Ruthless Game (4 page)

Kane drew another breath as he shoved the memory away ruthlessly. He was a big man, dwarfing her in size, all flowing muscle, his height proportionate with his weight and not an ounce of fat. He loomed over her, nothing more than a shadow, his arms coming around her from behind to take her weapon, and in one smooth motion, he tossed it on the broken-down couch. She tried to whirl around, going for his instep, but his arms became a steel cage, trapping her. His hands settled over her midsection and shockingly, she was round, like a basketball. His heart, after one heavy thump, settled into a satisfied rhythm.

“Shh, Rose,” he said gently, trying to breathe calm into her. Her breathing had gone ragged. “There’s a gun trained on you. Don’t pull another weapon. Just stay still.”

Under the palm of his hand, he felt the small rounded belly and a peculiar push as if the baby kicked him, trying to protect his mother. The sheer relief and satisfaction that she carried his child shocked him a little. “No one is going to hurt you.” And they wouldn’t, not ever again. She carried his baby, and no matter what else, the child would always connect them.

Rose went still. She didn’t turn her head but remained tense, her hands gripping his wrists as if to pry them from the slight swell of her belly. “Kane?”

He felt the tension coiling in her, not rigid and tense, but the coil of a snake about to attack. “I’m here, honey. No one wants to hurt you. Just stay still, and we’ll sort this out without anyone getting hurt.”

“I won’t go back. He can’t have my baby.” The statement was delivered in a quiet voice, but he believed her. Rose might look like a little Asian pixie, but she had a spine of steel. She had thwarted Whitney each time he’d sent a man to impregnate her. She’d fought until they feared they might kill her, and she was a vicious fighter. More than one man had been in the infirmary after a round with her.

“
Our
baby,” he corrected, and the rightness of it took some of the knots out of his belly. “You want to tell me why you didn’t look pregnant? How did you manage that?”

“I’m not without my own skills. I can camouflage when I need to. I felt all of you the moment you got close. Whitney isn’t getting my baby. He doesn’t know for certain yet that I’m pregnant, and I’m keeping it that way.”

“Whitney didn’t send me after you. I don’t take orders from him. We reported his experiments, and he’s gone into hiding. I’ve searched for you ever since you disappeared.”

She had begun to relax, but at his words she tensed again.

“To help you, Rose,” he explained hastily. “I was the one who helped you escape, remember? I’m not about to hand you over to the enemy.”

Kane didn’t make the mistake of letting go of her. He knew Gideon had a high-powered rifle on her and was all too aware that Gideon would protect him first. He wanted her away from the window, but that might trigger Mack to send in Javier. It was a very fragile line they were all walking, and one wrong move could result in disaster.

“Then let’s just get this over with,” Rose said. She kept her gaze trained upward, right out the window, as if daring the marksmen to kill her. “I assume you are part of the team sent in to handle the hostages. For them to warrant a GhostWalker extraction, they must be pretty important.”

“If I sit you down in the chair, will you stay put? Not do anything stupid?”

She turned her head for the first time to look up at him over her shoulder. His heart jumped when her dark gaze met his. Steady as ever. Cool under fire. That was Rose. But he was shocked at the exhaustion marking her face. He was equally shocked at how not just his body but everything in him responded to her. His every protective instinct, his animalistic side, the alpha male in him—
everything
male.

He forced his voice under control. “You’ve been sick.”

She nodded. “I haven’t been able to keep much food down,” she admitted, all the while searching his expression, trying to decide whether to trust him. “That’s made me fairly weak, and staying below Whitney’s radar means moving all the time.” She sent him a humorless smile, just a flash of her white teeth, but it was enough to act as a warning. “I will get the baby to safety, and anyone in my way isn’t going to live very long.”

Kane knew her quiet statement was more than an idle threat. Rose would fight if necessary, and as small as she was, she had psychic abilities and survival skills that made up for her size. He had come to know her in the brief time they’d been forced together. Dr. Whitney, head of the psychic experimental program, had gone rogue, determined to breed supersoldiers. Rose had been forced into his breeding program, but that brief time in his breeding program hadn’t stopped any of the women there from training daily. The men tended to forget the women had undergone training almost since birth, while they had joined the military later. The women actually had an edge, although they were smaller in stature.

