Mind Game

by Christine Feehan

  Dahlia woke in the dark with fear choking her. It was a familiar nightmare, one that never quite faded away. Shadowy figures watching her. Always watching her. She needed open spaces where she could breathe, and at the sanitarium she often crawled out onto the roof. She lay perfectly still, listening to the steady sound of Nicolas's breathing, yet she knew he was awake. He lay in the darkness, probably awakened by the movement of her body, the way she tensed, the way her breathing had quickened. She was certain he was that attuned to her. And she was that aware of him.

  It was only then that she realized she was wrapped around him, her thigh carelessly between his, her head on his abdomen. She moved away from him and felt her hair slip from between his fingers. She lay in silence, unable to think properly, wanting to apologize but not knowing how. In the end she took the coward's way out. Uncomfortable, Dahlia slipped off the moss-filled mattress, careful not to touch him, not to make physical contact. It was only an hour or so until dawn. She knew the night sounds of the bayou. She was awake more often than asleep after midnight so she knew each hour that insects, birds or frogs serenaded one another.

  Nicolas didn't move, but she knew his eyes were open, watching her as she padded on bare feet across the floor and opened the door. She could feel the intensity of his gaze as it burned over her. She was immediately aware of the thinness of the shirt she was wearing. The tails covered her body, even went to her knees, but she wore nothing beneath it. Her body felt hot and achy, completely foreign. The cool night air rushed over her. She hoped her face wasn't glowing as hot as it felt.

  Dahlia climbed onto the roof with the ease of long practice. Few physical activities were difficult for her. She sat carefully, tucking the shirt beneath her and looking up at the clouds floating above her. So many times she'd spent the nights looking up at the stars and wishing she could grab on to the clouds as they passed overhead. The rain had ceased sometime in the night. She loved the sound of rain, the continuous rhythm a lullaby that sometimes aided her in sleeping. The roof was damp, the bayou clear and crisp and fresh after the cleansing rain.

  She refused to dwell on the fact that she had awoken with her body tangled with his. It happened. There was nothing she could do about it anymore than she could change what Whitney had done to her. "Lily." She whispered the name softly. Her secret, pretend friend. Lily had kept her sane on more than one occasion, yet Dahlia had been told there was no Lily. There never had been a Lily. Lily was a figment of her imagination. Milly had been her nurse for as long as she could remember. Milly had to have known Lily if she were real. It was a small thing, but it was a betrayal. Dahlia thought of Milly as family, as a mother. If she couldn't trust the things Milly told her, whom could she trust? What could she trust?

  "I should have searched for you, Lily. And Flame and all the others. I shouldn't have stayed here, a prisoner really, and believed them all. I really thought maybe I was crazy." She stared out over the water and her vision blurred. "I should have been there to stop them from killing Milly and Bernadette. They never hurt anyone or anything in their lives. It just doesn't make sense."

  She didn't hear the opening or closing of the door. She didn't even hear a noise as Nicolas gained the roof, but she was aware of his presence the moment he came up behind her. She rested her head on her knees, not turning as he stepped carefully to the spot beside her, avoiding the cracks in the roof.

  "I was late. I should have been there."

  Nicolas watched as Dahlia rubbed her face against the collar of the shirt she was wearing. His shirt. It enveloped her completely. He settled close to her. Close enough so that his thigh touched hers. He felt waves of grief pouring off of her, surrounding her. "Your being late is what saved your life, Dahlia. They were there to kill you. That was a hit squad."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. But they were there to kill Milly and Bernadette and to destroy my home." She looked at him. "Why? After all this time, why would they decide to do that? Don't you think the timing is a bit coincidental?"

  Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. He felt a claw tearing at his gut. "I considered that immediately. I think it's more than likely that Lily dug in the wrong places and tipped someone off that she found you. She inherited everything.

  The paperwork is enormous. She found the trust for the sanitarium buried in a lot of legal mumbo jumbo only the lawyer understood."

  "Is she happy?"

