Predatory Game (25 page)

Chaleen snapped the cell phone closed and whirled around to face the GhostWalker, nearly stepping on Saber. “Don’t point that gun at me. You know who I am and who I work for.”

Saber inched her way back into thick brush. If Ken was here, Mari would be covering his back, and that left the way open to get back inside the house.

“I thought the CIA had stopped harassing Jess just about the time he lost his legs. Isn’t that when you left him because he wasn’t of use to you?”

“He never was of use to me.”

“No, I’m betting he wasn’t one for pillow talk. Go away, Chaleen.”

“Kiss my ass, Norton,” Chaleen said.

Saber crawled as quickly as she could through the brush until she was in heavier woods. She ran, staying to the shadows, wishing she could hear more of the conversation but knowing eventually Jess would come looking for her.

It took less than a third of the time to make her way back, as she knew the GhostWalkers were occupied with Chaleen. She made certain she stayed small and blended into the night so that she didn’t draw Mari’s eye. Keeping her energy low, even as she ran, kept the guards’ sixth sense from tripping.

Saber leapt onto the garage roof, used it to springboard onto the house roof, and crawled to the dormer. It was a little trickier making the jump and catching the ledge, removing the louvers one-handed, but she had practiced, and she managed to make it into the attic before Ken returned.

Breathing a sigh of relief that she hadn’t had to kill Chaleen, Saber made her way back to her sitting room and hastily changed.

“Y
ou’re looking very pregnant, Lily,” Jess greeted, glancing up at the video picture of Dr. Lily Whitney-Miller, daughter of Peter Whitney, the man who had begun the psychic experiments.

Lily sat perched in a chair, her face serious and pale, her eyes wide with concern. “I’m due in a couple of weeks, Jess. And I’m not certain we’ll be able to stay here after that, which means we’ll lose what little advantage we have. It isn’t safe.”

“I understand.”

And he did. She lived in the house Peter Whitney had built, complete with secret labs and eighty rooms and underground tunnels. The sophisticated equipment inside was his brainchild and he had a back door into it all, so he could review everything his daughter did. Unbeknownst to Peter Whitney, Lily had turned the tables on him and had found a way to tap into his computers, so in effect, they were watching each other.

Lily basically lived in a fishbowl where her father could monitor her at will, but she could feed him whatever data the GhostWalkers wanted her to while they tried to track him down. Once her baby was born, she would never feel as if the child was safe unless they moved to another location where Whitney wouldn’t be able to kidnap him and use him for his experiments.

“I copied a file on a female child called Winter from my father’s computer and made a hard copy for you. In one of his entries a year or so ago, he noted she had changed the spelling of her name from Winter to Wynter, so I have no doubt your Saber is this girl. After reading this file, Jess, I just can’t risk it.”

Jess swallowed hard as he stared at the photographs spilling across his desk. His throat flooded with tears. “My God. She was a baby. He trained her to assassinate and used her before she was even grown.”

Lily’s image reflected her own horror. “It’s worse than that, Jess. He’s got a vision now of a different world, one where he gets rid of birth defects and makes humans into superior beings. He calls it a superior soldier, but he wants an elite force of genius, psychic, and genetically superior humans. He’s a megalomaniac and so fanatical he’s lost sight of any reality. I accessed the files of one of the children he used for Winter to experiment on—her name is Thorn and he thought her of no consequence because she didn’t show any promise for his ultimate plan. It looks as if he still considers her expendable.”

“Now we know what happens to the girls who don’t meet his standards. They’re on the other end of the experiments.”

Lily didn’t bother to hide her tears. “I don’t know how you’re going to stop him, Jess. I really don’t. He’s a multibillionaire and has research facilities all over the world. He has access to schools and labs and hospitals. He has so many friends in various governments, and the truth is, no matter how they might condemn him publicly, they want him to continue. What he gives them, no one else can.”

“That’s bullshit, Lily.”

“I wish it was. He’s my father, but he needs to be destroyed. He’s gone past saving doing this.” She rubbed her temples, her face lined and worn. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Somewhere he made the descent from greatness to madness. He’s completely insane to do this.”

