Both men fell silent. Dr. Peter Whitney had been the brains behind the GhostWalker program. He’d sold his experimental ideas to the military. They’d tested psychic ability. Those accepted into the program had to test off the charts for various abilities as well as have the personality and physical abilities to withstand Special Forces training. Once accepted into the program, they were enhanced and then trained in every type of combat situation conceivable.
There were four teams, and each had been enhanced not only psychically – as they’d agreed to be – but physically as well – which they hadn’t agreed to be. The first team had many problems and a couple of their men had died – succumbing to brain bleeds. Whitney got better after that, improving with each new team, but it became obvious he had used animal DNA to make his superior soldiers.
It came to light that long before he had worked on adult men he had first begun his experiments on female children he had taken from orphanages from around the world – disposable children. He believed they could be sacrificed for the greater good. If his experiments worked on them, only then did he try to duplicate them in the soldiers.
He kept the women prisoners in various facilities scattered around the United States as well as in some foreign countries. He went underground once his experiments had come under scrutiny, but he had friends in high places. They not only shielded him, but believed in what he was doing, so they aided him.
One of his experiments was to pair a male soldier with one of his female experiments, using pheromones to entice them to each other. No one knew how he did it, nor was there a way to undo what he’d done, so when the male soldier came across the female, and she him, they were so attracted, it was impossible for one to walk away from the other. What Whitney hadn’t counted on was the emotional attachment the pair formed. Or the camaraderie of all GhostWalkers.
They were not only elite, they were also different from every other human on earth. Some couldn’t be in society without an anchor – another GhostWalker who could draw psychic energy away from them. The four teams had formed into a single unit looking out for one another. They trusted no one else and depended on one another. When one soldier found the woman he was paired with, she was protected by all of them – after all, Whitney had performed the same experiments on the women.
Each of the women was combat-trained and enhanced both psychically and physically. Some of them had been used for cancer research. Others had been forced into his “breeding” program. Wyatt had three daughters, little triplets, all of whom had snake DNA and were venomous. Trap had come to the bayou to help him find a way to keep them from hurting anyone if they accidentally bit while they were frightened or teething.
“How long have you known?” Wyatt asked. He wasn’t going to argue. Trap wasn’t a man given to fantasies, and the last thing he would welcome into his life was a woman – especially one he was paired with. One he couldn’t ignore and set aside after he’d had her body.
“She bothered me on a level she shouldn’t have from the moment I laid eyes on her. I thought – I hoped – it was because she was an experiment gone wrong and they issued a termination order on her. Maybe I could figure out what went wrong and I could fix her. My brain was already trying to assess her the moment I saw her and heard her voice, analyzing what her psychic abilities were and what DNA she might have been enhanced with.”
“That makes sense.” Wyatt wanted to pounce on that. Trap was holding himself together, but the rage deep inside was close – too close. He didn’t dare set Trap off with so many innocents around. He felt the other members of their team moving into positions closer to them. Just in case. That meant they noticed the tension mounting as well. No one really knew Trap’s full abilities, but it was generally considered that along with Ezekiel and Gino he was one of the most lethal men on the team – when it came to psychic enhancements.
Wyatt didn’t want the building to shake apart and come down on half the men with families living there around the swamp and bayou.
“I tried to make it that, Wyatt,” Trap said. “But she didn’t let go. I think about her when I’m in the lab working on how to come up with a vaccine that will stay in the system for snakebite. Not once, in my entire life, have I ever been distracted from my work. I dream of her at night, and I have always commanded my own dreams. Not just any dreams, erotic fantasies, and I’m not prone to those, not even when I’ve gone a while without a woman. When I consider finding another woman to get relief, the idea is not only repugnant, but it’s absolutely abhorrent.”
“Fuck.” Wyatt almost spat the word. “I see why you’re putting yourself in this position now. It didn’t make sense. You’re the last person in the world to go to a bar every night. We’ve come here now for the last five nights. I thought maybe you wanted to get in better with the locals.”
A faint gleam of humor moved through the ice in Trap’s startling blue eyes. “Hardly. I did take your advice and hire a few of them to help with the renovations once escrow closed and the land and building became mine, but hanging out with them in a bar is going beyond the call of duty.”
