Night Game (GhostWalkers, #3)(2)

The program calculated that there was an eighty-three percent chance that she would hunt for the girls.

And when I fed the news article into the program it also gave an extremely high probability that she would suspect the fire had something to do with Dahlia and the Whitney Trust.”

“I read several of the accounts,” he admitted. “They did report the murders, and they obviously knew it was a hit of some kind, an assassination squad, so yeah, she might come looking for more information.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Which of the missing girls is Iris?” Raoul already knew the answer. Long before Dr. Whitney had experimented on the adult men, he had acquired girls from foreign orphanages and experimented on them, psychically enhancing them. When things had begun to go wrong, he had abandoned all of them except Lily, whom he’d kept and raised as his own daughter. Iris had been a small redhead with defiant eyes and an attitude the size of Texas. The nurses had nicknamed her “Flame,” and from the moment she learned Whitney forbade the name, Iris used it to make him angry. She’d been four years old.

Raoul had studied the tapes of the little girl far more than any of the others. She had a few abilities the others knew nothing about—but he did—he shared those same abilities. Even as a child she’d been smart enough—or angry enough—to hide her talents from Whitney. Her nickname was appropriate: Flame, a little matchstick that could flare up and be as destructive as hell under the right circumstances. Whitney didn’t know how very lucky he was.

“Iris had deep red hair, almost the color of wine, and she has acute hearing. She’s able to manipulate sound in extraordinary ways.”

“And she’s an anchor.” That would mean she wasn’t as vulnerable as some of the other girls. She could exist in the world without a shield.

Lily nodded. “I believe she is. I know it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack trying to find her, but you never know. She’d be somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-five now. My father kept meticulous records, yet he didn’t bother to record our birth dates, which makes no sense to me. I did an age simulation on the computer. Here’s what she’d look like now.” She handed him the photograph.

His heart nearly stopped beating, then accelerated wildly. Flame was beautiful. Not just striking, but truly exquisitely beautiful, unlike any woman he’d ever seen. Even in the photograph her skin looked so soft he found himself running the pad of his thumb over her face. He kept his expression relaxed, charming, unworried—the usual mask he wore. “You know, Lily, the chances of finding her are almost nil.”

She nodded her head and her gaze skittered away from his. It wasn’t the real reason she’d come. Gator waited. She shuffled her feet but didn’t speak.

“Spit it out, Lily. I’ve never been much for games. Say what you came to say.”

She slid past him to catch the edge of the door, peering out into the hallway before shutting it carefully. “This is confidential.”

“You know we’re a unit. I don’t keep things from Kyland or my men, not if it impacts them and what we do.”

“That’s just it, Gator, I don’t know if it does. I’ve discovered a couple of things, and I’m checking them out. You have to understand these experiments have spanned more than twenty years. There are dozens of computers and hard drives, storage disks and zip drives I haven’t even gotten to yet, and that doesn’t include handwritten notes. I started with the girls because we wanted to find them, but my father’s observations are mostly on paper and old archived disks. He references nearly everything with numbers. I have to figure out what the number refers to before I can keep going in my research to see what he did. It’s very time-consuming work, and it isn’t easy.”

Lily didn’t make excuses. This was so far out of character for her. Had she discovered the truth about him? He had watched the video of Iris “Flame” Johnson so many times maybe she’d become curious. Maybe she’d seen him stop the tape and study the picture—the one that showed the walls expand and contract slightly. The one where the floor shifted minutely when Flame’s little gaze had narrowed on the doctor. She’d detested Dr. Whitney and her temper had barely been controlled.

“What have you discovered, Lily?”

“I think my father also did gene enhancing on the girls—as well as on some of you men.” The words left her in a little rush. This time her gaze met his squarely as if trying to read his reaction.

He counted to ten in silence before he spoke. “Why would you think that?”

“The referencing numbers have two letters beside them, and I couldn’t figure it out. G.E. I went through a million possibilities until I found a small hidden cabinet in the laboratory. It was locked and coded. There were several notebooks on Iris. She was definitely genetically enhanced. G.E. Those letters were throughout the files, and I’ve seen them on several other files. Most of the files. I think the letters reference back to genetic enhancement.”

“The girls. You used the phrase the girls rather than on us. As in including yourself.”

Lily shook her head. “There are no G.E. notations in my files anywhere. Believe me, I looked.”

“Why do you think that would be, Lily?” He kept his voice fiat, even, ultra-calm.