Call it what it is, handsome. It’s dictatorship. I get that from Whitney and pay him the least amount of attention possible. I’m not going to rely on someone else when I have perfectly good judgment.
It didn’t show good judgment to kiss me when I’m infected with a hemorrhagic virus.
Her amusement slipped into his mind and wrapped around his heart. Occasionally I have lapses, and you have to admit, you’re pretty irresistible.
He had an urgent desire to kiss her again. This kiss wouldn’t be so damned sweet either. He held himself in check.
Whitney must love having you. You’ve got to be an enormous asset to him.
The humor faded from her mind. There’s no pleasing Whitney, and after a while I gave up trying. I truly don’t care that he thinks I’m flawed. I sometimes get so focused that I can’t see or hear what’s going on around me. That drives him insane because no soldier can survive that way.
Yet he sends you out alone on one of the most dangerous assignments imaginable.
She gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. I’m good at what I do, and I like the freedom of working alone. Whitney treated Zara the worst. I hope whoever she ends up with loves her like crazy.
He does. Gino can’t breathe without that woman. He looks at her like the sun rises with her. He hadn’t understood that look until he was in Shylah’s mind. He liked just looking at her. She had the kind of face that lit up when she was happy or excited. Her frown was the cutest thing he’d ever seen. And those freckles … He could spend a lifetime kissing every one of them.
Stop, crazy man.
The laughter in her voice teased at every one of his senses.
I’m so glad she’s found someone like that, she added. Tell me about him. Will he take care of her? Will he see how special she is? She needs a family, Draden. She’s so brilliant, but she wasn’t cut out for this way of life. Whitney despised her for that, even though she kept him well ahead of everyone else. She’s the best industrial spy ever created.
Gino watches over her and is quite willing to put himself on the line for her, against anyone. She was sent to China and Cheng caught her and tortured her. She never broke. Never gave up the GhostWalkers. There was admiration in his voice because it was impossible not to admire Zara. Gino’s building her a research center along with the house they both want. He plans to travel with her if she speaks anywhere. Otherwise, she’ll be staying home, protected by Gino and our team.
He understands her?
I believe he does. She looks to him often in uncomfortable situations and he immediately takes the weight off her shoulders. He’s that kind of man, and I think it’s what she needs and wants.
Shylah smiled, lifting the binoculars to her eyes. And Bellisia?
That girl is a different kettle of fish. He smirked at his own joke and she made a small sound in his mind, letting him know she got it. Bellisia had toxin from the blue-ringed octopus in her, and she was fast in the water and could stay under for very long periods of time. She’s a warrior woman like Trap’s wife, Cayenne. She’s married to Ezekiel, one of my teammates. He’s crazy about her. More than once she’s been an asset to us.
Cayenne?
He knew what she was doing, delaying the inevitable of going inside. Getting the information about her friends and the other women because she believed they were going to die. Not entering the hut gave them a few more minutes to believe there was hope that they could find a therapy that would work against the hemorrhagic virus.
Cayenne was one of Whitney’s mess-ups. At least one of his people who oversaw the experiments decided she was a mess-up, and he scheduled her for termination. She’s very spiderish. She can weave webs and kill with a bite.
That gave him pause. He waited, but Shylah didn’t volunteer any information. It occurred to him that Cayenne had been considered a failed experiment, yet Shylah had been given similar traits. Cayenne was developed in a dish. The dose of spider was fairly hefty. Can you weave a web if you want to do it?
No one has ever asked me that, besides Whitney. I told him no. He was using silk to try to build armor for his supersoldiers. Do you know how much silk that is?
Cayenne said they forcibly removed it from her at times.
If he was going to terminate Cayenne, who clearly is an asset to you and was to him, why would he keep me?
I don’t think Whitney gave the termination order. I think Cayenne was his protégé’s experiment and she scared the crap out of the man. He’s dead, by the way. Whitney didn’t shed any tears. He was going to kill three little girls and Wyatt’s wife, Pepper, as well. The three children, not even two years old, are Wyatt and Pepper’s girls. Whitney wasn’t too happy with his protégé for that order either.
