Jared (45 page)

Darn it, these things were always sneaking up on her.

“I guess if you’re going to be that way about it, I
can’t go on holding a grudge.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” Jared murmured
above her, his shadow stretching over her as he leaned down. “Jace is one of my
favorite brothers.”

“They’re all your favorite,” she groused.

“True.”

“They’re not mine.”

“They’ll grow on you.”

She leaned her head back into his chest to see his
face; the angle was off. All she could see was the underside of his hat.
Smudges from his fingers abounded under the rim. It could definitely use a
cleaning. She reached up and touched the shadow of beard on the underside of
his jaw. “You’re awfully confident about that.”

The back of his fingers skimmed her cheek before his
hand captured hers, bringing them both to rest on her shoulder. “You’ve got an
awfully soft heart.”

“Not for long. I’m working on toughening it up.”

“Then we’ll have to work fast at winning you over,”
Caleb interjected.

It wasn’t going to be that hard. “Just get Miri out
and you can call it a done deal.”

“Miri’s freedom is my debt,” Jace corrected quietly.

“She’s my friend,” Raisa countered, just in case he
thought his claim was bigger.

“And my responsibility.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Allie exclaimed, hands on
hips. “Split the obligation down the middle and call it quits. We have too much
to do to be fighting amongst ourselves over who cares more.”

Was that what they had been fighting about? Raisa
wasn’t sure. And from the flicker of emotion that crossed Jace’s face, neither
was he.

Allie balanced herself with her hand on the rail and
faced Jace. “Now, I assume Slade will be joining us shortly?”

“As soon as he puts the finishing touches on the last
of his devices.”

“And there haven’t been any last-minute changes to the
plan?” The arch of Allie’s brow was knowing.

“Just one,” Caleb acknowledged.

“And what would that be?” Raisa asked, knowing what it
was before he even said it from the way he was looking at Jared and not at her.

“You’re staying here.”

“No, I’m not.”

Jared had been angling for that since the get-go, but
the reality was that only she knew the back way into the compound, and
explaining it wasn’t the same as being there. And if the place had been
booby-trapped in the interim, only she would recognize it. Plus there was that
other pesky detail.

“Have you forgotten I’m the only one who can sense the
bad guys when they’re masked?”

Jared’s jaw went stubborn. “We’ll get past them.”

“You need more than to just get past them. You need to
get past them undetected.”

“We’ll manage.”

She ducked out from under his arm. “You just don’t
want me in danger.”

“None of us do.”

That, surprisingly, came from Jace.

She waved away the concern. “I’m not the one who needs
protecting. Miri does.”

“Miri needs rescuing.” Jared didn’t come after her
like she expected, but his energy did, holding tightly to hers, keeping them
connected. “You, sunbeam, like all treasures, need protecting.”

“Good God, Jared Johnson spouting poetry, now I’ve
seen it all,” a man’s voice called. Derek and Slade approached the house. Both
were broad-shouldered and lean hipped, with the easy stride of warriors. The
weapons draped over their shoulders merely completed the image.

Jared didn’t even glance at Derek. “Talk to me when
you get a woman of your own.” His hand cupped her cheek. “You’ll find there’s
nothing you’ll value more.”

Unlike the Johnsons, the McClarens never wore hats.
Derek’s short-cropped hair gleamed a deep bronze above his handsome,
square-jawed face. “There’s no doubt I’ll be valuing her but not to the point
that I’ll be spouting poetry.”

Raisa couldn’t turn her eyes away from Jared’s as his
thumb brushed over her lower lip. His energy reached out. Hers embraced it
eagerly. The touch of his mind followed, and for the first time, she
consciously opened hers to his. She felt his surprise and then pure male
satisfaction as he measured her response.

“Again, Derek, talk to me when you’ve found her.”

There was a brief silence. Caleb broke it.

“I’ll get the men ready.” His turned to go. His boot
hit the top step, then the next. Raisa watched him leave, telling herself it
was okay, but knowing it wasn’t. She owed Jared this. She caught Jared’s thumb
in her teeth, kissed it, and said, “Hold that thought.”

She hurried after Caleb, catching up to him five feet
from the porch. He turned when he heard her behind him. Now that she had his
attention, she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She rubbed her palm on her jeans
and then stuck it out. His right brow rose in that way that reminded her so
much of Jared. She licked her dry lips. “If the offer is open, I’d like to
start over.”

His big hand swallowed hers. “Welcome to the family.”

JACE and the small group of men raced through the
night, sweeping her along in their center, an army of deadly shadows gliding
silently through the forest, blending in and out of the faint moonlight.

Having gotten her way, Raisa levitated alongside the
array of men who flanked her, feeling their displeasure every step of the way.
None of them wanted her here. She’d like to think she’d gotten her way because
of her logical argument, but the truth was, Slade wasn’t sure the device he’d
fashioned to block the killing signal from the Sanctuary would work in time if
the signal was weakened by distance. Hence, her presence amidst the weres
decked out with enough fancy electronic equipment to make her feel like the
warrior queen in a futuristic novel. A tremor of vibration came to her,
reminding her she had a job to do.

“Patrol on the left about a quarter mile,” she
whispered into the earpiece.

There was a flurry of tapping on earpieces from the
men around her.

“Repeat that,” came as clear as a bell over her head
set. The communication devices, which optimized a man’s deeper octave, had
trouble with her softer, higher voice.

Raisa rolled her eyes and sent the message to Jared
telepathically instead. He then repeated the message in a low whisper. Jace
direct their course to the right. It boggled the mind that a man like Slade
couldn’t figure out there were times when a woman might need to use one of
these devices.

