Mind Game (10 page)

Nicolas wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her over a rotted tree trunk, setting her smoothly down without missing a stride. “These type of men torture for the thrill of it. They don’t need excuses.”

They rounded a slight bend and found the shack. It sat on the edge of a canal, just as Dahlia had said, one wall sagging ominously. Cracks showed through the wood in places. A burlap sack covered a window, but the crooked door was locked.

“I’m going to get Jesse back,” Dahlia said, staring at the lock.

It was a simple combination lock. As Nicolas reached for it, the center spun, first one way and then the other. Tumblers clicked into place, and the lock sprang open. It happened fast and smooth and Nicolas realized Dahlia had opened the lock without really thinking about doing it. She reached around him and took it from the latch and shoved the door open. “I’m not leaving him with those men.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to leave him behind.” He looked around the small room. A mattress stuffed with moss lay on the floor. “He’s like us.”

Dahlia looked at him sharply. “Whitney experimented on him?”

“He’s telepathic. I’ve never come across a natural telepath that strong. I’d say he was enhanced, and as far as I know, no one else had Whitney’s formula.” Nicolas took out this canteen and handed it to Dahlia. “We have plenty left. Drink as much as you need.” He looked around him. “It isn’t a five-star hotel, is it?”

Dahlia wrapped her arms around her waist, desperate to control the continual shivering. More than anything she wanted to be alone. She hadn’t spent so much time with another human being in as long as she remembered, not even Milly and Bernadette. She forced a small smile. “I’m going outside for a while, so if you need to do anything private like dry off, the place is yours.”

“There’s no need to keep watch yet. I’ll know if someone comes up on us. You’re the one needing to dry off. My pack is waterproof. At least it’s supposed to be.” He placed his rifle on the rickety table before dragging out a shirt. “Wear this and we can spread your clothes out to dry.”

Dahlia took the shirt with reluctance and watched him as he took apart the rifle. He dried each part of the weapon carefully and oiled it. She looked around the small room. There was no hope of privacy, so she moved to the corner as far from him as possible and turned her back on him.

“You have to be prepared for your friend to be dead, Dahlia.”

She threw her wet clothing aside. “His name is Jesse, Jesse Calhoun.” She glanced back to see if he was watching, but he kept his back to her. She stripped off the thin, pale blue bra and tossed it on the heap of soaked, muddy clothes and pulled the dry shirt on quickly. “It wouldn’t make any sense to kill him. If they were going to kill him, they would have done it back at the sanitarium. They’re using him as bait to draw me to him. What other possible motive could they have?” She peeled off her jeans and underwear, trying not to be embarrassed, trying to act as though it didn’t matter to her.

“I’d have to agree. They took him for insurance. They figured if they didn’t get you, they’d take him and you’d follow.”

“Which is exactly what I’m going to do.” She glared belligerently at his back. Not that he’d told her it was a stupid idea, but his neutral tone was becoming irritating. Of course she had to go to Jesse’s aid. Jesse would never leave her in the enemy’s hands.

Nicolas kept his head down and his eyes on his rifle as he wiped it with a cloth. He could feel her mounting agitation and guessed, from his experience as a GhostWalker, that her rising anxiety stemmed from being in such close and continual proximity to another human being. Added to her grief and shock, it was a dangerous combination. “I don’t see any other recourse,” he agreed. “Since they know we’re coming after them, and we can’t forget they’ve put an assassin on our trail, we’ll have to outsmart them.”

“I’m glad you understand.” She rinsed the mud from her clothes before spreading them out to dry. She turned to watch as Nicolas set his rifle aside and pulled a few more items from his pack. One was a pillowcase she recognized from her room.

Nicolas opened a small tin and pulled out a tablet, setting it on a box. In spite of needing to keep her own distance, Dahlia moved closer, her eyes alive with curiosity. “What is that?”

“I’ve got waterproof matches in here. Some things are a bit damp. We were in the water a long time.” He shielded the flare of the match with his hand and lit the tablet. “It’s called a Sterno tab and it should give us enough heat to stop you from shivering.”

