Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

She fell silent again, listening to the night, letting the insects and night creatures alert her to intruders. She inhaled, using all her senses in an effort to detect an enemy. Rubin did the same. It was automatic for him. For Diego. Evidently, it was for Jonquille as well.

“Doesn’t that make you just a little bit suspicious? I didn’t think about it at the time. I didn’t think about your voice getting under my skin. Or the fact that the one time I got close to you, I could actually pick your scent distinctly out of the group of the men you were with and yet I’d never smelled your scent before. Those are red flags, Rubin. Huge red flags.”

A memory surfaced. A brief moment when he was surrounded, so many others talking to him at once, pressing close, all eager to make their points with him. A fragrance drifted to him out of nowhere—wild coral honeysuckle, so faint as to almost not be there, mixed with daffodils. He remembered it was so distracting his head had come up alertly and he had looked toward the side exit door, but there seemed to be a sea of faces looking at him, and then the elusive scent was gone.

He knew they were red flags. He didn’t want to see them because he didn’t want to miss out on a partner. He indicated it was safe to go back to the cabin. “No one is around. Let’s go back inside. We can hash this out where it’s warmer.”

“I just think it’s better if I leave.”

She crossed into the open, moving cautiously. She stayed a distance from him, irritating him. Her hair was light, and she had nothing covering it. He had dark hair and was much harder to spot. Anger swept through him, and with it, realization. She was deliberating presenting a target, the way Diego would in order to protect him.

Jonquille wanted to leave. She was trying to find a way to maneuver them into having her leave when it would actually be safer for her to stay with them. If he didn’t believe she was the bait for Whitney’s team to recover him, or for a terrorist cell or a foreign government, then what would be her motivation? Why was Jonquille really there? Had she honestly come in order to ask him to help her?

She had almost reached the back door of the cabin when she stumbled. It was the last thing he’d expected. She crouched down to fix her shoelace as if it had come untied, allowing him to get ahead of her. Rubin had never had much of a temper. He was easygoing, always had been, but the way his team, and especially his brother, insisted on protecting him because they considered his talent so valuable annoyed him. Now she was doing it. He didn’t believe for one moment anyone was in the cabin. He would know. He would feel it. She was protecting his back. He wasn’t a swearing man, but it was enough to make him want to become one. His team. His brother. The woman that should be his.

He’d been upset for weeks. Months. His entire team had been watching him closely, but his brother especially. Rubin had announced abruptly that he needed to go to the mountains and see patients there. It wasn’t exactly time yet, but he had to get away.

They weren’t scheduled to come to the mountains for another month. Diego and Rubin had decided to go early to hunt and fish. To work on the property. Rubin had needed alone time before he saw to the people he would normally check on. They weren’t two weeks early. They were four weeks early because Rubin thought he was going out of his mind.

4

Rubin strode into the cabin, his senses automatically flaring out to ensure for himself they were alone. He knew they were. He had the sinking feeling he knew why Jonquille had come to the cabin and what she planned to do there. It wasn’t happening.

Rubin? Diego was cautious.

Diego had to feel that slow burn building to a raging fire. Rubin rarely got angry. He wasn’t that kind of man, but when it did happen, as was often the case with quiet men, he was a volcano, capable of taking down a house and everything else in the vicinity when his temper did erupt.

I’ve had it. Just get in here.

Diego didn’t argue or respond. His brother knew him too well. Rubin removed his boots and set them aside in the mudroom. Beside him, Jonquille cast little anxious glances at him while she did the same. Rubin didn’t even try to stop the dark, smothering tension from pervading the room. It moved like an ominous cloud, spreading throughout the open rooms, filling every corner from floor to ceiling.