Vampire and were women do not go into battle, Jared
informed her with an edge to the thought.

Be that as it may, there are obviously cases where we
have our uses.

And it felt darn good. Despite the danger, despite the
fact that she probably wouldn’t come out of this alive, Raisa was finding it
exhilarating being part of the team to save Miri. For so long she’d been a
helpless victim, but now she was an integral part of something bigger, and it
felt good.

Don’t get too addicted to that feeling. As soon as
Slade pops that device out of your skull, I’m wrapping you in cotton wool and
tucking you away in a bedroom back on the Circle J.

She would have argued the point, but she didn’t have
enough energy. Though the men were adjusting their speed to hers, she really
wasn’t in the best physical condition, and the strain was telling. She settled
for sticking her tongue out at him. A gesture Derek caught sight of, which
produced the reverberation of a warm, very male, and compelling chuckle in her
ear. She blinked. The earpieces just might be too well tuned to male voices.
Distracted, she miscalculated the next leap over a low bush. Her foot got
caught in the branches. Snow puffed up all around her as her knees hit the
ground.

Rats!

Before her face planted in the snow, hands grabbed her
arms and she was lifted, Jared and Derek carrying her as if she weighed nothing
until she found her feet again.

Were they really that strong?

“Nah. You just don’t weigh anything.” There was a
murmur of agreement across the channel and a lot of disapproving looks.

She blew the snowflakes off her upper lip and rubbed
her cheek on her shoulder. “Give it up,” she said into the mike. “I’m not going
home.”

That just earned her more looks.

“Are you hurt?” Jared asked.

He knew she wasn’t. She’d felt his energy all over her
when she’d fallen so his asking of the question must be to placate the worry
eating him alive. He didn’t like her being here, didn’t like the risk she was
taking, didn’t like that it was necessary. She cut him a glance, injecting a
bit of humor into the tension. “My pride took an awful beating.”

The twitch of Jared’s lips could have been a smile. A
stray chuckle or too meandered over the com. “If you’d stayed home where you
belong, your pride would still be intact.”

She ignored the grunts of agreement in her ear. “It
was my choice.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

They’d been having this argument since Slade had
announced he wasn’t sure the blocking device would work on a signal weakened by
distance. Jared had been willing to risk it, opting for less overall risk.
Raisa had not. “No, it doesn’t.”

From her other side, Derek offered, deadpan, “If
you’re hurt, I could kiss it and make it better for you.”

Jared immediately growled a warning to the were. Derek
didn’t turn his head but the creases fanning from the corner of his eyes
indicated his amusement. The were leader’s habit of needling Jared usually
irritated her; right now it didn’t. Anything to divert Jared from his worry
worked for her.

“Hell, man, you’re getting so predictable there’s not
much point in teasing you anymore,” Derek tacked on.

“And your point would be?”

“Well, with Caleb out of the game, you down, and Jace
following the same path, I’m running out of amusement factors.”

“Get a dog.”

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Get a wife.”

“She’s playing hard to get.”

“She’s playing hide and seek,” a male voice she recognized
as the new were to the group said. “And she doesn’t want to be found.”

“Like your mate does,” Derek shot back.

“Quiet,” Jace hissed over the headsets.

The men immediately dropped back to that intense
silence. Raisa forced a smile to her lips at the exchange, despite the pain
beginning anew in her head. The Sanctuary’s sadistic version of “knock-knock.”
They’d been trying to get her attention for the last hour. She couldn’t send a
message now without revealing her location. She couldn’t tell Jared because he
had no confidence that the Sanctuary would continue to wait for her to give
them what they wanted and, therefore, would insist she transmit, which was
never going to happen.

Bottom line, she wasn’t going to be the one to
jeopardize this mission. Miri needed Jace. Jace needed Jared, and they all
needed her to guide them through the Sanctuary patrols. Which meant the
Sanctuary was just going to have to tolerate being on terminal hold.

A trickle of that almost energy came from ahead. Raisa
focused on it, trying to separate it into threads.

There are Sanctuary ahead.

“Jace, we’ve got company,” Jared whispered in a thread
of sound into the com.

“How many?”

Raisa shook her head. Two, maybe three.

“Two or three.”

“Are they tracking us?”

Jared stared at her, awaiting her answer. How was she
supposed to know that? She shrugged.

“Unknown.”

Jace raised his hand. The men came to a stop. Raisa
sat down on a rotting log, hoping it would hold her, because her legs sure
didn’t want to. Jared took a step toward her. She held up a hand, keeping him
at a distance as she focused on the energy that flowed to her in subtle bands.
The bands didn’t move for endless moments, just held at a steady distance. Did
the Sanctuary suspect they were coming? The last message she’d sent said the
Renegades knew about a compound to the east and they were heading west, but she
could have slipped up. She’d been so nervous, that might have gone through,
too, and aroused their suspicions. She waited in an agony of doubt for those
bands to give her an idea of what they were doing. She had never excelled at
waiting.

Without anything to distract her, she couldn’t
disregard the next warning throb at the base of her skull. Whoever was in
charge of the button was going to get serious soon. She sent another pulse of
energy to the implant, disrupting the frequency in what she hoped resembled
static. As before when she’d tried it, the pain abated before it came back,
slightly altered but not as strong. As if they were testing.

Playing with feedback had bought her an hour so far,
but sooner or later the Sanctuary was going to get suspicious. And knowing the
Sanctuary, when they did, they were going to be vindictive. Raisa took a
breath, stilling her panic at the thought. She’d never been able to adjust to
pain or raise her level of tolerance. She dreaded the moment they would decide
to punish her. The only thing she dreaded more was letting Jared down again.