Lawe had a team of highly trained covert Breeds trailing her for—she didn’t know how long, she thought as she watched them.
Oh yes, she did know. Because she knew how long it had been since she had so much as scratched herself during a mission. She hadn’t been wounded on a mission since the night Lawe and a very small team of men had rescued her from the Middle East dungeon she had been held in. Bar fights, though, were another story. Diane had been recovering from a bar fight in Asia when Thor had told her about Brandenmore’s nearly successful abduction of her niece.
Come to think of it, she had taken a few brawling injuries since her abduction and what she suspected was Lawe’s decision to place a team on her for protection. Those injuries had involved bar fights—usually begun by Malcolm the hothead.
Diane had immediately pulled out of the current job, returned the client’s advance and walked out on his screaming insistence that she make the scheduled pickup Thor had arranged. She had flown straight to the States and immediately begun shadowing her sister.
It had been weeks of hell afterward as she attempted to follow Rachel and provide backup for the Breeds attempting to protect her.
Thor had replaced the stitches in her leg more than once, cursed her for her stubbornness and railed at her when she had collapsed in exhaustion.
And when Lawe had found out, he’d nearly gone ballistic.
She clearly remembered walking away from him as he growled in rage at the two Breeds who had been part of her team at that time.
Those Breeds had since left and joined Sanctuary. She’d been smart enough to confront them and demand their loyalty when she’d learned Lawe expected them to tattle on every move she made. That demand had been one they had been unable to meet. Their first loyalty, they had informed her, was to their people. Diane suspected they had already assumed she was Lawe’s mate. That meant their highest priority was her protection.
Diane had already begun to suspect there was something drawing them together that wasn’t entirely normal.
Mating heat.
And she’d made it a point, just as it seemed he had, to steer clear of any chance of it flaring to full, burning life.
How long had it been since he had taken her out of that hellhole? Sixteen months? There were times she still felt as though she were recovering from the weeks she had been held and questioned about her deceased uncle and his activities before his death.
And since that rescue, she hadn’t been wounded once conducting a mission.
It was no damned wonder the Bureau of Breed Affairs was coming up short on Enforcers to spread around on the missions they were contracted for. They were sending their Enforcers on too many damned personal missions, she thought caustically.
And she hadn’t put two and two together and come up with four by herself in all these months. She felt the sting of self-disgust at that thought.
She had seen the looks in her men’s eyes earlier and she knew they too had sized up the situation correctly.
Lawe had had a team covering her without their knowledge too. Which meant they were more than damned good.
They were damned f**king good.
The number of “accidents” had increased though. The knife wound during a bar fight, a fall from a cliff when her equipment had mysteriously failed.
The first time Rachel had needed her, just after she had learned she was pregnant while in Switzerland, Diane had been in Syria having the shit beat out of her.
The second time, when Amber had been taken by Brandenmore that evening, Diane had been recovering from a knife wound inflicted during a bar fight.
The third time, when that deadbeat bastard who fathered Amber was attempting to legally take Amber from her mother, Diane had been recovering from injuries sustained when her equipment had failed during a mountain climb.
Strangely her so-called accidents coincided with events that had involved her sister or her niece at a time when they had needed her most.
And she was piecing this together finally why?
Because only this past week, after the Executioner—which was what they called Gideon Cross—left that message for her in Argentina had she begun to suspect that one of her men could be attempting to ensure she was no longer a part of her sister’s life, or her protection.
She simply couldn’t make herself consider Thor, for the simple fact that he had been the one to pull her ass out every time. But, neither could she make herself completely trust him either.
“Did you know they were on my ass?” she asked Thor as he stood silently behind her, his arms crossed over his chest as he too watched the small group.
“Nope. Didn’t,” he said shortly.
He was pissed, but he wasn’t the only one. The rest of her men were as well.
Aaron, Brick and Malcolm were in the other room. Aaron had taken a bullet to the thigh, Malcolm had taken one to the back of his leg. Brick had taken one across his outer thigh, a flesh wound that required advanced skin patches along with two stitches. He had stated he was just too damned disgusted to put up with Breeds tonight. Thor had insisted on staying with her. As though she needed someone to protect her.
Had her command already begun breaking down, or was Thor more concerned with any information that he may miss?
He was the one she trusted the most. He helped plan every mission, knew every move she made and was the one most insistent that she never went anywhere, or did anything, alone.
And she had a spy close to her.
“I didn’t even suspect they were there until they started pouring out of the woodwork like cockroaches today,” she muttered resentfully.