Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(41)
His laboratory was first class. Trap never stinted on his work environment. He had the best and the latest equipment and didn’t mind spending a fortune on it because his work made him a fortune several times over. Wyatt’s lab had been made as good as they could get it, but this gave Trap so much more room for the various machines he needed.
Light spilled through the windows he’d installed, long rows that brightened every room, especially the lab. His bank of computers was in the far corner, away from the various bottles and tubes he needed to conduct his experiments when he was on to something vital.
He had a desk and multiple shelves for his reference books. Hundreds of drawers were clearly labeled with everything he might need for work. He had the money for anything he wanted or needed, and he had a great assistant who personally brought him everything he asked for, anytime, day or night.
His office was large, a polished and wide mahogany desk gleamed, with his personal computer and two laptops waiting. The chair was one he’d chosen personally after sitting in dozens. He’d had a second office built, the desk smaller, but made of beautiful wood. The room was cozier, the shelves filled with every kind of reference book imaginable. He’d included works of fiction, every genre, so if his woman decided to go on a fiction reading spree she had choices.
His kitchen was awesome. He didn’t cook much, but he set it up with the best appliances and cookware possible, mainly because he considered he would be living there for years. The kitchen was huge, and it actually was two kitchens: the appliances mirrored one another from opposite walls with a long aisle down the middle. Double rows of pots and pans hung overhead. He wanted to make certain his home could accommodate the entire team and their families if it should be needed.
He added a shelf for cookbooks, because he liked to learn new things and he would be cooking for Cayenne as well. He wanted good, nutritious food for both of them.
In his blueprints, he’d included many bedrooms, telling himself they’d need them if the GhostWalkers and their families had to retreat to a fortress, but that didn’t explain the nursery set up right next to the master bedroom, or the reasoning for positioning several bedrooms close, but not so close that his hopefully great sex life would ever have the slightest interference.
This would be his home base. He’d changed every entrance leading to the tunnels and to the house itself so Whitney wouldn’t have the new specs. That would make it more difficult for his private army to penetrate. The windows not only were bulletproof, he had installed armor-plated screens that came down with the touch of a button. Every door in the house both inside and out was plated as well.
He had stashed weapons throughout the building, in every room and in the tunnels. He had an arsenal, enough for a small army – which his team was – should they need it. He’d had the roof redone in several places, giving them shadows to work with, small places that concealed and protected their bodies should they have to fall back on his home as a fortress. What he didn’t think of, the other members of his team had.
There was a helipad outside with a state-of-the-art helicopter, several armored vehicles and a private plane waiting at the small private airstrip he’d purchased. The hangar there housed a small jet as well as the plane.
Security cameras had been installed everywhere throughout the house. He had access to the security screens from his own computers as well as every other device he owned – and he owned a lot of them. He’d done a sweep of the house before he’d moved his things in. The furniture was untouched, but Cayenne had been in the kitchen. She’d been hungry enough to eat the food Nonny had fixed for her.
He’d sent Wyatt over with more groceries when he was working longer than he’d expected. Instead of a couple of days, it had taken four long days and three nights working on an antibody that hopefully would neutralize any toxin she might inject in him. To his shock, he’d worried about Cayenne every moment of that time. That was unheard of. As a rule, he focused so completely on what he was doing, nothing else entered his mind. He knew the pull between them was strong, but strong enough to disturb him while he worked? That was… unsettling. Disturbing. Ominous, when he thought about the days and nights ahead.
She’d eaten some of the groceries he’d sent, mainly the fruit and vegetables. That made him inexplicably happy. It was the first thing she’d taken from him without protest, and he thought it was a good sign that she wouldn’t try to kill him for being so late the moment she laid eyes on him.
She was staying in the lower level – the apartment he’d designed. He knew she was because the spiderwebs crept up the stairs and the cameras showed large veils of white silk covering the various rooms. He took it as a good sign that she had made herself at home there, especially after he’d confessed he’d had the apartment built just for her.
The space took up the entire lower story. He could fit two houses in her apartment. Clearly she wasn’t used to the space, because she occupied only one room and the adjoining bathroom. She obviously slept behind that heavy veil of silk, and more webbing was strung across the room from wall to wall, but it wasn’t dense and allowed her to sit on the cozy furniture.
The bathrooms – and there was a dozen of them – were mostly stark, ready to be decorated, but Nonny had begun to do just that in four of them. His master bedroom had a bath connected to it and there were three in the apartment on the lower story. Nonny had completed one downstairs – the one closest to the bedroom. He hoped Cayenne liked it. The only thing the cameras could see was the draped silk, beautiful masterpieces of silk, hanging everywhere.