Ghostwalker 03 - Night Game

Nonny. To you. Why would I do that when every instinct I possess would lead me to do just the opposite? I make illogical decisions around her. Why? Because I have to see her. The need is as strong as any drug. Look at Ryland and Lily and Nico and Dahlia, It’s the same with them. And if that isn’t enough our psychic gifts complement each other. My psychic talent matches hers. I can even amplify her. As a weapon, the two of us are probably unstoppable in an environment where we could destroy a large number of targets with no risk to civilians. Flame thinks Whitney did that on purpose and now he’s sitting back testing us.”

    “What do you think?”

    “I don’t know what the hell to think. There was a military sniper in this group—one with a very questionable background. He didn’t belong with the others, he was light-years ahead of them in training. None of them carried IDs. His fingerprints are burned off.
    That’s a hell of lot of trouble to go to just to kill a retired riverboat captain.” He cocked his head to one side, listening. “The helicopter is on the way. Who do we trust, Ian?”

    “Each other. Just the way it’s always been.”

    “Do we warn the others? We don’t have any facts, just pure conjecture.”

    “It really doesn’t matter if this was a field operation or whether it was something altogether different,” Ian said. The others need to know there’s a possibility Whitney is still alive.”

    “Then they ought to know we were physically enhanced as well as psychically.”

    Ian nodded. “I suspected as much. I didn’t think being able to see through walls was going to help me jump over them. The physical enhancement just seemed a bonus.”

    “He infected Flame with cancer more than once when she was a child. Enhancement can sometimes produce cancer and he wanted to find ways to avoid that. She was used as his lab rat. And Ian…“ Gator waited until his friend looked at him. “She was never adopted out any more than Dahlia was. She says if any of the girls were, it was only one or two of them, which means Whitney planted false stories for Lily to find. Lily is very suspicious already.”

    Ian whistled. “It never occurred to me that Peter Whitney might be alive.”

    “Do you realize what that would mean? He’s yanking on our strings. Setting us up. Still using us for experiments, only this time we don’t know it.”

    “We’re in the service, Gator. It isn’t like we don’t expect to conduct field operations. It’s why we agreed to the enhancement in the first place. We all thought we’d cut down on casualties and better serve our country. He could just have someone following us on assignment and document what we do. Going to this kind of trouble seems overkill.”

    “Not if he wants to see us working with the women. If Whitney is alive and he’s conducting secret experiments by putting us into other positions using the women, that changes everything. We didn’t volunteer for that and that makes us…“ He trailed off, unable to actually voice the word without bile rising in his throat. “Damn that son of a bitch, Ian.”

    “I’m not a damn victim, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Ian responded, his brilliant green eyes suddenly going flat and hard.

    “Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at. Do you think we feel superior to Lily, Dahlia, Flame, and the others because we made the choice? We volunteered for psychic enhancement.
    Do we pity them?”

    Ian opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. “I wouldn’t say superior. But the pity might be true. Although how anyone can pity Flame is beyond me. She’s beautiful and she’s lethal. And sexy as hell.”

    “Thanks. You don’t ever need to be saying that again. Or thinking it.” Gator let his breath out slowly. “We didn’t agree to physical enhancement and as cool as it has been, it also means we could get cancer just like Flame. For all I know the son of a bitch could have targeted us just like he did her. Once he realized gene enhancement could stimulate a mutant cell, he deliberately caused the mutation in order to figure out how to beat it. So he gave Flame cancer and then put her into remission a couple of times just as if she were a lab rat. Who’s to say he hasn’t done that to us?”

    Ian swore softly. “Cancer? Is that for real, Gator?”

    Yeah, it’s for real. Lily thinks it may recur in Flame. Whitney used viruses as the vector for the enhancement. Sometimes the