"And maybe you just need to cool it," Missy said, giving Graham the hard stare that few other people would attempt. "Noah could have kept lying to us, but he hasn't. He's the one who came forward. Try and keep that in mind."
"We all might also like to keep in mind that while the fact that Sam has been hurt is an unfortunate event we will return to later," Rafe offered, with a meaningful glance at Noah, "the real problem at present remains the unfortunate loss of Annie's data. That has far-reaching implications for all of us."
"Absolutely," Noah agreed, focusing on the need to do something, to spring into action and make every effort to correct the mess he'd made. "We need to go after the thief and get that information back before it changes hands again."
"And how do you suggest we go about that?" Rafe asked. "If this thief's scent keeps blinking in and out for the Lupines among us, I doubt very seriously that tracking him will be an easy matter. You all confess to having lost him at the lab, and he had been there only moments before. How are we even to know where to start?"
Noah set his teeth. "I know where."
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY
Grimly Noah laid out the rest of the story, telling them all about his contacts with Hammond, the B-team the general had sent in after him, and the members of his own team who had set themselves up in covert surveillance of the team surveying Noah. It didn't do much to keep his mind off Samantha, but it was better than not talking at all. That's when his mind had nothing to do except focus on her. If he kept that up, he'd go crazy.
It also helped to get the whole sordid thing out into the open. Every word spoken lifted another brick from his shoulders. He didn't know if it was a remnant of his Catholic upbringing, but in this case he could vouch for the fact that confession was good for his soul.
When he'd shrugged the last of his burden off the tip of his tongue, he paused to draw in a deep breath. The weight had disappeared, but the gnawing ache in his chest continued. That wouldn't go away until he'd fixed things with Sam.
"Somehow I doubt this General Hammond would approve of you sharing all of this information with us," Rafe said. He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, and his feline green eyes regarded Noah steadily. "I hazard a guess that there will be repercussions."
Noah had already thought of that, thought long and hard, and reached some unexpected conclusions. He had always been a good soldier, from the time he'd entered the service at eighteen. He'd taken to the life as if he'd been born to it. He appreciated order and discipline, and he believed in the concept of a chain of command. He'd seen it in action, had put it into practice himself, and he knew what a good team under good leadership could accomplish. He believed in teamwork, and spending all of his adult life learning how to build and maintain and lead teams had taught him that a small group of dedicated men could move mountains if given the right tools and enough time to work out a strategy. The army had given him all of that, fostering it in him and in the men on his team.
Too bad no one seemed to have passed those lessons on to Hammond.
Now, for the first time, Noah was beginning to see what could go wrong when someone in the chain failed to work by the same principles as everyone else. The entire military system relied on the integrity and ethics of its personnel; as long as everyone played by the same rules, the structure of hierarchy worked with mechanic precision. But when one member of the team or one link in the chain of command went bad, it had to be replaced before the whole thing collapsed under its own weight. When a bad order came from the top, the ripple effect brought the consequences to the men in the field. Noah had been taught from the very beginning that a good soldier followed the rule of law before a bad command. An order was never an excuse to commit a crime, and he stood by that simple concept.
"I'm prepared," he said, unblinking. "Hammond is the one who decided to step over the line here. As far as I'm concerned, he has compromised his command and his orders are no longer valid. He needs to be dealt with. If I'm going to face a court-martial over that, it's a price I'm more than willing to pay."
Rule watched him, his expression always inscrutable. "You have invested a lot in your career to let it come to an end like this."
"I'm hoping it won't end, but if the alternative is to get screwed for doing my job responsibly, they can take my pension and use it to cover their asses."
Graham glared at him. "You think you got screwed?"
Noah fought to keep hold of his temper and mostly succeeded. "Yeah, I got screwed," he said, his voice level. "I come on this deployment reluctantly and with the understanding that getting it done my way would mean I could at least ensure that the damage done to the relationship between the military and the Others was kept to a minimum. I'm not trying to claim that what I've done doesn't suck, but trust me when I tell you, it beats the alternatives."
"I'm all out of trust when it comes to you. Might have something to do with me having a hard time picturing how someone else could have screwed us worse. I don't remember you using any lube."
Noah bared his teeth and called it a smile. "Well, then your imagination sucks, my friend, because the first option involved taking Dr. Cryer into custody by force and to hell with just getting a look at her data."
"And what you did is so much better than that? Let me go ask Sam if she agrees with you—"
"Fuck you, fur ball! Sam can slap me around with a spiked lead pipe if she wants, but you need to keep your nose out of our business!" Noah shot back, feeling his blood begin to boil. "I was trying to keep Annie from being the first American to experience the draft since Vietnam, and since I can see her standing right here, it looks like I did my job. Since I also don't see you filling out missing-persons reports, I'm guessing you aren't out all the Lupines who contributed DNA samples for this research, either. I can tell you for damned certain they would have taken them, too. And now I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't have left the whole pack of you on your own!"
"There was only one contributor."
At first the soft voice barely registered. Then he heard it but didn't quite get what it was saying. Angry and impatient, Noah turned a scowl on Annie. "What?"
