Street Game (41 page)

Again Gideon and Javier exchanged a long look. Mack almost never mentioned his psychic abilities. His was a rare talent. Mack always played things close to his chest and when he’d filled out the forms, he had never revealed his ability to manipulate electrical energy. They’d heard the rumor that one of the GhostWalkers’ wives from Team Two could do the same, but they’d never met her and the rumor wasn’t confirmed. Mack’s talent made him invaluable to the team and the fact that no one, not even Whitney, knew he had the ability, made him the perfect assassin.

Getting up close to Jefferson was another matter. He’d proved to be very cautious. Years with the agency and working with Whitney had made him wary of everyone. He changed his route at a moment’s notice. Few knew his schedule ahead of time. It was impossible to know which car he would be using. When a car was summoned, it was gone over meticulously for bombs. He had to be taken in his home.

Mack watched Jefferson through the bulletproof glass of his study. “He’s waiting for a woman.”

Gideon turned his head back toward the house, narrowing his eyes. Jefferson used a remote to light a fire in his fireplace. He poured two drinks from a Waterford decanter on the table beside the sofa. He pointed the remote again and music flooded the room.

“Very high-class seduction scene,” Javier said. “Where’s the caviar?”

“He’s setting the scene, all right,” Mack said, “but I don’t believe he’s in love with this woman. Look at him. He’s setting a seduction scene, but he’s after something else besides sex.”

“He’s got something in his hand,” Gideon said. “Can you make it out, Mack?”

Mack watched the man put the object in a small, decorative box. Jefferson moved the box twice and then shook his head and took it back out again. He crossed to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase, removed a book, opened it, and thrust the small object into the hollowed-out pages.

“It’s got to be a recorder,” Gideon said.

“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,” Javier observed. “No guards. He doesn’t believe anyone would dare retaliate against him. He has to know Sergeant Major’s gone off the grid.”

Mack’s smile held no humor. “Men like Jefferson come to believe they’re above the law. He makes his own laws.” He looked at Javier. “There has to be a code of honor. We make the same kinds of decisions he makes. We have to make absolutely certain we’re doing it for the right reasons. This can’t be about power or personal gain, or we’re just like him.”

“I get what you’re saying, Top,” Javier said.

“Or the rush, Javier,” Mack counseled.

“It’s never been about the rush, Mack,” Javier said. “It’s about running from myself.”

Their eyes met—held complete understanding.

“Car’s coming up the drive,” Gideon reported.

The Escalade had tinted windows. It slid noiselessly up the drive and a woman got out. She was tall and blond, her hair up in a sophisticated twist that made her look especially elegant. She wore a pencil-thin skirt and a silk blouse with matching jacket that should have made her look all business, but she managed to look sexy instead. Diamonds clung to her ears and a single teardrop necklace glittered at her throat.

No one move. No communication.
Mack sent the warning, careful to keep his energy low, to keep it from spilling out into the open where the woman might have a chance to feel it.
Get her picture and send it to Jaimie for positive ID.

The woman stepped away from the car and looked carefully around, her gaze quartering the area, and then turned her attention to the house. She moved with unhurried, fluid steps up the walkway to the door. Jefferson greeted her before she could ring the doorbell. He waved her inside and only then did Mack let out his breath.

“She looks familiar,” Gideon said. “Like I’ve seen her before, but I’ve never really met a female GhostWalker other than Jaimie.”

“And Rhianna,” Javier supplied. He glanced down at his phone. “Jaimie’s on it, boss.”

“Shit,” Mack said. “That’s Senator Ed Freeman’s wife, Violet. I remember seeing her picture in the news right after her husband was shot. I forget the story. How the hell did a GhostWalker hook up with a senator?”

“And what the hell is she doing here?” Javier asked.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll assassinate him for us,” Gideon said.

Mack directed their attention to the couple in the house. Violet leaned in to brush a barely there kiss along Jefferson’s cheek. “If Jefferson thought he was going to seduce, he’s wrong. She’s deliberately tempting him, but that kiss was a definite signal to back off.”

“Maybe she’s wired too,” Javier ventured. “It would be pretty funny if they were bugging each other.”

