Deadly Game (38 page)

CHAPTER 16

Long after the sensation of energy flowing through their merged minds faded, Mari lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but she couldn’t make the effort to wipe them away. She heard someone outside her door removing Brett’s body, but no one spoke to her. It was just as well. She didn’t think she had the ability to answer.

Once, she felt a flutter in her mind and recognized Cami’s touch, but she didn’t have the strength to answer, even though she knew she must be causing the other women distress. They would have felt her fears. And they certainly would have felt the swell of psychic energy—anyone psychic would have felt that. There was no way to contain that kind of power.

Her mind felt drained, her body as heavy as lead. She couldn’t imagine what Ken felt like, but it had to be worse. Her head pounded with one of the worst, most disorienting headaches she’d ever experienced, and using telepathy and other psychic talents often caused them. Her heart beat too hard and fast and she was dizzy and sick.

She visualized Ken lying on the floor somewhere in the large complex, surrounded by enemies, vulnerable to attack, and sweat beaded on her body. She could barely breathe with needing to know he was alive, well and safe. She couldn’t touch his mind, and she was certain that if he could have touched hers to reassure her, he would have. She could only lie there, terrified for him, imagining the worst with no way to help him.

No one could expend that amount of energy and not have tremendous physical repercussions. He had given everything he was to save her. She heard herself sob. Her chest heaved. It shocked her that she would be lying on her cot
sobbing.
Not tiny tears, but weeping out loud for everyone to hear. She never did that.
Never.
She was a soldier, trained in survival. You never,
never
, gave the enemy ammunition against you, and you certainly never gave them the satisfaction of messing with your emotions.

All of her training seemed to be gone in that instant, leaving her with no control. She needed to know he was safe.
How in the world could their connection have grown so strong that it was no longer just about sex?
She thought she could have moments in her life that would make the rest of it all bearable, but being with Ken Norton had changed everything.
She
was changed. He had shown her life could be different, that there could be hope for her, she could have dreams.

For a good two hours she lay in the dark, wondering if he was alive. For the first time in her life, she prayed. Whitney had taught them to believe only in science and that people who believed in a higher power were people who needed a crutch. There was no such thing as God, or a savior, or even a way of life that was about anything other than discipline and duty. She’d been indoctrinated since she was a baby into the belief that those who had mercy and compassion were soft—sheep, people waiting for someone with the intelligence and power to guide them.

For most of her life, she’d thought herself a failure because she didn’t strictly adhere to Whitney’s teachings. She loved her sisters, and most of what she did was out of a desire to protect them and stay with them—not her tremendous sense of duty. She’d never believed in anything but her sisters, but now, just in case, she prayed. And then, as if someone really had listened to her plea—there was no sound, nothing to warn her—she nearly jumped out of her skin when the door slid open and a man slipped through.

“Ken?” She croaked his name, still unable to lift her pounding head from the pillow. It was him, his shoulders wide, his arms like steel sliding around her, gathering her close. She turned her tear-wet face against his chest. He collapsed on the bed, and she realized he was trembling with weakness. “How did you manage to get here? I can’t even move.”

“You don’t have to move; I’m just going to join you. My head feels like it’s about to explode.” He stretched out onto the bed beside her, hands running over her body to assure himself she was in one piece. “Your courage terrifies me.” In truth she humbled him. To endure the things she’d endured her entire life, to stand there and face Sean and what he meant to do to her, to give herself up so fully to Ken, a man she knew to be every bit as dangerous—maybe more—it was almost more than he could comprehend.

He suddenly stiffened. “Oh, God, baby, you’re crying. You going to break my heart. He’s gone now. You’re safe. You’re safe with me.”

He wrapped his body protectively around hers, feeling her tremors, the tear-wet face against his chest. His fingers tunneled in her thick hair as he dragged her as close as he could get her, trying to shield her from any further harm. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I tried to get here as fast as possible. They put you through hell and I wasn’t here.”

He couldn’t breathe with her crying. His chest felt tight, his throat raw, and panic rose. “Stop now.” His hands stroked caresses in her hair. He rained kisses over her face and licked at the tears in an effort to stop them. “I tried. I swear I tried.”

“You were here, Ken, you were; you saved me when I didn’t think it was possible.” Now that he was with her, alive and well, she should have been able to stop crying, but somehow, the floodgates opened and she was worse, alternating between hiccupping and sobbing, clinging to him like a child. Mari knew she would be ashamed in the morning, but the cover of darkness gave her the courage to be honest. “I was so afraid for you.”

“Afraid for
me
?” Ken brushed more kisses over the top of her head and down her face. His teeth scraped her chin, and then he was kissing the corners of her mouth. “I was safe. You were the one in danger. I thought I might go out of my mind.” His thumbs brushed at her tears.

Mari tried hard to regain control. He wasn’t joking; he was very shaken up by her tears. She took several deep breaths to calm down. “Will Sean realize you used mind control on him? Because if he does, Whitney will know I couldn’t possibly have done it and he could go berserk and kill all of us.”

“No, he won’t have any idea. You knew because I stopped before I gave you the command to forget what had happened to you. I can implant memories.”

“Did you with Sean?”

“To protect you, yes. He believes the two of you had sex. He believes you cooperated with him. I didn’t want him coming back in the morning.”

“How could you make him believe that?”

“It was easy enough. His desires were very powerful, and the pictures of you naked in his mind were vivid. It wasn’t difficult to manipulate them once I was wired to him. I didn’t want to, Mari, but I felt I had no choice. It was the only way I could think of, besides killing him, to protect you. And if I killed him, Whitney would discover we’d broken into his stronghold. I did set Sean up and if we’re lucky, he’ll be taken care of when he makes a try at Whitney.”

