He had a steady hand and the eyes of an eagle. He was silent and deadly when he stalked an enemy, and he was known to go into an enemy camp alone, death drifting in and the reaper drifting back out. He killed without a sound and thoroughly, taking out the enemy without raising an alarm. When he returned, he was the same exact man – cool and remote, his brain already moving on to solve another problem.
Trap raised those piercing glacier-cold eyes to his. An icy shiver crept down Wyatt’s spine.
“I’ve known you for years,” Wyatt continued. “You get caught up in problems, Trap. Problems that need solvin’. Your brain just won’ let it go. This woman is a problem. That’s what this is.”
Trap sighed. “You know better. You, of all people, know better.”
“You don’ become obsessed with women. Hell, Trap, you hook up for an hour or two and then you walk. Not a night. An hour or two at the most.”
Trap didn’t deny it. “I fuck ’em and then walk away because I don’t need the entanglement but I need the release.” He stated the fact mildly. Unashamed. Uncaring.
“This woman is a
problem
to solve to you. That’s all she is. This has nothin’ to do with the woman herself, just the mystery of her. You have to know that.” Wyatt’s Cajun accent was becoming more noticeable, the only thing that betrayed his wariness.
Trap’s expression didn’t change. His icy gaze didn’t leave Wyatt’s face as he took a long pull on the beer and set it down. “You grew up in that family of yours, Wyatt. You got your grandmother. Sweet and kind. You had all this.” He gestured toward the swamp where Wyatt had grown up. “Running wild. Living a life. Having a
family
. You know what that’s like.”
Wyatt remained silent. Trap never talked about his past. Not ever. They’d met in college when they were both still teens and worked together on numerous projects that made both of them very wealthy. Wyatt had joined the service, and ultimately the GhostWalker psychically enhanced Special Forces unit. Trap had followed.
In the years they’d known each other, Trap had never once alluded to his past. He sounded like he was gearing up to do just that, and Wyatt wasn’t about to blow the opportunity to learn more about what had made his friend as cold as ice. He simply nodded, keeping his gaze just as steady on Trap’s, mesmerized by the blue flame that burned ice-cold under the glacier.
“I had two sisters and a brother. Did I ever tell you that?” Trap’s fist tightened around the neck of the beer bottle, but he didn’t lift it to his mouth. “My name wasn’t Dawkins back then when I had them. It was Johansson.” He said the name like there was a bad taste in his mouth. “Changed it legally in order to keep that shit out of the spotlight. To keep my enemies from finding me. Didn’t work with the enemies, but it did with the press.”
Had.
Wyatt’s heart clenched hard in his chest. He regarded Trap as a brother. He had for years. He shook his head slowly. What kid had enemies they had to hide from? Enemies so dangerous they needed a name change? Wyatt remained silent. Waiting. Letting Trap take his time.
“My brother, Brad, and my sister Linnie were younger than me by a couple of years. Drusilla was older by a couple of years. Dru took care of us while our mother worked. She worked because our father didn’t.” He raised the bottle to his mouth and took a long pull. Through it, his eyes didn’t leave Wyatt’s.
Dread built. This was going to be bad. Really bad. Many of the GhostWalkers had difficult lives, which was probably why they made the military their home, but Wyatt knew the hell that was there under all that ice, those blue flames that burned white-hot and glacier-cold, meant whatever had happened to Trap was going to be bad.
He felt movement behind him and knew Mordichai, another GhostWalker and member of their team, was coming up behind him. He dropped his hand low, down by the side of the chair and waved him off, counting on Mordichai to understand – to know not to come near the table or allow anyone else to.
“My father despised me. I was different, even then, even as a child. He wasn’t in the least bit logical and half the time he didn’t make sense. He hated the very sight of me, and Dru took to stepping in front of me when he was around, because the moment he laid eyes on me, he had to beat the holy hell out of me.”
Trap shrugged, the movement casual. “I didn’t understand what I did wrong, and poor Dru tried her best to shield me. I was so young, but already too old in my mind.”
Wyatt understood that. Trap rivaled some of the greatest IQs in history. Wyatt was intelligent, but like many others he was especially gifted in certain areas. Trap was just plain gifted at everything. Along with the brains, he had the fast reflexes and superb body of a warrior.
