Lora Leigh - Rule Breaker

He wouldn’t be there anymore.

All the security she had ever known in her life was gone now.

“I want to die.” She wanted to close her eyes and just go away. “I wish they had just killed me first.”

If they had killed her, then she wouldn’t have to face what she had done. And she wouldn’t have to live her life without Mark in it.

“Look at me, Gypsy.” The demand in his voice was impossible to deny, but she was so tired that turning her head to meet his gaze seemed to take forever.

The gentleness in his expression, the sympathy and regret that filled those silvery eyes, urged her to believe him, commanded her to obey him.

“You can’t die, Gypsy, you have a far too interesting future ahead of you,” he said, glancing to her side for the briefest second before focusing on her once again.

An interesting future? No, there was no interesting future. There would always be the memory of the horrible mistake she had made.

“I don’t want an interesting future,” she answered him mechanically, stepping eagerly into the strange, unemotional shell she could feel beginning to wrap around her. “I just want Mark to come back.”

Yes, she opened herself to that heavy weight, urged it to cover her quickly, to dim the agony resonating through her soul, just a little bit.

Jonas grimaced, rubbing at the side of his neck in a gesture of helplessness that she was certain was a completely alien feeling for someone so strong.

“Your brother was one of our best informants,” he finally told her, and though she hadn’t known that, she wasn’t surprised. Mark had so admired the Breeds and all they had been forced to do to survive. “He was a high-level hacker who had found a way into their computers and was feeding us information on hidden labs and the identities of the Council’s scientists and managing to steal dozens of their top-secret files,” he continued as she watched him. “He refused to let us protect him. He refused to even let us know who he was. We were here because we had tracked him this far, unaware that the Council had managed to do the same so quickly. They would have found him whether you had slipped out of the house or not. The fact that you had slipped out and were with Khi is all that saved you, honey. No one could have saved your brother.”

He was wrong.

Mark was smart.

If it hadn’t been for her stupidity, he would have found a way to save himself.

She shook her head. “He was going to leave. I heard him on the phone the last time I tried to talk to him. He was telling someone he’d meet them in a few hours. He had to finish something.” If she hadn’t left the house—

If the party hadn’t seemed so important at the time, her brother would still be alive.

She was only barely aware of Jonas rising to his feet and moving away from her. Seconds later she could hear the sound of his voice as he spoke to someone.

She was shaking as she fought to push back the memory of her brother’s death. How he’d stared at her, his dark eyes bleak and filled with hopelessness. And helplessness, as he told her how sorry he was.

He was sorry? Why had he been sorry? It had been her fault.

The Coyote had laughed at him. Standing behind her brother, that big knife against Mark’s throat, he’d laughed at Mark, then told him what they were going to do to her after he was dead.

She had begged them not to hurt Mark. She didn’t care if they killed her. She didn’t care, as long as they just let him go.

“Don’t cry, Gypsy,” he told her as that Coyote, Grody, had laughed at him. “Don’t cry, and be brave, Peanut. Do you hear me? Don’t cry. Be brave, Peanut.”

She had heard him, but still, she had watched that knife bring blood and she had screamed. Screamed and begged, Please don’t hurt him .

The knife had bitten into Mark’s throat, blood welling at the side of his neck, and then there was a long, bright red line of dark scarlet that began to flow with sickening speed as the Coyote released his body. Mark had fallen to the ground as though in slow motion, boneless, his gaze locked with hers, dimming, then finally staring back at her with a blank look of sorrow.

She jerked, her eyes flying open as she realized she had let them close.

She just wanted to go to sleep.

She wanted to sleep for a very, very long time. Long enough that maybe her mom and dad would forgive her. Maybe her baby sister, who loved Mark just as much as Gypsy did, wouldn’t hate her forever.

But every time she closed her eyes she could see that moment when Mark had died. That second when his blood had spilled down the front of his white shirt.

“Your parents will be here soon.” Jonas spoke from beside her once again. “My team has just loaded them into the heli-jet.”

They would be here soon.

They would be so angry with her.

Oh God, what if they didn’t let her go home? What if they didn’t even want her anymore?

“They’ll hate me. Momma and Daddy will never forgive me for this,” she told herself, unaware she was speaking aloud, that her words were breaking the heart of the new director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs. “They won’t even want me to come home now. How could they ever want to live with me after this?”

Where would she go?

She was only fifteen, and no one would want the girl who had helped Coyotes murder her brother. Because everyone loved Mark.

He was everyone’s best friend.

How could anyone ever love the awful person who had enabled those filthy animals to kill him?

“How could they ever want me to be home?” she whispered again, laying her head against the wall beside her and staring into the darkness once again.

Maybe if she was very, very still, if she tried hard enough, she could just disappear into that darkness and never have to exist ever again.

“I promise you, Gypsy, your parents won’t blame you,” he lied to her again. “But if that ever happens, I swear to you I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. Do you hear me, sweetheart? You have only to contact me, I’ll never desert you.”

She heard the words and he probably meant them. But he was so brave, and just like that Breed with those bright, bright blue eyes who had shot the Coyote, Grody, he was strong, and he knew how to protect everyone.

Even stupid, weak little girls who didn’t know how to stay home instead of risking everyone they loved.

She didn’t deserve his protection.

She didn’t deserve anyone’s protection.

...

Jonas eased back to his seat on the crate and watched her sadly.

“They love Mark so much, just like I do. And I got him killed. It was my fault that the Breed used that knife—”

She broke off, shaking so hard he wondered how she was remaining in one place.

Rising, Jonas moved far enough from her that he could get the reports he knew were coming in.

He wondered if the shock would build in this child until she had her wish and she just went to sleep forever.

Hell, he’d grieve himself if this brave, broken little girl ceased to exist.

And should that happen, at least one Breed would surely suffer for it.

This grieving child would be far more to the Breed society than even she imagined if his hunch was correct.

Jonas turned and met one of the independent contractors who often fought alongside the Breeds, waiting for his report.

“Mercury just called from the McQuade residence,” Simon Quatres reported. “Rogue Breeds hit McQuade’s house at the same time this group ran Khileen’s car off the road. Mercury and his men found video and audio devices in his room and at his workstation in the living room. Grody and his men knew who they were coming for, and where he was. Nothing could have kept this from happening. And if she had been in the house, we’d have never found out in time to get to her.”