His voice was low, a sound that moved in her mind so intimately, stroking like a caress on her skin when it should have been an abrasive intrusion. While the words were a clear threat, the delivery and tone made her shiver, igniting every nerve ending in her body. That voice poured into her the way water and energy filled the Middlemist Red’s vein and carried energy and nutrients throughout the plant wherever it was needed. She needed. She’d been empty until that voice filled her.
Camellia tried to trace him using his voice, but he was definitely on the wide network, and he was as tuned to it as she was. It was as if he were a ghost. She puzzled out his threat. He wouldn’t burn down her garden; his friend Jeff would. She guessed Jeff was the taller of the two men sitting on the rocks. The man in her network couldn’t burn down the garden and destroy the plants any more than she could.
Who are you? Three words. A simple enough question. She was positive her position was just as hidden as his was.
She felt a jolt along a thread of the Middlemist Red Camellia network. In the brief moment, all subtleties were gone. The vibration was decidedly masculine and wholly sexual as it traveled back to her. This was far worse than she’d ever imagined.
Her heart went wild. There was no way he hadn’t felt her reaction, just as she felt the shock of his at the sound of her voice. He hadn’t been any more prepared for her than she had been for him. There was some relief in knowing he hadn’t expected their pairing—and there was absolutely no question that Whitney had paired the two of them. She was reacting to his scent, to the sound of his voice, just as he had reacted to hers.
My name is Jonas Harper. Tell me who you are.
Her stomach reacted, tied into a thousand knots. His voice was powerful, a whisper of command, yet it held a thousand promises. She steeled herself against that lure. She would never go back. She’d made up her mind she’d rather be dead. She wasn’t going to be trapped by his voice or anything he said to her. He knew who she was, or maybe he needed confirmation on which of the women she was. It was possible he didn’t know who he’d been paired with. That would be like Whitney.
Could Whitney have paired this man with all of the escapees? She fought back a dark, unsettling surge of fury, a knot of negative emotion that was so unlike her.
I will never go back to that place. She counted off seconds before she spoke again and then threw her voice off on different strands to ensure he couldn’t trace the sound back to where she was. There is no way to lie on this network. I am willing to kill you, your friends, burn my garden and die myself. Even as she told him the absolute truth, she knew she had spoken too many words in a row, communicated too long. Better to have given short bursts.
This soldier was too good. Not once had he given himself away, other than that faint scent she found intoxicating. He had infiltrated her garden and both networks, the mycelium and Middlemist Red networks, without giving his presence away, and now was stalking her using her own system to do so. She couldn’t make amateur mistakes. She’d been out of the game too long.
You can hear that I’m not lying. I didn’t come here seeking you. I had no idea you were here. I felt a threat and started following it to its source. I still feel it. And it isn’t coming from you. Can you feel it too?
There was absolute honesty in his voice. Middlemist Red would know a lie, and so would she. Even so, she wasn’t prepared to trust him. She was still feeling as if she was being hunted, and he was here. He had bypassed all her security measures, all her sentries, traps and alarms. Who knew what else he could do?
Did Whitney send you?
Absolutely not. I don’t work for Whitney. He did enhance me. I work for the United States government. I’m a member of GhostWalker Team One, the first unit he experimented on. You have to be one of the women who escaped when the Nortons and Team Two went after Marigold. They hoped to get Whitney at that time, but he managed to evade them.
Camellia was silent while she processed what he’d said. Marigold had been the last woman to leave the compound, and she’d left with Ken Norton. Camellia had lost track of her. The plan had been for all of them to go in different directions. They were to rendezvous at one point where they had been stashing money collectively after every mission they went on. The money was to be divided evenly, and they would all go their separate ways to make it more difficult for Whitney’s soldiers to track them.