Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

She was well aware Jonas had to know about the incident. The GhostWalkers had been involved. “Marigold was friends with all the soldiers. She’d been part of their command at one time. She talked them into letting her go with them. Her goal was to talk with Violet and Senator Freeman about what was going on at the laboratory. We hoped the senator would come and put a stop to it. We didn’t realize Violet was willing to sell us down the river for her own ambitions. She was raised with us, so we thought she was one of us.”

“So,” Jonas said, “a huge break in trust.”

Camellia nodded her head slowly. “We were in dire straits. Rose was already pregnant. We had to get free. Some of the younger ones were talking about suicide. I have to admit, I was going to fight until one of them killed me. I was never going to allow Whitney to force a man on me and then take my child from me. Marigold felt the same way, so we started looking for ways to get all the women out at the same time. If Marigold could get Freeman to come to the laboratory and help us, that was one way; otherwise, we would have to overpower the guards and make a break for it. That would be risky. Our best bet was Mari.”

Camellia turned to face Jonas again, pushing back against the support column, her fingers biting into the wood. Jonas listened intently, those golden eyes never leaving her face, making her feel as if everything she said was important to him—making her feel as if she was important to him.

“It was a huge risk for Marigold to go with the soldiers on their mission to protect Senator Freeman and Violet, but she went. There was what they thought was an assassination attempt. Mari was shot and taken prisoner. Apparently, another GhostWalker team had also been assigned to protect the senator. But it was a setup. Freeman was supposed to die. In any case, Mari was taken prisoner by Team Two, Norton’s team. She fell in love with Ken Norton. Whitney’s team, of course, was frantic to get her back. She wasn’t supposed to have been out of the laboratory. The team found her, but apparently that was because the GhostWalker team allowed them to find her. She was determined to get back to us. Whitney always threatened that if one of us escaped, he would kill one of those left behind.”

Just cracking that door open elevated Camellia’s heart rate. The blood began to pound through her veins. She suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t a grown woman, totally confident in her ability to defend herself. She was back to being that young girl, just finding herself, just becoming a woman, just learning about her skills and talents. She was filled with fire and defiance against a dictator who continually tore the girls down and used them cruelly.

Middlemist Red dipped its branches, and the blossoms smoothed over her face and along her arms to soothe her. Red had been her only friend, and the touch on her skin reminded her that it had been far too long since she’d felt the touch of another human. That want—or maybe need—was growing in her, and she had to push it down ruthlessly. Dredging up her past relationships would help, would be a reminder that friendships were illusions. The only person she could count on was herself.

She didn’t want those eyes of Jonas’s to look so closely into her. She felt exposed now, but she’d gone this far. Cracked the door open and let her secrets start spilling out.

“You know Whitney through his experiments, but we lived through them and his sadistic cruelties every day of our lives. He gave us pets to love and care for and then had them ripped to shreds in front of us as a lesson. They were all killed because we failed to teach them survival skills in a fighting ring. We didn’t even know something like that existed.”

Camellia pressed her fingers to her lips and found she was trembling. She couldn’t look at Jonas anymore. “There were a couple of nurses who stayed with us throughout all the experiments and accompanied us to Whitney’s various bases and laboratories. One of them, Beverly, was with us as long as I can remember. I loved her. We all did. It wasn’t as if she was overly affectionate, but she was always there for us, no matter how much Whitney frowned at her when she picked us up off the floor when we were toddlers or instructed us when we needed to know things about growing up as females. He intimidated every caretaker he ever had for us until they quit, or he fired them because they were too nice to us. In addition to Beverly, the only other long-term nurses were Shirley and Rosa. Rosa mostly cared exclusively for Lily, although she looked after all of us when she could.”