Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(127)

She’s lying, Cayenne said instantly.


Are you certain?


She wants to win the election and she intends to hunt for Whitney’s supporters. There was truth there. She genuinely wants a cure for cancer. That’s truth enough, although her reasons are self-serving. But taking down Whitney was a lie. I think she wants power over him, but she doesn’t intend to destroy him. More, she is involved with others, people in power, I can feel their influence on her, ones who would destroy Whitney’s GhostWalker program. Others who have her same prejudice.


Cayenne, Joe broke in. Are you absolutely certain she’s lying about destroying him? Absolutely, without a doubt, certain.


Yes. There was no hesitation on Cayenne’s part. Her voice changes pitch when she’s lying. I can hear the difference. Also, there are changes in her body, physical changes that are so minute, you can’t see them, but I feel them.


Trap, tell her that you’ll think about it. The idea of seeing Whitney’s research is certainly intriguing, Joe said. And then get out of there. This is turning my stomach.


“I can’t pretend the idea of seeing Whitney’s work isn’t huge,” Wyatt said, when Trap remained silent. “We’ve worked on various ideas for curing cancer, but his work might really advance ours by years, Trap. If she can bring other researchers together, and we have more funding, we really might be able to make this happen.”


Trap pulled Cayenne up and turned his back on Violet as he strode toward the door. “We’re in, but there better not be any more attacks on our families.” He turned his head and pinned Violet with his ice-cold gaze. “You’d better f*cking hear what I’m saying to you, bitch. I’ll kill you. If I don’t get you, one of the others will. In case you don’t believe me, you remember what happened in this room, and right now, you have a f*cking phantom behind you who could snap your worthless neck in seconds.”


Gino emerged behind her, his arm dropping and then locking around her neck.


“Right now, this moment, you’re one second from death.” Trap paused to allow her predicament to fully sink in. She’d all but forgotten Gino was in the room. He’d been too still, too quiet, fading into the background. She had no idea when he’d come up behind her, because she hadn’t heard him – or smelled him – or felt him and she had a built-in radar for trouble. “You will have every GhostWalker from every team coming at you, not Whitney, if there’s an attack on any GhostWalker again. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? It won’t matter that you’re the vice president or the president. No one, nothing will protect you from us.”


Gino let her go and moved away from her, not even looking at her when she turned her head toward him. She touched her neck with shaky fingers. “I can’t control Whitney. You know I can’t.”


“True, but you can warn us. You can get word to us when he’s up to something,” Wyatt pointed out. He was already walking to the door, following Trap.


Trap yanked open the door. “Pull yourself together, Senator, you’ve got bullshit speeches to make. Go ahead and tell the others Wyatt and I are in. That ought to buy you a lot of funding.”


He tightened his arm around Cayenne and swept through the door, taking her with him. Stalking across the room, he didn’t look right or left. His face was a mask of indifference. He appeared totally aloof. Cameras were on him, people greeted him, and he kept moving, never changing expression, never answering anyone.



Trap said nothing at all as the limousine took them through the darkened streets to the airport. Cayenne didn’t feel much like talking either. Being in close proximity to Violet left her shaken. She’d been surrounded, from the day she’d been born, with cruelty. Viciousness. There was an oily feel to the aura surrounding the person that made her sick to her stomach.


Violet wasn’t vicious, but she was deceitful and selfish, capable of great cruelty. She was capable of only accepting what she wanted as her reality. She couldn’t see anyone else’s point of view. She believed in her own greatness and believed that it was perfectly okay for her to remove anything or anyone that got in her way. Her aversion to Cayenne was deep-seated, as was her revulsion of Wyatt’s daughters and his wife.


They’d been in the city three days preparing for their meeting with the senator. Both she and Trap were used to spending long days alone. Although they’d stayed in the penthouse, the team was often with them. When they went out they were surrounded. Sometimes Cayenne felt as if she couldn’t breathe, and she knew it had to be the same for Trap.


They’d given his uncles several opportunities to make their try, appearing often in public. Those times, the underlying tension had been terrible, but the uncles hadn’t shown up. Trap’s mood had gone from bad to just plain foul. She couldn’t blame him. He’d geared himself up to face the men who had helped to destroy his entire family and in the end had taken his last happiness from him. They’d changed the entire course of his life, and still, they were somewhere, hidden by the very money he’d given them for his aunt’s safe release.


At the airport, Ryland’s team boarded their private plane for home. She liked them all, especially Flame and Gator, and actually hugged them before waving as the two teams split. She waited until they were in the air before she went into the large, well-appointed bathroom to change out of her evening dress. The silk slithered to the floor to pool at her feet, leaving her in nothing but her panties. Every time she’d moved in that silk, her body had come alive with need for Trap.