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.”

CHAPTER 8

“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?”

“Negative. Tree’s in my way.”

Sam’s nostrils flared. No one hunted him on his own turf. “Maintain your position. I’m going after him.”

“I’m locked. He moves and I got him. Be careful, Sam. This guy looks to be a professional.”

Donovan met Sam’s gaze with hard eyes. “You should stay here, Sam. Let me go after him. If Sophie wakes, she’ll need you.”

“She’ll need you more,” Sam said shortly. “You’re the medic.”

Donovan nodded, not arguing though Sam knew he wasn’t happy with the decision.

Sam suited up, his mind focused on the fact that there was a threat out there to his family.

Stalking his prey was what Sam did best. He was patient and cunning. He’d once spent six hours closing in on a sniper and took him out without the enemy, positioned a mere fifteen yards away, ever knowing.

This was more important. This man posed a threat to everything Sam held most dear in the world. His brothers. His family. And now his child.

And Sophie.

The voice whispered in his ear, a reminder he didn’t want.

When he finally got the intruder in his sights, he merely watched, gauging the man’s intent. He was a soldier or a mercenary, and he too was patient.

His movements were measured. He watched the house through binoculars and occasionally he’d scout the area around the house. Looking for anyone watching him.

Sam smiled to himself. The asshole would never see Garrett unless Garrett wanted him to.

Without a sound, Sam unsheathed his knife and crept forward, pausing when the wind stopped or his target moved. He was three feet away and the man still hadn’t detected his presence. Then the wind shifted, blowing from the west. The man turned up his head, nostrils expanding as he scented Sam like a wild animal.

Before he could turn, Sam was on him. The blade pressed into the neck smeared with camo paint, and Sam hissed his demand close to the man’s ear.

“Who sent you?”

“Fuck you.”

The intruder twisted and tried to ram his gun between him and Sam. Sam sliced, cutting the man’s throat in one quick motion.

The hiss of escaping air and the slight gurgle of blood were the only sounds denting the breeze.

“Good work,” Garrett said into Sam’s earpiece.

Sam held up the okay sign and then signaled that he’d take care of the body. He’d have left it there to rot, but one, it was too damn close to his house and he didn’t want to smell the bastard, and two, it would be a headache for Sean when the body was discovered.

Better it disappear for good.

An hour later, he returned to the house to find Garrett and Donovan both waiting.

“I’ve set a secure perimeter around the house,” Garrett said. “No one will be able to so much as piss in the direction of this house without us knowing.”

“We need to call Steele and Rio in,” Sam said as he glanced toward the couch where Sophie still slept. “Mouton made the mistake of stepping onto our turf. We’ll take the fight to him. This time he goes down.”

Both Garrett and Donovan nodded their heads in agreement.

“Until Rio and Steele get here with their teams, we stay put. I don’t want to get Sean or Mom and Dad involved in any way. We’ll put big shiny targets on our asses and dare the bastards to come and get us.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Garrett snarled.

“And Sophie?” Donovan asked.

Again Sam glanced over to her curled up body on the couch.

“She stays with me. She doesn’t get out of our sight.”

SOPHIE struggled in her dreams. The thing was she was aware enough to know she was only dreaming, but she couldn’t shake out of the hazy world of sleep. Exhaustion held her too firmly in its grasp.

The assassin was holding her while he slowly carved a line into her belly. She felt the skin give way. Horror overcame her. She screamed, a giant, silent scream. She couldn’t get her lips to work, and her mouth was as dry as sawdust.

Whimpers tore from her mouth, and she shoved invisible arms away from her. But still, she felt that blade, cutting closer to her womb.

“Sophie. Sophie!”

The gruff voice startled her to wakefulness. Panic shrieked through her spine. God, she wasn’t dreaming. He was here. He was standing over her ready to kill her.

She came up swinging. Her fist connected with his nose, and she felt the satisfying snap as his head popped back.

“Son of a bitch!”

The snarl had her rolling over despite the scream of protest from her arm. She drew back, ready to hit him again, her other arm instinctively over her belly.

“For God’s sake, it’s me, Garrett. You were dreaming.”

She blinked and stared up at the man looming over her. He was holding his nose, and blood smeared his fingers.

She couldn’t even bring herself to apologize. The words stuck in her throat as she remembered what an ass he’d been so far.