The men moved in the same tight formation, Dahlia locked in the center while they escorted her to the waiting plane. Max followed her into the small compartment. “You should have said something, Dahlia. You should have at least reported it to the director. Henderson would have had me bring you in to protect you.”
“No one was supposed to know about me, Max,” Dahlia pointed out. She sounded weary, sad. Already moving away from them all. “What does that tell you? And how did they know where I lived?”
“You can’t think someone at the NCIS is involved.”
“When they sent a team in to find me at the safe house in the Quarter, someone took a shot at me. They knew right where to find my home in the bayou, Max. It isn’t that easy to find.” She didn’t look at him but kept her face averted.
Nicolas put his arm around her and drew her close, the grief in her voice twisting at his guts. “You can see why we’re not taking any chances.” He had already done his best to probe Logan Maxwell’s mind, but the man had strong barriers up. The same kind of barriers Lily Whitney had taught the GhostWalkers through mental exercises. He recognized the mark of Special Forces, a warrior trained and honed by battle. Maxwell wasn’t the type of man to back down easily, and Nicolas doubted if he could be bought.
They settled in the plane with Max behind the controls. “Jesse know about these men, Dahlia?”
“Nicolas is the one who pulled him out of the fire, Max,” Dahlia said quietly. “And if Jesse lives, it was Nicolas who saved him.”
Max glanced at Nicolas, noting the proprietary way he held Dahlia, the protective body language. “Then I owe you. Jesse’s a good friend of mine. You all better strap yourselves in for takeoff. I’m not hanging around just in case. I heard Jesse was in bad shape. The admiral went to see him, but wouldn’t disclose where he was, not even to us. And he wouldn’t say what happened to him or what kind of shape he’s in.”
“And that should tell you something,” Nicolas pointed out.
Dahlia looked from one man to the other. Nicolas could be terribly intimidating when he chose, and right now, he had his stone face on. His eyes were hard obsidian and his mouth was a merciless slash. He pinned Maxwell with his icy cold gaze and refused to let up.
“I suppose it does,” Max agreed with a heavy sigh. “I don’t want to believe it, but I’m afraid the evidence points that way.” The engine was already on and the plane began to vibrate as he went through his checklist automatically before taxiing down the runway.
Nicolas waited until they were in the air. “Jesse Calhoun is a GhostWalker, psychically enhanced. I’m guessing you are as well. How did Whitney get ahold of you? And do any of you have the physical and mental repercussions associated with the experiment?”
Max’s cool gaze swept over both Dahlia and Nicolas. “You know I can’t talk about that.”
“But you know Dahlia’s a GhostWalker.” Nicolas made it a statement. “It’s why they used both you and Calhoun. You’re anchors. She could travel with you without too many repercussions.” Just the mere fact that Maxwell knew the term
GhostWalker
spoke volumes.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter,” Max intoned, staring straight ahead.
“You don’t have to. Calhoun recognized my name, and he knew what I was. He’s a strong telepath and there’s no way he was born that way. We also are aware Dr. Peter Whitney enhanced several men using his own private laboratory when complications began to arise from his military experiment. He didn’t want all his eggs in one basket, so to speak, and if we were all murdered, he had a few for backup, just in case.”
Dahlia made a soft sound of distress and turned her head away, reluctant to allow them to see her expression. Whitney had been the monster of her childhood, but as a child, she’d believed his experiments had been done only to her. She’d even been told the other girls were a figment of her imagination and at times believed it. “What was wrong with him?” she murmured aloud. “How could he experiment on human beings? He knew what was happening to us when we were children, but he repeated the experiment, not once, but twice. It’s horrifying.” She didn’t realize her fingers had curled into tight fists until Nicolas put his hand gently over hers. She looked at Max. “I trusted you. Both you and Jesse. You knew I felt isolated and alone, yet neither of you said anything or even mentioned you knew Whitney. Damn you both for that.”
“Dahlia, I take orders just the same as you,” Max pointed out. “You had to have known about Jesse. He was too strong of a telepath for you not to have known.”
