Ghostwalker 03 - Night Game

right,” he agreed, the lump in his throat j threatening to choke him.

    “We just left him there in the alligator hole.”

    “He would have wanted us to cover for you. We don’t know who we’re dealing with yet, Flame. I was going to track for the forensic people tomorrow if they hadn’t figured it out.
    It’s been raining heavily and the rain may have wiped out most of the tracks. Burrell’s island is a good distance from where we took down the killers and nothing will lead them to the preserve. The bodies are gone. Even if they find the wrecked Jeep, none of us touched it.”

    Another sob escaped, but she choked it back, turning away from him. “I hate this. I hate being out of control.”

    He didn’t know how to comfort her. Strange when he’d always been so good with women, but now, when it mattered to him, he didn’t know the right thing to say or do. He rubbed her arm awkwardly. “You have every reason to cry.”

    She shrank away from him, glaring. “I’m not crying.”

    “ Cher.” His tone was incredibly tender and her eyes filled up all over again. He watched her wipe at them with the back of her hand. “It’s okay to cry. It’s good to cry.”

    “No it’s not. Why do people say that? Crying is a complete waste of time. It doesn’t do any good whatsoever. Your face swells up and turns red. Your eyes burn and you get the headache from hell. Will crying bring Burrell back?” She sank down onto the bed, back against the wall, drawing her knees up. “I cried once in a while after I learned to screw up Whitney’s camera and recorders. It didn’t make me well. It didn’t get me out of the cage he put me in. It didn’t do a damn thing but give him satisfaction when he found out.
    I’m not crying.”

    Gator shoved a bag, the one he recognized from the first night he’d met Flame, into a corner of the cabin out of the way before stripping off his shirt and tossing it onto the back of a chair. He pulled a bottle of water from his pack. “Here, drink this.”

    “Thanks.” She took the bottle, watching as he tugged off his boots and tossed them into the corner of the room beside the large bag. “I’m not sleeping with you so you may as well take the bed. I can sleep on the floor.”

    Gator sat down beside her. She flinched when he jarred her leg. “I didn’t ask you nor was I going to seduce you, not, mind you, that it wouldn’t work.”

    “You were going to ask me. And seduction wouldn’t have worked.”

    “I wasn’t going to try,” he repeated.

    She frowned. “Why not? What’s wrong with me? I think you’d try with an alligator so why not me?”

    “An alligator? I draw the line at reptiles.”

    “Fine, I take it back. Why aren’t you going to try to seduce me?”

    He raised his eyebrows at her. “You mean why aren’t I going to seduce you? Grand-mere raised a gentleman. You’re too upset for me to take advantage of you right at this moment. We can both sleep on the bed and I’ll be have myself.”

    Her gaze moved over his face. “But you would have tried to seduce me if I wasn’t so upset, right?”

    “W-e-1-l,” he drawled. “I don’ know if I would have or not. You have a thing about knives.”

    She made a face at him. “You like my knives and you know you do. It turns you on every time you think about them.”

    He didn’t deny the obvious. “Did you huck one at me the other night after you left the club? Inquiring minds want to know.”

    “Huck? Is huck a word? No, I don’t huck knives; I throw them with deadly accuracy. If I threw a knife at you, you’d be in the bottom of the bayou. I saved your ass, actually.” She wiped at her eyes again, took a drink of water, and twisted the cap back into place.

    “What the hell does that mean?”

    “It means you aren’t quite the Mr. Invincible you like to think you are. You got someone mad at you the other night and he was just drunk enough and mean enough to try to take you out. You’ve grown complacent, and complacency can get you killed.”

    “You were following me?”

    “I was baby-sitting . You and your drunken idiot brother and friend. Someone had to do it and I didn’t see anyone else volunteering. Personally, I don’t think you have all that many friends.”

    “It was Vicq, wasn’t it? He waited for his chance and threw the knife.”

    She shrugged. “I was pretty certain he wasn’t going to just walk away quietly. He isn’t the quiet type. Did you know that he