“Luther wasn’t very forthcoming about his life when I first arrived with Bridget. My sister,” she clarified. “I asked all kinds of questions, but he didn’t answer.”
It seemed as though more and more men were arriving. That definitely boded ill for the easy recovery of her daughter. These men didn’t believe for a moment that Chariot would give her up or they wouldn’t have all come running. She tried not to show that she was becoming upset, but Diego seemed to be in her mind and caught her alarm.
What is it, sweetheart?
That voice of his was molten fire pouring into her mind, brandinghis name there. Filling all those places where she was terrified of having to leave him but so convinced she had no other choice.
You already know Chariot isn’t going to let me go, don’t you? That’s why so many have shown up.
The chances are very low that he’s going to listen to reason. We moved a satellite over his compound and are using it to catch any activity, such as his soldiers coming our way. We also have other ways of getting information. We’ll know if he’s sending another wave of soldiers to retrieve you.
Leila knew Diego was attempting to reassure her, but the news that his commanding officer and Luther were consulting together filled her with dread. Using a satellite cost millions of dollars.Millions.She couldn’t even conceive of the kind of money it would take to put a satellite in the air and move it where one wanted it to go. There had to be a protocol in place for moving satellites. Without a doubt they knew very powerful people, but she didn’t like the way the entire mess was shaping up.
Chariot works for the government. He has the backing of the United States military.Her heart was pounding too hard, and she couldn’t seem to slow it down. Never in her life had she been close to panicking. What was wrong with her? She was going to get these men killed. They had families. Wives and children. They were good men. She could usually detect a taint on a person, something that instantly put her off. None of the men she’d been introduced to had that strange off-putting aura about them.
“Joe’s here,” Wyatt announced, turning away from the cabin to look toward the forest.
“Do you need to at least greet him?” Leila tried to step away from Diego. She was going to have to leave. It was the only way to keep a war from brewing.
“Sweetheart,” Diego said, using his soft, mesmerizing tone. “I know you think this is happening because of you, but it’s beenshaping up for some time. Get it out of your mind that if you go back, this is all going to go away. It isn’t. It won’t. It’s bad enough that we have Whitney harming young girls and women and turning us into…I don’t even know what to call us. But we aren’t entirely human anymore. We don’t need another fully sanctioned lab doing the same thing.”
“The soldiers volunteer.” Leila couldn’t get her voice to go above a whisper. How did he know what she was thinking? It wasn’t as if she wanted to leave him.
“You didn’t volunteer. They gave your sister to Whitney. That right there condemns them in our eyes. Why would they be in league with a madman? Why take the two of you from Luther, your only relative? And after they kidnap you, going against your parents’ wishes, they train you to be an assassin and force you to work for them without the protection even the soldiers have.”
She felt the floor of the porch tremble. Wyatt turned back, a frown on his face. Rubin and Ezekiel, who both had stepped off the porch to follow Wyatt back toward the forest encampment, stopped abruptly to face Diego.
Diego’s arm still circled her waist, locking her to him. There didn’t appear to be tension in him. One would never know looking at him that he was angry, but she touched his mind and found rage. The trembling of the porch floor was an indication, and his energy was powerful enough that three men felt it and turned back. She immediately stroked gentle, soothing caresses in his mind, giving him those images and the feeling of her touching him mind to mind.
“Diego, what is it?”
“These men think so little of our women they’re willing to sacrifice them to further their own gains. When we were boys, we lost our sisters one by one. It was horrific to be unable to save them. We did our best to watch over them. To keep them fed, to brightentheir lives. Don’t get me wrong, our sisters did their part, but we valued them. We knew what they were. These men destroy the lives of women and children and don’t seem to give a damn about them or what happens to them. Look at what Whitney did to Bridget. She has no filter and is wide open, so every noise, everything around her, hurts her. She’s in constant pain. Chariot might say he didn’t do that, but he did. He conspired to send a little girl to a madman, knowing Whitney was considered insane. Knowing his reputation. Hell, it was his wife who told you Bridget was in trouble.”
His voice never rose from that low rumbling sound, but the edge to it let her know fury on her sister’s behalf, on hers, burned through him. She fell a little bit more in love with him. His anger on her behalf was very real.
“Everything okay, Diego?” Wyatt called.
She felt Diego take a cleansing breath and release it. He nuzzled the top of her head before answering.
“Yeah, we’re good here.” He gestured for the three men to go on their way.
Leila noted that Rubin studied his brother carefully before finally turning and following the others.
The moment they were alone, she turned her face up to his. “I don’t want these men to have to fight other soldiers, Diego, not on my behalf. I don’t want to be responsible if even one of them doesn’t make it home to his family. No matter what you say, they wouldn’t all be here if it wasn’t for what is happening to Bridget and me.”
Diego urged her toward one of the rocking chairs on the porch. “That’s true, but a showdown has been brewing for a long time. Our teams are always in the shadows. Very few people know of our existence, and that makes it easy for other factions to conspire against us and hunt us down. We’ve been sent on assignments that ultimately were designed to be suicide runs. I can’t tell you howmany times one or more of our teams were sabotaged by those sending us out. We serve our country. We save lives. As long as we’re completely in the shadows and the things Whitney has done never comes to light, all of us will always have to question who’s against us even though they’re our commanders.”
“That’s all true,” Leila agreed. She sank into the rocking chair and was a little surprised at how comfortable it was. Just like the chairs in his home, these were hand carved. “But you aren’t looking at the entire picture, Diego. If the world knew that Whitney had introduced animal and reptilian DNA into you, the backlash would be horrendous. People don’t like anything different. The prejudice against you would skyrocket. Those of you with various types of genetic differences would face unimaginable discrimination. Your kind wouldn’t be tolerated.”
“We’re aware.” Diego didn’t look at her. In fact, he stepped back, his hand dropping away from hers, his mind abruptly retreating from hers.
Leila looked up at him. As with most occasions, his features were expressionless, but there was something in his eyes—disappointment? Hurt? What had she said that triggered that kind of reaction in him? He had to know what she said was the truth. He had to have been aware of the reaction people would have to them. He said he was aware, so why the withdrawal?
“Diego, what’s going on?”
He turned back to her, his eyes hard. “ ‘Your kind wouldn’t be tolerated’?” His voice was low, sounding like the lash of a whip.
Instantly, she heard what he’d heard. “I’m so sorry for wording it that way,” she apologized. “I’m the same as you when it comes to genetic engineering. I sometimes, when I’m trying to understand other points of view, put myself in their place to try to get out of my own head. I don’t like forming arguments until I’ve listened and actually heard what the other person is saying to me. In thiscase, I was trying to make a case from someone else’s point of view. But you have to know if there is a ‘your kind,’ I’m part of that with you.”