“Are you apologizing to me?” She tilted her head enough to look up at him, shocked that he would be upset when what he’d done had cost him so dearly.

“I’m sorry, baby. He’s a powerful enemy, and I should have found a better way to remove him permanently, but we only had a few seconds to make a decision and that was all that came to mind if we wanted your family safe.” And he had agonized and cursed over that decision every moment since. He wanted Sean dead. He needed Sean dead, but he had to live with the fact that he’d left the bastard alive and Mari wasn’t safe.

“I have no idea what I would have done if you hadn’t helped me,” she said. Her nervous fingers stroked his hair, an unconscious caress. She buried her face against the warmth of his neck. “Whitney said the senator is coming here, that he specifically asked to talk to me. I don’t have any idea how he would know to ask for me, but Whitney was really angry. I’m certain that’s why he had Sean come to me tonight.”

It took effort not to keep the hot surge of fury from spilling over where she might feel it. He brushed a kiss against the soft strands of hair at the top of her head. He’d never been so choked up in his life. It was terrifying how this woman made him feel so much. He had been careful all of his life never to get emotionally involved, and yet she’d wrapped him up so tight he could barely breathe—and he had no idea how it happened, or even when.

“Senator Freeman is coming here?”

“That’s what Whitney said. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Whitney seems really angry with him. Freeman isn’t enhanced in any way.”

“But his wife is.”

“Yes. Whitney and the senator’s father, Andrew Freeman, go way back. Andrew Freeman is in shipping. Violet told us she was being groomed to a be a senator’s wife—that Whitney wanted Senator Freeman to run for vice president and that they would have a man in office they could control.”

“So Violet is one of Whitney’s GhostWalkers. He has a small army of them.”

“No!” Mari pulled back her head to look at him. “Violet would never betray us, no matter what Whitney offered. I think she genuinely loves her husband, but she still wouldn’t sell us out. Whitney has access to a team of genuine GhostWalkers. Violet was part of that group and so was I. Whitney has another unit comprised of supersoldiers. They’re not quite the same. They’re enhanced, but their psychic abilities aren’t as strong and most of them are very violent. I know Violet isn’t a part of that; she wouldn’t betray us.”

“Sean did.”

There was a silence and he cursed himself for hurting her. His arms tightened even more, as if by crushing her to him and nuzzling the top of her head he could somehow make up for his blunder.

“Yes, he did,” Mari said. “He blamed it on me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. He made his choices; we all do. He can take his own responsibility. If I screw up with you, Mari, it’s on me.”

She reached up to trace his lips with the pad of her finger, hearing the ache in his voice. “Why do you persist in thinking you’re some kind of monster?”

“I don’t want you getting the wrong idea about me.” His voice sounded raw even to his own ears.

She smiled in the darkness. “I’ve been in your mind. I know you’re bossy and you like everything your own way. You think you’re jealous . . .”

“I
am
jealous. The thought of another man touching you makes me crazy.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “My father was so jealous, Mari, he couldn’t stand my mother talking and laughing with her own sons. He beat her every time a man glanced her way, which was often. She was a beautiful woman. I feel very possessive of you already. The idea of some man holding you in his arms, kissing you, sharing your body, just the
thought
alone, makes me feel violent. I don’t honestly know what I’d do.”

Ashamed, he wrapped his arm around her head, pressing her face into his chest so she couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “I could feel your emotions when Sean was fighting Brett. It sickened you to be the cause of that. I could do much worse, Mari, I know I’m capable. I was hoping I could hold you at arm’s length and I wouldn’t feel so strongly, but it happened and I can’t stop it.”

“You’re not your father, Ken. You’ve led a completely different life. You’ve been shaped by your own experiences.”

He gave a small, humorless laugh. “Exactly, Mari. Wonderful experiences. Witnessing my father kill my mother. Trying to do the old man in myself—hell, I wasn’t even in my teens. I plotted a thousand ways to murder him. I beat the hell out of two of my foster dads and I have no idea how many boys and men growing up. I chose special ops, Mari, I chose to be enhanced both physically and psychically; after all, it would make me a much more efficient killer. Those are the things that shaped my life.” He kept his tone absolutely emotionless, separating himself from the reality of his childhood the way he always did—the way he had to in order to survive.

Tears burned all over again. Hadn’t she cried enough this night? This time the tears weren’t for her, but for him, that little boy, the teenager abandoned by adults. Her life might have been stark and cold, but she hadn’t known any different. She had nothing to compare it to. In some ways it had been fun even, all the physical and psychic training. She’d felt special and eventually respected. But Ken had known love. His mother had loved him; Mari could feel the echo of that long-ago love in his mind.

He hurt so bad inside and he didn’t even know it. He wasn’t aware of it, only of the fire of rage or the ice cold of his lack of emotions. It was all or nothing with Ken. Fury or ice. “Ken . . .”

“Don’t!” he said sharply, because if she cried for him, it would be the end. No one had ever cried for him. His mother had been dead, and the rest of the world looked at Ken and Jack as if they were already the monsters their father created. Even back then, people had been right to be afraid.

His thumbs brushed at her tears. “You’ll tear out what’s left of my heart, Mari. Just stop. I can’t change what I am. I might want to, baby, but I can’t.”

“If you really were the same kind of man your father was,” she said gently, biting back the little sob that threatened to escape, “you would have killed Sean right there and then, while you had the chance, and to hell with my sisters. Your father wouldn’t have put himself through the hell of knowing another man was touching me and denied himself the pleasure of killing that man. My feelings wouldn’t have counted at all, but they do with you. You may have wanted to kill Sean—hell, I wanted to kill him—but you didn’t.” She squirmed out from under his arm and brushed kisses along the underside of his jaw.