Maya Banks - No Place to Run

She threw him an impatient look that suggested she didn’t appreciate the fact that he was questioning what she’d stated as fact.

Then she looked down at her hands, and he could see the tips go white as she nervously twisted her fingers. She took a deep breath and then glanced up at him, her eyes almost challenging. Like she was gearing up for battle.

“My father was Alex Mouton.”

“What the fuck?”

Sophie jumped at Garrett’s explosion. Even Donovan recoiled and glared at Sophie. Sam processed the information with a sense of disbelief. He just stared at her, wondering just how badly he’d been set up and fucked over.

She stared back at him, her lips pressed into a tight line as she waited for him to digest the bomb.

It was Donovan who finally prompted Sophie to continue. Sam wasn’t able to speak. He was too furious. He felt like the biggest goddamn fool on the planet.

“Okay so Mouton is your father,” Donovan said in a tight voice. “Wait a minute. You said was.”

Her eyes grew distant, and she looked at them as if measuring whether she trusted them enough to say anything.

“Just a figure of speech.”

“He sent you to me, didn’t he?” Sam asked before she could continue.

Her chin went up and her gaze hardened. “He did. You hit his radar the moment you came into his town. He wanted information.”

Sam’s nostrils flared. “Pity you failed. Or maybe you weren’t good enough to get me to talk.”

She winced and looked away. He felt like a bastard kicking a puppy, but goddamn it, he was pissed.

“He got nothing from me,” she said. “He didn’t really need it. He was on to you shortly after you stepped into his territory, but he thought it was a good idea for me to stay close to you in case you dropped any information he’d find valuable. How do you think I knew where to find you? Here, I mean. It’s why you need to understand the danger that you and your family are in.”

There was a whole lot more she wanted to say. Sam could tell. Her lips quivered, and he saw the flash of her teeth as she sank them into her bottom lip to squelch the flow of words. What the hell?

She’d played him from the start. Her father was an arms dealer and currently occupied the number two spot on the U.S. government’s most wanted list. She claimed to be pregnant with his child. Her father wanted something from her and was using Sam’s child as leverage, not to mention Sam and all his family were now in danger. And she expected him to drop everything to protect her. From what?

Donovan shot Sam a look that clearly said shut the fuck up. Was it that obvious he was ready to explode?

“We need clear heads here,” Donovan said. “I get that you two have history, but right now, that’s not as important as why someone’s trying to kill Sophie. Why is that, Sophie?” He stared hard at her, but his expression wasn’t as fierce as Garrett’s or what Sam knew his own must be. “You’re not telling us everything.”

No, she wasn’t. Sam could see the shadows in her eyes. She was holding back out of fear, but of whom? Was she afraid of him and his reaction? Or was she afraid of her father, and if so, what the hell had she done to make him turn on her after she’d prostituted herself for him.

“Look, you have to know my father was a bastard. It’s not like he gave his flesh and blood a free pass. I saw my opportunity to escape, and I took it. There are people not so pleased with me because of it.”

“And we figure in where?” Garrett demanded.

She threw him a disgusted look. “You encroached on Mouton territory. You fucked with the family business. You were a target as soon as you showed up looking to score a deal.”

“That was five months ago,” Sam pointed out. “Why now?”

Her lips twisted. “You were bait. They were waiting for me to come to you. I stayed away as long as I could. But I’m getting bigger and clumsier by the day. Soon I’ll be completely defenseless. So I came here because I was sure you’d at least protect your child.”

Sam looked up and closed his eyes in frustration. “So you stayed away, kept the knowledge of my child from me even though you were both in danger, and you did this all to protect me.”

Rage burst in her eyes like a flare. It was a sharp mixture of anger and grief and of helpless anxiety.

“You know what? Fuck you.” She looked to his brothers, including them in her fury. “Fuck you all.”

She rolled to the side, shoving at Donovan as she slid to the floor. Her knees buckled, and she would have gone down in a heap if Donovan hadn’t shot up to catch her.

Still, she shook him off and wrenched her arm from his grasp. A spasm of pain whitened her face, and her blue eyes went pale.

Sam moved across the room to cut off her escape route to the door. He made sure he took her uninjured arm, his other arm going around her waist to trap her against him.

She tried to shove him away, but he held tight.

“Get the shot ready,” he ordered Donovan.

“No!” She struggled harder until he feared she was going to hurt herself more. “Sam, you can’t keep me here. They’ll find me! Are you insane? I get that you don’t care about me, but for God’s sake, think about your child. Your baby!”

He maneuvered her to the bed and wrestled her down until she was pinned to the mattress. Tears were trapped in her eyes, but none fell, probably held back by sheer determination not to let him see her bleed.

He grimly held her down, staring into her tormented eyes.

“Right now I don’t give a damn about what you did in the past. Let’s get that clear. You were a lay. A fling. You played me. Okay, fine. I can deal with that. But if that’s my child—if there’s any chance that you’re carrying my baby, you’re not going anywhere. And I goddamn well protect what’s mine.”

Hurt filled her eyes, and once again, he felt like he was crushing an innocent. Some innocent. Goddamn, she was Alex Mouton’s daughter.

“I don’t deserve to die, Sam. No matter what you think I did, I don’t deserve to die.”

His hands gentled on her shoulders as Donovan closed in with the syringe. Despite his anger and shock, Sam smoothed his fingers over her cheek in a gesture meant to comfort her.

