Page 16 of Hunted

She took a few steadying breaths. He figured she was calling on the hidden reserve of strength she kept locked away somewhere inside her. He wondered if she’d stumbled onto it by accident when he’d caught a glimpse of it before, or whether she’d always known it was there.

Her eyes were trying to be strong, but there was fear behind them. “If you’re done rescuing me, I think it’s safe to let me go now. Okay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t need me. I’ll tell you which branch and give you the key, but only if you let me go.”

Her tone was unsteady, her breathing had a hitch in it. He studied her in short glances while driving. Damned if she wasn’t up to something. He could read her like a book. “I thought you’d want to go with me. Seems like you’d want to see what I find in that box for yourself, especially since you’re so sure it’ll prove your old man innocent.”

“Whatever you eventually find is going to do that.”

“So how do you know I can be trusted to report what’s really in there? How do you know I won’t lie and ruin his impeccable name, no matter what I find?”

“What would you have to gain by doing that?” she asked.

He glanced at her, shrugged. “If I had something to gain by it, I wouldn’t tell you what it was.” He had to be careful with her. She was smart. Maybe smarter than him.

Definitely smarter than him.

She bit her lip, shook her head. “I’m just not cut out for this.”

“No, most people aren’t.” He sighed hard, almost regretting that he was about to drag her with him into hell. But he didn’t have a choice.

“Look, Lexi, if I let you go, those guys will track you down. It won’t matter where you go or how well you think you can hide. Sooner or later, they’ll find you, and try to force you to tell them what they want to know. They’re not going to believe you don’t know anything. And even if you somehow managed to convince them, they’d kill you anyway.”

She shook her head. “No one’s that brutal.”

“Trust me. I know exactly how brutal they are.”

“You’ve dealt with them before?”

Her eyes took on a new look, a curious one. He clamped his jaw, deliberately not looking at her. He didn’t want her digging into his mind, much less probing his pain. He needed his pain. Wendy, Justin and Jackson deserved his pain. And Lexi’s brown eyes might be powerful enough to see right into the black, bottomless pit of his grief. She’d look into the empty socket where his soul used to live. It was gone now. It had died with his little boys.

“You’re not gonna be safe until I get that formula to my boss. I’ll let you go then. Until that point, you’re stuck with me.” He glanced her way. “Now, how about handing over that key?”

She shook her head.

He sent her his meanest glare, but it was ineffective since she refused to look him in the eye. “How about telling me which branch, then?”

“I’ll tell you when we get to the city.”

“Care to explain your reasons?”

Her white teeth worried her lower lip for a moment. “I’ve already told you, my father couldn’t have done this.” She drew a shaky breath. “And … even if he did stumble onto some potential biological weapon, then he did it by accident.”

“I don’t really care if it was deliberate or not. Your father created a monster, and then he took it and ran.”

“Maybe he wished he hadn’t found it at all,” she said. “You said he deleted his files, took all his notes.”

“So?”

“So, if this thing ever existed, he would have destroyed it himself.”

“You’re dead wrong about that.”

She tilted her head, staring at him, tears slowly drying on her lashes. “I know my father.”

“I know his type.”

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