She wasn't an adrenaline junkie, and she worried. Rachel was the worrywart, Diana was the daredevil. But the thought that something could be wrong with Amber, that Phillip Brandenmore had harmed her child, was enough to make her stomach roil with fear and rage.
Laying a kiss to Amber's brow, Rachel laid her back in her crib before pacing to the fireplace and staring into the low, comforting warmth of the fire.
She lived for the day Jonas managed to get that bastard out of the Middle East and into Breed custody. She wanted to be there. She wanted to make certain he felt the same fear, the same lack of security and terror her daughter had felt.
She wanted his blood, slowly. She wanted to hear him scream in pain, watch as he begged--the way she had begged while Amber cried and cried for her.
She could still hear Amber's screams as the baby heard her mother's voice, knowing her momma was near, yet a stranger held her without tenderness or care.
Rachel could still remember the way he held her. His hand to the back of her neck braced against his chest.
He had hurt her baby. He had terrified both of them, and she wanted him dead. Rachel had a very bad feeling that once the truth was revealed, she would have no compunction whatsoever about pulling the trigger to take his life. Her female intuition was making her sick now. It had been ever since Jonas had mentioned the change in Amber's scent. As though the very thought of some unknown illness had triggered a knowledge inside her that she couldn't fully decipher.
Moving back to the crib, she quickly undressed her baby, turning her, checking her for any outward signs of problems. She knew Brandenmore had injected Amber with something. Elizabeth Vanderale and Jeffrey Amburg had been certain it had only been a sedative. That had made sense. Amber had been screaming, the sound of it raking across her own nerves because of the fear in her daughter's voice. It would have irritated Brandenmore. He would have wanted her quiet.
So why hadn't he killed her?
Rachel pressed her hand against her stomach at the thought. Brandenmore didn't care about one small child, and he had meant to kill Rachel when she returned anyway. If he hadn't had plans for Amber, then why leave her alive? And if he did have plans for her, then it would be nothing that a mother could find but nightmares within.
Brandenmore was a scientist. He could have created something that hid itself within the sedative. Something that would have begun working long after initial tests were run. That was how he worked, according to the file she had read on him. He was subtle, vicious. Completely and totally deceptive.
She was shaking. She could almost feel her world shattering around her as she stared down at her still-sleeping daughter. Could she survive it if something happened to her baby?
She couldn't. Amber had matured her. Her daughter had given her a reason to live that hadn't existed before her birth.
Biting her lip, she fought to hold back the fear, the tears. Jonas could smell it. He might be in the shower, but who was to say that his sense of smell wasn't strong enough to feel the complete panic threatening to tear her apart?
Amber had known fear much too soon. She'd known pain too soon. Surely that couldn't bode well for the values she wanted to teach her daughter: acceptance, compassion, a small measure of trust that the world could be kind, at least sometimes.
And perhaps the world was trying to show Rachel otherwise.
"It's going to be okay, Rachel."
Jonas's soft voice had her whirling around to meet the dark cloth of his shirt as it stretched over his chest. Lifting her head, she stared into his eyes as he smoothed a tear from her cheek, which she hadn't even been aware she had shed.
"How can you be certain?" she whispered as his arms came around her. "How can I protect her, Jonas, when he's already done something to hurt her?"
Her fingers clenched in the fabric of his shirt as she fought to control the racing of her heart, the shudders beginning to wrack her body.
This was her baby. Her child. So innocent, so dependent on her mother to ensure that she wasn't harmed. She'd already failed her.
"Because I'll ensure it." His tone was so certain, so confident. "We have the finest minds working in Breed research. Scientists that exceptionally intelligent, Rachel, will find out what, if anything, Brandenmore has done. And if they don't"--he gripped her arms, holding her back at she stared down at her, the arrogance and pure determination in his expression brightening his eyes to a neon silver--"if they don't, I'll bring Brandenmore here, and trust me, once I have him here in my territory, he will talk."
That confidence sank into her. She had never seen Jonas break a promise. Even when she had been certain there was no way he could make something he had promised the Breed cabinet to work, he'd still managed it.
He manipulated, he connived. He threatened, he wasn't very good at cajoling, but he knew how to terrify a person. And he always, always did as he said he would.
"She's just a baby," she whispered, trying to explain her fear.
"Shhh." He laid his finger against her lips. "She's our child. She may not share my blood, Rachel, but she's captured my heart, as you've captured my soul. Never doubt, no matter the cost, I will protect our child."
Not her child. Not his child. Their child.
For the first time in Rachel's life, standing there in his arms, she felt that long-buried fear of desertion slowly ease away.
It would never be easy, living with Jonas. It might never be calm. But as she stood there, his arms wrapped around her, his warmth sheltering her, she knew it would always be exactly where she wanted to be. And something that nothing, or no one, could ever steal from her.
CHAPTER 18