Poor little babies. I’m glad they’re safe now.
He wasn’t so certain, not with Whitney’s three rogue virologists on the loose. You didn’t answer the question. You told Whitney no, but you didn’t tell me one way or the other if you can spin a web.
Yes. I can spin silk.
That’s awesome. He poured admiration into his voice. She was sensitive about the ability to make a web because she thought it made her appear less than human. He thought that skill made her even more lethal, and she was kick-ass already.
I miss them. I hope we do have satellite capability, so I can at least say good-bye to Bellisia and Zara and see for myself that they’re happy and safe.
Why, Shylah? She’d condemned herself to death. Not just any death—she’d seen what hemorrhagic viruses did to the human body. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to kiss her. Mostly, he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her, comfort her, although at that precise moment, he might need more comforting than she did. Why did you kiss me, practically guaranteeing that you won’t get out of this?
I feel the same way about you that you do me, Draden. Maybe in another time or place, I wouldn’t admit that to you, but now it seems rather silly to pretend I don’t feel that same attraction. No way would you let me die alone. I see that in your mind. You weren’t pushing so hard to save yourself, but to save me. That resolve you have, that driving need to save me, to see me through this, I have that same feeling for you.
God. She was so courageous. There was no beating around the bush with her, she just came out and gave him her truth. He glanced down at her again. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t taken her eyes from the hut. She lay perfectly still without moving a muscle. That was the cat in her. She could probably keep it up for hours.
I’m telling you, woman, you’re everything I could ever want. Thank you. Doing this together is easier. We can look out for symptoms and know the other is willing to provide the bullet if it gets too bad. He hoped it was him. He didn’t want her to have to do him and then herself. We’re going to find a way. I want to get in there and see if I can contact Trap and Wyatt. They may be able to help.
It looks clear. I don’t see tracks and I can’t smell anything to indicate someone’s here.
She pushed off the ground and Draden reached down to help her up. Is it safe to talk?
She didn’t want to be in his head when they entered the hut. He
couldn’t blame her. They both had to face their greatest fears. Once inside, they would know if they had any kind of a chance to defeat the virus. He held out his hand to her. She hesitated, just for a moment, and then her chin went up and she sent him a brief, humorless smile and held out hers.
“Yeah, sweetheart, we can talk.”
Draden closed his fingers around her much smaller hand. She moved gracefully, all fluid like a cat flowing across the ground. They didn’t bother to hide. Neither of their warning systems had gone off and both were confident that they were alone there in the forest.
He had an unfamiliar … no, not just unfamiliar—completely alien desire to protect her. He wanted to wrap her up and keep her so close to him that she was wearing his skin. He needed to keep her safe and his reluctance to enter the hut was centered around the fact that he didn’t want anything happening to her—certainly not for her to die of a horrific virus. He was grateful she’d been the one to ask for privacy. He didn’t want her to think he didn’t believe she was his full partner and could handle what had happened to them every bit as well as he could. He might very well lose his mind when the symptoms began to show up. It was early yet and being infected didn’t seem real.
They strolled through the clearing as if they were lovers walking through a park. He was aware of everything. The birds singing. The sound of cicadas droning on and on. Rodents scurrying in the vegetation. The wind whispering through the trees. The way the scent of her was so delicate, almost elusive. It could have been that he’d spent the happiest days of his youth in the nursery, after his mother died, far from everyone, breathing in the perfume of peonies, and Shylah’s natural fragrance reminded him of the flowers he associated with that time.
He’d had a shit life, and not of his own making, in the beginning. He’d learned rage at such a young age, and how to push everyone away from him. He didn’t trust, and he really hadn’t learned—nor had he wanted to until he’d found the GhostWalkers. He’d been betrayed by just about everyone he’d ever known, including Dr. Whitney. He’d been lucky enough to find a home with Team Four of the GhostWalkers in the Pararescue Unit. In his life, those men had been the first he’d ever given his allegiance to, and that had been hard-won.