Wyatt continued to stare down at them, his mind suddenly putting pieces together. Pepper had an immunity to cobra bites. Cobras couldn't kill one another. She'd said the doctors were trying to build her immunity to snakebites and develop an antivenom that could be used for the soldiers. She hadn't specified which snakebite though. She was already immune to the cobra bite. It had been the viper venom that had made her so ill.
"She's your daughter," he said aloud.
Pepper frowned at him. "I consider her my daughter, but I've never given birth, which is required for what I think you're talking about. I'd claim her if she was mine."
He shook his head. "Not if they used your eggs, which, believe me, honey, if Whitney is involved, he collects such things from anythin' or anyone GhostWalker."
Wyatt couldn't keep the note of bitterness out of his voice. He'd been deceived when he'd gone into the program. Whitney was supposed to have been long gone, on the run, a man wanted by the military to answer for the crimes he'd committed. That wasn't exactly the case. Someone high up was protecting him and aiding him in his experiments. Whitney still worked for the government, he was just far more covert.
Pepper studied Ginger's face, the little hands and the mop of hair. There was no horror on her face, if anything, she examined the baby with a hint of eagerness. "Maybe a little. It would be absolutely wonderful, a miracle, if that were the case, because I intend to take care of all three of them, to be their mother. They need one. But you might take another good look at her, Wyatt. She looks more like you than she does me."
Wyatt stared down at the child.
"Not to mention, you're the genius," Pepper pointed out.
His eyebrow shot up. "And you're not? I guess babies all look alike." He shrugged. "Does she need to be changed?"
"She uses the bathroom like a big girl. She'll sign like this." Pepper closed her fist and shook it. "If you give her a little step, she can make it on her own."
"How did she break into the room when it was locked?" Wyatt asked.
"All three acquired the skill of picking locks at a very early age."
He laughed and teased one of the waves on Ginger's hair into a corkscrew curl. "We did that too, when we were little. All of us. Gator was the instigator. He taught us, I think. I don' really remember, but Nonny said we were barely walkin' when we started gettin' into trouble."
He kept his mind as blank as possible, which took a tremendous amount of discipline considering the thoughts running through his head. He could feel Pepper's pain beating at him. She was worried too, probably about the other two babies left behind in the laboratory. He found it strange that they were still so connected that without merging his mind or using telepathic communication, he could feel her emotions - and if he could feel hers, did that mean she could feel his?
He used telepathic communication with the other GhostWalkers often, and never once had he been able to feel their emotions - he could guess, maybe, but not actually feel them. His body ached everywhere. His muscles and joints screamed at him and always, in the back of his mind was the pressing worry that they were running out of time. That was all Pepper - not him.
The last thing he wanted at that moment was for her to catch one single thought swirling around in his brain. He kept his expression as pleasant and calm as possible. He was a doctor and a GhostWalker. He could be stone if needed.
"You need more painkillers this mornin', Pepper," he said.
She shook her head. "I have to have a clear mind. I need to get on my feet."
"No, you need to stay right where you are. I'm the doctor, remember? Ginger can look after you while I help Nonny with breakfast, and then you can give us a detailed layout of the laboratory along with how many guards and where they are. You must have studied their routine."
She nodded. "We were sent here about two months ago. I snuck out a lot and studied the bayou and swamp. I knew what that place was the moment I entered it. I knew I didn't have much time to get the children out of there."
"I'll go help Nonny with the food. Ginger, I'm countin' on you to watch her. She needs to rest. I won' be long." He had something important to do. Very important. Because he was a smart man who'd done a very stupid thing, and he had the feeling others were suffering the consequences.
Pepper reached out and caught his hand, moving faster than he would have expected, knowing the pain running through every muscle in her body. The moment her skin touched his, he felt the shiver run through her body. The same electrical current rushed through his veins.
"What is it, Wyatt?"
"Nothin' at all, honey. You just rest." He tugged until she let go of him. He had to check. When he got feelings, strong ones, he was rarely wrong, and the feeling was strong enough to put knots in his belly.
He slipped out of the bedroom and hurried down the hall to the staircase leading up to his grandmother's room. The pictures were there, lining the wall. He took the stairs slowly, studying each photograph of himself. With each stair he climbed, he grew younger, until he found himself face-to-face with a little boy not more than a year and a half. His hair was dark and wavy, a thick pelt that refused to be tamed. Dark eyes stared back at him, and right there on his right cheek was that tiny little dimple he'd noticed on Ginger.
