Diane focused her attention on him rather than the anger demanding action as it rose inside her.
“Such as?” Diane asked.
Not that she cared. Come daylight she would be after far different prey. “Such as the same signal that he used to pull information into these babies can be used to pull information out of them,” he told her. “I’ll explain it tomorrow when we meet with the Leo, Leo Vanderale. He’ll need to talk to you as well as Thor in regard to where you found them and how they were connected to their power source.”
Oh yeah, she was going to be at that meeting. Besides the fact that she had no intention of being in D.C. come morning, she also had no intention of facing the First Leo, the rumored first ever successful melding of human and animal DNA, more than a hundred years before.
“Speaking of that information, I’ll have it before I leave.”
Autocratic, demanding and arrogantly certain of himself. She would have expected Jonas to demand the information, not Lawe. Diane laughed at the pure Breed confidence he had in himself and his certainty she would be led so easily.
“You can get the information at the same time Leo and your alpha do,” she snorted. “I don’t explain things twice, Lawe.”
And he knew it.
It was a test. Had she told him, then he would have known she had no intention of making that meeting.
His eyes narrowed.
“The meeting’s at ten,” Jonas informed her as she and Lawe were locked in a silent battle fought only with their eyes.
“Fine. Now you can leave.” She had no intention of speaking to Leo Vanderale the next day. Once the first glimmer of light had made its debut, she intended to be on her way to Window Rock, Arizona.
Giving a brief, sharp nod, Jonas turned to Lawe. “I’ll contact Callan and Leo tonight. When you’re finished here . . .” He paused before his lips edged into a grin. “Or should I say instead, sometime tonight, you should contact Rule and let him know we’ll need every Breed in the vicinity on grounds when the heli-jet arrives in the morning.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Lawe promised, his nod sharp as Jonas headed for the door.
When the door snicked closed and locked behind the director, Diane turned back to Lawe.
“You need to leave with him,” Diane stated, her chest tight and aching as she battled tears that made no sense. She was stronger than this, she told herself. She was no ninny to cry over a man as though he were essential to her life. But for some reason, the betrayal she felt was tearing at her heart.
Lawe felt himself still. With his gaze locked with Diane’s, he had a feeling the battle of wills beginning was one that could end up destroying them both.
As she suggested, he should simply leave with Jonas. Staying here, accepting that challenge was the worse decision he could make, but that was exactly what he was doing.
“After last night, you really think it’s going to be that easy?” he asked with silky smoothness.
Diane’s gaze flickered with a glimmer of excitement and anticipation that he could feel her attempting to fight.
Attempting.
Lawe felt his own body preparing, his c**k hardening, lengthening, the glands beneath his tongue swelling and the faintest hint of the unusual taste of spiced, candied pears.