She turned her head to look at him, her gaze bleak and flat. “I was supposed to guess that Whitney had destroyed more lives? That you and Jesse would conceal it from me?” She pulled her hand away from Nicolas, suddenly unable to bear his touch. Any touch. Her chest ached and her throat burned. “I don’t buy the excuse, Max. I have a high-security clearance, and I certainly could know about others like me.”
Dahlia pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth for comfort. She made herself smaller, wanting to disappear, wishing for the sanctuary of the bayou. Why was she doing all of this? She’d never done anything she didn’t want to do, and she damned well didn’t want to be sitting in a plane with Maxwell, surrounded by the GhostWalkers. She knew if she looked at them, she would see pity in their eyes, on their faces. She’d never accepted pity, not even from herself. She owed Rear Admiral Henderson nothing after this. She’d always done good work, always made the recovery no matter the circumstances. Damn them all, and Jesse and Max most of all.
Nicolas wanted to smash something—or someone, preferably Logan Maxwell. How could he blame Dahlia for wanting to withdraw when it seemed that everyone she came into contact with betrayed her on some level? What could he say to prove his own feelings for her were real? How could she believe anything was real when the very people she worked with, worked for, had helped to keep her isolated? They had to have known her life was hell, yet they hadn’t reached out to her, hadn’t made any effort to let her know she wasn’t alone. He could feel her slipping through his fingers once again, and this time, he couldn’t blame her. How did one instill trust when all she’d ever known was betrayal?
He studied her profile. Her eyes were liquid, but she didn’t shed tears. He almost wished she would. Instead, she was gathering up her grief over the loss of Milly, Bernadette, and her home and belongings and the betrayal of Jesse and Max, cementing them deep inside. She was building the necessary barriers to protect herself and others. He could feel the energy gathering around her, swarming to her as her emotions deepened. The temperature in the cabin rose. He wondered if Max knew just how close she was to losing her control and just how dangerous it would be if she did. “Dahlia.” He said her name softly to bring her complete attention to him.
Dahlia swallowed the hard lump burning in her throat and shifted her gaze to Nicolas. He was holding out his hand to her. She stared down at it. “Are you worried about me blowing up the plane with all your men on board?”
Nicolas felt, more than saw, Max stiffen at the controls.
Dahlia had spoken softly, but even over the noise of the engine he heard. Had she meant him to? Was it a threat? Nicolas doubted it. Dahlia was upset and she had a temper, but she would never risk the lives of the other GhostWalkers because she felt betrayed. It wasn’t in her character.
“I thought if you held my hand, it would be more comfortable for you,” Nicolas answered truthfully. “I’ve reached the point where I can feel the energy as it is drawn to you. It’s massing fairly quickly in such a confined space.”
“I appreciate that you and Kaden are working so hard to allow me to be in such close proximity to others.” Dahlia slipped her hand into his.
Nicolas tightened his fingers around hers and held on. She sounded like a little girl politely thanking him for a Christmas present. Not at all like Dahlia. He felt almost desperate to get her alone. She had slept for a half hour while he had shopped for clothes for her, but even after a shower and clean clothes, he could see she wasn’t back to herself. She was withdrawing more and more into a place where he couldn’t follow her.
“Is Jesse safe?” Max asked.
“Yes,” Nicolas answered. “They have him stashed in a good hospital with the best surgeons and he’s well guarded.”
“How can I help find the traitor? You must be going after him if you’re heading to DC. I can help.”
“It’s good to hear you say that, Maxwell,” Nicolas said complacently. “We were hoping you’d be cooperative.”
Max cast him a suspicious glance. “I know the agents in our office in DC. I can’t imagine any of them betraying their country. Or Jesse for that matter. Who are your suspects?”
“Everybody is a suspect until we find otherwise,” Nicolas said. He watched Dahlia closely as he carried on the conversation with the pilot. All the while his thumb brushed back and forth across her inner wrist and he willed her to snap out of her depression. Had they been alone, he was certain he could find a way to make her laugh again, to shake off the melancholy, or maybe it was the seizure. He didn’t know a lot about seizures. That was Lily’s department. He knew seizures were dangerous and that Dahlia was humiliated that they had found her having convulsions. She hadn’t spoken to him all the way back to the Quarter, or even later, in the hotel after her shower when he’d drawn the sheet over her and promised he’d be back with clothes. She’d been so unlike herself, no snappy comebacks, no sassy remarks.
