Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(19)
Trap hadn’t thought himself capable of emotional attachments for a long time – until he met Wyatt at the university and then his GhostWalker team. He had chosen to follow Wyatt into the military because he wanted the psychic enhancements. He was grateful for the physical as well. He was determined to find his uncles and kill them. He would hunt them until the day he died. That had been his reason – to turn himself into a weapon – even more of one than he’d already made himself.
“Trap.” She said his name low. Her voice a caress. A soothing rasp of velvet over his skin. Trap. She moved inside his mind much more intimately. “What is it? What is making you so upset?”
He stared at her in astonishment. He hadn’t changed expression. He’d been extremely careful that the cloud around them stayed thin. Nothing should have betrayed his emotions. How had she known?
Deliberately he ignored her question. “You wanted to know what a family is like. Wyatt’s grandmother always has something on the stove cooking. She has music playing in the house and she dances with the girls. Pepper, Wyatt’s wife, dances now as well. The house always feels welcoming…”
Cayenne shook her head. “Not Wyatt’s family, Trap. Yours. What is your family like?”
His heart jerked hard in his chest. He didn’t want to lie to her. Or scare her. He’d shot his own father. Deliberately. He’d been nine years old, and he would have killed his uncles if he could have as well. What did he tell her? His woman. She had a right to know the danger she faced when gave herself to him – and she was going to give herself to him. He would accept nothing less.
“My family is Wyatt and the team, Cayenne. I don’t have anyone else.”
“But you did,” she persisted. “You were born into a family, not taken from an orphanage and put in a lab or, like me, made in a test tube.”
He sighed. “I tell you this, baby, and you’re going to run for the hills. I don’t want you to do that. How about I promise I tell you after the first time you let me have you. Once I’ve been inside you, once I’ve claimed you for my own, it will give me a fighting chance that you’ll stay with me.”
There was a short silence. “You know about my childhood. It’s only fair to tell me about yours.”
“I’ll give you this, Cayenne, you’ll know the worst of me, what I’m capable of, what I was born capable of doing, not what anyone shaped me into.”
She reached out, and this time, she was the one who took his hand. “Tell me.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sharing that f*cked-up shit with you before you commit to me.” He had to change the subject and turned the spotlight back on her. “Coming here, choosing victims and robbing them is not okay. You know that, and you can’t keep doing it. These men may not be enhanced, but sooner or later, you’re going to slip up and you’ll make a mistake. Then you’ll have to kill an innocent to defend yourself or they’ll kill you.”
“I have to eat,” she whispered. “Do you think I want to rob people? I make certain whoever I choose is someone who deserves a little payback.”
“If you want to eat, you come to Wyatt’s. His grandmother would welcome you. If you don’t want to do that, come to me. Tell me what you need.”
Her green eyes flashed bright, anger stirring. Pride. “I don’t need your charity, Trap. I don’t want it.” She picked up the origami crane he’d made from the paper he’d scribbled formulas on.
“It isn’t charity,” he hissed. “Why are you being so damned stubborn? I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No, but I could hurt you.” She glanced down at the crane, started to say something and then noticed the writing along the wing. “P = #AR. HYP.” She didn’t ask a question, but she repeated it softly as if musing out loud. Very carefully she unfolded the crane, revealing Trap’s formula and his assessment.
She glanced up at him. “You used the difficult way. You built a temporal model, didn’t you? I can see your equations.”
She smoothed the paper, running her gaze over the formulas. “I worked this out last week using a spatial model. The peanut husks are concentrated under the bar stools, and I counted around one and multiplied, and around the tables, especially during the first three days after Delmar sweeps. If you notice, almost all the husks around the round tables form a donut ring that runs about one foot under the table to about twice the radius of the table.”
Trap stared at her, his heart stuttering in his chest. For the first time, he actually was completely shocked, but he shouldn’t have been.
“I just counted the husks around one chair at the four-chair table and multiplied by four to get a pretty good estimate of the total husks associated with the table.”
He leaned close. “You took the easy way out. And it isn’t very accurate.”
She raised her chin. “I did not. I did it the intelligent way.”
“Over a week’s accumulation the peanut husks turn to mulch and can’t be counted. They get kicked around…”
“I factored in the ones that fall beneath the bar and get kicked back where Delmar works. I came up with thirteen thousand, two hundred and sixty per week.” She sent him her first real smile. The kind that made a man’s cock hard. Made his heart jerk and happiness spill through his bloodstream like sunshine. She raised her green gaze to his. “Nice. You’ve got a brain.”