Draden rubbed at the scruff on his face. “It’s like somewhere inside me is this dark being that just rose up and fought back. I don’t remember thinking, just doing. They were older, bigger, stronger and probably knew how to fight, but adrenaline kicked in and I didn’t care if they killed me. Rage took hold. Icy. Dark. That was how I felt inside. I remember grabbing the knife hand and just rolling, throwing myself as hard as I could to one side, rolling into him, taking that blade with me. The knife went right into him under my body weight as well as his buddy’s. It was that fast, that hard.”
Shylah’s eyes darkened but other than that, she didn’t move or change expression.
“The one on my back, holding my hair, nearly ripped most of it out, but I just slammed my head back into him as hard as I could. I was lucky and hit him directly in his face, smashing his nose. He fell back, and I was on him, the knife in my hand. I don’t even remember taking hold of it. It was just there. I stabbed him in the throat and ran. It was over in seconds and both were down, dying, I think. I ran in the dark for blocks and then realized I had the bloody knife in my hand.”
There was a small silence and he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead, surprised to find them there. Just talking about the incident that colored the rest of his life sent shards of glass digging at his stomach, tying him up in knots.
“I thought about that for years, Shylah. Was I some kind of psychopath to be able to do that so efficiently? I had to ask myself that question. What kid could turn the tables on two fully grown men? I’d never taken a self-defense class in my life. I’d never been in a fistfight. I certainly didn’t know how to use a knife. So how had I managed to escape them, and why were they dead and I wasn’t?”
“Do you really believe you’re a psychopath because you defended yourself, Draden?” Again, there was no judgment in her voice, in her expression or her eyes.
“Not because I defended myself. That was instinctual, the fight-or-flight response. I have the fight reaction instilled in me very strongly. I accept that. But I shouldn’t have won that fight, sweetheart.”
“You had the advantage, Draden. You didn’t think so, but you did. They regarded you as easy prey. There were two of them. Bigger. Stronger. They had a weapon, and both attacked simultaneously. They’d clearly done it before. The last thing they thought would happen was for you to fight back. The moment you did, it was completely outside their expertise. You were fast and made all the right moves, which was your self-preservation instinct kicking in. I would have done the same. Some of us are fighters. We just do whatever it takes to stay alive.”
She shrugged her shoulders and stood up, walking across the white carpet to him. He opened his thighs, so she could stand between them. Shylah swept back her hair and leaned down to kiss him. The moment she did, she swept him from those hated, even feared memories, into another place. She did it so easily, her mouth moving against his. Lips soft and inviting. Tongue stroking caresses along his.
Draden stood up, his arms sliding around her, lifting her. She wrapped her long legs around him, aligning their bodies. Her soft skin seemed to melt right into his, until he caught fire. Until that conflagration spun out of control. He kept kissing her as he took her to the bed. Her legs kept him wrapped up tight. Her arms were there, holding him tightly as her mouth gave him everything he needed. Love poured into him and he felt it with every stroke of his body—in every answering move of hers. Her hips rose to meet his as he surged into her again and again. As his mouth took hers until neither of them could breathe. His woman. Perfection. And they still had several hours to go.
The sprawling mansion situated on twelve acres was located right off the water, a good way to escape if necessary. The entire estate was fenced with a high, wrought iron fence that rose twelve feet and surrounded the property on three sides, leaving only the water for an exit. A tennis court, pool and spa were only three of the many luxuries on the outside of the property.
Ethan Montgomery swiveled back and forth in the deep leather seat, sipping on his favorite Scotch as he video chatted with his father. The center screen in the huge control room focused on the distinguished, genteel-looking man he often called “sir.” The multitude of screens on either side showed various rooms and hallways as well as outside the mansion itself.
“Are you certain you’re safe, Ethan?” the man on the screen demanded.
