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Silence filled the kitchen. Noble was aware of Jonas, Leo, and Dane coming warily to their feet. Tension spiked hard and fast, thick enough to cut with a knife as her gray-blue eyes pierced his.
Noble smiled at the demand, the angry exclamation. He was aware that it wasn't a pretty smile. He didn't do smiles well, unless they were the sort that came seconds before killing.
"You must have mistaken me for someone who obeys your orders," he told het softly. "Sorry about your luck there, sweetheart, but it's not happening. You're stuck with me, whether you want to be or not."
Haley stared back at him furiously before swinging around to Jonas.
"He's your enforcer." She shoved a trembling finger in his direction. "I don't want him in my home, period. Get him out of here."
Jonas dragged his hand over his face, muttered something about women and heat that made absolutely no sense whatsoever before staring back at her.
"It's not that simple, Miss McQuire."
"Don't you 'Miss McQuire' me," she snapped back at him, ignoring Noble as well as Zane. "This is your mess, now you can fix it. And you can fix it without him being here."
She couldn't bear the thought of something happening to Noble. For one blinding minute tonight, she had felt the overwhelming pain of believing he was dead, because of her. She knew what that would have meant—a sorrow so bleak, so deep that she had almost sunk beneath the waves of pain.
"Well, looks like you're being thrown out in the cold too, lover boy." Zane's laughter was mocking. "We can share a beer and discuss her stubbornness, then we can get to the best way to protect her," he suggested.
"Stop being a smart-ass, Zane," she ordered him roughly, her eyes still on Jonas. "I helped you," she reminded Jonas. "You know I did. You owe me."
"Yes, ma'am, I owe you." He nodded. "But I don't owe you the chance to die. And Noble won't walk away from this. He has his team, and he knows what the hell he's doing. He's your best protection."
"And the breed that died tonight," she yelled back at him. "Did he know what he was doing? Did you have an untrained man watching me, Jonas? Did you send a boy to do a man's job?" She knew better. "I knew him. Jason Lincoln. Do you know why he chose that name? Do you know he picked the name Lincoln because of a president who died before any of us was ever born? Did you know he liked comics? That he was flirting with one of the college girls who comes to the library?" Tears were filling her eyes. "Did you know that he wanted a Christmas present?" she whispered painfully. "I bought him a Christmas present." She wrapped her arms around herself and turned away from all of them.
Lifting her hand, she covered her lips and shook her head.
"Patricia has a grandson. He was coming for Christmas. Now he'll be coming to bury his grandmother." She wanted to scream with the rage filling her. "I have to see two friends buried because of me." She turned back to all of them. "I won't see any more. I won't bu
ry more friends. Now get the hell out of my house. All of you."
She stalked out of the kitchen, knowing none of them would pay any attention to her, and that only made her madder. The helplessness that rose inside her was like a tide of red, bleak fury. Whoever wanted her dead knew what the hell they were doing. They knew how to get to her. How to hurt her friends, how to make her suffer.
That bomb that killed Patricia would have killed her if she had gotten into that truck herself. Patricia always parked right beside Haley because she didn't like walking to her car alone in the dark. And Jason. She shook her head as she slammed her bedroom door and locked it.
Jason Lincoln. And he had chosen that name because he'd admired all he knew about Abraham Lincoln.
Jason has asked her once if she saw breeds as mankind. Haley had told him she saw them as the best of what man could accomplish, and the best of humanity. His brown eyes had lit with pleasure as he nodded, took his books, and left the library.
And now, she would never see him again. His shy smile would never touch her heart again, just as Patricia's laughter would never again fill her day.
She couldn't bear the thought of never hearing Zane give her another smart-ass comment, or of Noble never reading another carpentry book, or never reading another book of "mistakes" as he always called them. Because history was filled with mistakes, had been his reasoning. And he wanted to learn from them.
She sat down on her bed and stared around the neat, pretty room. The canopied bed, with its thick, heavy curtains that she could draw around her when it was really cold. The bedroom set, which had been given to her by her father's parents. The writing desk across the room, which her mother's parents had given her. Bridges to the past, just as her precious books had been.
The thought of dying filled her with terror. The thought of Noble dying, especially for her, filled her with cold, bleak agony.
She couldn't bear it. He would have to leave. She would make certain they all left. The breeds didn't have enough power to invade her home, or her life, without her permission. If they weren't out of her house by dawn, she would call the state police. She would pack her bags and leave town. And then she would figure out exactly what it was going to take to survive.
Because dying wasn't in her plans. At least not for a while. Living was. And there had to be a way to live without risking everyone she loved.
Noble stared at the closed washroom door and silently opened it a crack to make certain Haley wasn't there. Motioning to Shiloh, he sent her inside to watch for the fiery little librarian before he turned back to the others.
"Well, that was interesting," Dane commented as he turned to Noble. "She does do orders quite well. Too bad she wasn't born a breed."
He smiled, a mocking little smile at odds with the cold fury in his brown eyes.
"Contact the state police," Noble warned Jonas. "Inform them we have a situation here. I want Haley placed under the Bureau's 'persons of interest' mandates."