Annie cleared her throat. "I only had one source for the DNA," she repeated. "It made it easier not to get distracted by random mutations in the beginning, and when I needed a control to compare against, I knew I could just use myself."
"You have to tell us who it is," Missy urged, her expression worried as she leaned forward to emphasize her earnestness. "He should make sure they're okay. Maybe they should even come stay here. At the club. At least until this is settled."
"That's not a problem." Sighing, Annie shifted uncomfortably. "I used Sam."
Noah felt his blood flash right past boiling and imagined it turning to steam and pouring out of his ears.
Graham muttered something obscene. "No wonder neither of you wanted to talk to me about this mess. You were both in it up to your eyeballs."
"Well, that's going to stop," Noah bit out. "It's a damned good thing Sam's already here where I can keep an eye on her, but you should have told me immediately. What if something had happened?"
The look Annie gave him told everyone she thought he was crazy. "The experiment itself never caused her any harm, and even if I had known some military maniacs were after my data, why would I tell you? I don't know you from Adam, and I had no idea Sam did, either. What business was it of yours?"
Clenched teeth barely prevented him from roaring out that everything about Sam was his business now, because Sam was his. He didn't think anyone would appreciate that at the moment, Sam included. And the volume he would have likely shouted it at would almost guarantee she'd hear.
"It doesn't do us any good to argue or blame each other or speculate on things that haven't happened." Abby looked expectantly at her brother. "Knowing you, I'm sure you've already thought about what we should do next?"
Noah nodded abruptly and tried to smooth his hackles back down. Spending all thi
s time with werewolves was rubbing off on him. "First, we have to intercept that data before it gets handed off. If we're not already too late."
"The data itself won't do them much good," Annie said. "I encrypted it, and I have the only written key to Sam last weekend. They took everything I had at the lab, but it would take them days, at the very least, to crack my codes."
Caution forced Noah to warn her, "I hope you're right, but I've met some of those code breakers. They're geniuses."
She turned her brown eyes on him, sharp even through the lenses of her glasses, and blinked at him with a peculiar blend of arrogance and innocence. "So am I."
"We need to get Sam down here, then," Graham said. "I want to know where that key is, and I want it safe. If she's hidden it, she can bring it here, and I'll build a nest and sit on the damned thing if I have to."
Missy shook her head. "No. Sam's been through enough tonight. Leave her alone. Wherever she put it, I'm sure it's safe. Sam's smart and capable and she knew how serious this was. She would have acted accordingly. Besides, I refuse to let anyone go running off on a wild hare tonight. We all need rest, and a few of us need time to cool down." She glared pointedly at Graham and Noah. "We can hatch plans in the morning."
Abby frowned. "Can we afford to wait that long?"
"Annie already said it would be days before they could break her code. That's time enough for a few hours of sleep."
"But we don't know if they'll try to break the code themselves, or pass it on to the general right away and let him worry about it."
"They'll wait." Noah was certain of it. "The general doesn't like jobs half-done, and that's what he would consider it if someone handed him a code without a key. They'll be looking for someone to break it."
"That's another lead for us to follow then," Rafe said, his tone signaling a decision had been reached. By him, if no one else. "Missy is correct. If they are not likely to move immediately, we'll be better served by resting and attacking the problem again once we've slept and regrouped."
"I wouldn't delay too long," Noah said, "but a few hours shouldn't hurt."
"Good. Then we shall meet back here tomorrow. Around noon, I would suggest, seeing that it is already well past two."
Graham looked at Noah and opened his mouth as if he'd heard the bell to signal round two, but Missy grabbed him and shoved him toward the door. "That's fine," she said, as she guided her belligerent husband around his target and out of the room. "We'll see everyone tomorrow."
With a murmur about going to fetch his wife, Rafe followed them out, and Annie trailed behind, looking like a misbehaving puppy with her bowed head and shuffling steps. Rule and Abby trailed behind, and Abby paused to hug her brother.
Convulsively his arms closed around her, and he found himself swearing softly into her hair. "God, I messed up so bad, Abby." He shuddered. "I don't know if there's even any way for me to fix it."
Her small hands rubbed up and down his back in the same comforting motions he could remember his mom using all the time when he'd been growing up. "Maybe not," Abby said softly, her tone gentling the words, "but time can handle things that are beyond us mere mortals. You might not be able to make everything better right away, but they will get better. You're a good man, Noah, and after a while, they'll remember that. Especially if you make a point to remember it from now on, too. Keep doing the things you know are right, and I think you'll find that even new friends can handle a challenge."
"I meant with Sam," he choked out, half-laughing, half-sighing. "I like Graham and the rest of them, but I can live with them hating me. I don't think I can live with Sam feeling the same way." He shook his head. "I love her, Ab."
"Oh." Abby fell silent for a moment, then pulled back to stare solemnly up at him. "In that case…"
She reached up and threw all her weight into smacking him upside the head.
"Ow!"
"You're lucky it was just coming from me, you giant twit, because I'm pretty sure Sam would have aimed a hell of a lot lower!"
