Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

“The moment I actually saw you, my first thought was, ‘She’s the one you’ve been waiting for. The one you didn’t think existed.’ I don’t know why that thought slipped into my mind, but it did. There were no pheromones involved, and it wasn’t just the genetic pairing. I’d been in your garden and saw and felt the security network you set up, and I was in awe of your capabilities.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “You didn’t have a team around you. You’d done it yourself. I knew you had. You were a force to be reckoned with.”

There was open admiration in his voice. He couldn’t fake that. A knot the size of her fist formed in her stomach, low and aching, responding to the blatant honesty in him. The way he made himself vulnerable. He might be a dominant male with aggressive, violent tendencies when it came to battle, but there was also something intrinsically honest, even noble about him. He possessed a core of decency and honor that all of Whitney’s scheming and experiments hadn’t tarnished. She couldn’t help but react to that in him.

“Thank you, Jonas.” She didn’t know what else to say. The response seemed inadequate since he was laying himself out there, and she had retreated so far and wasn’t willing to inch back.

“You were explaining how the mycelium network works. I think I understand now. All along, I’ve had that advantage and I didn’t even know it. How are you able to tap into it whenever you want to?”

Again, he deliberately took the spotlight off the personal. He had done that for her more than once, and Camellia was grateful.

She pushed her hair behind her shoulder, trying not to look too closely at Jonas’s golden, very focused eyes. “I’d read everything I could about mycelium prior to discovering I was connected to it. Fortunately, I’m good at retaining what I read. So once I realized what was happening, I would visualize this huge system, like the Internet but connected to my own body, and I’d send messages along my pathways to it, trying to find how and where we were actually connected. I knew there had to be a way to strengthen the link between us. I’d already made a point of practicing every skill I had, so I just began to practice strengthening that one as well.”

Jonas nodded, his gaze never leaving her face. “That’s the kind of thing I do. Sometimes, though, strengthening particular skills turns out to be a mistake. More than once, I’ve honed a particular talent only to realize it amplifies a need for violence, which is the last thing I want.”

Camellia understood. He wasn’t certain what having the connection to the mycelium would do to him. She knew why he would be wary of any new talent that cropped up. She had studied Whitney and his cruelties up close.

“Are you going to tell me the real reason you didn’t go down to either of the compounds and let the women know you were up here, Camellia?” Jonas asked softly. “Especially Marigold. You had to know she was there once you stumbled on the homes. She was your friend. You don’t have to tell me, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense that you didn’t want anything to do with the teams. You could have visited with the women and then walked away. No one could have held you if you didn’t want to be held. You’re too good at what you do not to have studied both places for their security. You didn’t just have a look and then make a run for it. That’s not your personality at all.” He looked around the garden. “You plan out every move. Your backup plan has backup plans.”

Jonas had slipped that question in there when she was feeling relaxed with him. Now the tension coiled in her like a tight spring. She moistened her lips. He was too much like her, even though she’d cut herself off from him. He thought the way she did. What difference did it make if he said something to the others? She didn’t think he would. Marigold wasn’t married to a member of his team. Even if she had been, Jonas struck her as a man who kept things to himself unless he thought he needed to provide details for security.

Camellia sighed, stood up and half turned away from him, pacing across the porch toward the very edge so her face was nearly completely hidden from him. “It was a long time ago, or it seems like it now. We planned our escape as best we could, but we knew the chances of getting free of Whitney’s compound were slim. He’d put us in his breeding program, and we were fighting off his chosen supersoldiers, the ones he thought had great genetics. We all wanted out of there. Whitney had gone to another base, and one of our teams of soldiers was assigned to protect Senator Freeman and his wife, Violet, from a possible assassination attempt.”