Ian swore softly. "Cancer? Is that for real, Gator?"
"Yeah, it's for real. Lily thinks it may recur in Flame. Whitney used viruses as the vector for the enhancement. Sometimes the enhancement stimulated a cell that shouldn't have been messed with and there you go. Cancer. Of course Lily explains it all a lot better, but it boils down to the fact that Whitney deliberately used Flame for medical research."
"What about children?" Ian asked. "How do we know we're not going to pass something on to them?"
"Exactly. Lily says the gene doping shouldn't be passed on, but she's worried."
"She's worried that he deliberately experimented at least on the women to see if he could," Ian guessed. "Because the question would occur to him as well. And knowing Whitney, he wouldn't be satisfied until he had the answer."
"And that means the women had to grow up and find a partner," Gator said. "If Whitney conducted some other kind of experiment to match us all up, he'd be in a great position to get his answers."
"If he were still alive," Ian added.
"Exactly. If he's still alive." Gator shoved a hand through his dark hair. "That sniper was too well trained to be a civilian like the others. I swear, Flame's theory is beginning to make more sense than I want to admit."
"How'd Flame get away from Whitney if she wasn't adopted out? And when? How long did he have her?"
Gator shook his head. "She hasn't confided in me yet. She thinks Whitney sent me to bring her back."
"Well. In a way that's the truth, isn't it?"
"Not like this." Gator looked around him. "I don't want them to trace any of this back to her. It's another gun aimed at her head."
"Then we have to make certain they think you were on the bike, that you threw the knives, and had the garrote. We have to remove every trace of her, and we don't have much time." He was working as he spoke. "If they're looking for her, Gator, and they suspect for even a moment she's been here, they'll crawl through this place to find a strand of her hair. I'm laying down my prints and my tracks everywhere she was, but you need to be all over that bike. A child could read what went on here. And they'll be sending experts."
"Chopper's already landed." Gator cocked his head to one side listening. "A couple of our boys, Kadan Montague and Tucker Addison, are heading this way. What would they be doing in this vicinity?" He hurried to help obliterate all signs of Flame's participation.
"Come on, Gator. Kadan and Tucker are with us. You can't suspect them of being part of a conspiracy."
Gator met Ian's gaze squarely. "Just to be on the safe side, until we know what's happening, let's be careful what we say."
"She's going to be royally pissed about you claiming that bike," Ian warned. "She has a thing about that motorcycle."
"Well she'll have to get over it. Until we know what's really going on, I'm going to assume she's in danger. Whether Lily or anyone else likes it, Flame is a GhostWalker and is under our protection."
Ian laughed as he turned to walk back toward the small clearing where the helicopter had landed. "You've got it wrong, Gator. That woman thinks you're under her protection. She's going to kick your ass for this. You're taking advantage of the fact that she was a little bit shell-shocked with Burrell's death. When she recovers . . ."
"Stop trying to give me nightmares." Gator righted the bike, not an easy task when it was half buried in mud and the front tire was completely twisted. It wasn't going to be easy, in fact, it was probably impossible to hide the fact that Flame had been there from Kadan and Tucker. He trusted them with his own life, but he wasn't so certain he trusted them with Flame's. He didn't know exactly how to explain that to Ian.
"I think you're in over your head," Ian tossed back over his shoulder, striding away, his long legs covering ground fast.
"That's an understatement," Gator admitted aloud.
He lifted the motorcycle out of the muck, for the first time really paying attention to the superhuman strength of muscle in his body. He could run twice as fast and twice as long as he could before the experiments. He could jump and clear unbelievable heights, but it was really his tremendous strength that astonished him. He knelt beside the motorcycle and looked as if he were examining the bent frame and wheel.
"Nice mess," Kadan greeted as he stepped around the Jeep. "What the hell happened here, Gator? It looks like you went hunting." His sharp gaze was already touching on the water-filled tracks in the mud.
