Ryland’s palm curled around the nape of her neck and he drew her close against his hard strength. “I’d like some sort of explanation whether it’s technical or not. I’m not a complete idiot, Lily, and I have the right to assess the threat to the men.”
Lily let her breath out slowly, took his face between her hands. “If I gave you the impression that I didn’t think you could understand, I apologize. I have a tendency to get lost in my work and forget what’s going on around me. For that matter, anyone or anything around me.”
Ryland simply bent his head to hers and took possession of her mouth. Time stood still. The walls fell away as he whirled her out of the boundaries of the world and into the stars. Her arms circled his neck, her body molding immediately to his.
“I always thought,” Arly said loudly, coming up behind them, “that making out in a hallway was the kind of thing teenagers do.”
Ryland took his time, making a thorough job of kissing Lily. When he reluctantly lifted his head, his gaze shifted to Arly. “Interesting point of view, but in my opinion, kissing Lily anywhere, anytime is a must.”
Lily made a face at Arly as she moved past him toward the long winding staircase that led to the lower stories. “I wouldn’t know, Arly, never having gone to school as a teenager and never having kissed in hallways.”
Ryland kept pace with her. “For someone without the necessary experience I’d still have to rate you excellent at kissing in hallways.”
“Thank you,” Lily replied demurely. “I’m certain I could have done much better had Arly given me a few more minutes.”
“Oh, no, you were fine,” Ryland reassured her. “I was just reminding you I was around. Hallway or not, I wanted you to remember my existence.”
Lily laughed softly, but her smile was already fading as she turned to hurry down the stairs.
Ryland watched the distant look return to her face and sighed. Arly shook his head. “She’s brilliant, you know. She’s like a machine if you feed her data. There are very few people in the world who can do that.”
Ryland nodded his agreement but his frown remained. “It’s a little hard on a man’s ego.”
“She’s someone special, Miller. Different in ways you can’t imagine. And she’s chosen you.” Arly looked the man up and down. Took in the battered, scarred hands, evidence of fights, the muscular, stocky body and rough-hewn face. “Aside from the fact that you’re probably on the FBI’s most wanted list, do you have any other qualifications I might want to know about?”
“Qualifications?” Ryland echoed. “Are you asking me in a roundabout way my intentions?”
“Not yet.” Arly was honest. “First I wanted to find out if I even want you to state your intentions. I haven’t decided. I might still throw you out.”
“I see. You have something against the military?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re probably an adrenaline junkie or you wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the Special Forces or Dr. Whitney and his crazy experiment? Or that guys like you wind up dead because you never learn enough is enough? Or that you go through women like water?” Arly indicated Ryland’s hands with his chin. “And that you’ve probably seen the inside of more than one jail because you get in fights.”
Ryland whistled softly. “Tell me what you really think, don’t spare my feelings.”
“I had no intention of sparing your feelings. Lily is like a daughter to me. She’s my family. You’ll find the members of this household love her and will go to any lengths to protect her. And she’s rich beyond your wildest dreams. She doesn’t need a gold digger trying to waltz in and sweep her off her feet with a few practiced kisses.”
“Now you’re getting on very thin ice,” Ryland warned. “I don’t have any desire for Lily’s money. As far as I’m concerned she can give it away to charity. I’m perfectly capable of providing for us.”
Arly’s eyebrow shot up. “You’re arrogant on top of everything else. Great. That’s going to mesh really well with her delightful personality.” He was silent for a few steps, obviously debating how to say his piece. “Lily isn’t like everyone else, Miller. She has special needs and her brain requires constant information to work on. Without it, she doesn’t do well. Just as your men all will require special circumstances in their choice of homes and work environment, so does Lily. I’m telling you this because when all’s said and done, I think you really are sincere and she’s so damned stubborn I couldn’t persuade her away from you if she’s made up her mind.”
“I know she’s going to require care.”
“Not care, Miller. This house. These walls. People like me around her, who don’t drain her energy and batter her day and night with unwanted emotion. She thrives because her father saw to it that she would. You can’t take her away from here for very long.”
“She said there were others. They would be women now, what about them? How did they survive without the benefits of Whitney’s money and his protected environment?” Ryland asked curiously.
Arly swallowed several times before replying. Finally he shook his head helplessly. “I have no idea about any other women. I look after Lily and that’s all I can handle.”
They had to hurry down the stairs and through the maze of corridors to catch Lily. She had halted at the door to her father’s office. Lily punched in the code to unlock it and hesitated, looking around carefully. “Are you certain no cameras were placed in this area, Arly? And you did a sweep of my father’s office again, didn’t you?”
“A few hours ago, after the day help went home,” Arly admitted. “That’s where we’re most vulnerable. We need the staff, but they aren’t necessarily loyal to the estate. It won’t matter how much we pay them, if they’re offered more, they’ll give out information and maybe even go so far as to snoop in the areas off limits or drop little listening devices.”
“I’ve set up a command post on the third floor,” Ryland said. “We mapped out several escape routes, going up to the roof and down to the tunnels. Thanks for the motion detectors, Arly. Those certainly make the men feel more secure.”
