Ghostwalker 09 - Ruthless Game

the helicopter setting down. Of grim-faced men surrounding her, helping to lift Kane onto a gurney, setting her there with him.
    She never let go, even when they rol ed her into the sterile tent hastily erected and the doctors and nurses regarded her bloody hands inside Kane.
    She looked around at them with their masks and gowns, afraid to turn him over to them.
    “It’s al right, Rose,” Mack said gently. “We’ve got him now.”
    The cold took her then, like it always did when she used this particular talent, sliding inside her, freezing her from the inside out. Her teeth began to chatter, and she couldn’t move her stiff body, as if every muscle was completely frozen.
    “Let them take over,” Mack said again. “She’s holding him together, Doc.”
    A pair of hands came into view, and Javier lifted Rose. “Let him go,” he whispered. “He’l be safe.” Those black, kil er eyes jumped to the doctor. “Won’t he, Doc?”
    Those softly spoken words penetrated, and she released Kane into the hands of strangers.

CHAPTER 11
    Kane yawned and stretched, wincing a little when his wound, now almost completely healed, pul ed a little. Keeping his eyes closed, he inhaled, just to breathe in Rose’s scent. She wasn’t in bed beside him, but she was close by. He had woken up to her every morning now for several weeks. He could get up and walk around with a cane, but only for short periods of time. He found convalescence very irritating. His body was weaker than it had ever been, and physical therapy and training seemed slow.
    He caught the fragrance that was only Rose’s, a combination of fresh spring and wild summer. He could hear the soft pad of her bare feet as she came into the room and crossed to the bed. Her palm banded his forehead as she checked him for a fever. He reached up and covered her hand, preventing her from moving.
    He loved her touch. Her warmth. The softness of her skin. The silk of her hair. He loved watching the way she moved, a little bal erina flowing and fluid as she tidied things. Already the first floor of the warehouse where he resided was being transformed into a home. Rose seemed to love the wide-open space of the enormous warehouse. He and Mack and the others of his “family” had added a couple of bathrooms and sectioned off a living area and bedroom, but that was as far as the building of his home had gotten.
    The warehouse was three stories high and took up nearly half a block. On the corner, one side ran along the bay side, water lapping at the wharf where they stored a getaway boat. Jaimie Fielding had bought the monstrosity and was in the process of renovating it when the team had caught up with her.
    She resided on the top floor with her husband, Mack McKinley. The middle floor was their offices, housing the computers and so many other electronics it gave Kane a headache thinking about it. They had a gym equipped with the best training equipment available to them. They could put together a simulation of any building and do practice runs over and over until they were perfect in their execution. Their security system was state-of-the-art, thanks to Jaimie’s bril iance.
    Kane had taken the bottom floor for his home in the hopes that someday he would find Rose and they could raise their family there. They had managed to acquire the warehouse next to theirs as wel as two across the street. Negotiations were already in the works to try to acquire the apartment building directly across from them. They were putting together a fortress, a compound they could easily defend, one with multiple escape routes: water, land, and even air.
    Kane opened his eyes slowly, just to drink in the sight of Rose. She wore one of his thin, button-down-the-front shirts. It completely enveloped her smal body. Under the white material, he could see the outline of one of the nursing bras Jaimie had bought for her. He didn’t see much else. Her legs were slender and shapely, her feet bare. She must have just gotten out of bed and fed the baby. Even her hair was stil tousled, just the way he loved it.
    It was amazing to him how quickly she had become his world. Rose and Sebastian. He felt at peace every time she brought the boy into the room and sat quietly nursing him, or simply rocked him to sleep while Kane convalesced.
    His doctor, Eric Lambert, a surgeon renowned for his work in gene therapy, was usual y the first choice when it came to the GhostWalkers. He had saved the life of Jesse Calhoun,