Predatory Game
Page 25

She turned away as the first wave of GhostWalkers burst into the garage, weapons drawn, faces serious. Logan Maxwell and Neil Campbell came in from either side.
“Two dead,” Logan reported after crouching to take a pulse. “Two alive.” He looked at Jess. “You both all right?”
“Saber has a bruise coming up on her face, but otherwise, we’re good. She checked downstairs, but not the upstairs.”
Ken and Mari are on the roof. Logan sent the information to Jess and jerked Bill to his feet. “You’ll be taking a little ride with us.”
“I want a lawyer,” Bill demanded.
“Do I look like a cop to you?” Logan replied. “Don’t piss me off any more than you already have.”
Neil jerked the man to him. “So you like young girls?”
“No! I didn’t know she was fourteen. He didn’t tell us that.”
“Let’s go.”
“But, my friends. They killed everyone.”
“They didn’t kill you or your buddy over there. They saved you for us. So you’d better say everything we want to hear,” Neil instructed, shoving the man ahead of him out of the garage.
You’re such a tough guy. Logan snickered. The idiot’s going to bawl in another minute. Grab this one too. He yanked Lloyd up, uncaring that the man’s jaw was dislocated and his nose broken. “Get out of here.”
Saber watched the team moving with swift efficiency, taking the house while she stood absolutely still, not wanting to draw attention to herself.
Jess’s hand enveloped hers. She tightened her fingers, her heart settling into a steadier rhythm. “Let’s go in. They’ll have to remove the bodies and clean up in here. I want to double-check my office.”
“We haven’t cleared the house,” Logan warned.
“We’ll be in the office. You must have swept that first,” Jess said. “And they didn’t get in.”
“Not the office, but they planted very sophisticated bugs everywhere else.” Logan handed him one. “Take a look at this. Not one of ours and not one I’ve seen Whitney use.” He glanced at Saber. “You must be Saber Wynter, Jess’s roommate.”
She nodded. His eyes reminded her of a hawk, sharp and restless and missing nothing. He made her feel more vulnerable than ever. His gaze dropped to her hand, linked with Jess’s. Instinctively she started to pull away, but Jess tightened his grip.
“We’ll be in the office, Logan,” Jess said.
Send her ahead.
Jess’s gaze flicked to Logan’s face. “Saber, will you get the door for me?”
“Sure.” She moved without hesitation, straight through the garage, turned slightly at the kitchen door with her hand on the doorknob, and glanced into the windshield of her car. There was a handoff of something she couldn’t make out, but Logan definitely gave an item to Jess and he slipped it into the bag he always carried on his chair. Her mouth tightened, but she kept walking.
Damn him. So much for being on the team. She was crazy for thinking she could make a place for herself. Essentially she was trading one puppetmaster for another. Because if she worked for whoever Jess worked for, sooner or later they’d be sending her out into the field to do exactly what Whitney wanted her to do, and she couldn’t live with that.
She sat on the desktop, swinging her legs, and took a long slow look around. The office was huge, bigger than her sitting room upstairs. There was a framed picture of her with her arms around Jess’s neck. His head was tilted so he could look back at her and they were laughing. She remembered him playing around with a digital camera he’d been unable to get to work, but apparently he’d managed to fix it.
She turned her head to watch Jess roll through the door. He didn’t have even a smear of dirt on him. “You snake. You said the camera didn’t work.” She indicated the photograph on his desk.
“It was the only way to get your picture. Here, let me look at your face. You have a bruise coming up.”
His hands were gentle as he ran them over the delicate bones in her face. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No. But don’t think I didn’t notice that cut on your head from earlier. I know your male pride is very fragile, but it looks worse than my bruise.”
His eyebrow shot up. “Are we in competition?”
“No.” She ducked her head. “You scared me, Jesse. You tackled a killer with a gun.” Her heart had been in her throat and she’d been terrified for him, but she knew enough to choose her words carefully. He was a man who believed men should protect women, and worrying because he was in a wheelchair wouldn’t sit well with him.
“You kicked him.”
“Hey!” Logan’s voice drifted down from the upstairs hall. “Jess, we need you up here.”
“Be right there,” Jess called back and swung his chair around.
Saber swallowed her protest and slid from the desk. “I’ll go with you.” They must have found her field kit. She’d tucked it away safely but maybe not safe enough. It wasn’t the end of the world. He already knew she was a GhostWalker. She’d just have to come up with plausible explanations for some of her equipment.
She went up in the lift, holding his hand, trying to find a way to explain the chemicals in her bag. A small group of men were gathered in her doorway. A faint musky scent warned her it might not be her field bag they’d found. The sudden silence had Jess gliding ahead of her, and between his chair and Logan they blocked the doorway. Jess stiffened and she felt the house vibrate with rage.
