She swallowed hard and shook her head. “Not my parents. They would never betray me. Never. I don’t care what you think, they wouldn’t do that.”
“Why would they choose a damaged child, Tansy, when they were wealthy enough to buy perfection? Any adoption agency would have given them whatever they wanted right down to the color of hair and eyes. Why you? When they got you, you probably couldn’t stand their touch, or even using their utensils to eat with. Come on. You have a brain. Use it here. Figure out what the hell was going on back then. They took you to a doctor you clearly didn’t want to see, and in spite of your tears and pleas, they left you alone with him.”
Tansy closed her eyes briefly, trying not to remember the way her mother pleaded with her father, clinging to her before he took her firmly from her mother’s arms and shoved her into the room with Whitney. Kadan couldn’t be right. She wouldn’t let him be right. Even thinking that way was a betrayal of her parents’ love for her. “Shut up. I mean it, Kadan, I don’t want you talking about my parents anymore.”
“Then you promise me you’re not going to call them.”
“I
have
to call them. We have an arrangement. If I don’t, they’ll come looking for me.” Tansy glared right back at him. “They love me, Kadan. They won’t betray me.”
“Then ask them what they’re relationship with Whitney is and ask them why they didn’t tell you he was still alive. Do that much. Don’t make me have to track them down and find out myself, Tansy. You don’t want me confronting your parents.”
He looked so grim, so frightening, as if he was capable of walking in and putting a gun to their heads. Her parents. Two people she loved.
“Two people who are in this up to their necks,” Kadan interrupted, clearly reading her mind. “Whitney experimented on children. On
you.
And they had to have known, but they said nothing. They did nothing to stop it. At least admit they had to have known.”
She pushed at the wall of his chest. “Damn you, you just can’t leave this alone. You’re leaving me with
nothing.
They’re my sanity. They’re everything in my world and you’re not going to take them away from me. This is a mistake. A big mistake. I was crazy coming here with you.”
His fingers dug deeper, not allowing her to escape. “You’re damn right. You don’t seem to have the first idea of security, even when you’ve had plenty of reasons to be afraid. But I’m not your problem, Tansy, and you wouldn’t be so upset if you didn’t already know that. Don’t blame me because there’s something very smelly about the way your parents acquired you.”
“You’re such a bastard. Take your hands off of me. I’m calling my dad.”
“Put him on speakerphone. This number is blocked and will be difficult to trace, but even so, you only have a few minutes to talk. I’ll be timing you. If you start to say anything that compromises our mission or your safety, I disconnect. Do you understand?”
He held her in place, his eyes blazing down into her with that relentless, implacable, very annoying expression. She had a wild urge to kick him hard. Finally she nodded. He dropped his hands immediately. She muttered a repeat of the not so nice name she’d called him earlier, only this time she added not so nice adjectives to go along with it for good measure. He simply ignored her.
Tansy swung away, stalking across the room to the phone. She stabbed out her parents’ number, refusing to look at Kadan as he came up behind her and pushed the speakerphone button. Her mother answered.
“Hey, Mom,” Tansy said in greeting, her fingers twisting together. “Is Dad right there with you?”
“You’re on the phone, not the radio,” her mother observed. “Where are you?”
“Is Dad there?” she repeated.
“He’s right here. I’m going to put you on speakerphone so we can both hear,” Sharon added. “When did you get off the mountain?”
“Hi, Dad. I need you to answer a question for me,” Tansy said, gripping her wrist hard, digging in her nails. “Why didn’t you tell me Dr. Whitney was still alive?”
There was a silence. She closed her eyes, picturing the shock on her parents’ faces.
“Did that son of a bitch bother you, Tansy?” Don Meadows demanded. “What has he done? Tell me, honey, and I’ll take care of it.”
She looked around for a chair to sink into. Kadan shoved one under her and Tansy collapsed into it. “Why didn’t you tell me about him, Dad? I’ve gone through enough that I deserve to know. Why do you have anything at all to do with a man like that? You’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“What has he done? Tell me where you are and I’ll send Fredrickson to pick you up. Don’t trust anyone else,” her father insisted.
Kadan dropped his hands on Tansy’s slumped shoulders in an effort to show camaraderie.