Dahlia, don’t go so far away from me.
Nicolas made his tone as intimate as possible.
I know you’re tired and upset, and you have every reason to be. If you want to toss your job with the NCIS, I’m behind you all the way. Just don’t put me in with the rest of them.
Dahlia leaned her head back against the seat. His words slipped into her mind almost seductively. His voice was tender, gentle, whispered over her skin and found its way into her heart. Tears burned close, and that was unacceptable to her, not in front of all these people. Not in front of Max.
Don’t be nice to me right now, Nicolas. I need you to wait until we’re alone.
His heart nearly stopped. She was telling him things she didn’t even realize herself, but he knew. Deep down, where it counted, he knew. Dahlia wasn’t turning away from
him.
She didn’t want kindness, she was too vulnerable. She was waiting until they were alone. He tightened his fingers around hers and held her hand for the rest of the flight. He didn’t talk to the pilot again until they were circling above the small, private landing strip.
“Don’t put down yet. Circle low so we can take a look at what we’re up against.” Nicolas bent forward, peering out the window. Kaden and Gator did the same, using high-powered glasses to check the terrain.
Max complied and set the plane down when Nicolas gave the order. He had almost brought the plane to a stop at the end of the runway when Nicolas reached over and removed his gun. “Wouldn’t want you to get any ideas. We’d like you to be our guest for a while.”
“This isn’t necessary. I’d never harm Dahlia, and Jesse’s my friend.”
“Then you won’t mind coming with us for a little while. We won’t be long. The investigation should only take a day and then we’ll need you to fly us out of here.”
“Dahlia,” Max brought the plane to a complete halt and turned off the engine. “You don’t believe I’d hurt you, do you?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “You already have.” She took the hand Nicolas held out to her and swept past the pilot, leaving him to the waiting GhostWalkers.
Nicolas walked her to one of the waiting cars Lily had provided for them. Dahlia hesitated when he opened the passenger door for her. “Where are we going?”
“To a condo. Lily has a couple of places available for us. I asked her to give us one of our own. The others will be close by.”
Dahlia slid in and waited until he was in the driver’s seat. “What about Max? I’m disappointed in him, but I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“We’ll hold him until we’ve gone in and checked the residences of the agents for anything that might tip us off to who’s behind all this. By now, Lily’s talked to the admiral, and he’ll know what we’re doing.”
She averted her face and stared out into the gathering darkness. She didn’t want to talk about Henderson. He had to have known of the GhostWalker program. He certainly knew Whitney, and he knew about her. If both Jesse and Max had been psychically enhanced, Henderson would have known. And he’d let her believe she was teetering on the brink of insanity, not confirming nor denying Lily and the other girls’ existence. What had been the point? What would it have hurt to tell her the truth?
“Why didn’t he tell me, Nicolas?” Did she want to know? She could feel her insides knotting, tensing, churning with a kind of fear she didn’t want to identify. Was she finally overloading?
He reached over and put his hand over hers. “Dahlia, whatever these people do, they think they’re doing it for their country. It’s never personal with them. Henderson has spent his life in service. He may have thought he was protecting everyone. You’re an unknown to them. If they watched your childhood unfold on those tapes, if they followed your training, they’d see one side of you only. All the times you couldn’t control the energy and accidents occurred are caught on tape. That’s what they’d see. Not the Dahlia who practices with amethyst spheres until she can use the energy up. Or the Dahlia who works at becoming a human superconductor and races up the walls.”
“Floats,” she corrected.
“What?”
“Technically I float, not race,” she explained.
Nicolas smiled. “And they don’t see the scientist in you. They’ve missed all that about you because they see one side. When people don’t understand what’s happening, they’re afraid. Whitney never figured out what was wrong. He didn’t factor in that you would draw energy in complete opposition to the laws of the universe. Because Whitney didn’t know about the energy and couldn’t explain what was wrong, Henderson and his people didn’t know.”