“I don’t doubt for a minute she’s wired,” Mack said. “She’s exuding confidence and if Jefferson has a brain in his head, he’ll be very, very careful.”

“Kind of like entertaining a cobra in your home,” Javier said and smirked. He knew he looked like the boy next door. “Glad she’s one of us.”

“Data coming in,” Mack said, frowning down at the small phone in his hand. “Never make the mistake of thinking Violet Smythe-Freeman is one of us. She sold out the women in Whitney’s compound. Kane warned Jaimie about her. She was raised with those women, one of the orphans Whitney acquired, and they all believed in her.”

“She turned on them?” Gideon asked as if disbelieving. “That would be like one of us turning on the others. We were raised together, a family, like those women. That’s just . . .” He cast around searching for the right words to express his disgust.

“The word’s gone out to all the GhostWalker teams that she’s a traitor,” Mack read on. “She was at the compound to make an alliance with Whitney when everything went to hell. She was going to help suppress evidence on the breeding program if he backed her husband’s bid for the vice presidency. She and her husband are the ones who sent Team Two to the Congo and tipped off the rebels where they were going to be.”

There was a small silence while they absorbed the treachery of the woman’s actions. There were very few GhostWalkers and all of them knew just how difficult one another’s lives were. Violet had been raised with Whitney’s youngest, earliest victims, yet she appeared not to have any loyalty to them at all.

“I could take her out when she comes out, boss,” Gideon reminded.

“She’s not the objective,” Mack said. “We’re here to protect Kane and Brian and to get Jefferson off Sergeant Major.”

“I could stop the car down the road,” Javier offered.

“Too dangerous. Jefferson’s death has to look like a legitimate heart attack. If we take out a GhostWalker, they’re going to know someone was in the area.”

Gideon swore under his breath. “We have to just let her walk?”

Mack shrugged. “There’ll be another time and another place. There always is. Right now, we’re here for Jefferson. We know he’s after Kane and Brian and he’s certainly the one who ordered the hit on Sergeant Major when they lost track of him. We’ve got to look after our own first.”

Violet sank into a chair, accepting the crystal glass Jefferson handed her. “How’s the senator?” he asked as he gave the drink to her.

The voices sounded tinny through the recorder. Javier adjusted something Mack couldn’t see, frowning as he did so.

Violet, her eyes on Jefferson’s face, held the glass under her nose and inhaled.

“We’re on the same side, Violet,” Jefferson reminded.

“Anyone in my position can’t be too careful, and Whitney and I didn’t part on the best of terms. He had my husband shot.”

“He saved his life. No one else could have done that operation,” Jefferson pointed out.

“He wouldn’t have needed the operation if Whitney hadn’t arranged for an assassination.” She put her drink down and leaned forward. “Let’s quit playing games, Jefferson. I want Whitney off our backs.”

“It isn’t going to happen, Violet. You can join the other side and try to wipe out all the GhostWalkers or you can come back to the fold where you belong. Without us, your husband has no career and without Whitney, he’s a dead man.”

Mack was watching the woman’s face closely. Jefferson was a man in extreme danger. He thought he was holding all the cards, but she was weighing whether or not to kill him. She looked cool and composed, but Mack knew exactly what was going on in her mind.

Jefferson appeared confident, but he must have felt death in her silence. He set his drink aside and shook his head. “What good would it do you to kill me, Violet? Whitney would retaliate against you by letting Ed die. This is about him, isn’t it? Your husband? You want him alive. Only Whitney can keep him alive.”

“As a puppet,” she snapped. “We both will have to do his bidding.”

“Without Whitney, neither of you would have a decent life. It’s time to pay the piper, Violet,” Jefferson said. “It isn’t like Ed is a viable candidate for the vice presidency. Whitney had to practically replace his brain.”

“My husband can still have a political career.”

Jefferson sat back in his chair and once again picked up his glass, regarding her over the top of it. “Now we come to the real reason you’re here. What exactly do you want and what are you offering?”

“I can find the missing women for Whitney. They escaped. Whitney wants them back. I can get them for him. I have the resources. And I can tap into the women’s networks better than anyone else. In return, I want Ed completely well.”

“He was brain-dead, Violet.”

