Lethal Game (GhostWalkers 16)

That was just like Mordichai not to say a word. Anything to do with GhostWalkers was always so secretive. Malichai had known his brother had been going to school for several years, but they often interrupted him in order for him to go on regular missions. He’d gotten most of it out of the way, but he was persistent and continued even though it had taken much longer than normal.

“Trap, you never once admitted you had any healing ability,” Malichai said. They all did in one capacity or another, but Trap had always insisted he didn’t, that it was nonsense.

Trap abruptly pulled his hands off Malichai’s leg. “I don’t. I can ‘see’ sometimes, but I can’t heal. I’m taking Cayenne downstairs. We don’t want to be caught in here. But you stay off this leg and let the damn thing heal.”

“Will do,” Malichai said, uncertain if he meant it.

Amaryllis went to the door and looked out. They’d swept the other rooms for bugs and found several, all in the rooms of those attending the Ideas for Peace convention. The only other room to have one had been Malichai’s. Malichai was fairly certain Callendine had paid someone to plant the bugs—most likely Billy. Malichai had destroyed the listening device and now, several times a day they swept the room just to be safe.

The hallway was dark, and Trap and Cayenne immediately disappeared into the shadows in the way the GhostWalkers did. Amaryllis watched down the hall to make certain no doors opened. The B and B was full, every room taken, and there was excitement over the upcoming convention. Often groups of guests congregated in the meeting room or front room to talk about the various ideas they had and what they were most looking forward to. Judging by the friendly way the strangers treated one another, no one would ever think a deadly threat could be hanging over their heads.

Amaryllis closed and locked the door, turned back to him and leaned against it. “I find it interesting that your GhostWalkers think nothing of visiting you in the dead of night, never thinking they might get seen by a guest.”

“They rely on other senses to tell them if anyone is around, and they’re used to working at night. Trap would have known if anyone was in the hallway.”

“Some of the guests have a habit of sneaking down to the dining room and raiding the cookie stash there.”

“Why are you way over there?” Malichai studied her face. She was nervous around the GhostWalker team members, and he couldn’t blame her. Essentially, she had to rearrange her thinking from looking at them as supersoldiers—those belonging to Whitney’s private army—and the GhostWalker teams serving their country.

Amaryllis continued to stay across the room from him. “I think all of you take too many chances, Malichai.”

“All of you” meant him. She wasn’t happy that he’d been testing his leg already. She might not swear at him the way Trap did, but she was equally as upset, maybe more. He didn’t want his woman to be the one looking out for him. He did have some pride, especially now that the others were there, and she could see all the various things they were capable of.

Trap and Wyatt were geniuses and they had more money than they knew what to do with. Draden had been some hotshot model before he was a GhostWalker. Women tended to fall at his feet and worship. Gino was an extremely dangerous man. It had been Malichai’s observation that women had a tendency to think dangerous men were every bit as hot as a model.

What was he? His mother was an addict willing to sell her kids for drugs. He’d grown up on the streets, Ezekiel watching out for him. He was a doctor, but he wasn’t gifted the way the others were. He was what he was—a soldier.

He’d never felt inferior before. Never. Not around any of them. But he hadn’t been lying in a bed with a leg that wasn’t worth shit while the woman he wanted most in the world to see him as someone worthwhile was surrounded by men who could do just about anything. Hell. She’d had to save his life, not just with her healing skills but by following him when he’d allowed himself to get kidnapped.

He’d been so arrogant, it hadn’t occurred to him that Mills would kick the shit out of his injured leg. He should have. He’d exposed that injury to the enemy on purpose, using it as an excuse to go into the water so Shevfield could make his try. He’d been so damned smug. Now, seeing the men he admired most, the men he thought of as his family, he could barely stand being in bed, the one they all had to rally around because he couldn’t take care of business himself. He wanted to be there for his woman, not have his family do it for him.