Ghostwalker 07 - Murder Game

I'd recognized the men. They were business associates of my father and they'd come to dinner in our home. My mother had cooked for them. One had played baseball with my brother and me. I knew them. I stayed in the shadows where no one saw me, covered in my family's blood. I've been there ever since.

    She was crying openly now. It was impossible to choke back sobs. That little boy, covered in blood with a gun in his hand. She saw him so clearly. Felt the rage with him.
    Knew the sorrow that still gripped him like a vise.

    "Don't," she whispered aloud. "Don't do it." There would be no going back once it was done. No way to ever recover that sweetness, that innocence, that had been inside that little boy. "Don't."

    I need you tonight. I'm so tired and I need to hold you close to me. I don't ever do that.
    Hold anyone close. I don't get close, but now there's no choice and I'm too damn tired to fight it. Come back to me .

    She shook her head, but her feet kept walking and she was close now. She caught hold of the branch of a small bush and held herself straight when she wanted to fall to the gro n u d
    weeping.

    I walked through the front door and no one saw me. Even then I could mask my presence if I concentrated hard enough . I slipped into the room where they were celebrating and I shot them all. One shot into each head. They never saw me and never knew I'd done it. I didn't feel anything. I wanted to feel, but I didn't. I walked back outside, stripped down the gun the way my father had taught me, and I threw the pieces into various Dumpsters.
    I wish I could blame my brother's stare, but I have to take that responsibility. I'd probably do it again .

    Eight-year-old boys didn't walk into a house and kill people. Not without something being seriously wrong with them. She was in his mind, trying to find that vicious, cruel streak, or the sense of entitlement that meant rules didn't apply to him. She found a small boy throwing up, sickened by his loss, terrified of his future, still filled with rage.

    I've never told another living soul about that night.

    Tansy turned her tear-streaked face up to the sky. A shadow fell across her and she threw out a hand to block any attack. Kadan loomed in front of her, catching her wrist and pulling her into his arms, tight against his body, burying his face against her neck. She thought his face was as wet as hers. Slowly she brought up her arms to circle his waist, holding him, trying to offer comfort to that eight-year-old boy.

    "I'm not that boy anymore," he reminded without lifting his head.

    She slid her hand up his back to tunnel her fingers in his hair. "I know you're not. And ABC Amber LIT Converter
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    I'm not that thirteen-year-old girl who thought she could save the world either."

    Kadan's hands framed her face, forcing her head up so their eyes met. His heart contracted. She was so beautiful, her eyes shimmering violet over blue, that strange shimmer over the color almost a silver. He'd been drowning without her and he hadn't even known it.

    Need went from his mind to his body, a rush of heat that tightened every muscle. Desire burst through him, raw and stark and all too strong—so strong it felt like a punch in his gut. Lust for her had been there all along, driving his body hard, but now it was so much more. He felt starved, a man possessed, craving her with every fiber of his being.
    Because she could take it all away, that rage, buried so deep but so much a part of him.
    The screams and the blood. Only Tansy could relieve the terrible cold that gripped his heart. She could drown out the truth—that he was a straight-up killer, good at hunting other killers because he could think just like them.

    She touched his face, the warmth of her body seeping into the cold of his. The moment she touched him, his body reacted with brutal, painful force, filling his groin, pounding and aching with demand. Kadan bent his head to the temptation of her soft, trembling mouth. He stroked his tongue over her full lower lip, tasting that hint of cinnamon that was fast producing a craving in him. She shivered in reaction.

    Even with her mind connected to his, she couldn't know how much he wanted her—how much he needed her, how desperate he was just to touch her. Kadan had never felt desperation, or need—or if he had, he hadn't recognized it. Now he couldn't think