“My father wasn’t proud of me for being gifted. If anything, he took it as an affront. Dru always said he felt threatened by me, but I was a little kid and I didn’t see how I was a threat to him.”
Wyatt didn’t make the mistake of letting compassion or anger show in his expression. Trap would close down immediately. Trap kept his emotions under tight control and Wyatt realized why. There was rage coiled deep. So deep that it was never – ever – going to be purged.
“We never told Mom about the beatings, but one day she saw the bruises and the swelling. He’d broken my arm and a couple of ribs. She took me to the hospital, and he was arrested. While he was in jail, she packed us up and moved us out of the city. I was eight. Dru, ten. We went clear across the country. His family bailed him out. He had two brothers, both as worthless and as vicious as he was.”
The chair never moved, remaining balanced on two legs as Trap took another long pull of his beer. He put the bottle down with deceptive gentleness on the table. The movement was precise and deliberate. Just like Trap. Just like everything Trap did.
“They found us when I was nine. My father came into the house late at night while his two brothers poured gasoline up and down the walls inside and outside the little house we rented. He dragged my mother out of bed, down to the room where my little brother and sister slept. He shot them both and then shot Mom in the head.”
Trap’s expression didn’t change. His tone didn’t change. He might have been reciting a story he’d read in the papers. Wyatt’s fist clenched beneath the rickety table, but he didn’t allow his expression to change either.
“Dru and I were talking together in our secret hideaway. When we first moved in, we found a closet that was really shallow and after Mom went to bed, we’d sometimes get up and read or discuss something interesting we’d learned that day. We heard the shots and we went to find Mom, to see what was going on. Dru threw herself in front of me when he came at us. He shot her twice and her body landed on top of me. I could see her eyes, Wyatt. Wide open. Blank. She had beautiful eyes, but all of sudden, there was no light. No brilliance. My beautiful sister, so smart, so funny, the only one who could relate to me, who really saw me, saw into me, was dead. Gone. Just like that.”
“Fuck, Trap,” Wyatt said softly. What else was there to say? This was far worse than anything he had imagined.
“He should have just shot me,” Trap said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself. “If he had any intelligence at all, he would have just shot me like he did Dru. She was so smart, Wyatt. A gift to the world. She could have done things, but he took her life for no reason other than he was a fucked-up asshole.”
Still, even with the language, there was no change in Trap’s voice. None. That rage was buried so deep, so much a part of him, Wyatt doubted he actually knew it was there anymore. He held up two fingers, knowing Mordichai was watching them closely. Most likely the other members of his team were doing the same, not knowing what was going on, but willing to help in any way they could.
The GhostWalkers who had come with them were spread throughout the bar, one sitting on a barstool, one lounging by the famous piano the owner of the Huracan Club, Delmar Thibodeaux, guarded with a baseball bat, and a couple of others sitting at table across the room. All would be watching Trap’s and Wyatt’s backs, and at the same time appearing as if they had no cares in the world.
Neither man spoke until Mordichai plopped two icy cold bottles of beer on the table and sauntered away, pretending like all the team members were that he had no clue Trap and Wyatt were in a nightmarish discussion.
“How’d you stay alive?”
“He dragged me out from under Dru. I think he wanted to beat me before he shot me, but as I came up I rammed my head into his groin and twisted the gun from his hand as he went down. I’d already calculated the odds of success and knew I had a good chance. I shot him twice before he was on me. He had a knife in his boot.”
Wyatt had seen the wicked scar that seemed to take up half of Trap’s belly. He’d been what? Nine, he’d said. His own father had wiped out his family, killing his mother and brother and sisters. Wyatt pushed down the rage swirling deep in his gut. He drew in a deep breath to keep from annihilating the room. The peanut husks on the floor jumped several times like popcorn in a popper and the walls of the bar shimmered and breathed in and out. He took several breaths to get himself under control.
“He stabbed me twice. Once in my belly and again in my thigh. I hung on to that gun, but I went down in all the blood. That’s when my uncles came in. They came at me, but I lifted the gun and both backed off fast. I guess they were either cowards or they knew my father was done for, because they left him there bleeding out, threw gasoline all over the floor, lit a match and told me to burn in hell. They got out. I crawled out. Still got the scars on my legs and feet from the burns.”