Kadan had trained in Special Forces, served a couple of years, joined the FBI, and had a reputation for solving very difficult murder cases. He'd volunteered to join the psychic team and retrain with the rest of them when he was approached. It was common knowledge Kadan had been far more psychically gifted prior to the enhancement than any of the rest of the Ghost Walkers.
"Four men killed a local retired riverboat captain. He was a good friend of mine. Knew him since I was a kid. They hunted him on his island, murdered him, and threw his body in with one of the big alligators, weighted it down so no one would find him. Then they burned his boat. Burrell wasn't a troublemaker, just a nice man who deserved a hell of a lot better than that."
Kadan's steel blue eyes never shifted from Gator's face. "And you happened on them afterward?"
Gator nodded. "I was actually going to the houseboat, had parked the motorcycle I was using when I heard the shots coming from the island."
Kadan glanced at the Jeep wrapped around a tree, at the body of a man with a knife buried to the hilt in his throat and the driver garroted, his weapon lying beside him. "You lost your temper, Gator."
Behind him, Tucker Addison snorted. "I'd say that was a hell of an understatement. This is a war zone. And it didn't do much for your motorcycle either."
Gator didn't crack a smile. He didn't feel like smiling. He had lost his temper and that was a dangerous thing. And he hadn't been the only one. Flame had shown restraint. It didn't much look like it with four men lying dead in the swamp, but she could have flattened everything within a five-mile radius had she not been disciplined enough to focus on only the four assassins.
He ducked his head, the memory of his own loss of temper, his own lack of discipline a lifetime ago washing over him before he could stop it. The blow felt like a punch in the gut and he choked on shame and guilt. He had to turn away from Kadan and his all-seeing eyes. He could never look at any of the Ghost Walkers, not straight in the eye, when he recalled the early events of his training. He slammed the door closed on ugly memories the way he always did, but he wondered how many ugly memories Flame had. It was another thread tying them together.
Without conscious thought, his hand stroked the seat of the motorcycle. He only became aware of it when he felt Kadan's gaze following the movement. Abruptly he pulled his hand away. "I couldn't let them get away with it, Kadan. They were whooping it up and I followed them. We fought and they died."
"Sounds simple enough, doesn't it, Tucker?" Kadan asked.
Gator glared at him. "They had their chance at me. The big guy over there," he gestured with his thumb toward the sniper, "nearly killed me."
"Did you try to take them in?" Kadan stared at the Jeep and the dead man with the knife shaft sticking out of his throat.
"There were four of them and they didn't exactly say they were giving up."
Kadan's sharp eyes slid over him. "Not with a knife sticking out of their throat, I'll just bet they didn't. Why aren't you telling me the truth? What happened here?"
"Why were you in New Orleans?" Gator countered. "The last I heard you were recovering from a mission and holing up for a while."
The tension shot up. The rain poured down. Kadan's blue eyes grew colder, turned more gray than blue. "What the hell's going on here, Gator?"
Tucker moved up beside Kadan, his features hard and still. Ian shifted position until he was shoulder to shoulder with Gator, facing the other two Ghost Walkers.
Kadan's cell phone jangled. He let it ring twice before he pulled it out and snapped it open. "Make it
fast. I'm in the middle of something."
"Tell me what's going on out there, Kadan." Lily's voice could clearly be heard. "Does this have anything to do with Flame? With Iris Johnson?"
"As far as I know Gator came out here to find Joy Chiasson. I don't know anything about the Johnson woman. I don't know if this is related to Joy's disappearance or not, but four men, one highly skilled and definitely trained in the military, probably special ops, from the evidence I see, murdered an old man, a friend of Gator's. That's what this is about. You know of anyone running a field op down here, Lily?"
"I'll find out. Is everyone okay?"
"All the good guys. The bad guys are in a hell of a mess." Kadan hung up, pocketed the phone, and looked directly at Gator. "This is about Flame, isn't it? You found her."
Another silence settled over them so that the rain seemed loud as it beat down on them. Gator shrugged his shoulders. "She's here in New Orleans. She was staying with Burrell in the houseboat."