“You can’t leave the parameters I gave you,” Arly cautioned. “We can’t guarantee safety if you do. Lily tells me she’s going to work with you and the others to prepare all of you for the outside environment and hopefully minimize the risks of complications. In the meantime, you’ll have to realize the day staff is our greatest security risk.”
Lily stepped back to allow the two men to precede her into the office. She wanted to ensure the door was locked. Arly had changed the security code on the off chance another intruder might get into the house.
“I’m going to monitor the house from my rooms,” Arly announced. “Will you be all right?” He pointedly ignored Ryland to ask the question of Lily.
“I think Captain Miller knows all sorts of hand-to-hand things,” she quipped.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Arly said. In a rare show of affection he leaned down to kiss her cheek. “You aren’t wearing your watch. And you’re looking tired. Maybe you ought to sleep for a few hours before getting involved in your research, Lily.”
“This can’t wait, Arly, but thank you for worrying. I’ll go to bed as soon as I can and I’ll sleep all day.”
“And wear your watch.”
Lily hugged his thin body close to her. “Don’t worry about me, Arly.”
Ryland watched the older man go. “He’s a tough guy when it comes to you. He gave me the second degree. I had the feeling he might turn me in himself if he thought I was up to no good.” He watched with interest as Lily went to the grandfather clock and did something he couldn’t see with the hour hand. To his astonishment the front of the clock moved forward to reveal a hidden chamber in the wall. Then he found himself staring at an opening in the floor.
“Does the house have many of these rooms?” He followed her down the steep, narrow staircase. His shoulders brushed the walls on either side.
“Well, if you mean are there p
assageways, yes, and hidden rooms, but there is no evidence of this stairway. It’s sandwiched between two of the basements’ walls. It leads beneath the basements underground and I don’t believe it was in the blueprints, so my father’s laboratory is very secret. He has up-to-date equipment in it along with an entire library of documentation on his earlier experiment as well as with you and your men.”
“Explain to me about the electricity pulses, Lily. I need to understand what Jeff is up against.” Ryland stared around the laboratory, amazed at the meticulous detailing of Peter Whitney’s private lab. He shouldn’t have been. Research was Whitney’s life and he had the money to indulge his needs, but the equipment could only have been found in the best research centers.
“The entire idea of brain bleeds as a side effect bothers me,” Lily said as she began to scan dates on the neat collection of disks. “Everyone seems to accept it as normal but it isn’t. It would be incredibly rare. Seizures would have to be massive and continuous to cause the bleeds. And what’s bringing the seizures on? Prolonged exposure to highly emotional waves of energy? Using telepathy without an anchor, or a safeguard? That could happen, the brain is overtaxed, too much garbage getting in, but it would more likely produce severe migraines. I’ve been functioning for years overstimulated by emotions and unwanted information. Yes, I get migraines and it’s very draining but I don’t seize and I don’t have brain bleeds.”
“I still don’t know what that means. We’ve lost two men to brain hemorrhages; at least that’s what we were told happened to them.”
Lily inserted a disk into the computer. “My father tried using small pulses of electricity to stimulate brain activity in his initial experiments. He surgically planted electrodes directly on the areas he wanted enhanced. The microelectrodes recorded action generated by individual neurons. The electrical signals were amplified, filtered, and could be displayed visually and even converted to sounds through an audiometer.”
“He was watching the brain waves react?” Ryland watched the data flashing over the screen at a rate he couldn’t follow but even while talking, Lily seemed to be computing it. He watched the expressions chasing across her face, interest, a frown, a slight pause as she shook her head, then more data.
“And listening to them. Neurons have characteristic patterns of activity which can be both visualized and heard.” She murmured the information absently, peering more closely at the screen.
“Damn it, Lily! Are you telling me we have something planted in our brains along with everything else done to us? No one agreed to that.” He rubbed his throbbing temples, fury swirling in his gut.
“Jeff Hollister has evidence of surgery. But I can’t imagine Dad repeating such a terrible mistake—one of the rare side effects he found long ago was brain bleeds and he determined it wasn’t worth the results.”
“So you think we all have these things implanted?” He couldn’t help rubbing his hands over his head again and again searching for scars. The idea sickened him.
Lily shook her head. “It’s a complex procedure. They would have had to fit him with a headframe which they’d attach to his skull and to a table. It has to be done with the patient awake, so he would have known it was being done. A computer is used for the exact imaging. It’s very precise, Ryland, someone would have to know what they were doing.”
Ryland swore again under his breath, pacing away and then back to her.
“If someone were arranging accidents or trying to make the psychic experiment appear a failure, they could have done something to any of you in the surgery unit at Donovans. They’re certainly equipped for it.”
“What? Sabotage?” Ryland swept a hand through his hair. “Damn them.”
Lily shrugged. “Most of the time this type of conspiracy involves money. Or politics. If it could be made to look as if all of you were at risk on the outside, and you couldn’t be used for military purposes, but in truth, the enhancement worked without too many complications, the information could easily be sold to a foreign nation.”
“How would someone know about electrodes in the head causing brain bleeds? I didn’t know,” Ryland admitted. “If Higgens is behind this, how would he know?”
