Ghostwalker 06 - Predatory Game

strong when it came to reading energy and auras. She couldn’t read thoughts the way some of the other women had been able to do through touch, but she could feel danger miles away. As she made her way through the woods, the impression of a threat increased significantly.

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    Saber had to factor in the chance that Ken or Mari would become aware of the intruder and come to investigate, and that meant she needed to be on the alert every moment. She smelled cigarette smoke and slowed her pace, going low to the ground as she advanced on the car hidden in the bushes just off a narrow dirt road.
    The vehicle was parked behind several very bushy plants. It was impossible to see from the road, and certainly not from Jess’s house, which meant that whoever was watching couldn’t be in the car. Saber stayed still, waiting for a sound, anything, to tell her where the watcher was positioned.
    The breeze shifted slightly. She wrinkled her nose. Cigarette smoke and perfume—and she recognized the perfume. Chaleen.
    Saber stayed still, yards from the vehicle, breathing deep to keep her body relaxed and her energy output low. The idea that Jess’s former girlfriend was spying on him infuriated her, but she couldn’t afford to blow her cover with a surge of adrenaline that would bring both Ken and Mari running.
    Chaleen was standing on a large rock beside a tree. She was close enough that at first glance one might mistake her for part of the foliage. She wore a dark navy suit and, incredibly, high heels. Her shoes looked absurd there in the woods. She held a pair of binoculars up to her eyes and was studying Jess’s home, a faint frown on her face.
    With a little sigh of impatience, she dropped the binoculars, allowing them to hang by the strap around her neck, and stepped off the rock, careful not to ruin her heels. Snapping open her cell phone, she walked toward the more open area of the dirt road in an attempt to pick up a signal. All the while, she continued watching the house.
    As she put the phone to her ear, her jacket parted, revealing the shoulder holster and gun beneath her arm. She was wearing slim trousers, and when she took a step, the material pulled just enough to give her hold-out gun away as well. Saber would have bet she had another strapped to the back of her waist, right where the jacket was loose enough to conceal it.
    Chaleen began to pace while she talked into the phone, her agitation clear. The energy build-up around her was doubling. Ken and Mari would feel the threat and come looking.It was now or never.
    “I’m telling you, we’ll never learn anything this way. It’s impossible. Do you think Jess is just going to spill his guts to an old girlfriend? One who betrayed him? He’s a smart man. You continually underestimate him.”
    Saber crawled through the brush, stalking the enemy. Chaleen had already betrayed Jess once. She wasn’t going to get an opportunity to do it twice. Saber moved her body within striking distance, placing herself in Chaleen’s path. She needed Chaleen to take another step and stop. Already Saber began to tune her body’s rhythm to her adversary’s. The heart, the ebb and flow of blood, the steady pulse—those things became her world. A symphony of sound, the music playing inside of her, etching notes onto her brain where she could clearly see the important pattern and how best to gently interrupt it.
    Chaleen sighed and took another step, once more stopping to maintain the weak signal. “Does it matter?
    He has a girlfriend. Seduction didn’t work before and it isn’t going to work now. Let me tell you something. Not all men can be seduced into betraying their country.You should have learned that when he was captured and tortured. He wouldn’t give up the people he was protecting, not even when he lost his legs. No. Absolutely not. Yes, I believe Jess Calhoun is an operative, absolutely, but he isn’t one you Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    can use. Accept it and move on, damn it.”
    Saber curled her palm around Chaleen’s ankle without actually touching it. She could feel the heat now.
    The life. The blood moving and the electricity as the commands of the brain were carried out. With infinite patience she placed the tips of her fingers over the pulse. Light. So light as to be nonexistent.
    Saber closed her eyes and absorbed the rhythm,