"You think she was the one they were after?" Tucker gestured toward the dead men. "You don't really think they were sent to assassinate her, do you? Who would know about her? Who would send them? And why would there be a son of a bitch just as trained as we are and most likely just as enhanced psychically?"
"You think Whitney is alive." Kadan made it a statement.
Gator shook his head, a slight, humorless grin tugging at his mouth. "You're good, Kadan, and you weren't even touching me. Yeah, I think the bastard just might be alive. And I'm thinking he might be setting us up to see how we match up in the field with the women he experimented on."
Kadan frowned, thinking it over. "No one saw his body. I suppose it's possible. He could have fooled Lily and set her up to do his work for him." He looked around him with suspicious eyes. "Gator, you didn't think Tucker and I were part of someone else's team, did you?"
Gator shoved a muddy hand through his disheveled hair. "I don't know what the hell I'm thinking anymore. Who can I trust when her life is on the line? Lily wants her back, but I can't exactly force her to go back when all she's ever known there is pain and suffering. She doesn't trust Lily."
"What about you, Gator? Do you trust Lily?"
"Well, that's the question, isn't it?"
CHAPTER 10
Flame was weeping. Gator's belly knotted. The sound was soft and muffled, probably by a blanket, but he could hear her even through the pounding rain and it broke his heart. He tied his skiff to a post beside the airboat and jumped onto shore. The ground was spongy and his boots sank a couple of inches into muck. In his life, he had never imagined the sound of a woman quietly crying would tear him up the way it was doing. He should have come to her immediately instead of taking the time to shower and pick up a few supplies.
He paused outside the door. What was he going to say to her? Kadan, Tucker, and Ian had all agreed with him that it was possible that Peter Whitney was still alive. They had no idea why Burrell had been murdered. If the one obviously enhanced sniper hadn't been with the others, Gator would never have suspected that Burrell's death had anything to do with Flame or the Ghost Walkers--now he just didn't know.
The other Ghost Walkers were with his grandmother and he felt far better about her having protection after Burrell's death--especially as he needed to be with Flame. A shower had helped stave off exhaustion for a short time while he packed a few supplies, but he was feeling the effects of psychic and physical fatigue.
Gator pushed open the door to find Flame straight ahead, leaning against the wall, a throwing knife in her hand. She looked as if she'd been crying for hours, but she faced him with determination. Her hair was still damp from her shower and she wore jeans that were too big and an oversized men's plaid shirt he recognized as belonging to Wyatt.
"I'm alone," he assured her.
The tension went out of her and she relaxed visibly. At least she hadn't thrown the knife at him. That was some progress.
"What did you find out?"
"Not much. A couple of men from my squad showed up and helped Ian and me clean things up. Burrell's been reported missing and I told the police you were with Grand-mere and me all afternoon and when we came back, we heard shots coming from the island and while we were investigating the shots, someone started the houseboat on fire. I stuck to the truth as closely as possible."
Tears shimmered in her eyes again. "I can't believe he's dead. That someone would murder him. All he wanted to do was live on the waterfront and listen to the music in the bayou while he smoked his pipe. He never hurt anyone in his life. This isn't right, Raoul. It just isn't right."
"No, it isn't right," he agreed, the lump in his throat threatening to choke him.
"We just left him there in the alligator hole."
"He would have wanted us to cover for you. We don't know who we're dealing with yet, Flame. I was going to track for the forensic people tomorrow if they hadn't figured it out. It's been raining heavily and the rain may have wiped out most of the tracks. Burrell's island is a good distance from where we took down the killers and nothing will lead them to the preserve. The bodies are gone. Even if they find the wrecked Jeep, none of us touched it."
Another sob escaped, but she choked it back, turning away from him. "I hate this. I hate being out of control."
He didn't know how to comfort her. Strange when he'd always been so good with women, but now, when it mattered to him, he didn't know the right thing to say or do. He rubbed her arm awkwardly. "You have every reason to cry."