“You’re not going to die, Sophie.”

Donovan slipped the needle into her flesh, and she jerked in surprise, her shocked gaze going to Donovan. Panic flared in her blue eyes, and she went crazy.

“No!” she shouted hoarsely. “God, please, let me go. Please!”

Her begging nearly undid Sam. Even Garrett looked discomfited by the desperation in her cries.

Sam dropped down and pulled her into his arms. He held her against him to still her struggles. When she finally figured out she couldn’t win against him, she sagged in defeat, her noisy sobs echoing sharply across the room.

“Jesus,” Donovan muttered as he recapped the syringe. He threw it angrily into his bag and turned away, his shoulders tense.

Sam held on to her, stroking her hair, offering her comfort even though it was the last thing he wanted to give.

There were several missing pieces of the puzzle. She hadn’t told them everything. A lot didn’t make sense, but now wasn’t the time to try to drag it out of her. She was hysterical, in pain, and soon she’d be out when the drugs hit her system.

Most importantly, he and his brothers had to move fast. If all she said was true—if there was any possibility that she was telling the truth—they had to lock down their entire family.

He needed to contact Sean. He needed to pull in Steele and Rio and their teams. Mom and Dad and Rusty were vulnerable, as were Ethan and Rachel. They could all be targets.

He looked up to find Garrett staring fiercely back at him, and he knew Garrett was thinking the same things he was.

Sophie went completely limp against him, and he carefully pried her away from him to see that her she had finally surrendered to the painkiller Donovan had injected.

Her eyes were swollen and her skin was blotchy and red from crying. She looked delicate and frail, but underneath that deceptive façade was a devious woman who had no compunction about carrying out the orders of her father—a man who’d been responsible for more deaths than a lot of wars.

And the hell of it was she was carrying Sam’s child. Which meant, like it or not, she was going to be forever tied to him through that child. No matter what she’d done in the past or what her motives were now, he had to protect her and keep both her and his son or daughter alive.

He carefully extricated himself from around her and made sure she was arranged comfortably on the pillows. He pulled the covers up over her body and then turned to face his brothers.

“Let’s go,” he said grimly. “We’ve got to move fast.”

“DO you believe her?” Garrett asked when they assembled in the living room. “Do you believe any of that shit?”

Garrett still wore a look of discomfort after the episode with Sophie just moments before, but Sam was sure his brother didn’t realize how much her distress had affected him. It would just piss Garrett off.

“Whether I believe her or not, we have to treat this as a legitimate threat. Her wounds aren’t faked and neither is the fact that I pulled her half-dead out of the lake.”

“I agree,” Donovan said.

Garrett blew out his breath but nodded.

Sam looked to Donovan first. “I want you to get in touch with Ethan. Give him a heads-up on what’s going on. Make damn sure he keeps his ears and eyes open for any threat to him and Rachel. And for God’s sake tell him not to come home. He could be walking into a trap.”

Garrett nodded his agreement.

“Then I want you to get on the phone with Sean. Tell him to head out to Mom and Dad’s until we can get over there.”

He glanced over at Garrett. “We need to have a look and see if anything’s out there. I’m not walking into broad daylight with Sophie when I don’t know what if anything’s out there waiting.”

“I’ll go,” Garrett said. “You keep an eye on Sophie and stick by the radio. If there’s anything out there, I’ll find it.”

While Donovan made his phone calls, Garrett escaped through the basement tunnel leading down to the lake, and Sam did a step-by-step reconnaissance of the house, checking for any possible angles a shooter could use.

The basement was solid, almost as much of a fortress as the war room on the adjacent lot, but there was only one way out of it if the house was breached, and he’d prefer to use it as a last resort.

On the main level, the problem areas were the kitchen, which had a window facing the wooded area across the road in front of the house, and Sam’s bedroom, where Sophie slept. The window there was an open invitation for someone to take out anyone in the room.

He hoped to hell she was still under from the pain medication. The last thing he wanted to do was wake her up and have her wanting to split when he and his brothers hadn’t fully scoped the situation.

Carefully he slid his arms underneath her warm body and lifted, inch by inch, holding his breath when she stirred and snuggled into his chest.

“Sam,” she murmured in her sleepy, sweet voice. One he’d heard so many times when he woke her to make love to her again.

It was a compulsion to slide his lips over her hair. It was still damp and matted by the lake water, but she still smelled uniquely Sophie.

It pissed him off. In a situation where he needed to be in absolute and complete control of his judgment and emotions, he was decidedly . . . not.

He went back into the living room, where he’d already placed blankets and pillows on the sofa. He eased Sophie onto the cushions and arranged her arm so nothing would press on it. Before he was tempted to linger, he turned away, refusing to look at her any longer.

Donovan met him a few steps away.

“Ethan’s not happy. He wanted to hop on the next plane home. But at the same time he didn’t want to drag Rachel into the middle of something we don’t yet understand.”

“He’s not stupid. He’ll do what it takes to protect Rachel.”

“Sean’s heading to Mom and Dad’s now.”

Garrett’s voice came in low and serious over the radio. Donovan and Sam both froze as they listened.

“Sam, I’ve got someone. Two o’clock. West. He’s surrounded by camo netting. He’s damn near invisible. He’s clearly on observation duty. He’s it. Rest of the perimeter is clear.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sam muttered. “You have a clear shot?”