Lethal Game (GhostWalkers 16)

“Can you get up?” Gino asked.

Malichai had been afraid all along someone would ask that question. They were in the way of the Navy people. He shook his head. “Not without a lot of help.”17There was complete silence in the room. Only the sound of the clock could be heard, and even that was muted. Rubin was the big gun in the room. He’d slipped in, a shadow in the darkness, hidden from all inn guests.

The talent of psychic healing that Amaryllis and Joe possessed was a very rare gift and if Whitney knew they possessed it, he would want them back, but Rubin had the one talent that was prized above all else. He was a psychic surgeon. His talent was protected by every member of the team. No one would ever let it be known what he could do. Whitney would move heaven and earth to acquire him and, most likely, would take his brain apart in order to figure out how he could do surgery on physical bones with his brain.

In the beginning, when it first came out that Malichai would need him, Ezekiel and Joe had protested Amaryllis knowing his identity, but that had since become a moot point. Malichai planned to marry her. She was a GhostWalker. They either had to trust her enough to make her a part of them, or he would be walking away with her. She would be subject to the same rules all of them were.

Malichai tried to breathe normally, to keep his heartbeat under control as Rubin approached his bed. His hand nearly crushed Amaryllis’s.

“It’s interesting Owen found you, Amaryllis,” Rubin said as he pushed back the thin sheet covering Malichai’s leg. Malichai wore shorts that left his leg mostly bare. Rubin ran his hands along the leg but looked at Amaryllis. “Malichai told us how carefully you planned your escape. He admired you greatly for that. I thought your plan was brilliant. You outwitted Whitney and got two of the other women out as well, which actually helped you because they weren’t as adept or as certain they wanted to escape, which gave you more time.”

Amaryllis nodded. “Sadly, I took that factor into account.”

“Not sadly,” Rubin corrected. “You were surviving. That’s what we do. But Owen found you when he shouldn’t have.” He closed his eyes, his hands hovering close to the bruising and swelling where Owen had concentrated his punches. “You dealt with Whitney’s tracking devices?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How did Owen know how to find you? And how did Owen know about Malichai’s leg? Malichai assured me he was careful. He hadn’t so much as flinched, yet Owen knew.”

He fell silent. The room went silent with him. There was no expression on his face, so Malichai couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but his gut was churning. Then Rubin’s eyes opened, and he was looking at Amaryllis again.

“Owen was so obsessed with you, had he known where you were earlier, he would have come right away. That would lead me to believe he found out recently. Someone contacted him, and they also told him about Malichai and the fact that he’d been shot recently in the leg.”

“Who would know about Owen?” Amaryllis asked. “No one knows about him. I only told Malichai. That time in your room, remember? You woke up and thought something was off. Tag had found Lorrie and you wondered how.”

“Shit, Malichai,” Ezekiel said, for the first time breaking the silence. “That little snake Billy had bugged your room. You started using a jammer and sweeping it. Callendine tipped off Owen. He probably is on a need-to-know basis and when he sent the information higher up the chain, rather than get Whitney involved, they chose to send in Owen. That would shake things up here and hopefully get rid of the GhostWalker in residence.”

Amaryllis avoided his eyes. If Billy had listened to them, he’d heard a lot more than her encounters with Owens. Malichai sent her a wicked little grin, hoping to lighten her mood. Hell, he needed to lighten his mood. He tried to think back. He’d used the jammer because it was ingrained in him, but he always took it with him just in case someone got into his room. He’d slipped it into his pocket. He’d had sex with Amaryllis and then talked about Owen.

“I was at the beach today, minding my own business, reading, when I was contacted by one of Callendine’s men,” Rubin announced as he continued to assess Malichai’s leg. He was at his calf now. “He clearly was a soldier. Army. I sent his photo to Joe to have him identified. He came back under Callendine’s command. A man by the name of Sergeant Kolt Michigan. He offered me the job of burning down the bed-and-breakfast. This time, he didn’t include Amaryllis or Marie. They switched it to two of the guests. Men by the names of Jay Carpenter and Burnell Strathom. Art dealers out of LA. They wanted them murdered first and their bodies found inside. I was to anonymously call it in. While the police are inside examining the bodies, they’d like the entire bed-and-breakfast to go up in flames.”