Ethan indicated the multitude of screens surrounding him. “We’ve hired the best security there is. This house is a fortress. I can see every single room as well as the outside. The room is locked, and no one can get in. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Are you absolutely certain there is no trail of any kind back to the consortium?”
“No worries, sir,” he assured his father. “There is nothing to lead back to you or any of the others. Even Cheng is not associated with you. No one in the MSS has ever heard of you. The money was filtered through so many layers it would be impossible to trace.”
“You didn’t try to hide that you went to Palembang.” Calvin Montgomery’s voice was strictly neutral, letting Ethan know, as so many times in the past, that he was willing to withhold judgment until he knew all the details.
“It’s difficult to hide a plane. The plausible story is, I got an SOS from old friends and flew in to help them. They were acting weird and I didn’t want anything to do with them, so I didn’t stay long. Witnesses will bear that out. I made an ass of myself so I’ll be remembered. No one trying to sneak or fly under the radar does that. Standard story, I’m a party man and I don’t creep around in back alleys. I’ve found it best to let the authorities question me if they have to. I’ve done the act long enough that I’m totally believable.”
“Are your friends going to deliver? We need the virus, but even more, Ethan, we need that vaccine.”
“We dangled enough money for them to have fallen for the bait, sir. We kept our end of the deal the few years we had them in our pockets. They want the money. I told them no vaccine, no more money. They were upset and pointed out the cops weren’t on my trail.”
“I detest whiners. If they hadn’t screwed up in the first place, they’d still be working for Whitney and we wouldn’t have to recruit more of his people. They could have told him the virus doesn’t work on the woman and discarded it while they worked on finding a vaccine.” There was disgust in Calvin’s voice.
Ethan shrugged. “They got greedy and wanted us to pay them as well as for Whitney to give them more. They always thought they were so clever. They don’t matter.” Waving his hand dismissively, he looked around the room and stretched his legs out in front of him. “It’s why we run the world, not them. What have you done with dear stepmommy Candace?”
“The cheating little bitch? I let her see what happens when she decides to fuck some government official in another country. I showed her his entire family was wiped out. Everyone. Every single one. Not just him and his siblings, parents and grandparents. Everyone he ever grew up with and knew. She got to see the dead with the flies and maggots crawling all over them. He did too.”
Ethan’s father snorted. “What about him? Advisor to the president of Indonesia. What a joke. You’d think he could keep it in his pants, but he probably considered the whole affair a good joke on the rich American. We go for a meeting, and my guards tell me she’s all over him. Three days in and she’s fucking him.
“Before he died, I made certain he knew why Lupa Suku was destroyed, every man, woman and child. He was found dead this morning, and it looked like suicide. She’ll know it wasn’t because I made certain we had a video of him being hung. I wanted her to see him dying, choking to death slowly. I made certain she knew that every one of those deaths was on her head.”
“Sir, you know you have to be safe. She knows too much.”
Calvin’s expression turned crafty. “I’m enjoying her crude attempts to make it up to me. I like exacting revenge. There’s a meeting coming up between the five of us, the World Alliance, and I think
she’ll be perfect for entertainment. After, when she thinks she’s in the clear, I’ll strangle her.” He held up his hands. “I want the satisfaction.”
Ethan sat up alertly, shaking his head. “You know better. You can’t do that. It has to look like an accident. There can be nothing to tie this back to you. Have them kill her in front of you, but you can’t do it. You’re the one who taught me that. We have an alliance. When a favor is called in, we do it. Ask a favor. I’ll come to you and do it myself.” There was just enough alarm in his voice that it was evident he was serious.
Calvin sighed. “I suppose you’re right. And no, you stay there where I know you’re safe. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that you’re involved in this virus business. These GhostWalkers of Whitney’s are troublesome unless we can recruit them for ourselves. Violet came to me and explained everything going on. We convinced her we’d back her for the presidency when the time came in return for favors. That was why she took the files on the GhostWalkers to Cheng. It was part of the deal we made with her. There wasn’t much there. Whitney plays things close to his chest. We were just lucky the Williams boys worked for him.”
