Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(18)

“We all are, baby. Every one of us. Look around you. You see them. You feel them. Every last one of us is enhanced, just like you.”


“You aren’t flawed. You weren’t scheduled for termination.”


“Fuck that reasoning, Cayenne. You’re intelligent. Because you scare the hell out of them doesn’t mean they’re right to terminate you. Why would you accept any judgment they pass on you? Whitney and this man who had you in his lab, Braden, are megalomaniacs, believing they have the right to take children, infants…” For a moment a deep well of rage showed in his eyes, burning blue behind the ice.


He took a breath and flicked a glance at the shimmer surrounding them. It took effort, but he breathed away the evidence of that fury.


“To make his superior soldiers as well as the elite GhostWalkers, Whitney first experimented on little kids. God knows how many children he killed because they weren’t to his liking. He put men like Braden in place, scattering them in various countries in labs to do his dirty work. Wyatt’s brother Gator is a GhostWalker. His woman was repeatedly given cancer by Whitney when she was a child. He had another girl living in a sanitarium, training, running missions from right here in the swamp. She was forced to return here. The tract of land and the building I just bought? Whitney owned that. He had the sanitarium there, and it was burned to the ground because he suddenly decided the girl he’d forced to live there was expendable and he sent a hit squad after her. That’s the kind of man who decided you had to be terminated. Seriously, baby, get that flawed crap out of your head.”


She sat back and slowly pulled her hand out from under his. Her lashes fluttered, and he felt that small movement as if she’d fluttered them against his skin. Up close she was potent. He could see every breath she drew. The creamy swell of her breasts lifted when she drew in air. The temptation to tug at the ribbons of her camisole and open that crisscross of blue was difficult to resist. She was very lucky they were in a public place.


“Tell me about Wyatt’s daughters.”


It didn’t surprise him that she knew all about Wyatt and his daughters. She’d been rescued when their GhostWalker team had gone to rescue the toddlers from termination. When the soldiers had come in an effort to try to reacquire them, Cayenne had aided the GhostWalker team in protecting them. The triplets were not yet two and all three of them injected venom if they bit anyone. Wyatt and Trap had been trying to find a way to prevent that from happening.


“They’re happy. Nonny, Wyatt’s grandmother, is an amazing woman. She’s in her eighties, but she goes out in the swamp and transplants flowers and shrubs to keep her pharmaceutical bed alive and thriving. She adores those girls and treats all of us like family.”


“What’s that like?”


He raised an eyebrow at her.


“Being a family.”


Such a simple question, but it fed the rage building beneath the ice. He had to work at controlling the shimmer. Around him the faint, nearly transparent veil thickened, taking the air out of the room. Several men coughed.


Take a breath, Wyatt advised.


This is f*cked up, Wyatt. But he took the breath. Killing everyone around him wasn’t going to help her. He made himself breathe. Deep and even. Finding a rhythm. Letting the ice inside consume him. He knew he was broken on the inside. He’d accepted that premise a long time ago and then used it as his strength. Cayenne hadn’t had a chance. Living in a f*cking lab. What the hell was that? Who would do that to a child?


“Were there other women?” he prompted. “Like Pepper, Wyatt’s wife. Did you get to see them? Talk to them?”


She shook her head and rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold.


Trap took the jacket from where it was hanging on the back of his chair and wrapped it around her. She looked startled. Looked as if she might protest. She didn’t. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and held it close to her. It was his favorite jacket. He wore it a lot. That meant his scent was all over it. Now his scent surrounded her. There was a certain satisfaction in that.


Trap never thought that he’d ever be in this position. He had accepted that he wouldn’t have a woman of his own. He wasn’t that boy anymore. He had made himself into something dangerous. Something lethal. He knew some of the GhostWalkers were concerned with the experiments done on them with the DNA of animals, but he was stronger and faster, and he’d always been strong and fast. Now he was a predator, and he needed to be. He was actively hunting his uncles. His friends were like him. They were building fortresses in order to survive any attack on them or their families. Let his uncles come for the woman that meant something. He would be ready for them.


He’d been prepared to send Cayenne away. To find a way to reverse what Whitney had done, but the moment she’d stepped through the door of the bar, he knew he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t have anything or anyone who mattered to him other than his teammates. Unexpectedly, Cayenne was very important to him, and the more he learned about her life, the more he was determined to make the rest of it something else altogether.


He wasn’t certain why she would be paired with him, but there was one thing all the GhostWalkers were certain of – the pairings worked. The couples worked as a team in the field. They were extremely physically compatible, and all of them had developed incredibly strong emotional attachments.