“How are the renovations coming?”
The humor deepened. “We’re about finished. I know she’s living there. No one has seen her, but things go missing, and all of a sudden the men are leery of working there, especially after dark. The workers think the place is haunted. Word leaked out that Wilson Plastics might have been a front for government experiments. I didn’t let anyone go down into the lower region where the cells and the crematoria were until we’d gotten rid of all the evidence. Now, it’s a beautiful apartment I designed for her. Still, word got out, and the men who really need or want the work show up, but they work in pairs and they won’t stay late at all. I think she started the rumors and is sitting back laughing her pretty little ass off. Seriously, I only have a few odds and ends left anyway.”
“Did you try to find her there? You hate coming here, that might be a better alternative.”
“It’s not going to happen. She’s got her webs everywhere. The moment I come near there, she’s gone. I don’t want to risk driving her away.”
Wyatt wished he’d had more than a glimpse of the woman Trap had rescued from those cells. Wilson Plastics had been a cover for a dangerous experimental laboratory and termination center for the experiments deemed gone wrong. His three little girls and the woman Trap was certain he had been paired with had been down in those cells, waiting to be killed and then cremated, their ashes taken out to sea so no one could ever know of their existence.
Prior to being Wilson Plastics, the land had been owned by Dr. Whitney. The huge building had been a sanitarium. Whitney had conducted his experiments on the orphans he “rescued” from around the world. The sanitarium had burned to the ground. Whitney’s company had sold it, and Wilson Plastics bought the land. Wyatt’s GhostWalker team had exposed the company for what it really was, and when the land came up for sale, Trap bought it.
Their pararescue team had decided to make a fortress together right there in the swamp. Wyatt’s little girls and his wife couldn’t possibly leave the swamp, not until Wyatt and Trap came up with the vaccine that would stay in the system without daily injections. They also had to either remove the venom sacs or find a way to keep the girls from accidentally biting while they grew up. In any case, Whitney was trying to reacquire them, and that meant they needed protection at all times.
“So you think your girl is a squatter, living on your property.”
Trap nodded slowly, the humor still in his eyes. “Yeah. She’s there. And she’s the reason we hear rumors about drunk men being robbed on their way home.”
“Those men aren’t the best of the bayou, Trap,” Wyatt pointed out. “If she’s the one doin’ the robbin’ she’s pickin’ the men who are particularly nasty to rob.”
Trap shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not okay, and she knows it.”
“She’s got to eat.”
The humor faded from Trap’s eyes. “Seriously, Wyatt, if I’m feeling this way, can you tell me she isn’t? She could come to me. If not me, then you. She knows we’re GhostWalkers, the same as she is. She could come to us. She doesn’t need to rob anyone and put herself in danger like that.”
There was an edge to Trap’s voice, and a faint shimmer moved through the room. The opaque disturbance made Wyatt uneasy. He glanced across the room to Mordichai, who had a frown on his face. He felt it too. Trap had an energy about him now, one that was distinctly lethal.
“She doesn’ think she’s the same as we are, Trap. She was listed for termination. She considers herself flawed, just as Pepper always did. Not one of us, but a throwaway. She isn’t goin’ to come to us. She figures we’ll look down on her. That we’ll judge her in the way they did. It’s possible she doesn’t trust herself to be around us.”
“She doesn’t trust us,” Trap corrected. “I can’t say as I blame her, but she feels it, the same as me, that pull between us, or she’d be long gone. You know it’s true. She had no reason to stick around here. She has no place to stay, no money, nothing. No clothes. She’s staying for me.”
“She’s a GhostWalker, Trap. By now she has all those things,” Wyatt persisted. “She can slip in and out of any store or home without ever being seen. If she’s the one robbing the drunks, then she’s got money. You said yourself you’re certain she’s setting up her home there in the buildin’ you just bought.”
“I’m positive,” Trap said. “So much so that I’ll be moving there soon. I’ve nearly got the laboratory all set up. Most of my equipment is in. We’ve got a big workspace, and I can protect it easier than the one we set up in your garage.”
