Predatory Game

by Christine Feehan

  She made noise as she ran, deliberately making her footsteps loud, hoping he'd bring up the gun, but he kept screaming and rolling on the asphalt. Saber skidded to a halt, brought up the gun, and stared down into the face of the man who had violated her sanctuary--her home.

  "Les." She let out her breath, a little shocked that the day soundman could have been stalking her for the last few weeks. He barely spoke to her, in fact the rare times they worked together, he was surly and mean.

  He spat curses at her, the gun still in his hand, but he didn't lift it, only drummed his heels against the asphalt and raged as if demented. She could see he'd been wounded in the stomach. The pain had to be excruciating.

  "Saber!"

  If she was going to kill him, she had to do it now, squeeze the trigger and be done with him, but she couldn't. She stood there shaking, the energy swirling around her in blacks and reds, swallowing her up so that her vision darkened and she went to her knees.

  Brian ran up behind her and the terrible churning in her stomach, the pounding in her head, lessened significantly. When he dropped his hand on her shoulder, it disappeared altogether.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Brady's been shot. We need to call an ambulance."

  He reached down and helped her up, removing the gun and tucking it into his belt. "Did he hurt you?"

  "No. But he's been the one calling and he broke into my house and did disgusting things in my bedroom. I don't understand this."

  "No? Les was sent by Dr. Whitney to watch you and report back to him."

  Brian drew a gun from beneath his shoulder and kicked at Les with the toe of his boot while Saber stood there, mouth open in shock.

  "How would you know that? Who are you?"

  "The theory was neither you nor Jess would pay much attention to someone not genetically enhanced. And you didn't. It was a test of sorts, one you both failed. You even disliked him, but you didn't bother to find out why. That's a weakness, Saber."

  He brought up the gun, aimed it, and fired. A hole blossomed in the center of Les's forehead. Saber jumped and stepped back, horrified.

  "You should have killed him. You never would have been safe as long as he was around. He's been deteriorating for months. He obsessed over you."

  "Brian." Saber inhaled sharply, trying to keep panic down. He wasn't close enough to touch. And he didn't take his eyes off of her. "Do you work for Whitney?"

  "You already know the answer to that and it should have occurred to you why you were so comfortable at work." There was a definite reprimand in his voice.

  "You're an anchor." He was the reason she wasn't writhing on the ground with jackhammers pounding at her head from the aftermath of violence.

  "And a shielder." He flashed a quick grin. "One of the rare ones--like you."

  She raised her chin and took another step back. "You'll have to kill me, Brian, because I'm not going back."

  His eyebrow shot up. "If I'd wanted to take you back, I would have knocked you out at work and gotten the job done."

  "I liked you, Brian. You're very good at what you do."

  "You don't have to stop liking me. I'm no different from you. I do a job. My job was to look out for you and I've done it. The next time you have a maggot on the ground, Saber, kill it. You've been taught right. Just because you don't want to work as an assassin anymore doesn't mean all of your training should be thrown out. You should be able to keep yourself alive."

  Brian glanced over at Brady. "I've got to go. There are a couple of people I want to see before I take off."

  She took a step toward him. "Not Jess."

  "Of course not Jess. Back off, Saber. I wouldn't want to have to knock you out. I don't like seeing bruises on you. I'm going to see Patsy, just to make certain she's all right. I'm not going after Jess."

  "She has guards on her," Saber felt compelled to point out. She liked Brian. She thought of him as a friend. And she was stunned that she had worked with him night after night and never once caught on to the fact that he was a GhostWalker working for Whitney.

  "He's evil, Brian. You have to know that."

  "I'm a soldier, Saber. Just like you. I take orders."

  "You're not in his breeding program?"

  "That's a rumor, nothing more."

  She shook her head. "You're lying to yourself because you don't want it to be true. Why do you think he let me go? He wants Jess and me to have a baby."

  In the distance they heard the wail of sirens. Brian didn't look away from her. In his eyes, on his face, she saw respect--the respect of a fellow soldier--admiration for what she could do.