  "She seems very happy. She's married to a friend of mine. Ryland Miller. They're never very far apart."

  "I'm glad." She looked up at the moving clouds. "Someone needs to have come out of this sane and happy. I'm glad it was Lily."

  "Don't give up, Dahlia. There are things we can do to minimize the effects of what Whitney did to you."

  She turned her head to look at him. "If there were things anyone could do for me, why was I kept apart from the rest of the world? Why was I raised alone in what was virtually a prison? I could walk away, everyone always reminded me of that, but I really couldn't, because in the end, it was the only place I had that gave my brain respite from the sensory overload. Now I don't have it anymore."

  Nicolas felt awkward. If she needed him to shoot someone for her, he was her man, but comforting her was something altogether different. He didn't like feeling uncertain; it was foreign to his nature. Men didn't pat women like dogs, did they? He put his arm around her, drew her closer to him. She seemed so fragile he was afraid he might break her. She stiffened immediately, but she didn't pull away. "You might not have your home, Dahlia, but you have the GhostWalkers. Not just Lily, but an entire family of people just like you. We'll work through it together."

  Dahlia kept her face averted. She sensed how Nicolas was struggling to find a way to help her and it was endearing, the only reason she didn't pull away from him and put distance between them. She knew he was trying to comfort her, but the thought of being around people she didn't know, in a house that was unfamiliar, was terrifying. Dahlia knew no other way of life. The sanitarium and the bayou were her home. She forced down grief and fear.

  "I steal things."

  "You do what?"

  She wanted to smile at the incredulous tone. "Is stealing worse than killing? I thought it was all bad."

  "You just surprised me." He didn't flinch at her candid assessment of what he did, but it bothered him--and people's opinions didn't bother him. He had his own moral code, a code of strict honor. It shouldn't matter what she said . . . but it did. She wasn't accusing or even judgmental, just matter-of-fact and perhaps that was what got under his skin. That she just accepted what he was. One-dimensional, as if that was all he was. And all he would ever be.

  "That's what I do. I 'recover' things. Is that a better way of putting it? Data that has been stolen. I slip into offices and retrieve data from private corporations or even small businesses or anyone else that takes things they shouldn't."

  "Whom do you work for?"

  "Do you think all this time I've been working against the government instead of for it?" She turned her head and looked at him from beneath the impossibly long fringe of dark lashes.

  "It's possible." He tried to assess her tone, but there was little inflection in her voice. She was very closed off to him, making it impossible to read her thoughts. "If it's a splinter branch, they're working outside the parameters. What about Jesse? What did he say about them? He must have been in direct contact with them."

  "His orders always came from someone in the military. Jesse was a Navy SEAL. He would never, under any circumstances, betray his country. He's the ultimate patriotic gung ho male."

  "If he's military and was a SEAL, we'll be able to find out about him. I know he's enhanced, yet he wasn't part of our unit when we trained together. I'd like to know where he came from and where he trained. Lily suspects Whitney performed the experiment first with the children from the orphanages, with us, and with some others. She's been working to find all the children. Of course, they'd all be grown by now, and she's looking for information on whe
ther or not Whitney experimented on others."

  "It would make sense, wouldn't it?" Dahlia looked down at her bare feet. She bent to rub at a smudge on her toenail. "If he believed in what he was doing so much, which he obviously did, would he really allow so many years to go by between experiments? He must have tried it on others."

  Nicolas was listening to the sounds of the bayou. Frogs called to one another. Each group croaked louder than the other, trying to outdo one another, calling for mates. The frogs around the cabin were particularly loud, making a strange, off-key music. Abruptly, the group somewhere out near the strip of land leading to the channel went silent.

  Nicolas immediately clapped his hand over Dahlia's mouth and pulled her backward over the side of the roof. He lay flat, preventing them from being sky-lined. She didn't struggle. She was familiar with the sounds and knew immediately that something had disturbed the frogs. Nicolas put his mouth against her ear. "Slide down to the window and go in that way. I won't let you fall. Hand me my rifle. The pack is ready, just get your clothes and be ready to move."