“I don’ know if I like you livin’ there alone right now, Trap, especially if she’s there. We don’ know how dangerous she is. I know you’re close to finishing the renovations, but Whitney could hit us any time. The boys haven’t had enough time to set up all your security.”
“She’s there,” Trap insisted. “If I’m there alone, she won’t be able to resist coming to me. I’d never be able to resist going to her if I wasn’t afraid of scaring her off. She won’t hurt me.”
Wyatt sighed. There was no arguing with Trap when he made up his mind. “If you’re determined to do that, why are we here?”
“I need to see her in action. All of you have asked around. You know she’s been here. She’s gorgeous. Alluring. Almost as sexy as Pepper. You think these boys are going to forget her? Not be able to describe her? She does something to mute that either while she’s here or when she’s leaving. I believe it’s when she’s leaving. She’d want them attracted. She’s looking for a type. Someone she believes deserves being robbed. A criminal. That tells me she’s got a moral code of some kind.”
Wyatt flashed a grin. “They couldn’t have decided to terminate her because she’s a straight-up killer.”
“A black widow? She’s that. She carries venom for certain. She can throw webs out. And there’s her voice. She can lure with her tone and that damn French accent that’s sexy as hell.” Trap’s body shuddered at the memory of her voice seeping into his body through his pores. The feel of silk on his skin. Her long, thick hair that was so unusual. Black with red highlights right down the center. She had an hourglass figure – high, firm breasts, a small waist and flared hips. Even with her curvy figure she was small, slight even, so she could fit into places few others could get in and out of.
He was a big man. Solid. All muscle without an ounce of fat. He’d been with his fair share of women. He knew he was attractive physically and he was highly intelligent. But most of all he was rich. Not just rich. He was in
Forbes
magazine as one of the richest men in the world, yet he was in the military. He was a prize catch, and women pursued him. He didn’t do the pursuing. He had never wanted to take a chance that his uncles would rape, torture and kill another person he loved.
His brain needed to work. He had no choice, not if he was going to remain sane. He couldn’t work as long as he was obsessed with Cayenne – and he was obsessed. His body needed relief, and soon. Right now his brain was occupied with fantasies of her and her body. Of the way she felt when she was up against him. Of the way she smelled, that faintly elusive and mysterious mixture of storms and fresh rain. Sometimes he woke up with her scent in his lungs and he wondered if she’d been in his room. He was fairly certain it wasn’t possible – he was staying with Wyatt and the rest of the team at Wyatt’s grandmother’s house and security was ultra-tight. Still, he wondered.
When he woke in the middle of the night, his heart beat too fast and his body was hard and tight and her scent was everywhere. Once he swore it was on the pillow next to him. He didn’t sleep much. Sometimes he went days without sleep when he was on the trail of something he was developing for his pharmaceutical company. When he did regularly go to bed, he slept no more than four or five hours and not all at once.
Often Trap got up to read or work out elusive problems. His scribbled formulas were on just about every scrap of paper in the room and a few had been written on the wall. Sometimes he was certain those papers weren’t in the same exact spot. He considered that he might be losing his mind. The last few weeks he’d been acting totally out of character, and that’s what convinced him he needed to find her. To put a stop to whatever was happening.
If Whitney manufactured their attraction to each other, he should be able to find a way to undo it. Come up with an antidote. Cayenne would stay safe that way. It was the only way he could ensure no one would ever get their hands on her again. He would have to give her up before the attraction grew to the point neither would be able to resist.
Wyatt sighed. “You’re going to move to that building before we have it ready, aren’t you, Trap?”
Trap nodded slowly. “I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, under most circumstances, but if you’re wrong about her, this woman could kill you, Trap. I couldn’t harm Pepper. I doubt you could hurt Cayenne.”
Trap’s gaze turned glacier. “You’ve always been sensitive, Wyatt. You don’t like anyone pointing that out because you think that makes you feminine.” He spoke entirely dispassionately, no judgment or expression in his voice. “That’s what makes you such a good man. You care about people. You always have. I stopped when my own flesh and blood murdered my family. I couldn’t allow myself to feel. If I did, I wouldn’t survive. If this woman who is supposed to be
my
woman decides to kill me, she’s an enemy. She isn’t mine.”