“I’m not too worried about the GhostWalkers. They seem like jokes to me. Tyler and Cameron sent pictures of some of these clowns. They look like steroid users. All bulked up, can barely move. Whatever Whitney is doing isn’t working. I doubt his supersoldiers could fight their way out of a paper bag.”
“Violet did say he was doing all sorts of genetic editing. Or splicing. Or something like that. I don’t care what the hell it is, but he’s mixing in animals and insects. Hell, someone says he has snake children out in the swamp.” There was utter contempt in Calvin’s voice. “Cheng has asked that the virus be used on them. He wants them wiped out. He blames them for the death of his brother.”
“That’s ridiculous. Sir.” Ethan rubbed his thumb across the bridge of his nose, whiskey glass in hand, as if reluctant to speak. “Cheng is descending into madness. I’ve seen these so-called GhostWalkers. Cheng has no evidence whatsoever that they killed his brother. Or that they took him prisoner.”
“It’s more than possible.”
“I doubt it,” Ethan argued. “I know the military supposedly has four teams, but what have they really done? Have you gotten any real statistics on them? No one talks. No one. We’ve offered a lot of money, but no one’s gotten footage of them, or given them up other than Violet, and she wanted something huge in return. What exactly did she give Cheng? She refused to give the files on them to more than Cheng, after we were the ones to offer to help her in the first place.”
“She was paranoid, and who wouldn’t be if you thought the GhostWalkers would come after you. Each of us in the consortium offered her money in exchange for information, but Cheng offered the best deal, so she went with him. She wasn’t aware of the World Alliance as a whole. We couldn’t afford to take that chance with our identities.”
“That just proves my point about Cheng. The agreement was for each of us to make an offer to her, without her knowledge of our alliance. Cheng refused to share information with us once he acquired it, even though everything is supposed to be shared. Why? He didn’t really have anything but wanted us to think so. I believe the military paid a lot of money for a bunch of misfits. Screw-ups, but no one wants to admit it. If they weren’t, would the Marines or the Air Force allow them to build fortresses on our soil? No one’s worried about them.”
Calvin shook his head. “Ethan, when our consortium can’t find information on those teams, it doesn’t mean they’re screw-ups—just the opposite, in fact. It means they’re the real deal and we need to be wary of them. We don’t want their attention ever turned our way. We work behind the scenes and run the world. We don’t want publicity. We don’t draw attention to ourselves. If the GhostWalkers are everything Cheng says, we could all be in trouble. We’ll keep a low profile and continue trying to penetrate their ranks. Sooner or later, it will happen, but we have to have patience.”
Ethan started to argue but then he sighed and nodded his head. “I hear you, sir. I’ll be more careful, and I’ll definitely see what Tyler and Cameron have to say about them. They were in Whitney’s employ for quite a few years.”
“Where are they now?”
“I gave them enough cash to get the identities they needed to get back into the States. I wanted to be home here in Mississippi for a week or so before they arrived. That way it looks as if I went to see them because they put out an SOS, found out what they were doing and got out of there. Just trying to cover my ass.”
“That’s good. Keep distancing yourself, but we do need them if we’re going to acquire a biological weapon.”
“If they want all the cash, not just a percentage, they’ll be here. I said I’d meet them in New Orleans when they let me know they’re there. New Orleans is a party town I frequent, which is great. No one will question my being there. The GhostWalkers Cheng wants dead have built their homes and a fortress in the swamp just outside of New Orleans.”
Calvin rubbed his chin and then sighed. “This is getting too complicated to just call the plays without talking to the others. They’re worried about letting this virus loose again without a vaccine. The word we received from our informant in Sumatra was the U.S. military suddenly cleared their labs of everything, all equipment and computers. They took every sample with them and exited in one day. A private jet was escorted by the military off the ground. Right before that, a U.S. helicopter was sent to pick up two people from the forest just miles inland from Lupa Suku. What does that tell you?”