“What does he have on you?” Tansy asked quietly.
There was silence again. Her mother choked back a sob.
“Come home now, Tansy. I’ll tell you everything, but come home.”
Kadan gripped her harder and shook his head when she tilted back to look at him.
They need to get out of there, somewhere safe. He’s probably monitoring this conversation. Tell them that. Tell them to get out.
“I have to go now. He’s probably monitoring the conversation, Dad, and it isn’t safe for you. Take Mom and go into hiding. Do it now and don’t trust anyone.”
Her mother screamed.
“You don’t have to do that,” Don Meadows bellowed. “She’ll come back.”
Tansy jumped to her feet. “Mom?”
“Tansy?” There was another male voice on the phone. “I’m afraid Mommy can’t talk right now. Neither can Daddy. You have twenty-four hours to get back here or they’re both dead. Say you understand.”
Fredrickson, Dad’s bodyguard,
she identified to Kadan.
“What are you doing, Fredrickson?” she asked.
Her mother screamed again; this time the sound was filled with pain, not shock.
“I understand,” Tansy said and hung up the phone. She didn’t want to give Fredrickson, or anyone else, a chance to cause her parents further pain. “Get me a plane.”
“Take a breath. Let’s get a plan first.”
Tansy knocked his hand away. “The plan is, I do whatever Fredrickson wants me to do. I’m not letting him kill my parents.”
“He’s not going to kill them,” Kadan said. “As long as they don’t have you, no one is going to kill them. When they acquire you, your parents’ usefulness will be gone. That’s when they’ll be in real danger.”
“You heard my mother scream.”
“That was deliberate to frighten you into immediate compliance.”
She glared at him. “Well, it worked. Get me a plane.”
Kadan regarded her with that cool, impassive gaze she was coming to dislike. “Sit down, Tansy. We need to think, not run off half-cocked.”
“Screw you, Kadan.” She turned away and headed for the door.
His fingers settled around her wrist like a steel hand-cuff. “You’re too emotional for this kind of work. Settle down.”
She swung back, using her momentum to put power behind the punch she threw at him. Her fist went straight and true for his jaw, but he caught it, the sound loud as her knuckles slammed into his palm. He simply turned her, locking her tight against him.
“Don’t be stupid, Tansy. I’m not the enemy. If you want your parents to survive, sit the hell down and let’s figure out how to get them out alive. We need to know what’s going on here. Is it connected to the murders? Is this about Whitney and you finding out about him? Fredrickson was obviously a plant in your house, but who put him there? Who does he work for?” He whispered the words, low and cool, in her ear. His breath was warm, his body hot, his grip too strong to break. “Use your brain.”
Tansy hated that he was right.
Hated
it. She wanted to take another punch at him just for being right. “Let go. Just let go. I’m sitting down.”
Kadan reluctantly released her, his eyes narrowed, watching her closely. Waiting. She felt him in her mind and glared at him.
“I need the layout of the house and grounds, with as much detail as possible, and that includes position of furniture and lighting. I need to know about security. Cameras. Guards. Alarms. Codes for alarms. Everything you can give me.”
Tansy leaned her forehead into her hand. “You were right.”
He was the devil as far as she was concerned, and he couldn’t really blame her. He waved her admission aside. “Let’s hear what they have to say before we condemn them. You just have to be very careful. Whitney is a monster.”
She flicked him another quick look. “I know he’s a monster and he must have something on them. Whatever it is, it has to be bad for them to go along with anything that man has done. I’ve been the insect under his microscope. What are we going to do to keep him from killing my parents?”
At least she had included him. “We’re going to take them back. I’ll make a couple of phone calls and get some help.” Kadan didn’t want to think too much about the way her father had said to Fredrickson,
You don’t have to do that. She’ll come back
, but the words were engraved in his mind and the ramifications a scary thing.
She dragged air into her lungs. “The GhostWalkers. You’re going to ask them to help us.” There was fear in her voice.
“And you’re going to know they aren’t involved. We won’t be able to prove it, but you examine each of the game pieces, and when you meet the team, you’ll know if any of them match any of the game pieces, right? You have strong impressions of personality.”
