What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to do it?
Centering her attention on him, she remembered how he said he could borrow from Lawe’s strength, but was he trying to borrow from her?
It sure as hell wasn’t her patience because she was going to kick his ass for making her wait to find out what was going on.
Eyes closed, she felt a glimmer of amusement touch her mind as Rule became so firmly entrenched inside her soul that she swore she could feel steel bolts anchoring him to her.
Mental strength, she realized. If he wanted stubbornness, she had that in spades.
Was that a chuckle echoing through her head without sound? Oh God, she was so going to kill him for this.
“Interesting.” She heard the voice, felt Gideon’s name whisper through her mind. A second later she knew what was going on and felt her heart nearly stop in dread at the knowledge that the insanity Rule had described as Gideon held Rachel’s baby in his arms.
She couldn’t “see” what was happening. It was impressions, a sense of Breeds filling the suite, Gideon’s amusement and Jonas’s fury. And a second of complete terror at the knowledge that Gideon had tossed the child free of him as he jumped from the opened balcony door, over the railing to a two-person jet-copter obviously there to retrieve him.
Lobo Reever had a jet-copter. It was the only one in the area, she thought. At least, the only one she knew of. Except for the one the Navajo Covert Law Enforcement Agency owned.
The link between them immediately shut down as Gypsy blinked in surprise.
“Son of a bitch,” Lawe hissed through his teeth, his gaze meeting hers in the rearview mirror for the briefest second. “Tell me, Gypsy, just how many f**king secrets is my brother hiding from me?”
Uh-oh. She had a feeling Lawe just might be one up on the fact that Rule had been hiding Judd for the past nine years or so.
Bad Rule.
“He’s your brother,” she scoffed, glaring back at him. “Take that up with him.”
His gaze shot to hers through the mirror once again, the suspicious disbelief glittering brilliantly in the lighter blue hue.
“You know, Gypsy,” he pointed out, his tone rougher, frustrated as he turned his attention back to the road, “I’d be careful. Even as his mate, you’ll learn you’re not exempt from Rule’s manipulations.”
“I could have sworn I heard the same thing said to Rachel at some point concerning Jonas, just in the past weeks,” she mused, turning her attention out the window of the Dragoon once again.
For a moment, her thoughts had been distracted from her parents, their crime, and the decision she faced concerning her brother’s betrayer.
Eight years before, she’d shot a Council informer that the Unknown had been certain had betrayed her brother. He’d deserved to die for other crimes against both Breeds and the Navajo, but knowing he had been the wrong one cut at her.
The man who betrayed Mark deserved to hurt. He deserved to feel the same hell Mark had felt, knowing that his sister would be raped and killed and even the chance to help her was denied him. The fact that she had been rescued at the last moment hadn’t helped Mark. It didn’t salve her fury now.
Years of distrust made sense now. She’d been so angry as she’d watched her parents allow him to take Mark’s place. He tried to be a brother to Mark’s sisters, he’d married Mark’s fiancée, he’d taken over Mark’s company.
He’d thought he could live Mark’s life.
Her nails bit into her palms as she realized they’d curled into fists, prepared to inflict whatever damage possible.
Damn him.
She wanted to slip away now. She wanted to find him, wanted to tear his throat out herself.
The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that he had disappeared, just as she’d known he would. The Breed team sent to find him that morning had reported that he couldn’t be found either at his home or at his office.
Where would he go? she wondered. Where would Jason hide?
Eyes narrowed, she scanned the desert as it rushed by, going over old haunts Mark had once shown her, remembering bits and pieces of her childhood that she’d refused to allow herself to remember before.
As she did, she could “feel” Rule. As though the very fact that she was considering where he could be, where to find him, how to make him pay, had alerted Rule to her not-so-hidden desire to kill him herself.
She almost smiled as she felt him. Geez, it was the strangest damned feeling. He would just be there, like the caress of a breeze, but in her mind. She really wasn’t certain if she liked it or not.