Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [37]
Turning her gaze to Thor she lifted her brow inquisitively. “You have anything to say?”
Thor nodded slowly as he watched her, his eyes narrowed, the icy blue intent, thoughtful. What that nod meant, she wasn’t certain and she wasn’t about to ask.
“I’ll be waiting, boss,” he finally stated. “I suck at vacations, just like the rest of these morons do.” He nodded at the other men. “But today ain’t my stupid day, so I’ll just say we’ll miss you.”
She almost grinned. Damn smart-ass. At least they didn’t suspect her of having plans of her own. After the meeting with Jonas, she would head out and see if Honor Roberts was where she suspected her to be, without anyone being the wiser.
If Lawe wanted to convince himself that she was on her way to Sanctuary, then hell, whatever helped him sleep at night, right?
But she wasn’t going to Sanctuary.
She was going hunting.
And she would go alone. Her uncle had trained her how to protect herself first. How to track alone, hunt alone, how to slip out of sight and do what had to be done if something happened and his men weren’t with her.
Working alone wasn’t her preferred course, but the only man she trusted at this point was Lawe. And Lawe would never allow the hunt for which she was preparing.
Malcolm drew her attention. “I wonder how long your Breed has been watching your back. I wondered how we were all so damned lucky these past six months. A few of those jobs you took us on should have been suicide missions. His Breeds were protecting us though, weren’t they?”
“Not to my knowledge at the time, Malcolm, but if he and his men want to save us from a few bullets, then that suits me fine.”
Malcolm gave a mocking snort. “Didn’t save us this time, did he? Makes me wonder if maybe he didn’t arrange it. Keeps you out of the line of fire, doesn’t it?”
It did.
“Only for the moment,” she told him shortly. “That I promise you, only for the moment.”
•CHAPTER 5•
Lawe had been watching her all along.
She hadn’t been protecting herself and her men as she had assumed. Her careful preparations and alternate plans could only lend confidence to her men if no one interfered.
Lawe had interfered.
That knowledge swept over her once she had her men taken care of and returned to their rooms with medics.
The old-fashioned bullet wound was cleaned and the bullet dug out of hard male muscle and flesh and bandaged within the hour. The Breed heli-jet was on its way from Sanctuary and it would fly her men home before returning to fly her and Rachel back to Sanctuary.
Or so Lawe and Jonas thought.
She sat back in the wing-backed chair in the living area of the lower-floor penthouse suite Jonas and Rachel had taken at the hotel, after the attack on Diane and her men. She knew other high-level Breeds were now in residence as well. It was becoming a damned Breed military stronghold. With one boot-shod foot propped on the coffee table, her elbow propped on the arm while her chin rested in her palm, Diane watched silently as Jonas and Lawe talked on the other side of the room.
Her sister stood next to her mate, and unlike Jonas and Lawe, watched Diane worriedly. Her sister knew her. Diane’s lips quirked at the thought. Rachel would know damned good and well that Diane wouldn’t be going anywhere near Sanctuary.
But Rachel hadn’t come over to her since they had arrived in the room either. She stood next to her mate, silently aligning with him, and for the first time, Diane realized that her sister no longer turned to her first.
Lawe had a team of highly trained covert Breeds trailing her for—she didn’t know how long, she thought as she watched them.
Oh yes, she did know. Because she knew how long it had been since she had so much as scratched herself during a mission. She hadn’t been wounded on a mission since the night Lawe and a very small team of men had rescued her from the Middle East dungeon she had been held in. Bar fights, though, were another story. Diane had been recovering from a bar fight in Asia when Thor had told her about Brandenmore’s nearly successful abduction