“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 fucked 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
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.
Jess sighed. “You know this can’t be coincidence that you’re here, Saber.”
She closed her eyes briefly. She’d known the conversation was going to circle back to Whitney. “How many lives do you suppose Whitney has ruined in his quest for the perfect soldier?”
“Too many. So you know this wasn’t some mystic coincidence,” Jess said. “He must have known you take announcing jobs at small, local radio stations.” His throat squeezed tight and his chest hurt as he realized the full implications of where he was going with it. And he had to be right. “He orchestrated that accident. He killed three of my workers to create an opening for you.”
“Patsy’s fiance.” Saber sank down onto the floor and stared up at him in dismay. “He killed Patsy’s fiance in order to put us in the same place at the same time. How could he know you would take me in?”
“How much do you know about his experiments?”
“In our labs, quite a bit, but other places, not much. I know he trained soldiers, that that was his ultimate goal. He did a tremendous amount of psychic research, and he seemed to be very accurate with his placement.”
“We’re fairly certain he has some psychic ability. How else would he know which infants to choose, which children? Not by looking. He has to do it by touch. He has a breeding program, Saber. When he does his experiments, he strengthens the pheromones in his couples to match them.”
“You’re saying I’m attracted to you because of something Whitney did?” The thought of that sickened her. For once in her life she had found something that was free and clear of Whitney and the endless tests and observations. Someone good and decent.
“There’s evidence that he does that, yes. In our case, we can’t know for certain, but it would make sense. He would plan to throw us together and let his work do the rest.”
She pressed her fingertips to her eyes, calling on every bit of discipline that had been drilled into her to keep from screaming and throwing things. Even this. Even her love for Jess Calhoun hadn’t been free will.
She caught movement and lifted her head as Logan came up behind Jess. “I can’t take all of this in. I think Logan wants to talk to you.” For once she was grateful for the interruption, because she was not going to have an emotional breakdown in front of anyone. “I need to just go somewhere quiet and think about this.”
“Saber…” Jess waited until she looked at him. “Whatever he did doesn’t matter. I love you for who you are, not for how my body reacts to yours. And he can’t make love happen. Remember that, will you, when you’re thinking? I’ll be in my office.”
She couldn’t talk with tears flooding her eyes and choking her throat so she turned and went back to the only sanctuary left to her-Jess’s bathroom.
Damn. Damn. Damn. He had to follow. Had to run them off the road, keep the two idiots from being interrogated before they gave his description. He wanted to scream and spray all of them with an Uzi. Take them out. Screw them. Screw Whitney. They had no right to interfere in his plans.
CHAPTER 10
Saber stood very still in the middle of the bathroom, her body trembling. The room was large, with cooling tiles and wide, open doorways. Jess could roll his chair into the shower. The Jacuzzi tub was huge and she thought about sitting in it and letting herself cry. Maybe she’d brought this on herself with her voice. She’d deliberately used her voice, tried to summon her watcher from the shadows, and maybe she’d succeeded.
She paced for a while and then tried sitting. Eventually the cleaners left along with most of the GhostWalkers. Only Logan remained, and he went into the office to talk to Jess. They left the door slightly open. She was fairly certain Jess wanted to catch her before she went upstairs, but she had no intention of going up. She couldn’t stay in that room. Instead, she crept past the office and into the kitchen.
The room smelled comforting and spicy. The scent made her feel a little better. She made a cup of tea, but couldn’t sit still, shaken and uneasy that someone had managed to get into the house, so close to her-to Jess. The clothes weren’t the only thing slashed to ribbons. She’d spotted the picture of Jess she had on her bedside table, glass shattered, frame smashed, and the photograph ripped up.
A prickle of awareness slid beneath her skin, into her mind. She took a breath and let it out. Someone was watching the house. Was it the GhostWalker team? Were they keeping tabs on her? Protecting Jess? She stayed quiet, stilling her mind, trying to feel friend or foe.
The unease that would not quiet gave her the answer: that was no friendly out there that she was picking up. She hurried up the stairs, keeping her steps quiet. If she was lucky Jess would think she’d fallen asleep and he’d work with Logan for a while. The GhostWalkers had more than likely interrogated the prisoners and they’d be feeding information to Jess in the office. That should buy her the time she needed.
In her bathroom, Saber scrubbed her face clean, removing the faint lines along her eyes and around her mouth. Adding color to her skin tone aged her by a couple of years, nothing dramatic, and the eye makeup took away the lost waif look she always had without it. She looked at herself in the mirror and her heart squeezed down hard, her lips trembling as the picture blurred into memories she didn’t want to ever think about.
