“She’s supposed to text her arrival when her plane lands tonight,” Jonas stated, ignoring the challenge Lawe was silently directing toward him. “Have Rule meet her at the hotel we use and get the information she’s acquired. I know she found something, but she seemed hesitant to discuss anything either electronically or via the sat-cell she was using. Rachel says something has her sister spooked, and I’m assuming that’s the reason for withholding the information.”
Lawe stared back at Jonas thoughtfully, his gaze narrowing, nostrils flaring in sudden realization. He knew Diane. If she was spooked, then she felt she was being tracked or somehow watched.
Diane wasn’t a paranoid individual. And she was too well trained to make such a vital mistake.
Lawe’s fists clenched as he forced himself to ignore that sudden unnamed threat the animal inside him was raging to confront.
“And Gideon?” Lawe asked. “How close do you think he is to finding the Roberts girl or the others?”
Jonas sighed at the question, one brow lifted in a slow, mocking arch at Lawe’s restraint. “He’s closer than we are, I believe. I won’t know for certain until Diane arrives and completes her report. Hopefully she has the information we need and she’s willing to turn it over.”
“And if he finds them before we do?” Lawe asked.
To that, Jonas’s mouth thinned. “If he becomes a threat and we can’t capture him, then we neutralize him. Call in Dog, Loki, Mutt and Mongrel, and have them ready to roll out in case Gideon’s found. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Lawe stared back at him in surprise at the four names. Those Breeds were the most highly trained trackers and assassins to come out of the Genetics Council creations. To pull all of them in was a testament to the threat Jonas feared Gideon could become.
And to reveal the fact that they were Bureau operatives was a move Lawe hadn’t expected Jonas to make. Especially Dog, whose cover was still that of a Council-controlled Coyote, though he was known to freelance on occasion where the Council’s interests were concerned.
“Have Rule report back to me tonight after he meets with Diane as well,” Jonas ordered.
Jonas was pushing for that confrontation. Lawe ground his back teeth together, hesitant to confront this issue, or Jonas, much further. The animal inside him was raging to settle the issue of any threat to this mating.
The human side, the icy logic that ruled him, realized the mistake that would be. Whether Jonas or the animal genetics wanted to admit it, Jonas would never deliberately endanger Diane. She was his mate’s sister, he would protect her as much as possible. Still, the fact that she was facing any danger, period, had Lawe’s guts tightening in reflex.
Lawe rose to his feet. “I’ll meet with her.” He couldn’t help the growl in his response or the command in his voice.
He’d be damned if he would allow his brother, a Breed with genetics so similar to his own, around Diane at the moment. The silent fear that Rule could perhaps end up mating her was too great a risk. The fear could just be the possessiveness lashing out rather than any true risk of it. Still, it was a threat he couldn’t ignore.
Should it happen, Lawe knew he’d never control the vicious fury that would erupt inside him against his brother. A brother who had risked his life countless times to save him.
Lawe moved for the door, the tension in his body nearly impossible to control or to hide as he left Jonas’s office and headed for his own.
The rogue Breed cutting a swath of blood through research scientists involved in Breed development was a problem. The young woman the Breed was searching for, and the danger he represented to her and the two research victims she was hiding with, was nothing short of horrifying.
But it wasn’t his mate’s place to handle it or to find either of the missing parties. It was her place to stay safe. He may not have mated her yet, but she was still his mate.
It would still destroy him if she were harmed, or perhaps even killed.
God help whoever so much as scratched her because he would lose his mind, as well as his perspective, and shed a swath of blood that may well destroy the Breeds forever.
She was as essential to him as the very air he breathed.
But as long as he didn’t have her, as long as he maintained his distance, his control, then perhaps, just perhaps he would have a chance—
A chance of surviving, of maintaining control and his sanity if the worst did happen.
It was the only chance he had of holding back the pure, burning rage he could feel ready to ignite inside him. The rage of too many Breed lives lost, too many mates tortured, and far too many nightmares haunting him—
The knowledge that he now understood how a Coyote like Elder, a creature born to mercilessness and blood thirst, had given his life for one tiny, fragile, helpless breeder, sank inside his soul.
He would give his life—he would give his soul—for Diane.
CHAPTER 2
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Some would say he was insane, and some would be no less than completely accurate.