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"Afraid." He swung an icy look at her, sneered with arctic sarcasm. "Of what?"
"Yourself, for starters. But I think you're even more afraid of me."
She waited for an instant rebuttal, something cold and nasty to match the wintry rage that was rolling off of him like frost. But he didn't say anything. He glared at her for a long moment, then turned away and strode, a bit stiffly, toward a tall bureau on the other side of the room.
Gabrielle sat there on the floor, watching as he yanked open drawers, pulled out clothing and tossed it onto the bed.
"What are you doing?"
"I don't have time to debate this with you. It's pointless."
A cabinet of weapons opened before he reached it, the doors swinging on their hinges with an invisible, violent jerk. He stalked over and pulled out a retractable shelf. At least a dozen daggers and other lethal-looking blades lay in orderly rows on the shelf's velvet liner. With a careless grab, Lucan swiped two large knives in black leather sheaths. He slid open another shelf and selected a big, brushed stainless steel handgun that looked like something out of an action movie nightmare.
"You don't like what I'm saying, so you're going to run away from me instead?" He didn't look at her, or even curse in reply. No, he completely ignored her, and that really pissed her off. "Go ahead, then. Pretend you're invincible, that you're not scared to death of letting someone care for you. Run away from me, Lucan. You're only proving my point."
Gabrielle felt a keen sense of hopelessness as Lucan retrieved an ammunition clip from the cabinet and shoved it into the pistol's hollow grip. Nothing she said would stop him. She felt helpless, like she was trying to wrap her arms around a storm.
She glanced away from him, her eyes straying back to the table where she sat, at the plates and silverware in front of her. She saw the unused knife lying there, the polished blade gleaming.
She couldn't hold him back with words, but there was something else...
She pushed back the long sleeve of her robe. Very calmly, with the same fearless resolve that had served her a hundred times before, Gabrielle picked up the knife and pressed the edge of it to the fleshy part of her forearm. A small pressure, the barest slice of the blade through her skin.
She didn't know which of Lucan's senses responded first, but the roar he let loose when his head came up and he saw what she had done rattled every piece of furniture in the room.
"Goddamn it - Gabrielle!"
The blade flew out of her grasp and across the length of the bedroom, embedding to the hilt in the far wall.
Lucan moved so fast she could hardly track him. One second he was standing several feet away at the foot of the bed, the next he had his large hand clamped down hard around her fingers, hauling her up to her feet. Blood rose from the thin line of her cut, juicy, deep crimson, trickling down her arm. Her hand was still caught in Lucan's crushing grip.>"Yes. But Dante and Niko nearly tore him apart on sight, after he pulled that disappearing act during the raid."
"What happened to him last night?"
"One of the Rogues tried to slip out a back door at the warehouse as things heated up. Tegan tailed him into the street. He was going to take the suckhead out, but decided to follow him first, see where he might run. He tracked him to the old asylum outside the city. Place was crawling with Rogues. If there was any doubt, now we're certain it's a large colony. Probably an East Coast headquarters."
A chill went through her when she thought that she had been to the asylum by herself - had been inside the place - unaware that it was a Rogue location.
"I have some pictures of the interior. They're still in my camera. I didn't have a chance to unload them yet."
Lucan had gone stock-still, staring at her as if she just told him she'd been playing with live grenades. His face seemed to go a bit more ashen beneath its fatigued pallor. "You not only went there, but you broke in to the place?"
She shrugged, guiltily.
"Jesus Christ, Gabrielle." He threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a long moment, just looking at her. It took him a while to form words. "You might have been killed. Do you realize that?"
"I wasn't," she answered, lame observation, but still fact.
"Not the point." He ran both hands deep into the hair at his temples. "Shit. Where's your camera?"
"I left it in the lab."
Lucan picked up the phone beside his bed and speed dialed on intercom. Gideon came on the other end.
"Hey, what's up. Everything good?"
"Yeah," Lucan said, but he was glaring at Gabrielle. "Tell Tegan to put the asylum recon detail on hold for now. I just found out we've got pictures of the interior."
"No shit?" There was a pause. "Ah, fuck me. You mean, she actually went in the goddamn place?"
