For one small moment she tried to understand what it was like for him, driven by Whitney’s diabolical mind to pursue her,
Luther shoved up her shirt and lowered his mouth to her breast, the urgent needs of his body overcoming all reasoning.
Briony stomped down on his foot as hard as she could, kicking back to drive her heel into his knee. She missed the knee, but hit his shin. He grunted in pain, but his hands tightened to try to hold on to her. Bending forward, she caught him around the neck and threw him, using her back to roll him off of her. Luther hung on to her wrist grimly as he sailed over her head, yanking her arm nearly out of its socket as he somersaulted and hit the ground. She fell facedown and tried to roll at the last moment, instinctively protecting the babies.
The air left her lungs in a rush, and she drew up one leg as Luther lunged to pin her. She tried for his crotch, kicking out hard, but he turned enough to take the numbing blow in his thigh. He swore, doubling his fist and smashing it into her face. Briony saw stars, her left eye swelling so fast she lost vision immediately. Closing off all pain, she pushed up as he sat on her, rising to meet him, trying to get his weight off her stomach. Deliberately he shoved his knee into her hip, grinding down on the stitches she’d put there.
“Damn you, I told you not to try to get rough with me. You can’t win. Do you have any idea how much I could hurt you if I used my full strength? That was just me teaching you a little lesson.”
She shoved at his chest, his leg, doubling her fists and beating at him in an effort to get him off of her.
Jack’s voice moved through her head, nearly lost in the adrenaline and fear for her children. She hesitated and then dropped back to the ground. Warned by that small uncertainty, Luther threw himself off of her, rolling away as the bullet tore through his shoulder, where his head had been. He kept rolling away from her, into the mine entrance.
Briony scrambled on all fours toward the thicker cover of the woods. Her eye was swollen, keeping her from seeing properly. Hard hands caught at her and she fought, swinging wildly.
“Baby, it’s me. You’re safe. You’re safe now.” Jack enfolded her in his arms, tight against his chest. She could smell his scent, hear his heartbeat. He pulled back to look down at her. “Fuck! Son of a bitch!” He caught her close again and then pushed her toward Ken, turning his head toward the mine, his eyes glacier-cold.
“No!” Briony caught his arm and tried to pull him back to her. “He knows where she is. I have a sister. He knows where she is, Jack.”
Jack didn’t even turn his head to look back at her as he ran toward the mine.
“Jack! Please!”
Jack took a breath-reached for calm. Anything to do with Briony seemed to shatter his composure, but the sight of her swelling face and blood soaking through her jeans and shirt on one side… He shoved Ken off of him and crawled through the brush back toward Briony.
Jack gathered her smaller body up against him. “It’s okay, baby, I just lost my mind for a minute. You’re getting a hell of a shiner there.”
“I have a sister, Jack.” It was humiliating, but she couldn’t stop crying. “They have her. They’re holding her somewhere, and Luther said she was being disciplined because she didn’t want Brett touching her. He said it didn’t matter if the woman was attracted-only the man. What kind of people are they?”
“Bastards, baby,” Jack said, wiping her tears with the pads of his thumbs. Although he was infinitely gentle, she winced, and he dropped his hand. “What happened to your side?” He lifted her shirt to see the gauze pad soaked with blood. “What the hell, Briony! Baby, stop crying, you’re killing me.”
“He sat on me. You saw him sit on me. I don’t know if he could have killed them just by sitting on my stomach, Jack. I don’t know enough about babies.”
The tears streaking down her face broke his heart. “I read that unborn babies were in a very protected environment, Briony. They’re fine. They’re safe.”
“He said he was going to cut them out of me. He planned to take me to a clinic to abort them.” A shudder ran through her body, and a fresh wave of tears began.
Jack wrapped his arms around her and dragged her into the protection of his body, looking a little helplessly at his brother. “Nothing is going to happen to them, Briony.” He lifted her shirt again to reveal the wound on her hip.
“We’ve got to move or we’ll be trapped, Jack,” Ken cautioned, watching their back trail. “We aren’t going to fool them for long. They’ll know we left, and they’ll come running. And Luther or one of the other enhanced soldiers is bound to be telepathic. He’s pinned down in the mine, but the others will be running to cut us off.”
Jack lowered her shirt with a slight frown and tucked her beneath his shoulder. The two men began to jog with her in between them, through the woods away from the house and away from the mine. Briony pressed her hand to her side to try to still the constant throbbing.
“What happened?” Jack repeated.
“The doctor planted a tracking device in my hip. I cut it out so they couldn’t follow us.”
Jack glared at her. “You did what?”
“Jack,” Ken cautioned.
“What would you have done?” she demanded. He couldn’t yell at her, or she was going to be sick all over him. Her eye throbbed with every step she took, shooting pain through her head, and her stomach kept lurching uncomfortably. She was worried about the babies with Luther sitting on them, in spite of the assurances Jack had given her. “Do we know where we’re going?”
“We’re heading for the pass. We’ll take the canyon route. It looks like a dead end and we can draw them in,” Ken explained. “They’ll think we’re trapped, but we have our own way through the pass.”
“The sun’s up and we’ll need a good start on them,” Jack added. “We should stop and fix your hip and eye. There’s a grove just ahead that has a nice slope to it. We’ll be a little safer there. You’ll need to drink water. If you get tired and need to rest, don’t be stupid-say so.”
“They’re going to hit us with everything they’ve got once we’re in the canyon. You know they still have a helicopter, and they’re going to be using it to track us as well. We have to stay in the trees as much as possible.” Ken took the lead as the trail narrowed. “Watch the low branches, Briony.”
“They’ll be able to see where we go, Jack,” Briony said fearfully.
“We always expected a helicopter,” Jack assured Briony. “We can deal with it. The shrubbery is going to start getting dense. If you need to slow down, we can. The helicopter can’t get in here.”
“We’re leaving tracks,” Briony pointed out.
“We want them coming after us, baby,” Jack said. “No worries. We have an escape route. Ken, did you call in reinforcements?”
Ken shook his head. “Thought about it, but we don’t know, other than our team, who we can trust. If I contact our commander, the admiral, and he’s in on this, we’re screwed.”
Jack glanced down at Briony, assessing the strain on her face. She’d been through quite a bit, and they still had several miles up a steep mountainside to go. She flashed him a wan grin.
“I’m good, Jack. I want to put distance between them and us.”
She didn’t look good to him, and if he took her to a hospital-which he intended to do to check the babies-he was bound to be arrested for domestic violence. She looked as if she’d been in a war. He slowed the pace over several ground-eating strides. Ken glanced sharply at him then looked at Briony’s bent head and kept his mouth shut, but he began to drop back where he could protect his brother and Briony should one of the enhanced soldiers
