Ghostwalker 09 - Ruthless Game

looked close to tears. He shook his head, ran both hands through his hair until it was completely disheveled. “I’m not upset. Wel , a little. I don’t want you climbing on chairs in your condition. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable, Rose; I do. It’s just that a man feels the need to protect his woman—and his child. The thought of you fal ing or hurting yourself or the baby is ...” He searched for a word that was appropriate to say around a woman. “Distressing.”
    She nodded. “I’l be more careful. Real y.” Blink. Blink.
    He was fal ing hard. One more little bat of her eyelashes and he was going to be on his knees. This wasn’t going the way he wanted it to go. He was total y wrapped around her little finger with just one little blink of her long lashes. For God’s sake, he was a tough guy, wasn’t he? Why the hel was he turning into jel y just looking at her?
    “You’d better be,” he said, his voice gruff. “Have the—um—pains eased up?”
    She shook her head. There was fear in her eyes.
    He stepped closer to her. Her scent surrounded him, making it more difficult to think straight. He put his palm on her bel y, spreading his fingers to take in as much territory as possible, wil ing the baby to stay put. “How early?”
    “Too early. Nearly five weeks, Kane.” Her voice shook.
    Keeping one hand on the baby, he curled the fingers of his other hand around the nape of her neck in a slow massage. “We’l get through this.”
    “We have to stay,” she said. “You know I can’t leave like this.”
    “You just need to rest,” Kane replied soothingly, hoping it was true. He had a bad feeling, and he manful y didn’t point out that climbing on a chair and lying on her stomach might not have been the best way to stop labor.
    “Kane.” She looked up at him, her eyes going wide. “Why didn’t they know you were close by?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Whitney’s men. They didn’t know you were here,” Rose said.
    “That was the point.”
    She shook her head. “I always know when GhostWalkers are close. I’l bet you do as wel . They walked right by you, and they didn’t have a clue.”
    “You’re a GhostWalker. They probably thought they were feeling you.”
    She shook her head. “Not after I went into the house. You were only a few feet from them, Kane. They should have felt the surge of energy around you, but they didn’t.”
    “Or they didn’t notice because they weren’t paying attention.” But he didn’t think that likely. Two men left out in the desert alone? They’d been on alert.
    They may have dropped their guard a little when Rose went into the house, feeling as though she was trapped there and they had the upper hand. But she was right—Whitney’s two men should have felt the buildup of energy emanating around them.
    “These men,” Rose said, nuzzling his hand with her cheek, “they flunked the psychological evaluation but not the psychic testing, right?”
    Kane was certain she didn’t realize she was rubbing her cheek against him much like a cat. He laid his hand against her face, loving the feel of intimate contact with her. “Not only did they bomb on the psych eval, but their psychic abilities were extremely low.”
    Her eyebrow shot up. “How did you know that?”
    He grinned at her. “We have this real y savvy techie who can hack just about anything. She hooked up with another woman who escaped Whitney, and between the two of them, they manage to snoop into almost anything Whitney has documented.”
    Her hands covered his over the baby. “Who? What are their names?”
    She looked so eager for news, he was sorry he knew he would be disappointing her. “Jaimie is married to Mack, the leader of our unit. I should have shot them both for eloping like that too. She’s been with us since she was a little kid. We al grew up together on the streets of Chicago. Jaimie’s psychic, and she was enhanced by Whitney, but he never was around her when she was a child.”
    “And the other woman?”
    He could tel she was holding her breath. “Whitney bought her from an orphanage somewhere in Europe. They cal her Flame. She’s married to a Cajun GhostWalker we al cal Gator. Flame wasn’t raised in the compound with you, sweetheart. She escaped from a different facility.”
    Tears fil ed Rose’s eyes and she blinked them away, turning her head, al owing the silky cap of hair to fal around her face. “How many women did he do