Dahlia could already feel the heat flaring from the small object. “What else do you have in that bag? I don’t suppose you brought food with you.”

“Well, of course I did. Men don’t go anywhere without food.”

His eyes sparkled with brief amusement. Warmth washed over her. It was a small thing, but it had never happened before. Dahlia crossed her arms beneath her breasts and turned toward the warmth of the tablet, refusing to look at temptation. It didn’t last long.

Nicolas began to deposit weapons on the wooden box that served as a table. Two boot knives. Two knives that had been tucked into a harness lying flat against his ribs. Another knife produced from a sheath between his shoulder blades. A nine mm Beretta and a belt filled with ammunition. She stared at it all. “Good grief. You certainly believe in having an edge.”

“A person can never have too many weapons.”

She studied him, the fluid way he moved, his watchful eyes. Everything about him screamed lethal. “You are a weapon.”

He gave a small, fleeing grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “There you go. It’s called being prepared.”

She was all too aware of him stripping off his wet clothes and tossing them aside. The man had absolutely no modesty, and her gaze kept straying to him in spite of her resolve. His size dwarfed the room, and her. He was tall with wide shoulders and obvious muscles. He turned slightly and she caught sight of the nasty wound on his side, up high, near his heart.

“You’re hurt.”

He shrugged. “A few weeks ago. It’s almost healed.” He dragged the first aid kit from his pack.

The wound didn’t look healed or several weeks old to her. It looked raw and painful. “You should have told me.” His black eyes moved over her face. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking but something in his gaze disturbed her.

“What could you have done about it?”

“I would have tried harder to keep from passing out.”

She watched him apply a powder and ointment before he pressed a large pad over the area.

“Can you do that?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. I pushed my limit this time, but maybe with more incentive I could have forced myself to keep going.” Even now her arms and legs ached from the long swim. She rubbed her hands over her biceps. “At least you wouldn’t have had to drag me along with your pack and rifle.”

“You don’t weigh enough to notice.”

She turned away from him, back to the warmth of the tablet. She knew she was small. Even Jesse teased her about needing to grow. It was a sore subject, but she tried never to show it bothered her.

“Here’s some face wipes. Instant cleanup and then we can eat.”

Dahlia turned just as he tossed the small box of wipes to her. She snagged them out of the air and knew immediately he was testing her reflexes. “I’m fine, Nicolas. I passed out from the overload of energy, not because I wasn’t strong enough to continue. It happens a lot. I stay away from situations that can cause it. Really, you don’t have to worry, I’m perfectly fine now. As a matter of fact, because I can utilize most energy, I last longer at physical things than most people.”

He studied her averted face as he pulled on a much drier pair of jeans. She didn’t look fine. She looked pale and sad. He had no idea how to comfort her. Women weren’t his forte. She was doing a lousy job wiping off the streaks of mud. He took the wipe from her hand and awkwardly did it for her.

Dahlia’s survival instincts shrieked at her to pull away, but she stood her ground. Nicolas was never awkward, not in any situation she’d seen him in. Yet she could feel how uncomfortable he was and recognized that he was trying to soothe her.

“Whitney’s dead. He was murdered trying to protect the men in my unit after he experimented on us. After his death, several tapes were found. You were in them, that’s what led us to you. In all the tapes of you learning martial arts you attacked or defended ahead of your partner. You felt the energy coming at you before they moved, didn’t you?” He brushed more mud from her face, his touch so gentle she could barely feel it, yet electricity crackled in the air between them.

There was admiration in his voice and respect. Dahlia tried not to show it affected her, but her heart did its funny little flip at the unexpected comment. She nodded. “That’s pretty much how it works. Everything gives off energy, including emotion. So when I’m practicing with someone, I can feel the force of the attack before it actually reaches me. And I can take that same energy and use it myself.”

“That’s pretty incredible, even for a GhostWalker. But you aren’t telepathic?”

“Not strong. I can’t ordinarily initiate, even with Jesse, and he’s a very strong telepath. You warned me, didn’t you? I heard your voice warning me off. You must be a very strong telepath as well.” She glanced at him, at the shadows in his eyes. “Why do you call yourselves GhostWalkers?” She didn’t object to the title, in fact, there was something very comforting in knowing others were like her. That she wasn’t entirely alone, but part of a group, even if she didn’t know them.

