Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

She studied Rubin. He didn’t give much away on his very handsome face. He looked a little sad. A little regretful. Those dark eyes of his didn’t blink, reminding her even more of a predator and less of a man. She was susceptible to him in many ways. His voice. His looks. His brain. She had to be careful not to let her guard down. He wasn’t the gentle man he appeared to be. It was important to always remember that. He’d all but warned her.

The bottom line was, he wasn’t going to help her. She heard it in his voice. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe there was no way to help her. She’d run out of options. All that work tracking him down for nothing. She’d known. That really wasn’t why she was here, but when she saw him, she’d suddenly had hope. She wasn’t going to cry. She’d given too many tears to Whitney’s messed-up experiments already. She didn’t have any left to give.

She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “All right, then. I’m sorry I invaded your space. It was just an idea. My last one, actually, but you sounded promising.” She looked around the cabin. “This has been one of the nicer places I’ve stayed.”

Rubin frowned. “You’re moving on just a little too fast.”

He was reading her body language and everything said she was getting ready to run. She couldn’t help it. Maybe she should have tried to hide her intentions better. She knew he’d tried to be very careful of every word he said, but it hadn’t mattered. She was intelligent and she knew what he meant. At least he hadn’t tried to lie to her. That wouldn’t have worked either.

“I’m not certain what you mean.” She tried to sound neutral, but knew it was impossible to keep her body language from screaming that she wanted out of there.

“We might not be able to undo everything Whitney did as far as enhancements go, but between the three of us, we should be able to figure out ways to ease the situation.”

She shook her head. “I can’t stay in one place too long. I picked up a tail a few months back, after that last convention where you gave a talk on the uses of managing lightning strikes.”

She pulled the edge of her sweater out of her mouth, suddenly aware of what she was doing. It was a bad habit and one she thought she’d overcome a long time ago. “I spent too much time at those conferences trying to learn everything I could. In doing so, I probably attracted too much notice. I was careful not to ask questions or call attention to myself, but …” She trailed off.

She’s ready to run, Diego. Everything in her is in a hurry to leave. I can feel her anxiety. I’m just as anxious for her to stay. If we’re really paired together, why isn’t she fighting to find reasons to stay? Would Whitney have paired only me? Not her? I heard that on occasion he will pair the woman with a man but not the man. Would he do the opposite?

Her looks alone would have garnered attention. Rubin found himself really studying her. There was something ethereal about her. Her skin. Her hair. Even her eyes. She almost glowed from the inside out. Her hair was just that little bit too blond. Her eyes weren’t just blue, they were cornflower blue with interesting silver irises now that he had the opportunity to look closer. Outer silver rings as well as inner silver. She would definitely draw attention, especially if she attended more than one conference. It wouldn’t matter if she stayed quiet or if she tried to stay in a corner somewhere, her energy was too strong, drawing others toward her like a magnet.

That was essentially what she was—a magnet for electrical charges. Human beings reacted to electric fields, even to sensing the fields, much like animals did. Living cells moved along electric fields when healing wounds. The human body had at least one sensor mechanism for detecting an electrical field and was certain to have many more.

I don’t know. She’s skittish, that’s for certain, but she’s too cool with the two of us as her enemies, Rubin. She has to be very dangerous to be so confident in herself.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Jonquille snapped, and dropped both feet to the floor. She wanted to run away and hide from that inspection. She’d spent her childhood under a microscope.

Rubin, tall and good-looking on the podium, delivering a speech that made the most sense of anything she’d heard, had given her hope. She’d actually, for the first time in her life, been attracted to a man. She put it down to what she considered his genius and giving her a real sense of hope. Being in the small room with him gave her claustrophobia. She hadn’t spent time with others in a very long time. She’d had fantasies about this man, and it was a rude awakening to have him look at her as if she were a science experiment—the way Whitney had.