  Dahlia nodded and inched her way down the slope of the roof. Her heart pounded overloud in her ears. The wood scraped her bare thighs and dragged the shirt up over her skin as she slid to the window. She tried not to think about her bare bottom exposed to Nicolas. Surely he had better things to look at or think about. She felt the color rising in her face as she managed to crawl into the cabin through the window.

  The rifle lay on the table beside the pack. Everything was exactly as it had been before they entered with the exception of her scattered clothes. She handed the rifle to Nicolas through the window, careful to make no sound. Her jeans were damp and uncomfortable, but she pulled them on just the same. She was not traipsing naked through the bayou with only Nicolas's shirt to cover her skin. She didn't bother with the wet underwear, instead stuffed them in the pack. She picked up the belt of ammunition. It was heavy, and the pack was even heavier. Dahlia eased both through the window and onto the ground, hanging out so far she nearly fell headfirst to keep from making a sound. She made a grab at the windowsill, frantically trying to throw herself backward.

  Nicolas caught her by the shirt and hauled her up beside him before the weight of the pack had a chance to pull her out. Dahlia closed her eyes in humiliation. She had rare abilities when it came to physical stunts, yet so far, she'd looked an incompetent ninny. Did women become helpless around men? If so, she preferred a solitary existence.

  Nicolas made no sound as he moved to the ridge of the roof, rifle to his shoulder, his eye to the scope. Dahlia thought she was quiet in her work, but it wasn't just that he made no noise, it was the way he moved. Almost as if he flowed like water, so easily he couldn't possibly draw the eye to him. She watched his hands--rock steady. There was no change of expression, no quickening of breath, no animosity. And then she realized what she must be observing. Nicolas Trevane underwent a metamorphosis with the rifle in his hands and his eye to the scope. He was not completely human, yet not a machine, but something somewhere in between. He closed off emotion and his brain and body functioned at a rapid rate of speed.

  He gave off such low levels of energy because he didn't feel anger when doing his job. He turned everything off. It wasn't an act of violence, it was something far deeper. Dahlia struggled to understand. Controlling energy was everything to her. Violence always created energy. Even the buildup of anger in a person created the violent waves that often made her ill. Nicolas didn't have those harsher emotions roiling inside of him. There was no fear. She didn't even catch a stray swirl slipping toward her. He waited calmly, his heart and lungs working steadily.

  Dahlia knew the moment Nicolas spotted the assassin stalking them. She was so aware of him, she could almost catch his thoughts. There was no sudden spike in his breathing, but his finger moved along the trigger. One stroke, almost as if testing to insure it was exactly where it was supposed to be. The movement was slow and deliberate and it fascinated her. Although she was watching him, she was still shocked when he pulled the trigger and immediately slid down the side of the roof. He reached out and caught the back of her shirt, taking her with him.

  He dropped her to the ground, signaling for her to run in the direction of the boat. She did as he indicated, sprinting through the swamp, staying low as she followed the path. The boat was tied up to a cypress tree. Dahlia waded out into the water to ready the boat. She couldn't help the way her heart pounded when she saw Nicolas coming toward her out of the heavier foliage. He looked a warrior of old, tall and strong and fierce. He didn't hesitate, but waded straight into the water, pushing the boat into the channel where the reeds grew the highest and could shield them as they made their getaway.

  Dahlia expected a rush of violent energy to overtake her. She even braced herself for it, but there was nothing but cool morning air as Nicolas took the oars and drove through the water with long, smooth strokes. "You missed him," she said. Somehow it didn't seem possible. He was so sure of himself, almost invincible in his manner.

  "I hit what I was aiming at," he answered quietly. "We have to keep moving. I'm hoping I slowed them down, but we can't count on it." He forced the oars through the water with his powerful arms and the boat shot through the channel toward open water.

  "I didn't feel anything."

