She pulled her laptop from the backpack and set it on the end table beside the bed. He noticed the way her fingers moved over the lid in a small stroke of what could have been affection. The laptop had a waterproof case, and the backpack was waterproof.
“In case you’re wondering, I did ask Gedeon to bring us dinner.”
“I’m hungry,” she admitted. “I was considering heading to the kitchen and looking for whatever you had in there to make a salad.”
“Fortunately, Gedeon is grilling tonight. He’s got everything covered for us.”
“Handy man to have around.”
“I think so.” Gorya indicated her laptop. “How did you learn your computer skills? Computers aren’t my strong suit. I can use one if I have to, but I prefer to have someone else who really knows what they’re doing do all the heavy work.”
Her lashes fluttered—those long lashes that made her look so incredibly young. He was beginning to know the subtle telling signs she gave when she was uncomfortable answering his questions. He found it interesting that she didn’t want to tell him how she’d learned to use a computer.
Maya traced the logo on the lid of the laptop. “I happened to stumble upon three men attacking a woman. Well, teenager. She was seventeen. Initially, I think they were stealing her car. She had a very cool Porsche 911 Carrera. I didn’t know anything about cars at the time, but even I could see it was awesome and worth stealing. I didn’t, by the way, steal cars, because I didn’t know how to drive back then. I would have let them take the car had they stopped there, but once they saw the driver, they decided they wanted more.”
Gorya’s gut knotted. He kept his expressionless mask. There was a good reason she didn’t want to tell him about her introduction to the computer. He noticed immediately she didn’t give the woman’s name. She was still in touch with her. The woman knew her. Sheknew Maya’s name. That was unacceptable. He had no doubt in his mind that Maya was hunted.
He was already suspicious that she was like his mother, like Gedeon and Meiling. If Maya had rare gifts—and he already knew she did—and the remaining members of the Amurov family left alive in Russia found out she lived, they would hunt her. So would any of those who had banded together to wipe out families with superior gifts. Patva seemed to have realized her mother had rare gifts and wanted a child from her. Somehow her mother had managed to prevent conception. He had turned his eyes toward the child. Others might do the same. This woman would always be a threat to Maya as long as she was alive. He didn’t dare let on to Maya what he was thinking.
“Keep going,” he encouraged, careful his voice sounded like he was interested but not in the least threatening. “You must have stopped them.”
She leapt up to pace across the room to the fireplace, her feet not making even a whisper of sound. “She fought them, and the more she fought, the angrier they got. I despise that, as if women don’t have a right to say no. Or to protect our bodies. In any case, after what was done to Polina, that’s a trigger for me—multiple men raping women and angry that they dare fight back. By that time, Wraith and I had practiced, with her fully or partially emerging at will. We could fight together smoothly, and we did. We killed all three of them. Two of them had guns and one had a knife. I believe they would have killed her. As it was, they did stab her, and one shot me before I could finish them off.”
Again, Gorya noticed she didn’t put a name to thewoman. He filed away that the girl was seventeen at the time. She had to come from a very wealthy family in Houston in order to be driving a Porsche. The car she named was a top-of-the-line sports car. Maya might not know much about cars, but he did. Only a very wealthy family would give their daughter an expensive and, in his opinion, dangerous car.
“Shot you?” he echoed.
She nodded. “I didn’t want any of my blood at the scene. I knew she would have to call the cops, and I ripped my shirt and bound my arm. It wasn’t too bad, but it hurt like hell. I needed to make certain her wound wasn’t so bad that she’d bleed out before the ambulance got there. I tried not to let her see my face, but that was impossible. The stab wound was bad. I kept talking to her to keep her alert. I told her no one could know about me, that I lived on the streets. She hadn’t seen Wraith, so she had no idea my leopard had helped. In the end, she agreed not to identify me. She said she would say she was unconscious most of the time, which she was. She had a bump on her head. She gave me her address and told me there were security cameras everywhere on her estate, but if I could get past them or call her ahead of time so she could distract the guards, she would see to my wound.”
“You trusted her?”
She looked up at him through the crescent of thick pale lashes. “I don’t trust anyone, Gorya. At least, I’m struggling to trust you.”
He heard the honesty in her voice. He detested the fact that this woman meant something to her. Maya knew the woman was a threat to her safety and was willing to take the chance in order to keep her in her life. He wasn’t. That was the bottom line. He wasn’t. In just a short time, Maya had become the world to him. Without her, there wasn’t a way for Rogue or him to exist. There was no joy. No hope. She was the miracle whether or not she believed inmiracles or that she was capable of someday saving him. She at least gave him these moments—something he’d never had. No one could threaten her and live.
He gave her his gentlest smile when he didn’t know gentle. “I’m doing the same. Clearly you developed a relationship with her. Are you going to continue to refer to her as ‘she’ and ‘her’?” Deliberately, it was a challenge. Was she going to make up her mind to trust him?
“She’s the only person I consider family.”
There was no mistaking the underlying warning in her voice.
He had promised honesty. What was honest? “You know my family. I told you the cousins that matter to me.” He had. Timur, he thought of more as a sibling than a cousin. Fyodor. Mitya and Sevastyan. They were his family, and he was intensely protective of them.
He couldn’t kill her family. He couldn’t. And the woman was innocent. He didn’t murder innocents. What the hell was he going to do?
She nodded. “That’s true, but it isn’t as if I couldn’t have found that information easily. They’re notorious crime lords. Well, not Timur or Sevastyan, but Fyodor and Mitya.” She didn’t take her gaze from his.
He didn’t look away or blink. He was used to deception. It wasn’t that he wanted to deceive her. He didn’t want to harm the one woman she considered family. He’d made it a policy never to kill an innocent. It wouldn’t be an easy decision.
Rogue stirred.To keep them safe we would have no choice.
There is always a choice.Gorya was uneasy. Killing had become too easy for both leopard and man. It was a way of life, a solution when anyone got in the way. Granted, everyone they ran across was depraved and out to kill them or someone they loved, or they were someone they had hunted down from their past, but it had becomefar too easy for them to dispose of human beings.This woman is innocent. She is someone Maya cares for.
She is a threat. She knows Maya, and if this woman’s identity is discovered, she will be tortured until she reveals Maya’s real name and location. She cannot live. We can be merciful when we dispose of her.
Gorya liked that even less.We do not murder innocent women, especially if Maya considers them family.He’d just been considering the exact same thing, and yet when Rogue sent him the images, he knew it was wrong. Very, very wrong. Maya would never forgive him any more than he would forgive her if she killed Timur.
“You’re arguing with your leopard again.” Maya made it a statement.
