“You fear him, Cat,” he pointed out. “With good reason.”
“I don’t fear him. What do I have to fear? He may threaten to kill me. He may hate me with every fiber of his being, or love me to the bottom of his soul, who the hell knows. But he would never harm me. What I fear is what you’ll do to him if you continue to push him.”
“You saved the Jackals and Martinez last night. He would have murdered them . . .”
He simply didn’t know the Breed he was dealing with, despite Graeme’s attempts to show him.
“He would have executed them,” she corrected him. “Like you execute those you consider past redemption in some remote volcano. Or like you put down an animal with rabies. He has never murdered anyone or anything.”
Jonas nodded, but as he did so, the access he’d given her to his inner emotions slammed shut.
“Why did you follow me here, Jonas?” she asked him, this time with a genuine need to understand why he was there. “Did you really think I knew anything that would help you capture him? Or that I’d tell you if I did?”
Wry humor flashed briefly in his gaze. “Rachel felt that if I approached you without my ‘normal arrogant attitude’”—he grimaced in distaste, pulling an unwilling little laugh from her—“perhaps you’d be willing to help rather than hinder my search for him. I’ll have to be certain to tell her how well that worked.” The mockery in his expression was more self-depreciating than confrontational.
“How horrible it must be to have the weight of so many lives resting on your shoulders,” she said softly, drawing a surprised look from him. “To know every step you take, every decision you make, affects every Breed in the world, every unique and exceptional soul you fight to save. And with each Breed lost, I bet you feel as though you personally failed.”
He looked away from her. She doubted Jonas rarely gave anyone a chance to see an unwilling emotion, let alone sense the depth of pain he felt at the thought of any failures.
“You and Gideon are the same,” she whispered, sensing rather than seeing the tension that suddenly filled him. “The exception is that you perceive the intelligence he possesses as a failure of your own as well. If you can capture Gideon, then you could capture all the secrets he possesses and all the knowledge he has or will have.”
Arrogance, confidence and denial filled the features that turned back to her.
“I see him as that rabid animal you spoke of earlier,” he stated with cool detachment, rising to his feet to stare down at her. “One that has some value, though, when compared to the risk he poses, not enough to allow him to continue waging a war that could easily become a weapon used against the Breeds. The world wants justice, Cat, not vengeance.”
“Nor protection? Or truth?” She shook her head firmly. “You’re wrong, Jonas. Even as a child, long before I arrived in that research center, he was tortured. That serum nearly destroyed him. He survived because that intelligence enabled him to see how to use the serum to make him stronger, smarter, rather than killing him as it did so many others. And you want to lock him up for it?” She rose to her feet now, staring up at him fiercely. “No, that’s not why you want to lock him up. You want to lock him up to use him. To steal that intelligence and strength.” Now she was pointing one shaking finger at him. “You’re no different from the Council in that regard and if I did know where he was, what he was doing or where he would strike next, I’d die before I told you or anyone else determined to carve another chasm into that Breed’s soul.”
It enraged her. It broke her heart.
“He’ll never be at peace, Cat,” he snapped. “He’s fucking crazy.”
“Maybe he should have just hid it better, like you do,” she cried out hoarsely. “Like every other Breed in existence does. Because not a single damned one that I’ve met is completely sane. You want to use him, Jonas. At least be fucking honorable enough to admit it.”
Jerking her pack from the sandy ground, she pulled it over her shoulders furiously. “I may have been done with his crazy ass the night he rescued me and Judd from being euthanized, as they called it, but I’ll be damned, there’s not many Breeds I haven’t been done with at one time or another since. And I’m definitely done with you, Director. You should have stayed with the Council. At least they would have agreed with your asinine methods.”
“Cat.” The demand in his voice had her pausing to glance back at him. “Has he told you what happened when he was recaptured? What they did to him during the time Dr. Bennett held him?”
“Are you going to tell me?”