“I’ll take it from here,” he told her. “Go wait for me in my office. You remember the way?”
She nodded, her eyes subdued. To his surprise, she didn’t give him any lip. No defiance. She just turned around and walked back down the hallway, a defeated slump to her shoulders.
Chapter Fifteen
When Eli walked into his office, he found Tyana gathering the weapons he’d tossed onto one of the couches. Her torn jacket was back on, and she was shoving her knives into place.
Her back was rigid, her movements mechanical, as though she were hanging on to control by a thread.
“What are you doing?” he asked softly.
She turned, casting her gaze briefly over him before returning to what she was doing.
“Leaving,” she said shortly.
He moved closer to her but was careful to keep some distance between them.
“You just got here.”
She slung the rifle over her shoulder and turned around again, her stance defensive and impenetrable as hell.
“I found out what I needed to know. You can’t help me.” She paused for a long second then stared hard at him. “Why you?”
He lifted his brow in confusion. “Why me what?”
She sighed with impatience. “Why are you stable? How is it you can control your shifts, even conjure clothing when you shift back? You’re in complete control of your abilities. The inhibitor I used on you was ineffective.”
“Dumb luck?”
“Until now, I assumed you’d found a cure, that you and your team had found a way to fight what happened. I wanted that for Damiano. I’ve killed for it. I would kill again. I’d do anything to save him from what I fear will happen if he doesn’t get help soon.”
“Join the club,” Eli murmured.
“I was hired by Esteban to kill Ian and Braden and to bring you in alive. Any idea why he’d want you alive?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t even know who the f**k Esteban Morales is, so how the hell would I know why he wants my team dead and me alive?”
Realization lit fire in her eyes. “Because he’s the bastard who unleashed the chemical agent on you. You’re stable. The others aren’t. He wants to know why. You’re the one thing in his experiment that didn’t go wrong.”
Eli held his hands up. “Whoa. Slow down. Back up and tell me what the f**k you mean by he’s the one who unleashed the chemical on us.”
Her shoulders sagged and fatigue blew over her. She looked like a sapling swaying in the wind. He moved into her space, took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Fixing you something to eat. You’ll eat. Then we’ll talk. You’re no good to me unconscious. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Her quiet acquiescence was starting to bug the shit out him. He was much more comfortable when she was threatening to kick his ass, kicking his ass or pulling a weapon on him.
He shoved her toward the kitchen, parked her butt in a chair by the table and went to rummage in the fridge for leftovers he could warm up.
Through it all she never said a word. Her gaze was focused across the room, unseeing, like she was a million miles away. Plotting her next move? Who knew with this woman.
He was beginning to understand her motivation a lot more now. Her loyalty to her brother mirrored his own toward his team. If he thought Falcon Mercenary Group held the answers to helping Ian and Braden, he would have been after their asses just like she’d latched onto his.
He warmed some soup on the stove, poured it into a bowl and plunked it down in front of her. Then he sat down across the table from her and told her to eat.
She fiddled with the spoon for a minute before she dipped in and started to eat. The silence grew between them as did Eli’s impatience. He wanted answers.
Not that someone, some group being after him was anything new, not since the shit that had gone down in Adharji, but Esteban was a newcomer to the mix. And if Tyana was right, and he was behind the chemical attack, the shit was going to hit the fan and quick.
When he heard the clink of the spoon against the bottom of the bowl, he looked up and saw her push the bowl away. She looked like she was about to say something, so he kept silent, waiting on her.
“This sounds so stupid,” she mumbled.
“Just say it, Tyana.”
Her eyes met his again. “For some inexplicable reason I feel like I can trust you.” She held up her hand. “That came out wrong. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anyone outside Falcon. But I don’t see you as the enemy.
“And there’s this attraction thing…”
He raised his eyebrows. Somehow he didn’t see her as having the balls to own up to the tension between them.
“I’m attracted to you in a way that leaves me baffled.”
“The feeling is entirely mutual, sugar.”
She glared until he fell silent.
“I looked you up in Singapore for information. I wanted a way to help D. I didn’t intend for things to go as far as they did.”
“I’m certainly not complaining,” he offered.
Again she silenced him with a fierce scowl.
“Then you caught up to me in Paris and again, I lost sight of what mattered, what was important.” A faint light of shame passed over her eyes. “I compromised Falcon because I couldn’t keep my hormones in check. But when I’m around you…”
She put a hand to her forehead, a delicate gesture that contradicted her outer steel. “I get crazy. I feel stupid. I do stupid things. And quite frankly, it pisses me off.”
“I’m assuming there’s a point to this sharing of deep thoughts,” he said dryly. He wasn’t about to admit that he was doing a mental double fist pump and already plotting how to get her get all stupid with him again.
“Yeah, there is,” she bit out. “Esteban offered me a cure for D in exchange for killing Ian and Braden and bringing you in.”
He was beginning to understand. “But instead you came here, knowing full well you had a snowball’s chance in hell of pulling off the job.”
She cut him off with a derisive snort, and he rolled his eyes. “Let’s not go over the whole if I wanted you dead you’d be dead thing, okay? We’ve both had ample opportunity to kill each other. We haven’t. Obviously you have no more desire to see me or my team dead than I do to see you die.”
She nodded grudgingly.
“And you feel like you’re betraying Damiano because you aren’t willing to give Esteban what he wants?”
Her eyes flashed coldly, and he saw raw resolve there, simmering, angry.
“If I believed for a minute the bastard was telling me the truth I’d kill your men and package you and deliver you to him in a heartbeat.”
“So you think he was lying.”
“I think he knew exactly what buttons to push in order to get me to do his dirty work for him. Now what I want to know is why he’s so fixated on getting rid of Ian and Braden and why he wants you alive.”
