A cold shudder raced over her body as her eyes jerked open and she moved from the bed. It wasn't that innocent picture she saw, it was the labs, the babies whose ragged cries echoed through the cold stone walls as they wailed for attention. Their cries piercing as they screamed for warmth.
Little faces flushed with rage, eyes staring out at the world in wounded fury as nothing but the cries of others answered their demands.
"Are you normally this jittery before a job?" Lance's voice broke through the nightmarish memory as she swung around to face him. "We need to leave." Fear and anger knotted her insides as she paced to the closed curtains, her hands rubbing at the chill bumps that had risen on her arms. "And go where?" Harmony's gaze flickered to him as he carefully broke the gun apart again and laid the pieces in the foam padding of the metal case. "My first idea was better." She breathed in a shallow, quick gasp. "Dane will hide us until the child is born. We'll be safe. The baby will be safe." Lance clipped the case closed before lifting it from the table and setting it on the floor. Watching her closely, he leaned back in the chair, bracing his arms on the sides, and watched her with grim determination. "If we start running now, we'll never stop. And neither will our child." Lance's voice was firm, final.
This was a side of Lance that, she admitted, made her pause. The dominance was like a fire in those blue eyes and in the chiseled planes of his face. A part of her responded to the sheer force she glimpsed in him then. It made her want to submit to him, made her want to give him whatever he was demanding. But he was demanding her soul now.
"I can't let you do this." She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze head-on. "There's too much at stake and too many dangers that could have followed us here."
"Of course we were followed." His smile was tight, controlled. "We lost them in Boulder, but I'm sure they'll catch up to us soon enough."
Shock vibrated through her system.
"You knew we were followed?" she whispered.
She had suspected it when he drove through Boulder rather than the more direct route around the outside of the city, but she hadn't been certain. Her own radar, the prickle at the back of her neck, hadn't been present, so she hadn't been certain. Lance shrugged. "I thought I glimpsed the heli-jet in the distance in the rearview mirror, but I wasn't certain. It could have been a plane, hell, it could have been a shadow. But we were followed."
She wrapped her arms across her chest then, breathing in deeply. God, she hated all these emotions churning chaotically inside her. As though once she had begun feeling, it wouldn't stop. It wouldn't ease or give her peace.
"That's all the more reason to contact Dane." She breathed in deeply. "He'll know where to hide us…"
"I don't need one of your ex-lovers to protect my woman or my child," he stated grimly.
"Don't push this, Harmony, because you're going to lose."
"Is that what this is over?" She stood there, blank, amazed. "You won't accept his help because I slept with him?"
"I am perfectly capable of protecting my woman and my child," he informed her, his voice deepening. He retained his patience, though his gaze hardened. "We retrieve the information you have and get it back to Braden. From there, we'll know how to handle Jonas."
Men! She stared back at Lance in bemusement.
"Lance, I don't doubt you would protect us. The point is that if we found a place to have the baby in safety, then we could fight the rest later."
"If running or hiding would assure your life and our child's, then I would be perfectly capable of hiding us. Son of a bitch, Harmony. I understand your history with the bastard, but we do this my way, not his."
"I'm not doubting you…"
"Well, excuse me if it sounds like it," he snapped.
"You're bargaining with other people's lives," she whispered desperately. "We can't do that, Lance."
"I'd bargain with the devil himself for your f**king safety." An edge of impatience colored his voice. "If the first Leo exists, then his location is not going to be in those files. If the Council ever had a hint of where he was, they would have struck. A few power-hungry Council scientists would not have sat on that information before using it." He sat there so calmly, commanding, determined that this was going to go his way, period. For a moment, Harmony almost gave in. She almost agreed.
Then the faces of those babies in the labs flashed before her mind again. Screaming for attention, for warmth. They hadn't known warmth, had never known love or a gentle touch. That was the fate that awaited her child if the Council took her—that, or death. Straightening her shoulders, she let her own determined gaze meet his.
"Then I'll leave alone. I know how to contact Dane…"
She didn't expect his response, though she should have. His patience evaporated as her eyes widened. A hint of fear flew through her a second before he reached her, his hands gripping her upper arms firmly.
"Like f**king hell!" His features were contorted with fury, his eyes burning with it.
"Attempt it, Harmony, just f**king attempt it and I swear to God I'll slap you in cuffs so fast it will make your head spin."
Her lips parted as she stared back at him, shocked at the burning heat that flowed from his hands into her arms.
"Let me go." She jerked against his hold.
"Do you think I'm going to let you keep running?" His gaze bored into hers. "That I'm incapable of protecting you and our child?"
"That's not what I meant." She shook her head desperately. "You don't understand…"
"I understand that Jonas, Dane and these f**king files have haunted you for ten years, and it's coming to an end here."
His head lowered, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a primitive snarl.
"It ends here. Right here, by God."
"Even if it means our lives?" she cried out, fighting to hold back her fears, her tears.
"They've followed us, Lance. We can't even be certain who it is that followed, or who's waiting. Don't ask me to take this chance. Please."
He dropped a hand to her abdomen, his palm covering it, his eyes darkening to a near black.
"If it meant your life, I'd know it," he snapped. "I would feel it and the winds would scream that knowledge to me. This is the only way."