“I’m sorry, Lily,” Jess said, meaning it. Lily had suffered enough. He could feel it radiating from her every time she was close to him.

“A child assassin, Jess, trained from the time she was a toddler. She could slip into a room, kill with a touch of her hand, and no one would ever even know it was murder. A heart attack. There is not a single pinprick on the body. She’s a perfect killing machine. What government wouldn’t give their right arm to have her? Logan gave me the picture you sent. Don’t worry, he hand-delivered it, and I’ve since destroyed it, but she’s enhancing her looks to make herself look older.”

“I can see that.”

“She was trained primarily for covert work. A nice little school where she learned everything needed to slip in and out of any society, any culture, without leaving a trace. She blends. That’s one of her greatest strengths. She becomes whatever is needed to get the job done. She’s lethal, Jess. One touch. She can kill with a touch.”

“I get that, Lily.” This wasn’t Lily’s fault. He had to keep reminding himself he was just pissed off and wanted a target. It couldn’t be Lily. She’d given too much of herself to helping the GhostWalkers, but damn it, he didn’t want to hear her talking as though Saber wasn’t salvageable. They were all killers. Every last one of them.

“He’s been tracking her through her radio station jobs. They’re watching her, trying to determine if by being out of the compound and away from training she’s losing her skills. But more importantly, Jess, they orchestrated her meeting you.”

He sighed and raked his hand through his hair. “Then he did arrange the car accident that killed my crew.” And his sister’s fiancé. How was he ever going to look Patsy in the eye again? And if David’s car had been shoved over the cliff, was Patsy’s accident an attempt to kill her? If so, why?

“Yes.” Lily shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Jess. It’s like a game of chess to him. We’re all pieces on his board and he moves us around to suit him.”

Jess quickly placed a call to the security force to put guards on his sister before spreading the photographs of Saber’s childhood across his desk in a surge of shimmering rage. Even the air rippled, the walls breathing as if trying to calm him. “I see his idea of intellectual amusement. Look at the things he did to her. Forced her to kill animals. Tried to make her kill children. Locked her into small dark places folded into a tiny contorted being for hours. Did you see this one, Lily?” He held up a picture of Saber lying on her stomach. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Several men stood around her with what looked to be glowing hot cigarettes. They had repeatedly touched the hot cigarettes to her skin.

“He didn’t want her to move or cry out,” Lily read from her copy of the file. “No matter what the discomfort—that’s the word he uses in his report—‘no matter the discomfort, the assassin must lie still and wait until that perfect moment to strike.’”

Jess wanted to pound something, preferably Whitney. “She always wears a T-shirt over her swimsuit.” He couldn’t vent his anger the way he wanted to because he was acutely aware of Lily’s tears. She was choking on them, outraged, horrified, and disgusted by the things her father was doing.

“You understand why I can’t stay in this house, don’t you, Jess?” Lily said. “I can’t take the risk that he could get his hands on my baby.”

“Of course you and the baby need to be safe, Lily. You’ve done more than your duty by the GhostWalkers and we’re all grateful to you.”

“We have to find a way to stop him. I thought it was just the girls in the laboratory where I was. But he has them scattered all over.”

“That would make sense. If one group was found—or destroyed—he’d have more to work with.”

She rubbed her head as if it ached. “I can’t find them all. I don’t even know how many I’m searching for.” She indicated the file on his desk. “Have you read it?”

“I haven’t had time yet,” Jess said. “Did he use pheromones on us?”

Lily sighed. “Yes. I’m sorry. You’ll always be physically attracted to her, Jess, but that doesn’t mean you won’t ever fall in love with someone else.”

“I’m in love with her.”

Lily shook her head and leaned forward to stare into the screen. “You’re in love with the image she’s presenting. Look at her childhood, Jess. She’s been regimented, trained, disciplined. She’s an assassin. Born and bred for it.”

“No, she wasn’t born for it, or bred for it,” Jess snapped. “She was taken as a child, essentially kidnapped, held prisoner, and subjected to torture. She learned to be what she is in order to survive, Lily. There’s a difference. And if you don’t know that difference…”

A male head leaned into the screen. “That’s enough,” Captain Ryland Miller interrupted. “She used a wrong turn of phrase, don’t read anything into it that wasn’t meant.”