  "I do my job, Saber. Go where they tell me and carry out orders. I'm going to see Patsy and then I'll be gone. You stay out of trouble."

  "Brian, get another assignment. Anyone but Whitney. Ask for a transfer to one of the other GhostWalker teams. Someone is out to kill all of us and we have no idea who. Not Whitney, but someone high enough up that they can mess with assignments. Some of the GhostWalkers have been sent out on suicide missions. You need to know that and all the men on your team need to be aware of it as well." She talked fast, keeping her voice low, aware of the janitor and two other security guards hesitantly coming toward them.

  He smiled at her. "You take care of yourself. I have to get out before the cops arrive. Be safe, Saber. And don't let your guard down."

  She was going to miss him. She watched him walk over to Brady and held her breath as he crouched down, took a pressure bandage out of his jacket, and handed it and Brady's gun back to the ex-SEAL. Brian went over the side of the mountain, using the exact escape route Saber had scoped out months earlier. He would have a car and a pack stashed close by.

  She ran over to Brady and knelt down beside him. He tore open the packaging with his teeth. She ripped at the material of his trousers. His thigh was soaked with blood.

  "Here, give it to me. The paramedics will be here any minute."

  "Brian's military," Brady said. "Man, I didn't catch that. He blended so perfectly."

  That was what a GhostWalker like Brian did. A chameleon, becoming who and what everyone expected. She shook her head. She'd heard of them, of course, but Brian was the first one she'd encountered. They could become anyone.

  "Yeah, he's military."

  "He executed that man."

  She didn't reply, but sat back, rubbing her hand over her face, exhausted. Without Brian to pull the energy from her, she felt the aftereffects, although most of it was already dispersed. She held out her hand. "You have a cell phone." Because all she wanted to do was talk to Jess--hear the comfort of his voice.

  Brady lay back in the grass beside her. "My pocket."

  She glanced at him sharply. He was gray, with beads of sweat on his face. "Hey! You'd better not be thinking of dying on me."

  Alarmed, she bent over him and pressed her fingers to his pulse. At once she felt the rhythm of his body. She could read it easily now, after working with Patsy and Jess. He was losing too much blood too fast. Swearing, she knelt beside him.

  "Close your eyes and try to relax. You're going to feel warm, maybe even hot."

  A faint grin told her he wanted to give her a snappy comeback, but he didn't have the energy to deliver it.

  She sent out a tentative current, reading the feedback until she found the tiny nick in the artery. She closed herself off to all sights and sounds and sent a small pulse of heat to repair the tear. The electrical current stimulated cells to step up the repair process as well as closing off the artery.

  Brady caught her wrist as she sank back on her heels. "What are you?"

  She grinned at him. "I'm top secret, my friend." And she could save lives as well as take them.

  She found his cell phone and flipped it open to call the one man she needed to share that piece of news with.

  CHAPTER 19

  "Logan and Neil checked out Les's home and most of it was stripped clean. All but the little homemade dungeon he apparently had waiting for
you," Jess said.

  Saber shuddered. "There are just some things in life it's best not to hear about and Les's dungeon is one of them. What do you mean the house was stripped clean? Weren't there any prints?" She felt awful. So tired she could barely stand, and twice now she'd had nosebleeds. She'd covered it up at the police station when she was giving her report, but all she wanted to do was crawl in a hole somewhere.

  Jess leaned forward in his chair to reach the cup of coffee she put on the table in front of him. It had been a long day with the police, checking on Brady at the hospital, visiting Patsy, and then talking with Logan and Neil. Saber hadn't even gone to bed. They lost both soundmen at the radio station and he sure as hell didn't want Saber to go in to work. He didn't want her away from him.

  "There were prints, but they didn't tell us too much that we didn't already know. I ran his prints when I hired him, and nothing popped out at me. It seems he failed to mention on his resume that he spent a couple of years working at the Whitney Research Center in California."

  "Brian said Les was reporting to Whitney, but he was a very sick man. Do you think Whitney knew he was sick and that's why he sent Brian as well?" Saber asked. She yawned and pressed two fingers to her throbbing temples, trying to stop the incessant pounding. "It's all too complicated for me to figure out."