“Not anymore. Not with this new technology. Get him up and running and put him back in the political arena. I can handle everything else. No one will ever get close enough to know he’s not all human.”

“You’re asking a lot,” Jefferson said, and took a sip of his brandy.

“One of the women is pregnant. The father is a GhostWalker. She has extraordinary talents, as does he. Their child alone will be worth what I’m asking. You and your friends back Ed’s career and we’re back on track. Whitney will have a friend in the White House for life.”

Gideon gasped. “That bitch. She’d sell out her own mother.”

“Just make certain you’ve got this all recorded,” Mack said.

Jefferson’s smile turned malicious. “He’s already got friends in the White House.”

“He has enemies too. I can find them for you. You know I’ll do it too. I keep my promises.”

“Do you?” Jefferson asked. “You turned on Whitney before and you have no problems turning on the women who regard you as their sister.”

Violet tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the arm of her chair. “Don’t judge a woman in love, James. I would do anything for my husband.”

“Or for the power. We both know who’s behind the proverbial throne, Violet, so don’t play the loving wife to me. You were prepared to sleep with me if that’s what it took, but you knew the moment you looked into my mind that wouldn’t serve your purpose,” Jefferson said shrewdly.

Javier growled deep in his throat. “She really is a cobra.”

Violet shrugged her shoulders. “Why should I deny it? I am prepared to pay whatever price Whitney wants from me.”

“And if he demands a fail-safe?”

She sucked in her breath, for the first time her composure shaken. She recovered very quickly. “He’s put a fail-safe program in Ed?”

“Of course he did, my dear, and he’s prepared to use it. You not only will deliver the women to us, but you’ll find whoever in the White House is going against the GhostWalker program and you’ll deliver them as well. If we decide to put Ed back into position to use him, believe me, Violet, it will be our decision without coercion.”

Even from his position a distance away, Mack could see the woman’s eyes glittering with malicious intent as she rose. “I would be very careful of threatening me, Jefferson. You may hold all the cards, but if you push too far, you’ll find out just what a woman will really do when you’ve put a bullet in her husband’s head.”

Her voice was utterly cold. Deliberately spiteful. Mack swore under his breath. Jefferson would know exactly what she meant and he would take her threat seriously. That would make it doubly difficult to kill him.

“You’re getting him back,” Jefferson reminded. “A new, improved model, wholly devoted to you. There won’t be any chasing skirts, or aides under his desk; he’ll live for you.”

Mack inhaled sharply. “Whitney paired her with him, but didn’t bother pairing Freeman with her. Whitney sold her into service with Freeman to aid his political career.”

“He couldn’t know the monster he was creating,” Gideon said.

“I can’t even feel sorry for her,” Javier said. “She’s willing to give up the other women to a breeding program, knowing what happened to them in that compound.”

“She’d kill all of us if it got her husband one step closer to the presidency,” Mack said, watching with a small frown. “He’s glanced at his watch again. You think he’s got more than one visitor coming tonight?”

“Maybe it will be Whitney and we can blow them both to kingdom come.” Javier sounded hopeful, eager even.

“You’re so bloodthirsty tonight,” Mack reprimanded.

Javier shot him a grin. “Must be the company. Bad influence and all.”

Violet put down her drink and stood up, drawing their attention back to the scene in the house. “I have to go, Jefferson. You’ve given me quite a bit to think about.”

Jefferson rose with her. “I hope you’ll give me your answer soon, Violet. I don’t think Ed has long, hanging in limbo. You want him up and running around, you commit to Whitney’s program and work for us, not yourself.”

She said nothing at all, but walked, head up, out to her waiting car. Jefferson watched the vehicle pull down the long drive before he snapped open his cell phone. “She was here. She’s going to come on board, but she’ll turn on us the moment she thinks she has an out. She’s ambitious. You might think about getting rid of her before she causes any more trouble.”

“You getting this, Jaimie?” Mack asked.

“I’m running a trace,” she answered. “I think he’s talking to Whitney. I’ve got a voice analysis program and it should give me a match any second. Yep. Whitney.”

Jefferson snapped his phone off and went back into the house after one more long look after his parting guest. He shook his head, disgusted, and slammed his door.