CHAPTER 22

The sniper rifle surprised her.

Harmony had known that Lance had been on the SWAT team in Chicago; she had even been aware that he was a sharpshooter. Yet when he pulled the specially designed sniper rifle from its case and began to put it together, she could only watch him. He handled the weapon like an extension of himself— confidently, certain of each move he made as the different parts of the weapon were cleaned, then put in place. With each added part, he checked the weapon for any flaws, any weakness. She studied his expression as he worked at the small table in the hotel room they had finally settled on. His face was set, composed, relaxed. There was no frown marring his strong brow, no sense of anger tightening his mouth.

As she cleaned and checked her own weapons on the extra bed in the room, she realized that perhaps there were parts of Lance that she didn't know as well as she should. Parts of him that perhaps she was frightened to know.

He was a man of many layers, of many depths, and infinite patience. She had never met a male as patient, and yet with such a sense of inner strength as Lance held. Unlike Breed males, Lance didn't push his dominance, his power. He used it when he had to, when it became apparent that cool logic or patience wouldn't achieve the results he was searching for. But he didn't feel the need to impress that dominance on anyone. Unlike Jonas, Lance didn't play games, he didn't manipulate or threaten. Like the wind, what he couldn't go through, he went around or chipped at, layer by layer. But this was the first time she had seen the warrior she had only caught glimpses of before. In his face, in the prepared readiness of his muscles and the cool, objective look in his blue eyes as he studied his weapon, she saw a man who had no qualms in taking that final step to do what he felt was necessary.

It sent a strange tingle of arousal through her body. The certainty that in ways, many ways perhaps, he was stronger than she was, stronger than the Breeds she had known. He was a man who understood and believed in the laws of the land. In justice. But he was also a man who understood that even those laws had a limit.

Tonight, his laws and his justice wouldn't exist. And she regretted that. Dragging him into her world wasn't what she had wanted to do.

Tearing her eyes from him, she lowered her head and concentrated on cleaning her own weapon, on preparing for the night they would awaken to later. It was barely daylight now; the ride from Broken Butte to Estes Park had been made ahead of schedule. Of course, the fact that the wind seemed to push at their vehicle had helped. Lance had broken speed limits and driven with a calm efficiency that she admitted had made her nervous.

He had spoken little. His gaze had been fierce, his expression set. They had eaten breakfast before checking in, and the minute the door locked behind them, he had picked up the metal case he had carried in with his duffel bag and begun assembling the rifle.

Harmony had followed his example, beginning her own pre-battle rituals. But it was different now. As she searched inside her for that core of ice, for the shadow called Death, she realized it wasn't there anymore. Rather than feeling the vengeance clawing inside her, she could only feel regret.

Emotions rose, twisting, churning inside her chest until she wondered at the fact that she could breathe for them. As though something inside her had changed with this mating, some intrinsic, important part of her that had once enabled her to kill so easily. It felt… missing.

She shook her head unconsciously, frowning as she tried to make sense of herself. Had the potential to love always been inside her? She had never felt it before, had never known the need to love, until Lance.

Laying the ammunition clips aside, she laid her hand on her abdomen, her fingers rubbing at the area imperceptibly. A baby. What was she supposed to do with a baby?

But her arms ached to hold it, and as she closed her eyes, she saw tiny features framed by Lance's thick black hair, seeing the world through his midnight blue eyes. A little boy perhaps, one who could know laughter.

A cold shudder raced over her body as her eyes jerked open and she moved from the bed. It wasn't that innocent picture she saw, it was the labs, the babies whose ragged cries echoed through the cold stone walls as they wailed for attention. Their cries piercing as they screamed for warmth.

Little faces flushed with rage, eyes staring out at the world in wounded fury as nothing but the cries of others answered their demands.

"Are you normally this jittery before a job?" Lance's voice broke through the nightmarish memory as she swung around to face him. "We need to leave." Fear and anger knotted her insides as she paced to the closed curtains, her hands rubbing at the chill bumps that had risen on her arms. "And go where?" Harmony's gaze flickered to him as he carefully broke the gun apart again and laid the pieces in the foam padding of the metal case. "My first idea was better." She breathed in a shallow, quick gasp. "Dane will hide us until the child is born. We'll be safe. The baby will be safe." Lance clipped the case closed before lifting it from the table and setting it on the floor. Watching her closely, he leaned back in the chair, bracing his arms on the sides, and watched her with grim determination. "If we start running now, we'll never stop. And neither will our child." Lance's voice was firm, final.

This was a side of Lance that, she admitted, made her pause. The dominance was like a fire in those blue eyes and in the chiseled planes of his face. A part of her responded to the sheer force she glimpsed in him then. It made her want to submit to him, made her want to give him whatever he was demanding. But he was demanding her soul now.

"I can't let you do this." She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze head-on. "There's too much at stake and too many dangers that could have followed us here."