  "They found recordings of Les's ramblings. Most of the recordings were missing, so I'm assuming the ones referring to Whitney were taken, but there were enough left to show his descent into madness. It seemed to happen over time."

  There was something in his tone that had Saber going on alert. She reached across the table and caught his hand, waited until his eyes met hers. "It had something to do specifically with me? Did Whitney set him up?"

  "We don't know, baby, but it's a possibility."

  She jumped up and turned away from him to pace across the floor. Even her legs felt rubbery, her body trembling with weakness.

  "Whitney had another man like this working for him, a very sick doctor. Logan thinks it's part of a larger research project Whitney's conducting." As Saber went by him, Jess caught her arm to stop her. "We all believe that Whitney has psychic ability. That he reads people. How else would he find infants with psychic ability? He isn't the kind of man to have a couple of deviants working for him unless he wanted to study them."

  She frowned and pulled her arm away, not wanting him to notice she couldn't control the trembling. "Whitney sent him on purpose? How could he know that he'd come after me like that?"

  "He didn't. He wanted to see. At least that's what we think."

  "And he sent Brian along just in case."

  "He probably didn't want to take a chance that anything would happen to you before you had a baby. If Brian is a shielder, then at this time, I know of only four of us. Kadan, you, Brian, and me. He needs more children to be born because it's so rare and obviously he thinks we're his best bet."

  "Great. I can never have a baby."

  "We'll have babies," he said softly, reaching for her again and drawing her close to him. "I've already talked to Ken and Jack about purchasing land close to them. We can build a fortress up in the mountains. A few of the others may join us and we can protect the children."

  "What about Patsy? It bothered me that Brian was so insistent about seeing her."

  Jess was silent for a moment, turning things over in his mind. Brian risked being caught to see his sister. Granted, the guards weren't GhostWalkers, but they were well-trained men from Brady's security force. When he'd spoken with Patsy she had admitted Brian had come to say good-bye.

  "Patsy's never met Whitney, has she?" Saber asked.

  Everything inside of Jess went still. His thoughts were already heading in the direction of Saber's and it scared him. If Whitney had managed to observe his operation at a major hospital with GhostWalkers around, he certainly could waltz into the hospital where Patsy was.

  "Oh God. Hand me the phone. I want her protected at all times. We've got to get her out of that hospital and into some place we can better guard her."

  Saber shoved the phone into his hand. "Maybe I should get over there." She didn't want to. She wanted someone else to handle all the problems so she could just crawl in bed.

  Ken, you and Mari get over to the hospital fast and guard Patsy. I'm afraid Whitney may make a try for her.

  Then you wouldn't have any protection. Neil is meeting with Kadan today and the others were called to work.

  Jess glared at Saber, frustrated that Ken would argue with him. "You're not going without me. I'm sending Ken and Mari there as well." Get to Patsy. We'll be right behind you.

  You're vulnerable here, Jess.

  Damn it. Don't you think I know that? Go!

  "We've got to get over there, Saber. If Brian was interested in Patsy, Whitney must have somehow paired them using his pheromone enhancers. He won't let her go."

  Saber had reached for the van keys, but she dropped them back on the table and stopped, turning to look at him. "What does that mean, Jesse? You don't think Brian could have genuine feelings for Patsy?"

  "What difference does it make?" he snapped impatiently, reaching past her for the keys. "Let's go."

  "You go."

  Jess whipped his chair around. "Don't do this, Saber, not now. Patsy could be in danger."

  "Brian isn't going to hurt Patsy. And in any case, he's long gone. She said he left, remember? And Ken and Mari won't let anything happen to her. I think you should go and see for yourself, but I'm tired. I've been up nearly twenty-four hours, been in a shoot-out, and used up all my energy trying to heal your legs. I'm going to bed."

  "Damn it, Saber. This isn't the time to get pissed off. I wasn't talking about us."

