She shook her head. “No. They had nothing to do with Whitney after he enhanced them. These men belong to the puppet master. He got them through the screening and then somehow through the interview with Whitney. He did it for his own personal gain, no other reason. He had a plan from the beginning. Can you track him?”
“Lily might be able to find out who he is through Whitney’s records. Almost all documentation the military had on us was destroyed. What is there is behind a million flags. Whitney experimented on us at his research lab, not on a military base, and only a few people knew.”
“You’ll have to find those people if you want the puppet master. He’s good. Really good if he can slip past Whitney’s guard.”
“What does he want with the killers? Does he get his kicks out of planning the murders?”
She frowned and rubbed her temples. “He doesn’t plan them. The teams do.”
Kadan reached across the table and erased a trickle of blood from her nose with the pad of his thumb. “We’re done here, baby.”
She shook her head. “I can keep pulling out more.”
“We’re done. You’re going to get a brain bleed and then we’ll be in trouble. I’ve got a lot to go on. I think with what you’ve given me, I might be able to find Frog. Ex-military, or still in it, a security company with his teammates, and an affinity for water.”
She leaned her head into her hand again, rubbing. “Don’t go in the water with him, Kadan. I can feel that’s what you’re thinking of doing, making him lead you to his underground colony, but he’s at home in the water.”
He took her swollen hand and brought it to his mouth. “Don’t you worry about me, honey. I know how to take care of myself.”
CHAPTER 16
“What’s wrong?” Tansy asked as Ryland, Gator, and Nico entered the house.
The sun had gone down, leaving shadows over the windows. She’d had to sleep on and off throughout the day, waiting for her headache to let up. Without the glare of light, her eyes felt better and she was beginning to feel alive again.
The three men collectively winced at her question and then exchanged a long look with one another.
For men who were normally inscrutable, Kadan found it surprisingly easy to recognize trouble the moment he saw the faces of the three GhostWalkers. They looked grim, angry, and very upset that Tansy was in the room with him. There was nothing wrong with Tansy’s radar. She picked up the signal almost at the same moment he did.
Kadan. She won’t like hearing what we have to say. Her father’s involved,
Ryland warned.
She’s in immediate danger.
Kadan felt the blow to his gut, but stayed outwardly impassive. Immediate danger.
How?
“Don’t!” Tansy said sharply. “If you think you can cut me out of this now, Kadan, I swear I’ll walk out of this house. I deserve better than that.”
“I thought you were shielding,” Ryland said a little sheepishly. “Sorry, Tansy.”
“I am shielding. She’s very sensitive to vibrations.” Kadan reached out and shackled Tansy’s wrist, pulling her beneath his shoulder so he could circle her waist with one arm.
Don’t threaten me like that. You try to walk out and see what happens.
He didn’t give a damn if all three GhostWalkers knew he was talking telepathically. Her threat had shaken him more than he wanted to admit. In place of ice, there was suddenly a cauldron of fire roaring in his belly.
“We wanted to protect you,
chère,
” Gator added in his thick Cajun drawl.
Tansy shoved at the wall of Kadan’s chest, not even rocking him. That took her temper up another notch. “I’m putting myself on the line too. If you have something to say, just tell me. I don’t break so easily, and I don’t need to be wrapped up in cotton like a doll.”
“Settle down, Tansy,” Kadan said without looking at her. He couldn’t look at her. She thought she was going to walk out of the house? What the hell did that mean? His grip on her waist tightened. “You need coffee, Ryland?”
“I’m not sure we have time for coffee. How well guarded is this place? You have an escape route?”
“Of course. We can defend fairly easily, that’s why I chose it. We have a way to the roof and another below-ground if need be. If the bastards want to come for us, they’ll get more than they bargained for.”
Gator and Nico were already moving to the windows, checking alarms and drawing the drapes. Gator flicked off the lights and went to the next room to do the same there.
“Who’s after us?” Kadan asked.
“Our friend in Washington.”
“The same one who sent the first team after Tansy?”
Ryland nodded. “They know where she is.”
Kadan felt the breath slam out of Tansy’s body, but she stayed still, waiting for Ryland’s explanation. “Here? They know she’s here? How?” He drew her closer, his arm going to an iron band of protection.