Eli sat back in his chair. “My guess? If what you said is true, and we were all part of his little experiment then he wants me because I’m what worked. Just like you said.” He frowned and leaned forward again. “What it doesn’t explain is why he doesn’t want Gabe.”
Tyana gave him a perplexed look. “Isn’t he the fourth member of your team? Why would Esteban want him?”
“Because he’s stable,” Eli said calmly.
Gabe was the sole reason Eli’s secret hadn’t been exposed. It also meant that Gabe was really the only experiment that worked. Had Esteban just overlooked him on his radar?
Tyana’s eyes rounded with shock. “So you aren’t the only one after all?”
Eli shook his head.
“Maybe Esteban wasn’t lying, then,” she murmured. “Maybe there is a cure.” Her chin came up and she looked at him, her eyes just a little bit lighter. “What went on during your captivity, Eli? Were you and Gabe given injections? Did they give you any serum? Tests?”
Eli’s jaw tightened. “They didn’t have time. We got out.” He couldn’t tell her that his natural shifting ability was what got their asses out of a sling in the prison camp. Not when the others didn’t start exhibiting symptoms until much later.
“We didn’t get in to rescue Damiano until three days after you guys split. He doesn’t remember what happened.” Her hands shook slightly on the table as she balled her fingers into fists. “He was in bad shape when we found him.”
The area right behind Eli’s eye began to pound. It felt like someone was shoving an ice pick right through his eyeball. He didn’t leave men behind. He’d watched Damiano go down. Seen his lifeless body dragged out of the cell.
“That bothers you.”
He looked up at her. She hadn’t posed it as a question. “Hell yeah, it bothers me. I don’t leave a man behind. I saw him die. I watched them take him away.”
“He was more dead than alive when we found him,” she said softly. “I won’t lose him to this. Not after saving him once.”
A silvery apparition shimmered and coalesced beside Tyana. Before he could utter a warning, not to Tyana, mind you, but to Gabe’s stupid ass, Tyana bolted from her chair and grabbed Gabe’s now solid form.
They fell to the floor, Tyana on top, knee dug deep into Gabe’s crotch and her knife across his throat.
Eli stood and leaned over the table. “Dumbass. It would serve you right if I let her carve you up like a turkey. Tyana, back off. The moron you’re about to kill is Gabe. I figure you at least want to stop and ask questions first.”
Tyana pressed her knife just a little harder until a fine stream of blood slithered down Gabe’s neck. “Don’t you ever try and sneak up on me again like that, f**ker.”
Gabe held up his hands. “Yeah, yeah, I get the message. Get off, for God’s sake. I have a policy about hitting girls.”
Tyana kneed him in the groin even as she stood to her full height. Gabe rolled up in a ball, grunting in pain.
Eli chuckled and Gabe glared up at him. Then Eli grew more serious and fixed Gabe with a scowl. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”
Tyana speared them both with furious eyes. “So what’s his gift?”
“Invisibility,” Gabe said as he finally got himself to an upright position. “Damn convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
“Or damn inconvenient if it gets you killed,” she said sharply.
Gabe folded his arms over his chest. “Damiano. You said he was alive.”
She nodded. “No thanks to you and your team.”
“That’s low and you know it,” Eli said.
She lifted a brow. “Do I? It seems to me that you and Gabe here have a good deal. Maybe Ian and Braden were just collateral damage along with Damiano.”
Eli bolted around the table and got up into her face quick. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and yanked her up close. “If you’re insinuating that we somehow signed on for this gig, you better think again. We took a job to recover hostages. We hired Falcon to get us there. There were no hostages. It was set up from the start. How the f**k do we know that Falcon didn’t lead us right into Esteban’s hands?”
She gazed unflinchingly at him. “I guess neither of us has reason to trust the other.”
“And yet here you are with the proverbial olive branch,” he murmured.
“Maybe I just think our energies are better spent as a team rather than at odds.”
“And I couldn’t agree more.” He bent and licked gently at the cut at the corner of her lip.
She jerked away, her eyes blazing with fury. She cast a sidelong glance at Gabe and frowned even harder. Eli laughed.
“He heard our entire conversation, sugar. Don’t go getting all shy on me now.”
It was probably the wrong thing to do, remind her that Gabe had been privy to her bloodletting. And he had a feeling that any time Tyana got in touch with her innermost thoughts it was the equivalent of shedding blood.
She turned and stalked out of the kitchen, and Eli turned on Gabe. “Stay the f**k away from her.”
Gabe gave him a bored look. “You seem to forget she was sent here to kill at least some of us. Quit thinking with your dick, Eli. Get rid of her and fast.”
Eli sighed. “To quote a saying that has become increasingly more common around here lately, if she had wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you want, Gabe? Want me to go slit her throat? How does that help us? She has information we need. We now have the name of the jerk-off who gassed us to begin with. He wants us out of the picture. I think we ought to be a little more concerned with taking this ass**le out than pissing off the entire Falcon Mercenary Group by killing their little sister.”
Gabe shrugged. “I’m with you, man. You know that. I just don’t agree with her being here. And I’d hate to think your judgment was clouded because of your desire to get into her pants.”
“I believe you’ve made yourself abundantly clear.”
Gabe turned and went the opposite direction toward the stairs, and Eli went in search of Tyana.
He found her in his study, pacing.
It was interesting, the myriad of reactions she elicited in him. Yeah, he wanted to f**k her. But when he looked at her, all hard edges with just a hint of vulnerability that he got the barest glimpses of, he had the strange desire to shelter her. To protect her, though God knew she could take care of herself.