Wyatt clenched his teeth and then carefully brought the bottle to his mouth. He needed action. Something. He almost wished a fight would break out as they habitually did in the bar. When he was younger, he often came there to drink, fight and find a woman, just like most of the other men in the swamp and bayou did. Now he came to drink and fight. He had a woman waiting for him at home.
“I had one living relative, my mother’s sister. She was fifteen years younger than Mom, barely twenty-three, and single, but she came and got me and I lived with her. We changed our names, moved and thought we were going to be all right. At twelve I founded my first company after selling two of my patents. We lived good for a while.”
For the first time something moved in his cold, piercing eyes. Trap raked his hand through his blond hair, hair that definitely identified him as an outsider there in Cajun country. Had he not been with Wyatt, he would have been the first target chosen for anyone looking for a fight. The fight wouldn’t have ended well. Trap wasn’t a man who enjoyed a good friendly brawl. You didn’t put your hands on him. You didn’t threaten him. Even there in the Huracan Club with his team around him, he kept to himself. Wyatt could see the name Johansson suited Trap far better than Dawkins. Trap definitely had some Swede in him, with his build and blond hair.
Wyatt didn’t want to hear what happened to Trap’s aunt, but he had to know. There were too many flames burning icy hot behind the blue glacier of Trap’s eyes.
“For a while?” he prompted.
“Yeah. For a while. I made a lot of money, even through my early teenage years. Went to school, could have taught most of the professors. Did a lot of research in pharmaceuticals, and we both know you can make a fortune there. I just kept making money.” He made small circles on the table with the edge of the beer bottle. His gaze once again held Wyatt’s. “You know that money didn’t mean a fucking thing to me, Wyatt. Not one damned thing. I can’t help the way my mind works. The money made it easy to get the lab I wanted and the equipment, but that was all. I live simply. I don’t use it.”
Wyatt frowned at him. “Trap, I’ve known you for years. We went to school together. We were both younger than everyone else and yeah, smarter, so we naturally gravitated toward each another. We went into business together. You don’ have to convince me you aren’ into money.”
“She was kidnapped. They took her right out of the house when I was working in the laboratory. She would always come and get me for dinner. I could skip other meals, but not dinner. She didn’t come. When I went into the house, the place was a wreck. She fought them, and I hadn’t heard a fucking thing.”
Wyatt listened to Trap’s voice, but he couldn’t hear any expression at all. Just the soft monotone Trap often used.
“I paid the ransom, of course. Millions, enough to set them up for life in another country where they could change identities and live life large. I paid it immediately. They returned her body to me on my front porch. She was dead. They’d used her.” Trap’s blue eyes went so cold the temperature in the room actually dropped. “Hard. They made certain there was plenty of evidence so I would see that. They hurt her in every way possible before they killed her. They left me a note. Quoted an eye for an eye. They made it very plain that any woman I was with would suffer the same fate.”
Trap took another long swig of beer. “I knew it was my uncles. I pointed the cops at them. I hired detectives. They disappeared. Their tracks were so well-covered that I knew they had changed identities. Even bribing the best in the business, I didn’t find out who they’d become. All that money I’d made wasn’t worth shit, Wyatt. It didn’t buy her back for me, and it didn’t find her killers.”
Wyatt sank back in the chair and regarded his friend. He understood Trap’s antisocial behavior much better. He had buried himself in work, cut himself off from everyone, making certain he had few ties. He hadn’t blindly followed Wyatt into the GhostWalker unit, he wanted the skills. He hadn’t given up on finding the men who murdered his aunt. He would never give up. He didn’t tie himself to a woman or let himself feel affection for one. He used his work to keep him apart, to keep his mind occupied so there would be no chance that he would ever put another woman in jeopardy.
“Trap,” he cautioned softly.
“She isn’t a problem,” Trap said just as softly. “Cayenne. She isn’t a problem. Fucking Whitney paired us together. I don’t ever think about a woman, not even after I’ve fucked her. Not ever. I go to my lab, and I work until there isn’t a trace of her left. This woman I let out of a cage, not knowing if she’s going to try to kill me. I just see her a couple of times and I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t, Wyatt. She’s no problem to solve. He fucking paired us together.”