Deadly Game (GhostWalkers, #5)(12)

“Did they meet in Colombia?” Her voice was a whisper, a strangled sound that was too close to tears. Tears were a weakness—one soldiers didn’t indulge in. How often had she heard that as a child? Soldiers didn’t play. Soldiers were about duty and hardship and skill.

“No. Her parents refused to allow her to go and he had them murdered. She walked in right after and found them.” His voice was gentle, as if he knew he was hurting her with the telling. “She has brothers, but like you she needs an anchor. Living in close proximity without one was hell on her at times. Particularly as a child, before she was strong enough to build some small protections.”

Mari nodded. She knew what it was like to be bombarded with too much emotion, and a child living in a household with parents and brothers would have headaches and blackouts, maybe even brain bleeds. “He did it on purpose to see how tough she would be, didn’t he? I was in a controlled, sterile environment and she was put out in a chaotic, busy household. He wanted to compare how we handled it.”

“That’s what we believe.”

“And he wanted her to have your brother’s baby because he’s genetically enhanced, isn’t he?”

Ken nodded. “Yes. We think he wanted you pregnant at the same time.”

Again there was no inflection in his voice, no change in expression, his glacier-cold eyes completely unfathomable, yet she winced, sensing extreme danger. It was odd that he never stirred, not even the ripple of a muscle, but the aura of danger, the tension in the room, seemed to build at times so that she could barely breathe, waiting for disaster. She had been around genetically altered soldiers for most of her life—was one herself—and some, like Brett, were cruel; others were men she respected, but all of them were dangerous. She just sensed something more in Ken. She couldn’t put her finger exactly on what it was—but she knew she never wanted to go into combat against him again. She’d been lucky.

“Mari?” The way he said her name shook her. A caress. A stroke of velvet. He created intimacy when there was none. He always sounded so gentle. Men weren’t gentle. Soldiers weren’t gentle. Men like Ken, predators, hunters, they weren’t gentle. How could he make her feel so vulnerable with just his voice?

“What do you want me to say? Yes, you’re right?” She should have kept her mouth shut. Anyone would have heard the stress, the anger, the repressed fear and hurt. Her life had been hell since Whitney had decided to pair the genetically altered women with soldiers. He didn’t care if the women wanted the men; in fact he seemed to delight in seeing how far the men were willing to go to get the cooperation of the women. Everything was meticulously detailed and reported. And men like Brett didn’t like failure.

“He tried to force cooperation from the women?”

She suppressed a small hysterical laugh. That was a gentle way of saying it. “Whitney wouldn’t put it that way. He creates a situation and sits back and observes. He isn’t messy enough to force us. He leaves that to the men.” She pressed her lips together and turned away from him. How could she be giving up information? Personal, vital, information. She had to be drugged.

“Whitney is a first-class bastard.” Ken moved, a rippling of muscle, a gliding of silent steps across the room until he was once more beside her and she could breathe him into her lungs. His palm was cool on her forehead as he brushed back strands of her hair. “He faked his own death and has gone underground. Someone high up is helping him. After Jack met Briony—”

“How? This all seems too big of a coincidence for me to swallow. You just happened to be the shooter when we were supposed to protect the senator. You miss when you’ve probably never missed in your life.”

“I didn’t miss.”

“You missed.”

A ghost of a smile pulled at his mouth. His even white teeth flashed. The effect was breathtaking. Her stomach somersaulted. Even her broken fingers tingled—fingers he had crushed. She remembered the swift attack, so fast he seemed a blur of movement. Even as she’d tried to fulfill her promises to the other women, she had admired his efficiency.

“Tell me,” she urged.

“It started with Senator Freeman. He was flying over the Congo, over rebel territory, and his plane went down. Mysteriously, General Ekabela, who was renowned for torturing prisoners, didn’t touch the senator, the pilot, or anyone traveling on that plane. At the very least, the pilot should have been killed.” He waited a moment, letting the implications of that sink in. “Jack was supposed to lead a rescue mission and pull the senator out. The orders came down, but Jack was still in Colombia. He’d run into a snag there, so I took his place.”

“You led a team into rebel territory to get the senator and his people out, but things didn’t go well.” Her gaze drifted over the terrible scars.

“They were waiting for us. We were ambushed and I was cut off from my unit. They were definitely after me, singling me out and sending in so many soldiers I didn’t have a chance. My men got the prisoners out and I was captured.”

Again, she was struck by the complete lack of inflection in his voice. He showed no emotion, when she felt the emotion like a raging volcano churning beneath the tranquil surface. She couldn’t imagine what the pain had been like—or the fear.

“How long did he have you?”