Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [118]
It was usually the other way around. She investigated while Thor ran interference with whichever parties were deemed the most hazardous to their job. But, she knew how to handle this part. She and Thor had perfected both areas of the mission parameters and understood how each worked.
“The Navajo won’t know who they are, where they are or, after all this time, how to reach them,” Diane informed them all as she faced them impatiently. “There’s not even a number that’s called anymore. No one knows how the group becomes aware that a pickup is needed, but they’re always there.”
“Then they have a Breed working with them,” Jonas guessed.
Diane shrugged. “Getting anyone to talk to any of you will not happen,” she told them. “I have some ideas, and once I begin investigating—”
“Once we begin,” Lawe injected.
She glanced up at him, feeling her chest tighten at what she knew she had to do.
“No, once I begin,” she reiterated softly. “They won’t talk to me if you’re around or anywhere close enough to identify them. You’re a Breed, Lawe. To them, you’re the same as a Coyote, a scientist, or a rogue.”
She watched his gaze turn to ice as Jonas cursed softly.
“I hate to keep repeating myself, but I know what I’m doing,” she stated, knowing that with the exception of her sister, possibly, no one there was willing to believe her at this point because of the fact that she was now a mate.
Her chances of investigating were thin to none, but this was her role to play, and if she simply stepped back, then there was no way Lawe would accept that she and Thor hadn’t planned something else.
“Diane, you’re the strongest woman I know,” Rachel said with an edge of bitterness, a clear indication she’d tried to discuss the matter with Jonas. “But the danger to mates right now won’t allow a single Breed in the vicinity to allow you to investigate this on your own.”
Despite the grief she heard in her sister’s voice, the knowledge it could mean her daughter’s life, Diane realized that even her sister couldn’t help her here.
“And all of you are willing to lose Amber for this?” She met her sister’s gaze and watched the tears that welled in her eyes.
“There’s nothing on this earth I wouldn’t do to protect my baby.” Rachel’s voice hitched on a sob. “But nothing is going to change how they’ll surround you or their determination and vows to protect you. Nothing will change the fact that not even my child is as important to Lawe or to the animal genetics that are a part of him as his mate is. Even Jonas’s orders won’t sway him.”
Diane refused to accept that.
Her head lifted as she stared back at the males watching her. “Every damned one of you will get over it,” she told them coolly before turning to Lawe. “You will get Thor back here if that protection is all important to you. He’s not a Breed; he won’t be seen as suspiciously as you will be.”
“He follows your orders,” Lawe growled. “If you told him to back off, then he would do just that. Your safety will always be endangered by the fact that you’re his commander.”
There was truth to that.
“He would cut off his own arm and tell me to go to hell before he’d allow me to do anything to place myself in a situation that would risk my capture by anything or anyone associated with the Council,” she informed them all firmly. It did about as much good to argue with them as it did to attempt to use fuel to put out a fire. And she knew that, to the bottom of her soul.
There wasn’t a chance in hell he would ever step back if that were the case.
But she was better at what they were doing than Thor was. She knew how to listen, how to talk to women and how to put men at ease. Thor’s size alone intimidated everyone. Emma and Sharone were Breeds, and the fact that the information they had acquired so far had been stolen by listening to conversations, rumors and suspicions before being pieced together, just frustrated her.
She watched Lawe’s jaw tighten, saw the denial in his eyes, though he didn’t voice