Ethan let his breath out, excitement showing in his expression. “They have survivors of the virus. They can make a vaccine.”
“We need to find out everything there is to know about those two. If we can get your friends to make the virus, and we have one or both of the survivors, we’ve got a biological weapon and that’s a game changer. The virus isn’t worth anything without a vaccine,” Calvin said. “We’ve got the informant working to find out who the survivors are. They weren’t from the village. Everyone was dead. The idiot commander of the MSS filmed the dead, which was stupid, but good for me so I was able to use that footage to show Candace. The MSS surrounded the village as directed to shoot anyone trying to get out. No one did. They were all too sick. It was someone else altogether. We’ll find out who.” There was utter confidence in Calvin’s voice.
“Let me know what else I can do to help,” Ethan said.
“I don’t care what Cheng wants. Don’t let those three test the virus on the GhostWalkers, especially here in the States. That kind of thing will bring us nothing but grief. If Cheng wants them all dead, we’ll find another way. We can’t take the chance of unleashing something that virulent when we aren’t even vaccinated.”
Ethan nodded. “I’ll talk to them. If possible, I’ll bring them to the safe house we have in Biloxi. That can’t be traced back to us. We can set up a lab for them. As soon as we get the vaccine and virus, I’ll kill them. I’ll make certain nothing can be traced back to the consortium, or to us.”
“Ethan, this one is hitting very close to home. The Williams brothers were your friends in college. You were in Sumatra to see them. If the cops find them, or the virus is let loose, you’re going to be looked at very closely.”
There was genuine worry in Calvin’s voice. Ethan sent him a reassuring smile. “No one will find the bodies, sir. And even if they look at me, no matter how suspicious they are, they’ll never find anything to prove I was in any way responsible. I’m a party animal with too much money and a good lawyer. Trying to wreak havoc in the world would be far too boring for a man like me. I’ve carefully cultivated that image, and it is believable.”
“Just be careful. I want to consult with a couple of the others, they’re on standby. I’ll get back to you in ten minutes.”
“I’ll wait for you,” Ethan assured him.
His father disappeared from his view, the screen going black. Etha
n picked up his drink and wandered over to the large stone fireplace where flames crackled and danced low. The shadows the fire threw on the wall were comforting, and he walked around the room, stretching his legs. He glanced into the dark screen and saw a shadow moving directly behind him. Gasping, he spun around. A tall man stood there. A woman moved into sight, but on his ceiling, clinging with hands and feet. On the wall across from him was another man. It was as if the very shadows had come alive.
He put his glass down very slowly, his heart pounding. “GhostWalkers, I presume.” He glanced toward the door. It remained closed and locked from the inside. On the screens prominently displayed around the room, he could see his very expensive security guards patrolling the house and grounds. They were on alert, just as he’d instructed, and yet now there were three people inside with him.
His mouth was very dry, and he wished he’d gulped the rest of his Scotch before he put the glass down.
Ten minutes after speaking to his son, Calvin Montgomery, head of the five men making up the consortium that had been making major decisions globally for a great number of years, switched from speaking to the others and went back to his son.
“Ethan.” He could see the fireplace and the inside of the room. Shadows from the glowing fire danced on the walls. The control room appeared to be empty. He waited, thinking Ethan had gone to the bathroom or perhaps went to change his clothes for the night.
Five minutes later he glanced at his watch impatiently and then texted Ethan. There was no response. He looked closer, trying to see into the room. A weird shadow rocked ominously on the wall. He tried to see what it was. The heavy blob just swung back and forth, a little darker than the other shadows. The camera was a good one and he could manipulate it from his end. He panned the room and saw porn playing on one of the screens. It was very high quality for a porn film, and for a moment he was caught up in the faces of the two women servicing the man. He thought maybe he might track one of the stars down. The little blond.