Ghostwalker 06 - Predatory Game

wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
    “Besides being an anchor, you’re a shielder too, aren’t you?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “We’re getting a little off the subject, don’t you think?”
    She shrugged as casually as she could. “What’s the point? I’m obviously not going to convince you, so anything I say is suspect, isn’t it? Because, you know, it makes so much sense that Whitney sent an assassin to spy on you. That’s not a waste of a serious weapon, is it?”
    Jess could see the raw hurt in her eyes and no matter how hard he tried not to let it get to him, his heart was in serious jeopardy. He swore under his breath as he suddenly comprehended the implication of her question. “Saber, you’re a shielder. That’s why in all the months you lived here, I never felt a rise in energy.” He hit his forehead with his hand. “How can you shield, but not anchor?”
    She cleared her throat. “He said his masterpiece was flawed.”
    His fists closed and he kept his hands out of sight. It made more sense to him now, the way she could kill and not suffer immediate and severe repercussions. A shielder was rare. They could keep an entire team from detection. They could shield areas from weapons attacks for a short period of time. Whitney wouldn’t want her dead. But if he thought she was flawed…“He’d want another one, to work with,” Jess murmured aloud.
    Saber’s fingers curled around the edge of the Jacuzzi, as if she might bolt, but she remained where she was, looking smaller than usual, but her eyes were defiant and her chin looked stubborn and set.
    Jess shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair again. “He sent you to me because he wants another one. He arranged for an opening at the radio station and waited for you to take the bait.”

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    Saber shrugged. “You’re not telling me anything we haven’t already suspected.”
    “He has a breeding program, Saber. He wants babies. I’m a shielder and an anchor, and although you aren’t an anchor, you are a shielder too. He knows we’ll be physically attracted because when he was busy adding to our genetic code and bumping up our psychic abilities, he made certain of it. He’s busy playing God again.”
    Beneath the bubbling water, Saber pressed a hand to her stomach as if feeling for a child. “I’m not certain what you’re trying to say.”
    “I’m saying you’re right, he wouldn’t want to get you back, not without you being pregnant.”
    “He wants me to have a baby?”
    “My baby. He wants you to have my baby. He has to be convinced that our traits are going to show up in the child, possibly stronger than in us.”
    She pressed her hand harder. “We didn’t use protection, Jesse. I didn’t even think about it. How totally irresponsible is that?”
    She sounded so close to panic, Jess reached for her and pulled her back to him. “I thought about it, I just didn’t care. If you have my baby, I’m fine with it.”
    Saber shook her head. “This is crazy. Do you see what he’s done?He’s taking away all our choices. I don’t want to get pregnant and worry every second that he’s going to take my child away from me.”
    “He’s always going to be hovering around the edges of our lives, Saber. Whitney isn’t going to go away because we want him to, no matter whether we’re together or whether we choose to have children.”
    Jess wrapped his arms around her. She was trembling and he needed to comfort her even as he was telling her the truth as he saw it. “He’s there, and he’ll always be there until he’s dead. And even after that there could be others working with him we don’t even know about.”
    She let out a strangled gasp, and he nuzzled the top of her head.
    “And that brings me back to the files in his office. Why would he plant something in his office for you to find when he knew he was sending you to me? Because if it wasn’t coded, Saber, it was there for you to find and read. Whitney doesn’t ever make amateur mistakes. He wanted you to read those files.”
    “On bionics? I could type it all out for you, every single detail in both files, but I have no idea why he would want to give me medical information.”
    “Unless he knew I was going to be having the operation and needed to get information to me.”
    “What are you saying, Jesse? That you think he was trying to help? And that would mean he knew