"Of course we were followed." His smile was tight, controlled. "We lost them in Boulder, but I'm sure they'll catch up to us soon enough."

Shock vibrated through her system.

"You knew we were followed?" she whispered.

She had suspected it when he drove through Boulder rather than the more direct route around the outside of the city, but she hadn't been certain. Her own radar, the prickle at the back of her neck, hadn't been present, so she hadn't been certain. Lance shrugged. "I thought I glimpsed the heli-jet in the distance in the rearview mirror, but I wasn't certain. It could have been a plane, hell, it could have been a shadow. But we were followed."

She wrapped her arms across her chest then, breathing in deeply. God, she hated all these emotions churning chaotically inside her. As though once she had begun feeling, it wouldn't stop. It wouldn't ease or give her peace.

"That's all the more reason to contact Dane." She breathed in deeply. "He'll know where to hide us…"

"I don't need one of your ex-lovers to protect my woman or my child," he stated grimly.

"Don't push this, Harmony, because you're going to lose."

"Is that what this is over?" She stood there, blank, amazed. "You won't accept his help because I slept with him?"

"I am perfectly capable of protecting my woman and my child," he informed her, his voice deepening. He retained his patience, though his gaze hardened. "We retrieve the information you have and get it back to Braden. From there, we'll know how to handle Jonas."

Men! She stared back at Lance in bemusement.

"Lance, I don't doubt you would protect us. The point is that if we found a place to have the baby in safety, then we could fight the rest later."

"If running or hiding would assure your life and our child's, then I would be perfectly capable of hiding us. Son of a bitch, Harmony. I understand your history with the bastard, but we do this my way, not his."

"I'm not doubting you…"

"Well, excuse me if it sounds like it," he snapped.

"You're bargaining with other people's lives," she whispered desperately. "We can't do that, Lance."

"I'd bargain with the devil himself for your fucking safety." An edge of impatience colored his voice. "If the first Leo exists, then his location is not going to be in those files. If the Council ever had a hint of where he was, they would have struck. A few power-hungry Council scientists would not have sat on that information before using it." He sat there so calmly, commanding, determined that this was going to go his way, period. For a moment, Harmony almost gave in. She almost agreed.

Then the faces of those babies in the labs flashed before her mind again. Screaming for attention, for warmth. They hadn't known warmth, had never known love or a gentle touch. That was the fate that awaited her child if the Council took her—that, or death. Straightening her shoulders, she let her own determined gaze meet his.

"Then I'll leave alone. I know how to contact Dane…"

She didn't expect his response, though she should have. His patience evaporated as her eyes widened. A hint of fear flew through her a second before he reached her, his hands gripping her upper arms firmly.

"Like fucking hell!" His features were contorted with fury, his eyes burning with it.

"Attempt it, Harmony, just fucking attempt it and I swear to God I'll slap you in cuffs so fast it will make your head spin."

Her lips parted as she stared back at him, shocked at the burning heat that flowed from his hands into her arms.

"Let me go." She jerked against his hold.

"Do you think I'm going to let you keep running?" His gaze bored into hers. "That I'm incapable of protecting you and our child?"

"That's not what I meant." She shook her head desperately. "You don't understand…"

"I understand that Jonas, Dane and these fucking files have haunted you for ten years, and it's coming to an end here."

His head lowered, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a primitive snarl.

"It ends here. Right here, by God."

"Even if it means our lives?" she cried out, fighting to hold back her fears, her tears.

"They've followed us, Lance. We can't even be certain who it is that followed, or who's waiting. Don't ask me to take this chance. Please."

He dropped a hand to her abdomen, his palm covering it, his eyes darkening to a near black.

"If it meant your life, I'd know it," he snapped. "I would feel it and the winds would scream that knowledge to me. This is the only way."

"No." She jerked at his hold again.

"Yes."

He didn't give her time to argue. As her lips opened to curse him, his were there, covering them as his arms pulled her against his chest.

Arousal should have been the last thing in her mind, the last thing she responded to. They were in the middle of a war zone and it was about to get worse, she could feel it. But his lips on hers were a sensual, erotic act of mastery. He didn't ask for her kiss, nor was he tentative. He demanded. He controlled. And ultimately, Harmony found herself submitting to the wicked, erotic nips at her lips by sharp teeth and the hungry growl that came from her own throat.

That dominance was her undoing. Female Breeds must have been programmed to submit to the males, though until Lance, that genetic coding had never made an impression on her. With Lance, she couldn't deny it. She couldn't deny her need, or her hunger, any more than she could deny the fears that, for the moment, dissolved beneath his passion.

His hands trailed down her arms, broad, calloused hands that stroked her flesh with sensual roughness and replaced the chill of foreboding with heated, wicked lashes of pleasure.

She was lost in him. As impossible as it should have been, as furious as she was with him, he still managed to consume her, to build the hunger simmering within her to a full, raging blaze.

She tore at his clothes, nothing so important now as feeling his flesh against hers, the warmth of his body stroking over her.