“Thornton would know.” At his puzzled frown she explained. “The president of Donovans. A few years ago doctors began research on a project using deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease. The idea certainly has merit and other researchers were very interested to see what else the process might be used for. Thornton and I had a long discussion about it a few months ago. I remember because he was so interested in the procedure and its uses. And if Dad mentioned he’d thought of it and dismissed the idea as too dangerous, that might have triggered interest right there if they were looking for a way to sabotage the experiment.”
She sounded so fascinated it annoyed him. “Damn it, Lily, is there a possibility we have electrodes in our brains and we can’t feel them? And if we do, how are they messing with us?”
“There would be evidence, Ryland. Also, Dad stated absolutely he wouldn’t risk repeating the problems associated with the first experiment, even though now he would be able to map a target site with pinpoint accuracy.” She looked at him. “The autopsy report was done at Donovans and Dad didn’t believe it. He suspected someone was tampering with you and your men, but he wasn’t certain. Look at this, Ryland.” She peered at the screen. “Dad tried repeatedly to speak to General Ranier, in fact, had several conversations with his aide, apparently recorded on Dad’s side, so the tapes are here somewhere. Ranier never called him back. Dad sent four letters and various emails to him and not one was answered.” She tapped the computer. “It’s all right here in his journals. General Ranier is a family friend. I had no idea Dad tried to contact him so often.”
Ryland paced across the floor, swearing under his breath. Lily was swaying with exhaustion, the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced than ever. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her to him. Carry her to her bed and curve his body around hers protectively. His hands came down on her shoulders in a soothing massage. “You need to lie down for a while, Lily. You should go to bed. If Jeff is safe for the time being, then you should just get some sleep.”
“I am tired,” she admitted. “I just have a few more things to look at here and then I’ll check on Jeff one more time.”
“How would they deliver the electricity?” Ryland asked curiously.
She scanned the third disk quickly, stopping twice to silently absorb the more technical material. “If it was legitimate, you’d wear a small power pack, much like a pacemaker. You’d switch it on yourself. It’s magnetic. The smallest pulse possible for results would be delivered. None of you have a power pack so if it happened to Jeff, the electrodes were placed without his real knowledge or consent of what they were doing and then he would have been subjected to a magnetic high frequency delivered by an outside source. I’m hypothesizing, Ryland, I’m not certain how or even if it could be done for certain.”
“Why? What would be the point of doing that to him?”
“To kill him of course.” Lily shut down the computer. “Come on. Let’s go check on him. It’s been a long night.”
He took her hand. “And a longer day,” he agreed.
TEN
I need you. Lily woke with a start, her heart pounding with fear, or maybe in anticipation, her eyes straining to pierce the darkness into the corners of her bedroom. The voice was clear and strong. Edgy with hunger. Not a dream this time. Ryland was in the same room with her.
She rolled over and peered under her bed. Laughing at her silliness, Lily lay back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. The sound of her voice helped to stifle the disappointment settling in her body. She ached. Inside and out, she ached for him. For Ryland Miller. The silver slash of his eyes. The temptation of his mouth. His body. She dreamt of his body. Of holding him close, of his hands and mouth touching her, tasting her. Of the feel of his skin. She woke burning and alone. H
ollow and empty and moody.
After she had left him with Jeff Hollister, she had returned to her father’s secret laboratory, wanting to read more of his journals. Lily feared doing anything that might harm Hollister but Ryland had been adamant that they not bring in medical help. She worked most of the morning and into the afternoon, falling into bed just before five. Obviously she had slept into the night.
She was not going to search Ryland out. Thinking about him interfered with her ability to concentrate on helping him. It was far more important to find answers. She had supplied him with a safe refuge and plenty of food. Getting involved with him any further could jeopardize everything, she told herself firmly. The best way to help Ryland Miller and the others was to find out everything she could about how her father had managed to open their brains to the waves of energy.
Lily shoved a hand through her thick mass of hair tumbling around her face. She could never live up to the erotic dream they’d shared. It was easy enough to be completely uninhibited in a dream, but she had no idea how to behave with a flesh-and-blood man expecting a siren. Why had she ever shared that dream with him? She blushed a vivid scarlet, groaned, and hid her face in her hands.
“Think of something else, Lily. For heaven’s sake, you’re a grown woman. It’s imperative to find the answers. Stop thinking about him!” Lily tried to be firm with herself, forcing her mind to consider other things besides raw, hot men. Man. She sighed. “Okay, Lily, focus here. Colonel Higgens is bound to eventually become suspicious of you. Sooner or later he’ll find a way to penetrate security. Arly only thinks he’s a miracle worker.”
Lily threw back the covers and padded across the room to the tiled bathroom on bare feet. She wore only a long shirt. Ryland’s shirt. It still held his scent, enfolding her in his presence like an embrace. She had stolen it, a pathetic impulse she was slightly ashamed of, but eternally grateful she had acted on. It had been left in the laboratory along with his other clothes, ready to be sent out to the laundry. She couldn’t believe she had been reduced to stealing a shirt. It was more than pathetic, it was truly wretched.
Shadow Game (GhostWalkers) Page 18