Jess swallowed his anger. Yeah, Lily misspoke, and Jess’s temper was notorious. He had to keep it under control. It was just that the photographs were so heartbreaking. Whitney had documented the journey of a child into an assassin and he’d done it with obvious pride. If ever there was a man who needed killing, Peter Whitney was that man.

As if reading his mind, Lily spoke again. “You understand he could never have an operation of this magnitude—even with all of his money and the contacts and loyalties he’s built up—if he didn’t have sanction and a lot of help. He isn’t doing all this himself. There are too many projects. He may conceive the ideas, but others are taking over the experiments and carrying them out.”

Jess pushed back in his chair, this time using both hands to rake through his hair. He needed to see Saber, to touch her, to know that she was all right. He felt bruised and battered after viewing a small part of her childhood. He had been raised in a loving family, with wonderful parents and a sister who adored him. He couldn’t imagine what Saber’s childhood had been like.

“What else do you have for me, Lily?”

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“I don’t doubt that.” He hadn’t liked anything so far. Yeah, Whitney had help and whoever he had was trying to send the GhostWalkers on suicide missions. It was Jess’s job to find the leak in the chain of command and plug it up.

“He was there. When we operated on your legs, he was there.”

Jess felt his heart jump in his chest. The idea of Whitney walking into the hospital and observing his operation with security everywhere was just plain frightening. Lily had been there and Ryland always, always provided her with a guard.

“Are you certain?”

“I was able to hack into your file, and he has all the notes of his observations and conclusions there. He thought Eric and I did a brilliant job. He does say that while you work very hard at physical recovery, you’re neglecting the one thing that will make the bionics work and neither Eric nor I have managed to think of it. He wasn’t happy with either of us. He thinks we’re too focused on other things, me with the baby and Eric trying to play doctor to GhostWalkers.”

“What should you have told me?” Because the truth was, Peter Whitney was a brilliant man, and if they were missing something with the bionics, he’d know it.

“He mentioned your psychic abilities. You’re using physical capabilities to heal, but not mental. He notes that you should be doing exercises and imagery to form the neural pathways to map out the way from your brain to your legs.”

“I’ve been using visualization. You were the one who told me how to work on it. Whitney is full of crap.”

For the first time, Lily sent him a faint smile. “He says you’re a strong psychic and your brain is very developed, enough that you should be able to form the pathways quickly using visualization through that medium. And I agree with him. You’re using the normal part of your brain as well as physical therapy and we’re leaving out a vital part of what could springboard you to faster health. Also”—she hesitated and glanced at her husband—“he thought we should have used electrical current to stimulate the cells.”

“I’m not certain I like the speculation in your voice, Lily.”

Jess reached out and picked up the file on Saber, flipping through the photographs of her life. She looked so young, so innocent and vulnerable. It made no sense that she hadn’t touched Whitney’s protective streak. How could he look at her and not want to take care of her when she’d been such a beautiful child?

“Jess,” Lily said. “He may be a monster, but we should consider his medical opinion on this.”

“You want to zap me to see whether or not my nerves respond?”

“Well, electrical stimulation did in fact produce results in lizards who don’t normally regenerate a tail.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Lily,” Jess said.

Several of the photographs slipped out of the folder onto the floor, sliding just out of easy reach. Jess sighed and bent down to pick them up. Saber’s hand was there first. It was the photo of her with a small chocolate dog—before and after she’d touched it.

C
HAPTER
11

S
aber sucked in her breath as she stared down at the photograph in her hands. A strange roaring thundered in her ears. Her heart slammed hard in her chest. There was no stopping the surge of abject humiliation. There she was at eight. Even then there were shadows in her eyes. She could see them. In the series of photographs she was smiling, playing with the dog. By the end she was crying and the dog lay in her lap, lifeless. She still woke up with her heart beating too hard and tears flooding her throat and burning her eyes at the memory of that horrible moment when she realized she had taken that life. She had killed with her touch.