  His gaze brushed her face, an odd little caress she felt all the way through her body, just as if he'd touched her with his fingers. "I wasn't aiming at you."

  She caught the fleeting glint of his white teeth in what could have been a brief smile. One dark eyebrow rose in response. "Has anyone ever told you your sense of humor needs a little work?"

  "No one's ever accused me of having a sense of humor before. You keep insulting me. First you accuse me of missing, and then you try to tell me I have a sense of humor."

  His face was made of stone, his tone devoid of all expression. His eyes were flat and ice cold, but Dahlia felt him laughing. Nothing big, but it was there in the boat between them, and the terrible pressure in her chest lifted a bit. "And it needs work," she pointed out. "Get it right." She even managed a brief smile of her own to match his.

  The boat moved silently through the water, taking them through a labyrinth of channels until they were in open water. At once Nicolas started the motor. "You know the area much better than I do. Keep us away from the island where your home was and away from the cabin. You need a route that takes us under cover if possible. They'll have spotters. We don't know how well equipped they are, but if we hear a helicopter or small plane, I think it best to avoid them."

  "I may steal things for them," Dahlia admitted, "but I've spent my entire life in a sanitarium. Even if this all came out, how much damage could I do to them? I'd be labeled crazy. And the sad truth is, I couldn't go into a courthouse and be in close proximity with so many people and not have a meltdown. None of this makes sense to me." She pinned him with her dark gaze. "Does it to you?"

  "I'm giving it some thought," he replied mildly.

  She shook her head in exasperation at his steady, unshaken manner and turned her attention to guiding them, at top speed, through the bayou.

  Nicolas looked at her. She was very small-boned, but perfectly proportioned. The more he was around her, the more of a woman she seemed to him instead of the child he first thought her. And that was becoming a problem. He wanted his mind fully on keeping them alive, not on the fascinating fact that the shirt she was wearing was soaked and nearly transparent. Although small, she had beautiful breasts, and he couldn't keep himself from looking at them. He could see the darker outline of her nipples through the wet material. She had knotted the shirttails around the waistband of her jeans, and it called his attention to the curve of her hip and the memory of the brief, enticing glimpse of her bare butt as she slid down the roof. He had to admit, the glimpse had distracted him and he'd thought far too much about that particular part of her anatomy, not the smartest thing when on the run.

  Nicolas couldn't stop
looking at her with her head thrown back, her thick, black hair streaming in the wind, her body perfectly balanced as she guided the boat. With her head back, he could see her neck and the outline of her body beneath the shirt, almost as if she wore nothing at all. His body stirred, hardened. Nicolas didn't bother to fight the reaction. Whatever was between them, the chemistry was apparent and it wasn't going to go away. He could sit in the boat and admire the flawless perfection of her skin. Imagine the way it would feel beneath his fingertips, his palm.

  Dahlia's head suddenly turned and her eyes were on him. Hot. Wild. Wary. "Stop touching my breasts." She lifted her chin, faint color stealing under her skin.

  He held up his hands in surrender. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "You know exactly what I'm talking about." Dahlia's breasts ached, felt swollen and hot, and deep inside her, a ravenous appetite began to stir. Nicolas was sitting across from her, looking the epitome of the perfect male statue, his features expressionless and his eyes cool, but she felt his hands on her body. Long caresses, his palms cupping her breasts, thumbs stroking her nipples until she shivered in awareness and hunger.

  "Oh, that."

  "Yes, that." She couldn't help seeing the rigid length bulging beneath his jeans, and he made no effort to hide it. His unashamed display sent her body into overtime reaction so that she felt a curious throbbing where no throbbing needed to be. She grit her teeth together. "I can still feel you touching me."

  He nodded thoughtfully. "I consider myself an innocent victim in this situation," Nicolas said. "I've always had control, in fact I pride myself on self-discipline. You seem to have destroyed it. Permanently." He wasn't exactly lying to her. He couldn't take his eyes or his mind from her body. It was an unexpected pleasure, a gift.