“I spent some time with the reporter who broke the story on the murders and how they might be connected.” Ryland didn’t go into how he’d spent the time with the reporter, but Kadan knew his friend and his patience when it came to getting information. “He was also the one who wrote about Tansy’s whereabouts in the Sierras. It seems he was tipped off by a friend of his, a secretary to Senator Freeman’s wife, Violet.”
“Violet Freeman. She just keeps turning up. You’d think she’d have enough to do with her husband on life support.” Kadan shook his head. “We should have capped her when we had the chance.”
“Are you talking about Violet Smythe-Freeman? What does she have to do with this? She and the senator are good friends with my parents. I’ve been to their home any number of times,” Tansy said. “Her husband was a presidential candidate and someone shot him in the head, leaving him on life support. It’s a terrible tragedy.”
“Yeah, a real tragedy,” Kadan said. “We all held a candlelight vigil for him.”
Tansy frowned. “He was a friend.”
“He was a slimebag. He sold out his country, Tansy. He sent a team of GhostWalkers to the Congo, where a particularly vicious rebel leader was waiting to ambush them. The torture a couple of them endured was immeasurable. He then toured Whitney’s breeding facility with Violet—yes, she not only knows about Whitney, she’s one of his enhanced girls, and she allows his work to continue so that she and her husband can get into the White House. He was shot at Whitney’s compound, not as the newspapers reported.”
Tansy sank onto the couch. “Are you certain? They’ve been at my house. Violet and my mother go shopping together. They play cards. They . . .” She trailed off and looked up at Ryland. “What else? Just tell me.”
Kadan stood behind the couch, dropping his hands to her shoulders, fingers easing the tension from her. He ached for her. Her world was turning upside down.
“Whitney put a tracking device in all the girls. He surgically implants it in their hips.”
Tansy gasped and looked up and back at Kadan, her eyes locking with his.
It’s okay, baby. We’ll deal with it.
He wanted to hold her, rock her, take her somewhere else where all the ugliness was out of her life. Unfortunately, this was their lives and always would be. He had no choice. He was enhanced and so was Tansy. He couldn’t change that.
“Your father apparently found out about the tracking device when you were about fifteen or sixteen and had it removed. He told Violet about it. According to the secretary—”
“You talked to the secretary?” Tansy asked.
Ryland shrugged. “We had a little meeting. It seems she enjoys knowing secrets, so she often listens in to Violet’s conversations with her guests. She claims Violet initiated the topic of tracking children with your father.”
“She’s taking a huge risk, spying on Violet,” Kadan said. “Violet would have no hesitation killing her.”
Ryland nodded. “I did suggest that Ms. Harris get a different job immediately and destroy any tapes she may have. Whether she listens or not is up to her. Meadows knows Violet was one of Whitney’s experiments. My guess is she confided in him to gain his trust.”
“And then when Whitney lost his tracking device, he sent Violet to find out why,” Kadan guessed. “That would be like him. She’s playing both sides.”
Ryland nodded, avoiding looking at Tansy. “And Meadows planted one of his own when he had Whitney’s removed.”
“In me?” Tansy leapt off the couch and paced across the room, whirling around to face Ryland, her fingers closed into two tight fists. “My father planted a tracking device in me? They can actually use GPS to find me?”
Ryland nodded. “I’m sorry, but yes, that’s what he told Violet. They apparently had a long conversation about how all parents should put them in at birth, and she was interested because the senator might want to bring this up and back the idea. Kidnapped children could be found easily. The conversation was all about what tracking devices could be used for, the good they could do. It also got a little technical on how they work. Violet knew how to find you.” Ryland looked at Kadan. “I spent some time with Ms. Harris, and as it turns out, Violet wanted the information about the murders and Tansy given to the reporter. Violet had her secretary leak the information.”
Tansy’s hand was still over her mouth, her eyes wide. “And the secretary just gave you all this because of the generous good heart that she has?”
“I persuaded her that if she wanted to live a few minutes longer, she’d better tell me the truth,” Ryland said without flinching away from her steady gaze.
