Murder Game (GhostWalkers, #7)(57)

Thankfully, she didn’t pull away from him, sharing her body even in a room full of strangers. He loved her all the more for that sacrifice, her shoving aside her embarrassment for him. Her gaze clung to his.

“What am I going to do with you, Kadan?” she murmured softly.

He knew her question had nothing to do with sex, but he filled her mind with a graphic answer, complete with graphic images—her sprawled naked on his bed, his mouth and hands all over her, his cock buried deep inside her—and yet really, truthfully, for him his answer had nothing and everything to do with sex.

She blushed, glanced at the other men, who were staring at the drawings, not paying any attention, and shook her head.

“I don’t want you to go.”

He took her hand, tugging until she followed him out of the room. “I don’t think they’d kill your parents after the twenty-four-hour deadline, Tansy, but they might wound one of them. And if they move them, it will make a rescue much more difficult. Once they’ve moved them, they could do anything to them. We have to go now.”

“Then use the other two men. I’ll be fine. I know they’re part of your team. They’ve seen the layout of the estate. Let them go with you.”

One hand cupped the nape of her neck, his thumb sliding over her jaw in a little caress. “If something happened to you, Tansy, there wouldn’t be much point in any of this. I’m not so far away from that edge myself. And you’ve seen it. Don’t pretend you haven’t. There would be a bloodbath the likes of which no one has ever seen. I refuse to take chances with your life—or my honor. Are we clear?”

She swallowed hard, tears burning behind her eyelids. “I don’t want anything to happen to you or your friends.”

“This is what we do, baby. And I’ve got someone to come home to. I wouldn’t blow it now.” He leaned down and took a tear from her face with his tongue. “Don’t be afraid for me. I want you to pack up everything you’ll need just in case we have to move fast. We’ll keep this house as a base, but we’ll need to go at a moment’s notice. I want to be on the next scene the moment we get word.”

He wanted there to be no mistake: She wasn’t going to be staying with her parents. She’d be with him.

Tansy nodded. “I travel light, Kadan. I’m used to the life, remember?”

He didn’t want to remember the horror in her mind, and he sure didn’t want her remembering it either.

“It won’t be like that. I won’t let them take your soul again.”

She rested her forehead against his. At least he understood. Her parents had tried to understand her, but it was impossible when they couldn’t know what was happening in her head. Just don’t think about it, Tansy-girl, her father had said. Why can’t you just push the bad things out of your head and think good thoughts? her mother had chimed in. As if somehow, if she just tried, she’d stop the killers and victims from sticking in her head and sucking out her soul.

She looked up at Kadan. He seemed so strong. Invincible. Standing between her and evil. She believed him. She believed that quiet confidence, the implacable resolve she found in his mind, but most of all, the ice running through his veins and in his mind and heart. Because he could match the killers move for move, like players on a chessboard, and they couldn’t defeat him with their immoral, malicious inhumanity as they had her. They couldn’t eat him alive and take him over. And he was standing in front of her.

“We really have a chance of stopping them, don’t we?” she asked.

“We will.”

Tansy nodded. “Okay then. I’m with you.”

“Then let’s get your parents back.”

Kadan squeezed her hand and let her go. There would be no more touching her mind until it was done. Maybe once, maybe one more time when he kissed her good-bye and left her with her guards at the safe house across the narrow canyon from her parents’ house, but that would be a luxury. She couldn’t be anywhere near him when he ran a mission—especially this mission. Because if her parents were in any way involved with Whitney, he would fulfill his promise to her: She would see them one more time, and then they would disappear.

Kadan still had possession of her cell phone, a fact she had long forgotten, and he hoped it stayed that way, because there was no way she was getting it back until this thing was over. As a precaution, there was no phone in the safe house he was taking Tansy to, so if things went wrong she couldn’t try to call and make a deal with Fredrickson, exchanging her life for her parents’. Ian and Tucker had strict instructions on what to do if the mission went south. They would get Tansy out of the area fast, that night. They had the necessary drug and would use it if push came to shove.

Kadan had given orders that they weren’t to tell her, just drug her and get her out. They could deal with the grief and anger later, but they weren’t to let Whitney get his hands on her. Tansy was not going to end up in his macabre breeding program, not if Kadan could do anything about it, and that was a promise he’d made to himself.





CHAPTER 10


The three GhostWalkers waited patiently while Nico went to high ground, establishing a position where he could cover them all and give them the location and movement of as many guards as possible. The wind had picked up a little, coming in off the ocean, rustling the leaves in the trees and bringing with it the smell of sea and sand. The moon was a mere sliver, spilling very little light on the ground, although the night was clear and that meant stars were out in full force, illuminating more of the landscape than any of them wanted.