Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)(51)

“I have faith in you,” he said, giving her fingers a slight squeeze. “Have you set a time for the announcement?”

“Not officially.”

He gave a curious lift of his brow. He’d spent most of his life dealing with computers, not people. He had no idea how the whole PR thing worked.

“Why not?”

She reached to hook her hair behind her ear. The moonlight shimmered over the tawny strands.

“Most people ignore press conferences unless it’s a celebrity or a politician caught with his pants down,” she explained.

“Or with her skirt lifted,” he pointed out in dry tones. She had a real chip on her shoulder when it came to men and sex.

She shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“So what are your plans?”

“I’ve reached out to my various contacts over the past couple of weeks and hinted that I’m following an explosive story that’s going to shake the world,” she revealed.

“And?”

She allowed a faint smile to touch her lips. “And then I stopped talking,” she told him. “Anything I could have said can’t compare to the whispers that have started circulating. As each hour passes, and I remain out of sight, people become more and more curious. Once it reaches fever pitch, I’ll schedule the press conference.”

He nodded, trusting she would recognize the perfect moment to create maximum impact.

“For better or worse, it’s never going to be the same,” he said.

“No, it will never be the same,” she agreed in soft tones.

A peaceful silence shrouded them. Like the calm before the storm. For long minutes, Rios simply enjoyed the brisk breeze and distant chirp of crickets. Then, he turned on the rock, plagued by a sudden need to know what the future might hold.

“If our people are given freedom, will you leave the Pack?” he abruptly demanded.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I’d like to search for my parents.”

He felt a flicker of surprise. “You don’t know where they are?”

“No.” Her features hardened with a remembered pain. “I was visiting my cousins when they were caught in a roundup by the SAU.”

“There was no record of their detainment?” The SAU was smart enough to know that there would be a few fellow humans that would be squeamish about the universal roundups, so they made it all seem very legal and ‘by the book.’

There were official records that included the name, date of birth, and physical characteristic of each detainee.

“I know they were originally sent to DC,” she said, her voice carefully stripped of emotion. “But the containment center was closed down. I can’t find a listing of which permanent compound they were sent to.”

Without warning, Rios’s cat was snarling, even as his human side was leashing the urge to grab her by her shoulders and give her a shake.

“Bree,” he said in low tones.

She stilled, easily sensing his burst of annoyance. “What?”

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

She frowned in confusion. “For what?”

“You know full well that there’s nothing and no one I can’t find,” he rasped, dismissing from his mind Sinclair’s need to use the pretty Mira for his search. There was no way to get access to the CDC files without direct access to their computers. “If your parents were missing, all you had to do was tell me, and I would have found them.”

She ducked her head. “I think a part of me was afraid.”

“Of me?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “I was afraid of discovering that they had been killed.”

His outrage eased. Ah. He understood that sort of fear. Slowly, he inched closer to her slender body. An unspoken offer of comfort.

“Why would you think that?” he asked.

She bit her lip, unconsciously swaying toward him. “I was very young, but I remember enough to know my parents wouldn’t have submitted easily to being collared and branded.”

Half afraid he might frighten her away, he lifted his hand, brushing it over her cheek.

“Surely it’s better to know one way or another?”

Her expression became wary, but thankfully, she didn’t pull away from his light touch.

“It was better not to know when I didn’t dare risk trying to go in search of them,” she clarified. “I needed to hang on to the belief they were out there waiting for me.”

“But if we’re truly freed…” He allowed his words to trail away, unwilling to imagine a future where this woman was no longer a part of it.

“It’s time to search for them.”

His fingers moved to cup her chin, his brows furrowed. “What if I said I didn’t want you to go?”

With a hiss, she was knocking away his hand, a dark color staining her prominent cheekbones.

“I would say you’ve repeated the same words to a hundred other females.”

Rios snarled in frustration. Even knowing he deserved her lack of faith, it annoyed the hell out of him.

“Why are you certain that I’m not being sincere?”

“Umm, let me think.” She pretended to consider before offering a humorless smile. “Because I’ve watched you leap from bed to bed since you joined the Pack.”