Saber avoided Jess’s outstretched arm and pushed past Logan to gain entrance to her room. Horrified, she stared around her. Bile rose, but she pushed it down. To have someone invade her room was such a violation, but to do this…the room stank as if the occupants had had an orgy. Her clothes were slashed to ribbons and every scrap of underwear was thrown around the room, most containing sickening white blobs. The bed had been neatly made, but one of the cleaners had pulled back the covers to find more underwear coated in se**n.
Saber pressed her hand to her mouth, shocked to realize she was trembling. She could feel the sympathy in the room, and was grateful the men didn’t look at her. She turned abruptly and stalked out.
“Logan,” Jess began.
“We’re on it. He left enough DNA here to identify an army. This is a sick bastard, Jess, and she’s not safe. If this one is connected in any way to Whitney, he’s gone rogue at this point. Whitney would never condone this. He’s too…scientific. This would be abhorrent to him.”
“Funny where people draw their lines. Sometimes I wonder what the world is coming to.” He paused and looked around at the cleaning crew. “I want this room stripped of anything he may have touched. Separate her fingerprints so nothing goes out but his. I don’t want a flag raised on some remote computer Whitney might be monitoring.”
Logan nodded toward the crew and walked down the hall beside Jess. “Whitney knows she’s here, Jess. I can smell him. She’s in trouble.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“And she’s gearing up to run. He’s too close to her this time, he’ll nab her.”
“I’m hearing a note in your voice I don’t like, so don’t beat around the bush, spit it out.”
“Unless he planted her.”
Jess thrust on the wheels and took himself into the lift. Logan crammed his body in as well. The doors slid shut and Jess rubbed his temples. “He didn’t plant her.”
“Then how did she manage to find you? You’re the one GhostWalker conducting an investigation into our chain of command. Tell me how she ended up on your doorstep. When you couldn’t find a background on her I told you she was another Chaleen. They’re coming after you because you’re a good guy, and that makes you vulnerable. You think the best of people, especially women.”
“I didn’t think at all around Chaleen, at least not with my brain. They studied me and sent someone programmed to be whatever I wanted. You saw it because you weren’t sleeping with her.” The doors opened and Jess waited for Logan to step out before he shot out of the small space in a fit of temper. “It was stupid, I’ll admit that, but I caught on soon enough.”
“She broke your heart.”
“She didn’t have my heart. She smashed my ego, but my heart was never touched. Saber, on the other hand, definitely could rip the thing right out of my body, so she damned well better not be Whitney’s spy.”
“Could you kill her?” Logan’s voice was low, mild even, but his gaze was cool and steady. “If you had to, to defend yourself, could you kill her?”
Jess remained silent.
“For a moment there, in the club, when she realized she was surrounded by your team, I saw her look at you, Jess. She thought about taking you out right then and there.”
Jess swallowed his first response-denial. Hell yeah, she’d thought about it. He wasn’t certain how she thought she might get away with it, but she’d thought about it. “I know she did,” he admitted. “And she had every right to. Because, if she betrayed me, I’d want to strangle her with my own two hands.”
A heartbeat went by. A second one. Logan sighed. “You didn’t answer me, Jess. Wanting isn’t the same thing. I’m not going to let her kill you. If she makes a wrong move…”
Jess shook his head. “I’m not suicidal, Logan. I never have been. I lost my legs, not my mind. I’m better off than most, everything else is in working order. And I’m making some progress with the other thing, enough to think there’s hope. But if she turns out to be Whitney’s, I don’t know if I’d know how to face that, or if I could let you take her out. I just don’t know. And it’s f**ked up to be talking about this like she’s not going through enough as it is.”
Logan shrugged and walked away, leaving Jess wanting to hit something. In the end, Jess went to find Saber. She wasn’t in the kitchen or his bedroom. He knew she wouldn’t be out in the open. She didn’t feel safe. In his home-in her own home-she didn’t feel safe. He wanted to yell at someone, hit something. Preferably Logan. Because Logan was right and he was wrong. And damn it all, that sucked.
He knocked on the bathroom door. “Come out of there. I want to take another look at that bruise on your face.”
There was a small silence. “I’m fine, Jesse,” she finally answered. “I just need a minute alone.”
“You’ve had your minute.”
She pushed the door open and glared at him. “I’m the victim here, dragon king, so get over being angry.”
“I’m angry because a GhostWalker found me in my own home, lived here, and I didn’t even suspect for months. I usually spot a GhostWalker within seconds of meeting one. Sometimes even before.”
“Because of the energy.”
“Exactly. There’s a feel to it.”
“Well. Then I get to be angry too, because I didn’t know about you. How’d you figure it out?”
“You slipped up and spoke telepathically.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I did not. I don’t make mistakes like that.” She’d been making mistakes ever since she’d met Jess. She’d never felt such a physical attraction to a man, and then, as time went by, such an emotional attachment. Jess was easy to love. And God help her, she was in love with him.
“You did.”
She bit at her lower lip, tapping her foot with her restless energy. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“For the same reason you didn’t say anything.”
“All right. I can accept that,” Saber conceded.