She shrank away from him, glaring. "I'm not crying."
"Cher." His tone was incredibly tender and her eyes filled up all over again. He watched her wipe at them with the back of her hand. "It's okay to cry. It's good to cry."
"No it's not. Why do people say that? Crying is a complete waste of time. It doesn't do any good whatsoever. Your face swells up and turns red. Your eyes burn and you get the headache from hell. Will crying bring Burrell back?" She sank down onto the bed, back against the wall, drawing her knees up. "I cried once in a while after I learned to screw up Whitney's camera and recorders. It didn't make me well. It didn't get me out of the cage he put me in. It didn't do a damn thing but give him satisfaction when he found out. I'm not crying."
Gator shoved a bag, the one he recognized from the first night he'd met Flame, into a corner of the cabin out of the way before stripping off his shirt and tossing it onto the back of a chair. He pulled a bottle of water from his pack. "Here, drink this."
"Thanks." She took the bottle, watching as he tugged off his boots and tossed them into the corner of the room beside the large bag. "I'm not sleeping with you so you may as well take the bed. I can sleep on the floor."
Gator sat down beside her. She flinched when he jarred her leg. "I didn't ask you nor was I going to seduce you, not, mind you, that it wouldn't work."
"You were going to ask me. And seduction wouldn't have worked."
"I wasn't going to try," he repeated.
She frowned. "Why not? What's wrong with me? I think you'd try with an alligator so why not me?"
"An alligator? I draw the line at reptiles."
"Fine, I take it back. Why aren't you going to try to seduce me?"
He raised his eyebrows at her. "You mean why aren't I going to seduce you? Grand-mere raised a gentleman. You're too upset for me to take advantage of you right at this moment. We can both sleep on the bed and I'll behave myself."
Her gaze moved over his face. "But you would have tried to seduce me if I wasn't so upset, right?"
"W-e-l-l," he drawled. "I don' know if I would have or not. You have a thing about knives."
She made a face at him. "You like my knives and you know you do. It turns you on every time you think about them."
He didn't deny the obvious. "Did you huck one at me the other night after you left the club? Inquiring minds want to know."
"Huck? Is huck a word? No, I don't huck knives; I throw them with deadly accuracy. If I threw a knife at you, you'd be in
the bottom of the bayou. I saved your ass, actually." She wiped at her eyes again, took a drink of water, and twisted the cap back into place.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means you aren't quite the Mr. Invincible you like to think you are. You got someone mad at you the other night and he was just drunk enough and mean enough to try to take you out. You've grown complacent, and complacency can get you killed."
"You were following me?"
"I was baby-sitting. You and your drunken idiot brother and friend. Someone had to do it and I didn't see anyone else volunteering. Personally, I don't think you have all that many friends."
"It was Vicq, wasn't it? He waited for his chance and threw the knife."
She shrugged. "I was pretty certain he wasn't going to just walk away quietly. He isn't the quiet type. Did you know that he dated Joy? They went out twice. She called it off when he gave her a black eye for looking at another man."
Anger churned close to the surface. "How the hell did you find that out? If Wyatt had known he would have been gunning for Vicq."
"Word is, everyone is afraid of the man."
"I'm not."
"Which is why I was baby-sitting you." She sent him a look of censure. "Just because you're enhanced doesn't mean you can't be killed. You dismissed him because he isn't combat trained. He's dangerous, Raoul, and you should have known that. I could see it in his eyes. He likes violence and he gets away with it. I'll bet he's very abusive toward women as a rule. He's going to beat his wife and children and he'll have fights all the time hoping to hurt or do worse to the men he picks the fight with. He likes it. He likes hurting people and probably animals as well."
"How'd you find out he went out with Joy?"
"I talked to her mother. She told me Joy came home crying and had bruises on her face. They didn't want her father or brothers to find out because Vicq has such a bad reputation. Joy's mother mentioned it to the police but they didn't even question him."