“I said I’d get you out of here safely, Rose, and I meant it.” He tried not to sound aggressive or commanding, when he felt a little of both. He tamped down his take-charge nature. Rose wasn’t getting away again, not with danger surrounding her and their child every moment of every day. She needed protection, no matter how independent she was. Kane understood her aversion to him, but her safety took precedence over everything else.

She didn’t acknowledge his statement, and with Rose, he had no idea what she was thinking. She appeared fragile, but she had a core of steel and a will of iron. Even Whitney hadn’t been able to get what he’d wanted from her. She’d chosen her partner, refusing to accept any of the others Whitney had sent to her, despite the fact that his punishments were horrible.

Kane clamped down hard on those memories. It was difficult to stay cool and disciplined when fury raged through him. Very gently he urged her toward the chair away from the window.

She’s out of my line of sight,
Gideon warned.
She’ll know that, Kane.

Damn it, don’t you fuck with me on this, Kane,
Mack snapped.
I’ll send Javier in after the both of you.

Go to hell, Mack,
Kane snapped back.
She’s pregnant with my baby, and you’re damn well not going to shoot her.

“They’re really angry with you, aren’t they?” Rose sent him a wry smile. “They’re right, you know; you’re in danger.”

“If you’re going to make your try, Rose, do it now, before they send someone else in.”

She studied his face, and he couldn’t help using the opportunity to do the same with her. Those long, sweeping eyelashes of hers drew his attention. From there his gaze dropped to her high cheekbones, her small, straight nose, and her lush mouth. The women had been taken from orphanages, and Rose had most likely come from China, but how Whitney had managed to get hold of her, Kane couldn’t guess.

She touched her tongue to her full lower lip, and his body tightened. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. You’re ready for me to try something.”

That didn’t tell him if she still planned on running, and he was going to have to help Mack and the others get the hostages out. He sighed and changed the subject. “Tell me about the hostages.”

“About a week ago, there was a sudden influx of cartel members. It isn’t all that difficult to make them; they carry some serious hardware and scare the crap out of the decent people around here. Two murders occurred, heads severed as a warning for everyone and the bodies dumped in the fountain two streets over. The buzz on the street was something big was going down. At first I thought it was a big drug deal, and then I spotted the prisoners. They were brought in at night, dark SUVs with tinted windows. I thought maybe members of a rival gang, but as soon as I saw them—a woman of about thirty-five and a little girl of maybe ten—I knew this had nothing to do with a drug war.”

“Actually it does,” Kane corrected. “
El presidente
is waging war with the cartels to get his country back. The cartels have been hitting high-profile members of the government in retaliation.
El presidente
called in a favor from our president and asked for help. His wife’s sister and his niece were taken on their way to church. All the bodyguards were killed, as well as the driver. He was told to back off or he would find his sister-in-law’s head rolling down the middle of the street. Next would come his niece’s head. He believed them.”

“And he was afraid to trust his own military or the police,” Rose guessed. “He should be. These people are armed to the teeth with the latest weapons, Kane. Something isn’t right here. They’ve all but declared war.”

“Corruption here is rampant,” Kane agreed. “Someone would tip off the cartel.
El presidente
is a very intelligent man. He knows his administration and his military as well as police departments have been infiltrated by paid informants for the cartel. He asked a personal favor from our president, and we pulled the assignment. None of us had any idea the informant would be you.”

“I thought long and hard before I called it in,” Rose admitted. She ducked her head, refusing to meet his eyes. “It was selfish of me, that I waited, but I knew there was the possibility that if the hostages were who I thought they were, that a GhostWalker team would be called in. It was a calculated risk, but I couldn’t just ignore the fact that those monsters would kill them. I was afraid to try a rescue myself with so many of the enemy guarding them.”

His heart slammed hard against the wall of his chest. She’d contemplated the idea, that much was obvious. His Rose, pregnant with their child, would have risked herself for strangers.

