She had been hurt before, Storme assured herself. She carried scars that she hadn't carried when she was fourteen. The scars of attacks by Council Coyotes and soldiers who had been sent to force the information from her.
Gena crossed a slender leg over the opposite knee, crossed her arms over her br**sts and stared back at her with a cool expression.
"Then I guess you better get started," Storme stated as she steeled herself for whatever was coming.
Her brother and her father had given their lives for this information, Styx had possibly given his life in his attempt to save her and the other women caught in the attack.
She had promised herself that if she was ever caught, she would be as strong as her father had been.
"She thinks she's so brave," Marx growled then. "Protecting the information Daddy trusted her with. I wonder how she feels knowing Daddy gave her up all those years ago. That he told us exactly who had hidden the chip for him."
They were lying and she knew it. Her father knew where it was hidden, and how he had hidden it. He had died to keep it secret.
"It wouldn't take Einstein to figure out he entrusted me with it." She shrugged easily. "I wasn't there, the chip wasn't there, and one and one equals two. Big deal."
Marx laughed. "And Daddy died begging us for his life and swearing to make you give it up to us. Don't bother lying, sweetie, we know you hid it. Just tell us where it's hid."
Her gaze flicked to Gena, catching the other woman staring suspiciously out the picture window behind Storme's chair.
"They're out there, aren't they?" she asked the other woman softly. "Styx isn't dead, Gena. I'm his mate. He'll never let me go."
She would have laughed at her own statement if they hadn't seem so damned serious about it.
It was beginning to make her wonder. Hell, it might be scaring the hell out of her.
Because she knew she wasn't his mate.
Gena's gaze flicked to the windows again.
"Ghost Team," Marx whispered. "They were the ones that came out at us when we tried to grab the felina and her brats."
"They've not found us." False bravado filled Gena's voice now. "We may not have gotten the prized princess or their brats, but we got this little whore. Once we get that chip ..."
Storme shook her head. "Styx has that chip, Gena."
"You're a lying little tramp!" Gena came to her feet in a burst of fury, came across the room and slapped Storme full across the face with all the fury of an enraged demon.
"I want that f**king chip!" she screamed.
Storme could hear her ears ringing from the blow as the side of her face burned with a fiery numbness and the taste of blood filled her mouth where her lips had split against her teeth.
Storme blinked against the dizziness that filled her head and fought to hold on to her consciousness.
Swallowing tightly, she focused on Gena as she paced back to Marx, reached up, grabbed a handful of short hair and jerked his head down for a deep, tongue-tangling kiss.
Hell, maybe Storme would get lucky and they'd entertain themselves long enough for her to figure out a way to escape this time.
This was becoming ridiculous. In ten years she had never been captured until Styx had managed it. He had jinxed her or something, she decided. In ten years, she had never been so damned unlucky, and she had always been smarter than to allow herself to be caught the first time.
She had learned how to hide. She had changed her name several times, her hair.
She had worn colored contact lenses and padded her clothing with shape-altering prosthetics. And still, sooner or later, she was always found, but she was never caught.
Through the years, there had been one constant though. No matter who found her, no matter the trouble she was in or how hot the situation, Gena had always managed to pull her ass out of the fire with a smile and a friendly warning to keep her head down.
At least, that was how Gena had made it appear. There had been times Storme couldn't figure out exactly how Gena pulled off some of the things she had pulled off to get Storme out of a tight situation, but now she knew. Because she had been slowly reeling Storme in, gaining her trust, believing Storme would betray her father and tell her best and only friend where the data chip had been hid.
Storme now thanked God that over the years she had never followed through with the urge to confide in the other woman.