Tansy glanced at Kadan’s impassive face. “You all play for keeps, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ryland answered. “We’ve dealt with these people for a long time. Our friends end up dead or tortured. Sometimes both. Violet traded your location, and basically your life, for something big that she wants. What it is I don’t know, but the reporter heard a rumor that Senator Freeman was going to undergo some kind of new, experimental brain operation. If that’s true, I’m guessing your life is the price someone was asking in order for the senator to be a candidate for the surgery.”
“So they’re going to come here and kill me.” She swallowed hard. “And all of you.”
“I would think that was the plan,” Ryland agreed. “But we have a few plans of our own.”
“Great.” Tansy swept a hand through her hair and looked at Kadan. “Can we get rid of the tracking device?”
“Yes, eventually. For now, the best we can do is jam it. I don’t want to cut you open to take it out. We need a doc for that.”
“No, we don’t. Not if it’s in my hip where the first one was. I remember having stitches in my hip. Dad told me I fell and hit my head and tore a laceration in my hip but—” She stopped abruptly and turned her face away from them. “I’m going to make tea. Does anyone want a cup?”
Kadan filled her mind with him, wrapping himself in her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, but she kept space between them. The only thing he had was his mind and he used it, pushing inside her where she was silently weeping, where the pain of her father’s betrayal cut like a knife. Even when he willed her to look at him, she kept her head down, her arms crossing her breasts in a protective gesture. He hated the separation. And he hated more that his reaction went from being about her and the pain her father caused, to him and his own need to be complete with her.
He watched her walk out and felt like she took all the warmth in the room with her. His eyes met Ryland’s. “I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone in my life the way I want to hurt her father,” he admitted.
“Man,” Ryland set the heavy bag he’d carried in onto the couch and unzipped it, “I’m sorry to have to tell her. And he bragged about it, bragged he could find her anywhere in the world. He may not have realized he set the assassins on her trail, but he did. He led them right to her.”
“She’ll handle it,” Kadan said.
“Yeah, but she shouldn’t have to,” Ryland said, dragging weapons from the bag. “I brought a few supplies. Thought they might come in handy. And I’ve got transport standing by just in case we need it.”
“Isn’t Gator’s wife really good on a computer?”
“She can hack just about anything,” Ryland confirmed.
“I’m going to need her to work on a few things for me. With her help, I think I can find and take down killers on the East Coast team, but not until Tansy handles the other team’s game pieces and gives me enough to find them. I’m going to have to eliminate them all fast so no one has time to disappear.”
“Tansy can do that? She looks a little worn.”
Kadan shook his head. “I almost lost her with the last one. We’ll have to be careful. But I can’t eliminate anyone without the others going underground. I have to know who they are.”
“I can ask Lily if there are any other trackers, but I’ve not heard of it, not legitimate ones anyway.” Ryland began pulling guns and ammunition out of the sack and spreading the cache across the couch. “So she has to handle how many more objects before we can go after them?”
“Four.”
“That burns.” He added grenades and claymore mines to the mix. “You better pack up whatever evidence you have and get it ready to move fast. We secured another house, and partially set it up. We can use this one as bait, but I doubt if they’ll be very far behind us. They’ve had the information for a while. They’ll be trying to find out who is with her.”
Gator and Nico came in and scooped up the claymores. “We’ll handle the setup outside,” Gator drawled.
“Don’t kill the neighborhood dogs,” Kadan warned.
Gator flashed him a grin. “Hey, man, they shouldn’t be on my property. Where’s that good-lookin’ woman of yours? You don’ much let her outa your sight.”
Kadan sent his friend an ice-cold stare that failed to wipe the grin from Gator’s face. The Cajun just shrugged his shoulders, shouldered his weapon, and followed Nico out with a handful of claymores.
“Does he ever stop smiling?” Kadan asked.
“Not in all the time I’ve known him.” Ryland shoved a magazine into an automatic. “This woman is the one?”
“The only.”
“Then we make certain she’s safe,” Ryland said.
A muffled noise, like something thumping against the floor, came from the kitchen. Kadan whirled around, inhaling sharply, and caught the coppery scent of blood. He sprinted, using his enhanced speed, his heart in his throat.