  "Yes, you were. You think I'm going to just let that go, Jesse? Brian is after Patsy for no other reason than because Whitney paired them? Patsy is beautiful, far more so than I am. She's sophisticated and educated and most men would kill to have her. She isn't anything at all like me. If you don't think Brian could be attracted to her for herself, then no way in hell did you fall in love with me on your own."

  He raked a hand through his hair, wanting to shake her. She was exhausted. He could see it on her face. And hurt. He could see that in her eyes. But the truth was, she was looking for a way out because she was afraid--of him, of Whitney, of being involved in a family, of being part of the community of GhostWalkers.

  "You've always got one foot out the door, Saber. No matter how much I tell you I love you or that I want you, no matter how many times I tell you that you're my world and I'd give up everything for you, it isn't going to matter if you don't feel it too. I can't make you want to stay. And I'm not holding you against your will, as much as I'd like to."

  He threw the keys back on the table. "Do you think I'm proud of the fact that we didn't use birth control? Do you think a man like me ever--ever--forgets something that important? I wanted you pregnant. I wanted you to have my child growing inside of you because you wouldn't leave me. You'd need me to take care of you and the baby. I hate that I did that. That I even thought that. That's as much of a trap as Whitney had you in. If you stay with me, it has to be because you love me and want to be with me."

  "It's so easy for you, Jess. You have it all. The parents. Patsy. Your friends. Everyone respects you. I come from nothing. I don't even have a name or a birthday. I can do all the things Patsy can do because I was educated for the purpose of fitting into any society to kill. That was my main goal for everything I ever learned."

  He spread out his hands. "But that isn't who you are. You've lived here going on a year, Saber, and I can tell you, I have more of a killer instinct than you. Brian knew that or he wouldn't have blown his cover. He'd still be here watching us, informing Whitney and seeing my sister. But you wouldn't kill Les."

  "I would have killed Chaleen. When I thought she was a threat to you..."

  "But you didn't. And that's the point. It isn't in your nature. I see you. Who you are. Who you can be
. For once in your life stop running from yourself and have the courage to take what you want. I'm right here. In front of you."

  Saber sank into a chair and rested her head in the crook of her arm on the table. "I'm so tired, Jesse, I can't think anymore. Go see Patsy and make sure she's fine and I'll sleep for a while, and when you come back we can talk."

  His breath caught in his throat. Something was very wrong. Saber didn't get tired--not like this. He should have noticed the moment they were alone together. He rolled his chair closer to her and put his hand on her forehead. She wasn't running a fever and that could only mean she was feeling repercussions from trying to heal the damaged nerves and muscle in his legs. It wouldn't be unusual for a GhostWalker to have problems after using psychic ability. Many had brain bleeds and other major physical problems. He should have considered that.

  "Come on, baby, let's get you to bed. I'll call Eric to come over and check you out, just in case."

  "No, I don't want that man near me, and I'm just exhausted. I can hardly function, let alone think. Please just go see Patsy, you won't worry so much if you do. I'll be fine here." She let him pull her out of the chair and onto his lap. She nuzzled his neck. "Tell me about your legs. So much has been going on I haven't had a chance to ask you if you think I helped."

  "I think you saved my legs for me, baby. I spent the evening while you were working swimming and relearning how to use my legs. It's interesting. I know how to walk, but I actually have to remember, think each step through. But I only fell a few times." There was excitement in his voice.

  He pushed the wheelchair through the house toward his bedroom. "I'm resting my legs right now. Eric said not to be stupid and overdo, even though I really want to go running." He kissed the top of her head. "Go running. Did you hear that, Saber? It's possible that I'll be running in a few days and you did that. You. You're a fucking miracle, babe. My own personal angel."

  She sighed softly and murmured something he couldn't catch, her small body relaxing into his.

  Jess slowed his pace. She had fallen asleep in his lap. Even with his astonishing news, she had crashed--big time. His mouth went dry. He wasn't a man to feel panic, but he wanted to call Lily and ask her if it was normal for Saber to have this reaction. Unfortunately Lily wasn't available to him. Ryland and she had gone underground with the baby being born. A boy, Daniel Ryland Miller. Jess was certain he would see them up in the mountains when they bought land in the same vicinity.