His stomach lurched. The baby picture could have been of Ginger. They looked identical. The child wasn't Pepper's; she was his. Whitney had used him to father a child - not one, but three. Something terrible had gone wrong with his experiment and he'd sent the children to the bayou - straight to Wyatt's backyard. Why? What was the man up to? This was no coincidence.
Nonny knew. She probably had known the moment she laid eyes on the child. She'd been insistent that she was safe with the baby and that she wouldn't allow Wyatt to keep Ginger from her. He should have known right then that something wasn't right. It was unlike Nonny to fight him over something they both knew wasn't safe.
He sank down slowly onto the stair and scrubbed his hand over his face. That baby - that little viper - was his daughter. His. He didn't need a paternity test to tell him the truth. Hell. The picture on the wall might as well have been of her.
"Wyatt?" Nonny sat down beside him right there at the top of the stairs. She gestured toward the picture. "You know then."
"You saw it right away, didn' you, Grand-mere?"
She put her hand on his shoulder. "I don' know what's goin' on, how that child came to be like she is, or where she came from, but she's a Fontenot. There's no denyin' it."
"There's two more, Nonny, at that laboratory, and they plan on killin' them because they're dangerous."
She sucked in her breath and gripped his arm. "But you aren' gonna let that happen, right, Wyatt?"
He shook his head. "I wasn' about to let it happen before I knew they were mine." He straightened his shoulders and made himself look into those old, beloved eyes. "I'm sorry, Nonny, for bein' so damned stupid. Gator told me about the program he'd joined and, of course, we both know what Whitney did to Flame, givin' her cancer an all, so I should have known better than to join too."
"You joined because the three of you boys always followed Gator's lead," Nonny said, her voice matter-of-fact. "If he did somethin', you boys were sure you could do it as well. Never did mind what it was or iffin it was good for you."
Wyatt closed his eyes briefly. It didn't much matter how he'd gotten himself into trouble - it was already done. Three children had been created without his permission or knowledge, but they were still children - and there wasn't a doubt in his mind they were his. Not Pepper's or his other brothers'. His.
"The woman, Pepper," Nonny said. "The baby looks like her too, something in her eyes. Do you suppose she's the mother?"
He shrugged, rolling his shoulders as if he could shrug away the entire mess. "I have no idea. She thinks and acts like their mother, but she's like me. If she's the biological mother, she wasn't told. I think the resemblance is there, but maybe I didn't want to see the resemblance to me."
&
nbsp; "My breakfast is goin' to burn. Malichai is tendin' to it. He says he knows his way around a kitchen, but I wasn' so certain. The first thin' he did was grab my apron and put it on. Then he sorta stood there in the center of the room and turned in circles." She gave a little Fontenot smirk. "I done asked him if it was some kinda ritual he did before he started his work."
"And he said?" Wyatt prompted.
Nonny laughed softly. "He said, yes ma'am, jist as purty as you please. I snapped the tea towel at him."
Wyatt winced on Malichai's behalf. Nonny was hell on wheels with a tea towel. He'd been a recipient more than once of that snapping bite. She was accurate and deadly with the weapon and could raise a welt if she desired.
"That boy done said he had a gun on him, so I gave him a little taste of what it was like to threaten his helpless grand-mere."
There it was. The reason he was the luckiest man on Earth, no matter what was happening. He had Nonny. He'd always had her. He had his family. His brothers. They'd come a running if he called for them. Wyatt began to laugh with her. The idea of his petite grandmother chasing Malichai around the kitchen with her tea towel was just too funny.
"Helpless, Nonny? You're a holy terror."
"Let's eat, son. We'll figure the rest out on a full stomach."
Wyatt stood and reached down to help his grandmother up. He hugged her close, inhaling the scent of fresh food that always signaled home to him. "Let's go rescue breakfast, Nonny. I'm surprised you left Malichai alone with the food. There won't be much left if we don' go rescue it."
She hugged him back hard and then turned and rushed down the stairs, raising her voice. "Malichai Fortunes, don' you be eatin' before we sit down and give thanks to the good Lord."