Page 3 of Protector Unmatched

“Maybe it does,” Winter said. “She could be some sort of Mata Hari who’s putting the moves on you, seduces you, and then betrays you.”

“Oh, please! As if I’m stupid enough not to recognize when a woman tries to use me. I’d never fall for that. Besides, I don’t even know anybody named Daphne.”

“Which is a good thing, because it means you can still change the future.”

He nodded. “You’re right. I have to eliminate the threat.”

Winter swallowed hard. “Eliminate? That’s not why I told you about the vision. I don’t mean for anybody to get hurt.”

“Winter, you should have learned by now that somebody is always gonna get hurt.” And a threat had to be eliminated before it was too late. “Better my would-be killer than me.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

“I need to figure out who she is.” And he had an idea how to accomplish that task. “Would you recognize her if you saw a photo of her?”

Winter furrowed her forehead. “But you just said you don’t know anybody named Daphne. And now you have photos?”

“I don’t, but the DMV does.”

“There must be thousands of Daphnes in all the DMV databases in the U.S.”

“We’ll start with Maryland. There can’t be that many. It’s not a very popular name. And we have parameters to limit the search: a female with black hair aged between twenty-five and forty.”

“I wouldn’t limit the search to black hair only. What if she dyed her hair?”

“Good point. Still, there can’t be that many women named Daphne. Meet me in the command center once Logan has left for his assignment. I’ll run the search in the meantime, and then we’ll go through the photos.”

Winter nodded. “Fine.”

As she turned to the door, Pearce said, “And Winter…”

She looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Not a word to the others about your vision. Not even to Logan. I don’t want anybody to know before I can figure out what we’re dealing with here. Agreed?”

“For now, fine. But once we know who she is and why she wants to kill you, we need to talk to the others.”

“One step at a time,” he said, and watched Winter leave his quarters.

Once he knew who this woman was, he’d do what needed to be done.

2

It was midmorning when Winter finally entered the command center, where Pearce sat in front of a bank of computers.

“What took you so long?” He didn’t want to sound accusatory, but he was impatient. It didn’t happen every day that he found out he was going to get murdered. He looked over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Winter said, lowering her lashes as she approached.

Pearce stared at the golden shimmer that covered her face. In fact, even her neck and every part of skin that was exposed exhibited the same sheen. In disbelief, he shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Winter sat down in the chair next to him, but didn’t look at him directly. “What?”

“Oh, please.”

Finally, she met his gaze. “What was I supposed to do? Logan got a call that his meeting was delayed a couple of hours. So, he was free.”

“Sure he was,” Pearce said dryly. Free to make love to his wife the Stealth Guardian way, pouring his virta, his life force, into her to heighten her arousal, giving her an orgasm every time he touched her. And as long as his virta coursed through her veins, she would shimmer golden. With four of the warriors at his compound now bonded, Pearce thought he’d gotten used to seeing their women walk around with the telltale golden shimmer every so often. But for some reason, it still jolted him. After leaving his parents’ home and moving into a compound, surrounded by single men and one Stealth Guardian female, he didn’t have to deal much with that particular sight.