With Every Breath by Maya Banks Page B

ensuring she remained safe, he’d do the unthinkable.
    â€œWade Sterling,” Dane nearly growled into the phone. “Tell him Dane Elliot is calling about . . . Eliza Cummings.”
    If there was one man Eliza couldn’t steamroll, it was Wade, a man who’d taken a bullet for her when he went up against every single member of DSS and told them what flaming dumbasses they were for allowing an injured, tortured woman who hadn’t had sufficient time to recover from participating in the takedown of the men who’d hurt her so horrifically.
    And when it became a battle of wills, with Eliza showing more fire and determination than Dane had ever seen from his usually unflappable partner, and her refusing to back down under Wade’s intimidating, ferocious decree, he’d simply honed in on the mission, insisting on going along even though he in no way worked for DSS; and furthermore he was a man who lived cloaked in shadows and Dane didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.
    Only, he’d stepped in front of a bullet that Lizzie’s vest wouldn’t have protected her from. It would have struck the vulnerable flesh of her neck and killed her instantly. Instead, Wade’s much taller frame had caused the bullet to lodge into his arm and even then, the bullet used had been an armor-piercing bullet and had torn through the flesh of his arm, missing bone, thank God; and because Eliza had time to turn, the bullet had gone through Wade’s arm and had wedged itself into Eliza’s protective vest as Wade had taken her down, covering her body with his own.
    Yes, if anyone could find out what Eliza was up to and the source of so much pain and shadows in her eyes, and worst of all the fear Dane had seen clearly reflected in a tenth of an unguarded second before she’d visibly collected herself, it was Wade Sterling.
    Dane may not like the man, but he owed him a hell of a lot, and he wasn’t stupid. Wade had made a claim on Eliza that any man in a ten-mile radius could recognize. Eliza, on the other hand, was oblivious, but then she was clueless as to her effect on the male population. Always had been.
    He could almost feel sorry for Eliza because Dane was effectively throwing her to the wolves—or rather wolf. One large, surly lone wolf. But even losing her trust, friendship and loyalty was worth it if the end result was her safety, and one thing Dane had learned in very short order was that what Wade Sterling considered his, he protected with his every breath.
    Eliza couldn’t be in safer hands. Even if she didn’t yet realize it.

SEVEN
    WADE Sterling stood inside the open gate to Eliza’s small courtyard which was surrounded by a privacy fence to give her seclusion not only in the front of the homey end unit but all the way around the townhome, encompassing the slightly larger backyard where she’d obviously spent a lot of time landscaping and making it into her escape from the rest of the world. He’d made sure he blended with the shadows so his presence wasn’t detected until he was ready to reveal himself.
    Not that he’d ever been invited inside her private domain. The few times he’d approached her in the parking lot in front of her building, she’d made it clear there would be no invitation into her inner sanctum. Her apartment looked like all the others in the complex—on the outside. Wade would bet everything he owned that the inside likely resembled the control room of the CIA or FBI. The image amused him. Hell, she amused him, and, he’d grudgingly—finally—admitted that not only was she a source of rare entertainment for him, but she intrigued and fascinated him. It wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to when it came to women.
    He wouldn’t go as far as to say he was an expert on females. Who in the hell in their right mind would ever make, much less convince others to believe, such an absurd