“We call ourselves GhostWalkers because we were put in cages and no longer considered human, or alive. And we knew we could escape into the shadows, into the night, and the night would belong to us.” He tilted her face up for his inspection, two fingers beneath her chin. “There, I think I’ve got it all.” His hand slipped away, taking his warmth with him. She watched him scrub the mud from his own face.

“Who are
we
?”

“Whitney thought his experiment failed because all of you from the orphanage were children and you weren’t old enough or disciplined enough to cope with the effects of what he’d done. He waited a few years, believed he refined the process, and drew from a military pool, thinking highly trained and disciplined men would fare better.”

“I take it they didn’t.” She took the wipe from his hand and gestured until he bent down. Dahlia wiped the streaks of mud from his face.

Nicolas felt the breath leave his body. She wasn’t touching him, not with her fingers, not skin to skin, but it felt as if she were. His lungs burned for air, or maybe his body burned for something else. Something far more intimate. He didn’t dare move or breathe in case she stopped. Or didn’t stop. He was uncertain which would be safer. His reaction was so unexpected, so foreign to his nature, he stilled beneath her hand, a wild animal gathering itself for a strike. He could feel himself coiling, waiting. The strange part was, he had no idea what he was waiting for.

For a moment the room crackled with tension, with arcing electricity. It jumped from her skin to his and back again. “Stop it.” She said it in a low voice.

His black gaze collided with hers. Air rushed into his body and took her scent with it. He should have smelled the swamp, but instead he smelled woman.
Dahlia
. He would always know when she walked into the room. He would always know whenever she was near. It had to be a chemistry thing. “I didn’t realize I was the one doing it. I thought it was you.”

“It’s definitely you.” She handed him the dirty wipe and stepped back, putting space between them.

She was giving them both the opportunity to drop the subject. She wanted to let it alone. Nicolas wasn’t so certain he wanted the same thing. Her moving away from him didn’t stop the flood of awareness. He rubbed his hand over his arm. She was there, under his skin, and he had no idea how she got there.

“Do you really have food in that pack?” Dahlia asked.

Nicolas let the heat in his gaze burn over her face. She stood her ground, but he felt her tense. He let the air escape his lungs. Dahlia was not prepared to accept any part of him. He relaxed and smiled at her. A quick, deliberate, male grin that said all kinds of things and yet said nothing. “And coffee or cocoa.”

“I think you’re a magician.” Dahlia eased away from him even farther, moving around the makeshift table to put the rickety piece of furniture between them as if that would stop the strange awareness that was growing with every moment. Her heart was beating loudly, a hard, steady rhythm that told her she was in trouble.

What happened between them? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know, but she wanted it to go away. Dahlia didn’t trust anyone enough to share such a moment of total awareness. And there had been something proprietary in the energy rolling off of him. An element that was both male and very confident. Very determined. Extremely sexual. She glanced at him, then away. He was a hunter, a man who took months to single-mindedly follow a target and never missed. Dahlia shivered. She didn’t want him to focus on her.

“I think cocoa would be perfect. A hot cup so I can sleep.” She doubted she could do so even with the warm drink. She couldn’t remember ever sleeping with someone in the same room with her. The idea made her feel slightly ill.

Nicolas pulled out the MRE, a sealed bag of prepared food the military provided for troops in the field. “There’s plenty of food, Dahlia.”

“Is it edible?”

“I eat it all the time.”

A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “That isn’t saying much. You probably would eat lizards and snakes.”

“They can be quite tasty, cooked the right way. I often ate snake with my grandfather on the reservation where I grew up.”

He didn’t look at her, but kept busy preparing their meal. Dahlia had a better sense of him now. The conversation seemed casual enough, yet something in his voice told her he was imparting information he rarely shared with anyone. He was wearing only a pair of jeans. His bare chest was bronzed and heavily muscled. She couldn’t help her gaze straying occasionally in his direction.