"Harmony, dammit, answer me," Lance snapped into the link as she realized she had been hearing his voice for several seconds.
She inhaled slowly, her gaze going around the room before finding the wary form of the young woman stumbling through the door.
"Harmony… Now, dammit." His voice was rough, and sent lust coursing through her. Flipping the mic down, she crooned into the link. "I have a present for you, baby. Want to come collect?"
Yep, it was lust.
CHAPTER 13
The moment her voice crooned over the comm link, Lance felt the response surge through his body. His c**k was already painfully erect, but the sexy tone of her voice had it jerking in his jeans, impossibly harder and ready to f**k.
Damn her. She picked a hell of a time to turn into a sex kitten.
"Okay, Steven, let's move in. She has him."
He was aware of Steven's quick, surprised look as they headed into the house, with the paramedics coming in behind them.
Lance waved them to the corner where the mother, Liza, was cradling her young son. She was bloody, beaten, but appeared conscious.
Moving quickly, he and the two State Police officers moved into the bedroom, guns drawn, before pulling up to a quick stop.
Tommy Mason was spewing vulgarity as Harmony sat on her haunches listening to him, her head tilted, a mocking smile on her face as she ran her thumb slowly down the edge of her blade.
"You think you're so smart," Mason spat. "You freak. You're nothing but a nasty damned animal and you'll get yours."
Harmony lifted her head to Lance. "He's just full of information," she drawled. "All kinds of supremacist rhetoric. You have some fine folks in your fair town, Sheriff Jacobs." She moved aside as the officers gripped Mason's arms and picked him up from the floor. Harmony slid the knife deftly into its sheath and stared back at him expectantly.
"I'm hungry," she stated. "Didn't I see a fast-food joint earlier? Think we could detour before we have to take care of all that nasty paperwork?"
He watched her closely. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, her voice huskier than normal.
"Are you okay?" He moved to her, his gaze going over her carefully. "Did he manage to cut you?"
She gave an unladylike snort. "Please." She waved the question away. "He was such an amateur. People should learn how to use knives before attempting to play with them." She reached behind her and pulled the switchblade, encased in an evidence bag, from her belt. "Here you go. I didn't even get any of my nasty little paw prints on it." He took the bag carefully, allowing his fingers to brush hers, feeling the unnatural cold of her fingertips.
"Let's go get those statements taken care of," he said and sighed. "Steven and his men will take care of Mason."
"Are they going to lock him up?" She moved ahead of him as they left the bedroom and headed for the front door.
"They'll lock him up. He'll be lucky if he sees the outside of a cell in the next twenty years. Shooting at the State Police is a heavy crime."
Lance had seen the officer carefully lifting a pistol from the bedroom floor and putting it in an evidence bag as his partner read Mason his rights.
"They'll lock him up for shooting at a police officer but not for beating the hell out of his wife?" Harmony shook her head as they moved outside. "The world is a sick, sick place, Lance."
"We do our best, Harmony."
"And when your personal best isn't good enough?" she asked as they reached the Raider.
As she turned to him, Lance saw the shadows that filled her amazing green eyes. They were pure, brilliant, with no specks of darker color. Almost mesmerizing.
"When my personal best hasn't been good enough, I keep fighting," he sighed as he leaned against the door, trapping her between him and the interior of the vehicle. "I come out here every time the neighbors call. I try to help Liza as best I can. Until she lets go of her fear enough to help me put him behind bars, then there's nothing I can do."
"And the little boy?"
"I do my best, Harmony." He knew the question she was asking, the warning behind it.
"I uphold the law, baby. I don't make it."
She inhaled slowly. "I'm not cut out for this job. Maybe Lenny will trade places with me." They both knew that wasn't possible. The papers she had signed had been clearly written. Harmony had to work patrol, not a desk.
"You have to take satisfaction from the good you can accomplish," he whispered, reaching out to touch her pale cheek. "When you see the arrest turn into a conviction, when you know you've done your job well enough to stop the leaks in the system. The good outweighs the bad, Harmony."
"If he gets free again, he'll kill them both," she told him. "He told that boy to scream if anyone came in. And he almost screamed. He'll make that child pay. And when he does, I'll go hunting."
And there was Death. He heard the transformation in her voice, watched as she stared back at him ruthlessly.
"Will you let Jonas win that easily?" he asked. "How many other children could you help by living, Harmony?"
"What will it matter if I've failed one of the few who gave me his trust?" she asked him then. "Don't let that bastard escape your law, Lance, or he may well find Death's justice."
Then she reached up, laying both hands against his chest as a breath shuddered from her. And he felt it then. The heat in his body building, reaching out to her as the winds whispered of pain at his ear.
Reaching up, he covered the backs of her hands with his own, standing silently as she let her head lean forward to rest against his chest as well. Other eyes watched them, and Lance knew it. As the ambulance pulled from the drive, the other officers moved slowly to their vehicles, glancing back at them curiously. And Mason. Lance could feel his gaze boring into his back, stripping through him as hatred pressed against him. Tommy Mason was going to be a problem. Lance could feel it.
"Sorry." Harmony straightened with an abrupt movement, pulling her hands from his chest and straightening her shoulders as she stared up at him defiantly. His hands still held hers. Turning them over, he looked down at her reddened skin and knew that the mating heat was taking its toll.
She had touched another man. The hormonal forces inside her didn't differentiate between touches. It was showing her, warning her, that no other male's touch would do.