“The jig is up, old chap.” Amused and inherently irritating, that foreign accent cloaked in a lazy drawl never failed to raise his hackles.
This time, they didn’t just rise, they started doing a little jig on the back of his neck.
“What jig?” he growled, though he had a feeling he knew exactly what the “jig” was.
“Contact Jonas,” he was ordered, the voice firming with the demand. “Or we’re all going to be in damned hot water, with more Breeds after our asses than we know what to do with. And I’m sincerely not in the mood to have to explain getting caught to my sire.”
Graeme snorted at the order. “Let me guess, you managed to f**k this up before I could finish saving that kid’s life? Why doesn’t that surprise me, you little prick?”
Why didn’t that surprise him?
This wasn’t the first time he’d worked with the bastard, and though the hybrid was usually damned competent, there were times, highly inconvenient times, when he had a habit of throwing a monkey in the works and letting it play hell with the plan.
Graeme always thought it better to just shoot the f**king monkey, but what the hell did he know? He was just the Breed who managed to hide right under everyone’s nose. And how did he accomplish that, he asked with silent sarcasm. Let’s see, he stayed the f**k out everyone else’s business maybe?
“When’s the next injection due and how many before we’re finished?” Hell, now the accent had managed to completely disappear; that didn’t bode really well for him. That meant he could possibly get sacrificed as a useful but regrettably required casualty. And that wasn’t a part Graeme had any intention of playing.
“Final injection is due within the next eighteen hours.” And he was damned glad it was the final one. Hearing that baby’s pain-filled cries and the patient, unwavering love and pain in her mother’s voice was taking a toll on his hard-won sanity.
“We have forty-eight hours,” he was told imperiously. “Get Jonas the information he needs or my partner and I are history here. Someone witnessed a meeting we had with our contact in the Unknown. If you don’t give up the secrets, my friend, we’re all screwed.”
A snarl escaped before he could control it. Dragging his hand over the dance of nerves being played out over the back of his neck, Graeme checked the mirror he kept hanging on the wall next to his work area.
Fuck. Fuck. Was that a shadow of a stripe coming across his face? He was going to kill the little bastard on the other end of the call before it was over with.
“You’re the one who was caught,” he reminded the other man coldly. “Unlike you, I’m not into the damned games and machinations you and your brother so enjoy. I keep my nose out of everyone else’s business and get along damned fine. If I contact Jonas before that final injection, there’s no way in hell I’ll get in there to finish it. And I’m not quite so willing to sacrifice that child’s life for yours, ass**le.”
“Finish it, then contact him,” he was ordered. “But have it done in the required amount of time, Graeme. Because if our witness identifies me and our partner, then we’ll give up the goods on you to save our own asses. Never doubt it.”
“So take care of your f**king narc,” he grumped, rolling his eyes and catching sight of the prisoner he’d dragged into the Reever cells less than an hour ago. “I have things to do. Dealing with Wyatt isn’t one of those things.”
“Then make it one of your things. Our narc is Whisper. Exactly how do you expect me to take care of that one?”
Son of a bitch.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he swore he could feel the stripes that once marred the flesh of his face beginning to shade his skin again as fury rose inside him. He couldn’t touch Whisper and they both knew it. Hell, he didn’t just owe her his life, he owed her the life of his mate. Whisper was the child who had overheard the plot to kill Judd, Honor, and Fawn before the Unknown had managed to hide their identities. Had it not been for her contacting the man her deceased brother had worked with, then Fawn would have died. And Gideon—Graeme—would never have found his sanity.
He’d kill for her, but he’d never consider killing her.
The bastard on the other end of the call was another story, though.
“I’m going to take this one out of your hide, ass**le,” Graeme warned him.
“Stand in line.” The suggestion was amused and filled with a confidence that his safety was assured.
Graeme wasn’t so certain about that.
“You actually have forty-six hours,” he was told then. “I expect to hear the roars of rage long before that deadline is actually up.”
Yeah, he just bet the bastard did.
Disconnecting the call, he turned to the soldier staring back at him malevolently, wondering how pissed Lobo would get if he just beat the shit out of the bastard instead of wrapping him up nice and pretty for Lobo’s stepdaughter.
She’d gotten to him, Graeme admitted. The little toddler slowly becoming a Breed. Once he’d explained it all to her in a way she could understand, she had warmed to him. She knew it was going to hurt at first, bad enough that she wouldn’t be able to stop crying maybe. That she would feel really bad, but once it was over, she would be her daddy’s little girl for sure.
The first injection Brandenmore had given the baby had begun the process of changing her DNA. Almost overnight her ability to understand and to reason began rising exponentially. If one knew how to communicate with the child, then seeing the world through her eyes, through her observations, almost made a Breed believe in miracles.
Now, four injections later, the last and by far the most painful was coming. What Brandenmore had done should have destroyed the child in the same manner in which he had died himself. What no one had known, but Graeme had found in the blood and tissue samples Phillip Brandenmore had taken that night, was that Amber would soon have been diagnosed with the same type of leukemia that had nearly killed Honor Roberts.