Predatory Game (GhostWalkers 6)

Saber avoided Jess's outstretched arm and pushed past Logan to gain entrance to her room. Horrified, she stared around her. Bile rose, but she pushed it down. To have someone invade her room was such a violation, but to do this...the room stank as if the occupants had had an orgy. Her clothes were slashed to ribbons and every scrap of underwear was thrown around the room, most containing sickening white blobs. The bed had been neatly made, but one of the cleaners had pulled back the covers to find more underwear coated in semen.

Saber pressed her hand to her mouth, shocked to realize she was trembling. She could feel the sympathy in the room, and was grateful the men didn't look at her. She turned abruptly and stalked out.

"Logan," Jess began.

"We're on it. He left enough DNA here to identify an army. This is a sick bastard, Jess, and she's not safe. If this one is connected in any way to Whitney, he's gone rogue at this point. Whitney would never condone this. He's too...scientific. This would be abhorrent to him."

"Funny where people draw their lines. Sometimes I wonder what the world is coming to." He paused and looked around at the cleaning crew. "I want this room stripped of anything he may have touched. Separate her fingerprints so nothing goes out but his. I don't want a flag raised on some remote computer Whitney might be monitoring."

Logan nodded toward the crew and walked down the hall beside Jess. "Whitney knows she's here, Jess. I can smell him. She's in trouble."

"Yeah. I got that."

"And she's gearing up to run. He's too close to her this time, he'll nab her."

"I'm hearing a note in your voice I don't like, so don't beat around the bush, spit it out."

"Unless he planted her."

Jess thrust on the wheels and took himself into the lift. Logan crammed his body in as well. The doors slid shut and Jess rubbed his temples. "He didn't plant her."

"Then how did she manage to find you? You're the one GhostWalker conducting an investigation into our chain of command. Tell me how she ended up on your doorstep. When you couldn't find a background on her I told you she was another Chaleen. They're coming after you because you're a good guy, and that makes you vulnerable. You think the best of people, especially women."

"I didn't think at all around Chaleen, at least not with my brain. They studied me and sent someone programmed to be whatever I wanted. You saw it because you weren't sleeping with her." The doors opened and Jess waited for Logan to step out before he shot out of the small space in a fit of temper. "It was stupid, I'll admit that, but I caught on soon enough."

"She broke your heart."

"She didn't have my heart. She smashed my ego, but my heart was never touched. Saber, on the other hand, definitely could rip the thing right out of my body, so she damned well better not be Whitney's spy."

"Could you kill her?" Logan's voice was low, mild even, but his gaze was cool and steady. "If you had to, to defend yourself, could you kill her?"

Jess remained silent.

"For a moment there, in the club, when she realized she was surrounded by your team, I saw her look at you, Jess. She thought about taking you out right then and there."

Jess swallowed his first response--denial. Hell yeah, she'd thought about it. He wasn't certain how she thought she might get away with it, but she'd thought about it. "I know she did," he admitted. "And she had every right to. Because, if she betrayed me, I'd want to strangle her with my own two hands."

A heartbeat went by. A second one. Logan sighed. "You didn't answer me, Jess. Wanting isn't the same thing. I'm not going to let her kill you. If she makes a wrong move..."

Jess shook his head. "I'm not suicidal, Logan. I never have been. I lost my legs, not my mind. I'm better off than most, everything else is in working order. And I'm making some progress with the other thing, enough to think there's hope. But if she turns out to be Whitney's, I don't know if I'd know how to face that, or if I could let you take her out. I just don't know. And it's fucked up to be talking about this like she's not going through enough as it is."

Logan shrugged and walked away, leaving Jess wanting to hit something. In the end, Jess went to find Saber. She wasn't in the kitchen or his bedroom. He knew she wouldn't be out in the open. She didn't feel safe. In his home--in her own home--she didn't feel safe. He wanted to yell at someone, hit something. Preferably Logan. Because Logan was right and he was wrong. And damn it all, that sucked.

He knocked on the bathroom door. "Come out of there. I want to take another look at that bruise on your face."

There was a small silence. "I'm fine, Jesse," she finally answered. "I just need a minute alone."

"You've had your minute."

She pushed the door open and glared at him. "I'm the victim here, dragon king, so get over being angry."

"I'm angry because a GhostWalker found me in my own home, lived here, and I didn't even suspect for months. I usually spot a GhostWalker within seconds of meeting one. Sometimes even before."

"Because of the energy."

"Exactly. There's a feel to it."

"Well. Then I get to be angry too, because I didn't know about you. How'd you figure it out?"

"You slipped up and spoke telepathically."

She put her hands on her hips. "I did not. I don't make mistakes like that." She'd been making mistakes ever since she'd met Jess. She'd never felt such a physical attraction to a man, and then, as time went by, such an emotional attachment. Jess was easy to love. And God help her, she was in love with him.

"You did."

She bit at her lower lip, tapping her foot with her restless energy. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"For the same reason you didn't say anything."

"All right. I can accept that," Saber conceded.

Jess sighed. "You know this can't be coincidence that you're here, Saber."

She closed her eyes briefly. She'd known the conversation was going to circle back to Whitney. "How many lives do you suppose Whitney has ruined in his quest for the perfect soldier?"

"Too many. So you know this wasn't some mystic coincidence," Jess said. "He must have known you take announcing jobs at small, local radio stations." His throat squeezed tight and his chest hurt as he realized the full implications of where he was going with it. And he had to be right. "He orchestrated that accident. He killed three of my workers to create an opening for you."

"Patsy's fiance." Saber sank down onto the floor and stared up at him in dismay. "He killed Patsy's fiance in order to put us in the same place at the same time. How could he know you would take me in?"