“We’ll get them out, Rose, but you stay put. I don’t want you running again. You need care. I can offer that to you, as well as safety. The last thing I want is for Whitney to get his hands on you or the baby. I don’t know why you trusted me to be the father of your baby, but you did. I’m asking for that same faith now. I swear to you, on my life, I will protect both of you.”

She lifted her head and looked him straight in the eye, searching his expression. For a moment he had the uncomfortable feeling she was looking into his mind, which was entirely possible with a GhostWalker. There were things buried there best kept hidden. Especially from Rose. He refused to look away, keeping his expression blank. A faint smile curved the bow of her mouth. His breath nearly exploded from his lungs. He dreamt of her, night after night. He thought of her every minute of every day.

Intellectually, he knew Whitney had found a way to “pair” a couple by using pheromones, and he’d certainly made Kane crave Rose physically. He couldn’t get near her without his body reacting with a permanent hard-on from hell. But the doctor hadn’t paired Rose with him. She’d been forced to choose from three different candidates, and she’d chosen him, but she didn’t have the same physical drive to be with him that he had for her, which posed a major problem for him. He had too much respect for her and too much honor to force himself on her. But the thought of never seeing her again, of spending his life without her, drove him insane. He also knew he would never
ever
be able to tolerate another man in her life. And quite frankly—that sucked.

“All right.”

That softly spoken assent surprised him. He studied her face in an effort to read whether or not she was telling the truth.

“Then you’ll wait here for me to come for you.”

She shrugged. “I won’t run.”

He was missing something; he just couldn’t quite figure it out. His mind was already shifting, his radar going off, and instinctively he put himself in front of Rose as he swung around to face the bedroom door, knife in his hand. Rose tried to jerk her gun out of the hidden holster, but the man facing them shook his head, a grin on his face.

“Naughty, naughty, Miss Rose. I can’t let you shoot him, even though Mack thinks he’s a major pain in the ass. He is my brother, after all.”

“Actually,” she corrected, “I planned on shooting you.”

Javier’s grin widened, but his eyes were ice-cold, his stare sending piercing icicles stabbing right through Rose’s mind. “Well then, everything’s fine. You carrying my nephew there?” He indicated the small basketball shape beneath her loose tunic.

Her eyebrow shot up. She didn’t wince, and she didn’t take her gaze from his. She kept her voice low and taunting, as if she didn’t realize she faced the biggest threat of her life. Kane knew better. He felt the little tremor that ran through her body.

“Maybe a niece.”

Javier snorted. “Don’t get your hopes up. He’s too damn mean to throw a girl. Mack’s getting all papa bear on us. You good, Kane?”

Kane noticed Javier’s body was angled toward Rose, half in, half out of the shadows, making him a difficult target, and the tiny knife was still concealed in the palm of his hand. He smiled at Rose and joked, but he was ready for any trouble, those cold, cold eyes never leaving his prey. Kane shifted his weight, subtly moving to cut off Javier’s angle of attack. Javier glided slightly as well and shook his head.

You know better than that. Mack would skin me alive if anything happened to you.

Rose sighed. “Nothing is going to happen to him. I’m Rose Patterson, by the way.”

“Javier Enderman, ma’am. Pleased to meet you. You reading my mind?”

“No,” Rose said. “I’m smart. I know what you’re both thinking.”

“Then you know I’ve got to get him out of here in one piece, ma’am. And that none of us wants you to hurt him.”

Kane huffed out his exasperation. “You’re making me sound like a two-year-old you all have to babysit. Tell Mack we’re on our way, and let’s get it done.”

“They’re armed to the teeth,” Rose said. “And they have trip wires strung around the windows and in the hallways leading to the apartment. You’re not going to get in through the ground floor.”

Kane made a strangled growl in the back of his throat and crouched down in front of Rose, catching her chin in his hand. “You scouted them out with my baby in your belly?” He bit out each word through clenched teeth.

“Yes,” she said very calmly, her dark eyes sober. “Before I made the decision to call in reinforcements. I told you I’d decided I couldn’t rescue them alone. Did you think I made that assessment from here?”