He shook his head. “Aren’t you leaving something out, little Anya?”
He surprised her with the question.
“What do you mean?”
“Your father had those girls assigned to you as protective detail. I believe you’ve received an offer from the Genetics Council itself to head an office that would coordinate the admistrative and security duties involved in keeping their organization more secretive.”
She frowned. She had received such an offer, but how had he known?
“Doctors Chernov and Sobolova have requested that I stay assigned to the current lab until I’m twenty-two.” She let a smile tug at her lips. “They offered proof to the GC that I’m not nearly as proficient in the new programs as they had hoped I would be.”
It was deliberate, of course. Her father had warned her such an offer might arrive, and Anya had made certain she began to appear to be lagging in certain areas.
“Indeed,” he drawled. She suspected there was a wealth of mockery in that single word. But this man was often mocking, and always hard. But, sometimes, she saw amusement, perhaps a hint of softening.
“Indeed.” She rolled her eyes. “Which is totally beside the point, I could arrange for the girls be transferred. It would be simple enough.”
“No.” His voice was hard. Firm. “Here are three pictures. Do you know these men?”
She frowned down at the photos and pointed to one. “This is Aleski Dornovo, he’s a Breed trainer, ex-Russian Elite hit squad. He was sort of black ops for many years.” She tapped the next one. “Graco, he’s one of the older Breeds at the lab. Very quiet. Colder than the others. This is Cavalier. He’s dead on the inside,” she said sadly. “He came from another lab just ahead of the rescues. I heard it was a brutal lab to be in.”
“And yours isn’t?” he asked her.
She shook her head slowly and lifted her eyes to him, feeling the pain that filled her at the thought of what the Breeds suffered. “No. Doctors Chernov and Sobolova believe that loyalty begins with loyalty. They begin training with rewards for proper behavior. They refuse to conduct experiments on the Breeds they created, citing that it would begin a breakdown in that loyalty. They’re very high ranking within their fields. The Council rarely refuses them whatever they ask. They kill as example only.” She felt the tears that edged at her eyes. “But still, they kill.”
“You’re too softhearted,” he scoffed. “Death happens every day. “This man,” he tapped Cavalier’s picture, “watch him closely.”
“Is he an enemy?” She stared up at him, feeling her heart clench. She liked Cavalier. She never talked to him, she wasn’t allowed around the male Coyotes, but there was something haunted and sad in his eyes.
“Enemy or friend, I haven’t decided yet. Have Sharone watch him closely. She interacts with the male Breeds more than you’re allowed. Correct?”
“Correct,” she said heavily. “You’re not coming for them yet, are you?”
“Not yet,” he told her. “We’re going to weed out the chaff before we come in for the harvest. There’s no other way to do this, Anya. Not and maintain your safety as well as the female Breeds you’re trying so hard to protect.”
Sharone had warned her that to do this right, it would take him years. She hadn’t believed it. She did now.
“Graco is certainly a spy,” he warned her then. “We have proof of it. Have him transferred if you can do so without suspicion.”
She nodded. “Father and the scientists make that decision. They normally follow Father’s recommendations though.”
Her father was head of security and training, and he listened to her opinion, he valued it. The fact that she was betraying him haunted her often. The fear that he could pay with his life for her actions was a constant.
“You won’t kill my father?” she asked him again. She asked him each time they met, to be certain. “You won’t hurt him?”
“Your father won’t die,” he promised her. “I promised you I wouldn’t harm your family, Anya.”
She inhaled heavily. “I’ll make certain Graco is transferred. I’ll get word to you when it’s arranged.”
“Be brave, Anya.” He surprised her with the words, with the deepening of his voice. “Nothing worth having comes quickly.”
She nodded bleakly. “Freedom is worth fighting for,” she whispered. “It’s worth dying for.”
Her friends weren’t animals. The Coyotes created in the labs she worked and lived within were created to follow orders, to be cold, to be hard, but Anya had seen so much more in them over the years. She prayed she would soon see them free.
FOUR YEARS LATER
Del-Rey stared at the young woman standing on the other side of the table as he and his lieutenants studied the diagrams she had brought with her. Electrical lines, water pipes, tunnel access beneath the labs, security weaknesses—she had brought everything they would need. But one crucial key was missing, and he dared not tell her that.
An ace.
Every great mission needed an ace. That one card that he knew would trump all opposition—that trump was Anya herself. Her father was head of security and training. Two cousins were team leaders in security. Various relatives worked within the labs. She was the baby of the family, cherished by father and cousins, and by the Coyotes that remained in the labs, she was seen as their greatest treasure.
They would die for her, die with her or die trying to save her. It wouldn’t matter to them. If she said, Walk through hell for me, then those men and five women within that damned lab would head to the bowels of the earth with a smile.
There were twenty left. When they came out, they would join the forty men he had already amassed over the years. All Coyote males, hardened and cold as death. They had only their honor, which they had been taught had been bred out of them, and the principles that brought them together.
His men outnumbered those inside, but he was betting when he took the ace, the Breeds in those labs would cheer. There wasn’t a one that was comfortable with leaving her behind.
But he knew the cost to the young woman that had become an integral part of his life over the past six years. She had weeded out the chaff, made certain nothing but loyal Breeds remained. She had done her part. He had agreed to her terms, and he was going to break the deal before it even began and she wouldn’t even know it before it was too late.