Noah recoiled more in shock than in pain. He hadn't known his little sister had a violent streak. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side? Where's the sisterly compassion?"
"You don't deserve any," she snapped, her brow furrowed in a ferocious frown. "And I am on your side. That's why I'm so mad at you. You finally find someone who's more important to you than your combat boots, and what do you do? You lie to her and treat her like crap! If you want her to take you back, brother mine, you'd better start practicing your groveling."
"I didn't lie about us. I didn't lie about being attracted to her or about wanting to be with her." Somehow that reasoning had sounded better before he'd said it out loud. Less lame.
"Oh, big gosh-darned deal," Abby said, clearly of the same opinion. "You might not have faked having an erection around her, but how is she supposed to know you didn't fake everything else? It's hard enough for women to trust a man without you coming along and screwing it up like a big old idiot."
Noah felt a lot like he had in the third grade when Sister Mary Eugene had rapped his knuckles with a ruler for throwing spitballs at Freddie Price. He'd known better back then, too.
"I can't go back and undo it," he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets in case Abby decided to try a ruler of her own. "I admit I screwed up, but there's not a whole hell of a lot else I can do."
She smacked his shoulder instead. "Don't swear at me. And there are still things you can do. Like I said, start with groveling."
He looked over at Rule for some masculine moral support, but the big blond demon just shook his head. "You are on your own here, Noah. As a man and a warrior, I can understand why you felt you had to act as you did. But as a husband, I am afraid I have to agree with Abby's assessment of your behavior. You have acted like an idiot."
"Thanks. That's helpful." Noah ran a hand over his head and hunched his shoulders. "She walked out. She left before I even got a chance to explain." He really hoped that note of bewilderment he heard was only in his imagination. He didn't need his sister and brother-in-law to hear him sounding like such a lovesick puppy. "How can I grovel if she won't even stay in the same room with me?"
Abby gave him a disgusted look and stepped back to her husband's side. His arm dropped over her shoulder to hold her against him. "You're a big boy, No. You'll figure something out. Just make sure it includes the groveling."
He made a face, and Rule grinned. "It comes to all of us," the demon said. "Especially those of us foolish enough to fall in love with women who have minds of their own." He grinned at Abby's narrow-eyed glare. "If you will recall, your own sister had a few things she had to forgive me for before we could move on with our relationship."
"There's a big difference between a little kidnapping and what he did," Abby muttered.
"You did not call it a 'little' anything at the time, sweet," Rule reminded her. "You were furious with me." He looked back at Noah. "Believe me, the groveling does do wonders."
Noah grumbled something and waved them out of the room, watching the door shut behind them. He stood alone in the empty room for a long time, staring sullenly at the floor.
It wasn't that he had anything against groveling, at least not in this situation; he could see where it might be warranted, in Sam's mind at least. But he didn't know if he was strong enough just now to take another rejection from her. He could still feel the blood seeping from the wounds left by the last one. How many cuts could one heart take before it stopped beating altogether?
And did it matter?
He groaned and let his head fall back as he blinked up at the plaster ceiling. He tried to think of anything that would matter if Sam cut him out of her life, but his mind was blank.
How could anyone cause that fundamental a shift in so short a time? he wondered. He'd been perfectly happy before they got involved, so why couldn't he go back to being that way now?
Sighing, he pulled himself back together and straightened his shoulders. He coul
d stand here all night going over this territory in his head, but he knew perfectly well that it wouldn't change anything. Right now, there were three major truths in his world. The first was that he loved Samantha Carstairs. The second was that he would do whatever it took to make her listen to him, and the third was that he was willing to do whatever it took to make her forgive him, whether that involved groveling, begging, pleading, or public acts of humiliation. He didn't care. No matter what it required, he would win his woman back.
He just really hoped she wouldn't put him in the hospital first.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Staring up at the ceiling of the guest room Tess had tucked her into, Sam wondered idly where this feeling had gotten the name of a broken heart. She'd been thinking about it for an hour at least, and she still hadn't come up with a good explanation. Why call it a broken heart when she felt like every last part of her had shattered into a million fragile pieces?
Tess had been incredibly sweet, clearly demonstrating that her sharp-tongued, tough-cookie exterior hid a gooey marshmallow center. She'd wanted to draw Sam a bath but had accepted the refusal easily and instead commandeered a nightgown from somewhere while Sam made mechanical use of the club's toiletries to wash her face and brush her teeth.
Like a toddler, Sam had allowed the other woman to help her out of her borrowed sweats and into the borrowed gown, then tuck her into the big, soft bed. Tess had even brushed the snarls from Sam's hair and sat beside her, talking about nothing in a calm, soothing voice until she had pretended to go to sleep in order to make her stop.
It wasn't that Sam didn't appreciate the inordinate amount of care that her friend was taking of her; it was just that her nerves were so raw, she needed to be completely alone to make them stop screaming in pain. The silence at least didn't demand anything. It didn't try to sympathize with her or make her feel better or tell her that everything would be all right. It just settled, heavy and still around her, and gave her time to scab over.
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