“Of course I’ll know. What happens if one of them is involved?”
“You signal me; I take out a gun and execute him.”
There was another small silence while she examined his face, looking for a sign that he was joking. “We bring him in for trial,” she corrected.
“There isn’t going to be a trial for any GhostWalker caught murdering civilians. There’s an execution order. Every GhostWalker is on the chopping block, thanks to these killers. When I know who they are, I’m authorized to hunt them and terminate.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
For a moment something hot swirled beneath the cool ice of his gaze. “These men are soldiers, more than soldiers. They are superweapons, sworn to protect this country and everyone in it. They are betraying every soldier who has gone before them, the soldiers fighting now, and all who come after. We have a code. They’ve broken that code. And more than that, Tansy, you better know exactly what we’re up against.”
“It’s always difficult to go up against psychos.”
He shook his head. “Superweapons. Never forget that these men we’re chasing are not just well-trained soldiers, which would make our job difficult enough. I’ve had every kind of training possible. So have these men. I’m enhanced psychically. So are they. I’m enhanced physically. They are as well. If someone comes after me to kill me, they have one chance. One. They have to take me by surprise; after that, I’m hunting them and they’re dead. These men are like me. Once they know we’re on to them, they’ll disappear and we’ll never find them unless they surface to retaliate.”
She nodded slowly. “Unfortunately, I have to agree with that assessment after handling the stallion. The man who owns that game piece definitely thinks he’s superior and above all laws. His sense of entitlement is absolute. I believe he would come after us in a heartbeat, and it would never occur to him that he would lose.”
“He’s going to lose,” Kadan said, no inflection in his voice.
There was no inflection in his mind either when she touched it. Only resolve and a belief that he was far more intelligent than his adversaries and that his code demanded the men committing the murders pay for casting a shadow over his fellow GhostWalkers. They would pay for betraying their country and the honor of every soldier the GhostWalkers represented. A shiver went down her spine. Just like the murderers, Kadan believed he was superior and far more intelligent. Faster. Stronger. That his training could see him through any situation. He believed in his teammates and he had a strong patriotic sense of duty. More than anything, these men had betrayed all soldiers, their country, and their code. Sentence had already been passed. To Kadan, they were walking dead men.
Kadan reached out and captured her hand, tugging until she was close to him. A breath away. The heat of her body meeting and amplifying the heat of his. “Tansy, don’t be afraid of me. You have access to my mind . . .”
She shook her head. “I don’t. I have access to what you let me see. You see all of me.”
“You have access to all the places that belong to you. I’m not hiding how I feel about you. I want you, not for one night, but always.”
“Because of Whitney. You think your attraction to me is because of Whitney, and you aren’t happy about it.”
“I did think that,” he admitted without flinching, “and I was angry at the manipulation. But Whitney can only manipulate physical attraction. He has no power over my emotions. And you.” He framed her face with his hands. “Have no doubt that the intensity and depth of emotion I feel for you, Whitney could never have dreamt of, let alone managed to produce in me. I don’t feel emotion as a rule. I didn’t even know I was capable of such depth of feeling. So never worry that my feelings for you are manufactured. I could never harm you, not under any circumstances.”
Her eyes searched his, looking for something, some reassurance that went beyond what he told her, what she saw in his mind. “My parents?” she asked softly, unable to stop worrying. Kadan was ruthless and a man without mercy. She knew he would execute anyone, friend or not, if they were guilty, and he would do it without hesitation.
He shrugged. “I’m not willing to lie to you, Tansy. I hope they aren’t guilty of anything other than stupidity, but if they try to harm you, if their intention is to betray you and turn you over to Whitney, they’ll have to walk through me to do it.”
His thumb smoothed over the contours of her bone structure, tracing her jaw and high cheekbones, dipping down to float over her lips. The pads of his fingers felt hard, yet velvet soft, and she couldn’t stop the shiver of need or the inevitable arousal that leapt from breasts to thighs. He was mesmerizing, and the lure of another human’s touch was inescapable, but more than all of that was the intense sensuality, the way his gaze went hot and moved over her with such possession, the way one flick of his eyes seemed to remove her clothing.