“Great,” she muttered. “How far away is it?”
And it was dark. Cold. The moon was full, the canopy of trees above them was pretty thick.
“We need to hurry.” He hitched his jeans up on his lean body and moved ahead of her. “Uncle Jonas says the sound of a heli-jet carries for a ways for a Breed. But we can’t stay here.”
“Uncle Jonas, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah, he smells kinda like Daddy, but Daddy doesn’t like it when I say that, so I don’t tell him.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I can hear the lions. Let’s go this way.”
Lions. They eat people. Scheme whimpered. She was not having her best week here at all. Just not at all.
CHAPTER 29
“Tanner, we have a heli-jet on radar coming over Buffalo Gap and moving in fast,” Kane reported over the earwig Tanner wore. “We’re putting the chopper in the air, but it’s not going to be much defense against it and our heli-jet is currently unavailable.”
“We caught their trail,” Tanner shouted above the din of the dirt cycle’s motor as he raced behind Dawn and her Lionesses. “The lions are moving in fast now, so we believe they’re stationary.”
He gunned the dirt bike harder, skidding around fallen logs as he raced up the incline of the old logging road that cut through the mountain.
In the distance he could hear Sanctuary’s armed chopper lifting into the air and he prayed. He had been praying since the moment he realized Scheme was gone. Praying like he had never prayed, even during those horrifying years in the labs.
“Tamber’s tracker was deactivated, as was David’s,” Kane barked in his ear.
Callan’s snarling voice cut across the line. “The lions will find David.”
Callan, his pride brother, Taber and Jonas were just behind him, gunning their bikes just as hard as Tanner was his. They hadn’t spent the hours riding these mountains that Tanner and Dawn had. Tanner would get there first, and when he did, he would kill Tamber.
It was almost impossible to believe that the quiet, soft-spoken Lion Breed female had been part of Tallant’s organization. The lab she had been rescued from had been one of the worst. The conditions had been horrid there for the Breeds. The Coyotes that oversaw them were some of the most vicious, the scientist depraved.
Tamber had been rescued as a teenager; she couldn’t be much more than twenty-five now, and she had been betraying them all along. Her position in the communications shed, given complete trust simply because she was a Breed, would have given her all the access she needed to keep Tallant apprised of every move the Breeds made.
Tanner’s hands clenched around the handles of the cycle, one wrist bending back, giving the cycle more speed as he raced up the logging road.
If they didn’t get to Tamber’s jeep before the heli-jet reached the boundary of the property, then Scheme and David could be gone forever.
“The lions are catching scent,” Dawn called out on the channel. “We’re moving in. The alpha is roaring his challenge now. We better hurry.”
Releasing the lions with Scheme out there was a risky venture. They were trained to only respond to certain non-Breeds, only those who lived full-time within Sanctuary. Scheme was in just as much danger from the big cats as she was from Tamber. Unless she went to the ground and became completely submissive, making no sudden moves and not looking the animals in the eye. That would be the only way she could save herself.
“The jet is clearing Buffalo Gap, Tanner,” Kane barked. “You have approximately five minutes before it reaches the only possible launching site.”
Time was running out.
“We’ll make it,” he snarled, pushing the bike harder. They had to make it; he couldn’t live otherwise.
Scheme stumbled on the incline as she tried to hurry away from the jeep and the psychotic Breed hopefully bleeding to death inside it. Though she doubted it. For the most part, Breeds, even the foul ones, were amazingly resilient.
Holding on to the stick David had provided, she followed him as fast as she could, feeling her legs trembling, the pain racing through her body and the overwhelming knowledge that she might have failed.
“We have to hurry.” David turned to stare back at her worriedly, his head lifting, scenting the air around him. As small as he was, as young as he was, he was already showing traits of an alpha Breed male. Sure of himself, confident of his surroundings and his family’s ability to find him.
What would it be like, Scheme wondered sadly, to have that confidence? To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if your family was near, then you were safe.
Her father was most likely near, coordinating the capture with his smug smile and self-satisfaction. But it wasn’t for her protection. It was for the destruction of others. The Breeds who had escaped the torment he could have inflicted on them.
“Go.” She waved her hand back to David weakly. “Get out of here, David. Find Tanner. He’ll come and get me.”
The boy didn’t have many self-preservation instincts. If he did, he would be running like hell away from her.