GhostWalkers 10 - Samurai Game

minutes,” Sam explained hastily.
    Daniel knew by the way she held him so protectively that he had an ally in Azami. He gave a little sob and pressed his face into her shoulder.
    “You tie him to a chair?” Azami glared up at Sam.
    Ian burst out laughing. “If you tried tying that boy to a chair, momma bear would come at you with teeth and claws.”
    “And a very big gun,” Ryland added. “I don’t know what they do in Japan, but we don’t tie our children to chairs. He sits in it because we tell him to. It’s safe and doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t like the isolation and understands there are consequences for naughty behavior. In this case, he also violated a safety rule.”
    “What happens if he gets out of the chair?” Azami asked. “Before the two minutes are up?”
    “He is placed back in the chair and we go at it all day if necessary,” Ryland said. “Raising Daniel requires patience as well as love.” He looked around the room. “I think it requires all of us. We work together. Clearly we dropped the ball. I’m sorry he disturbed you on your first night with us. Thank you for being so gracious about it.”
    “I rarely sleep at night. I needed to make certain my brothers were safe and had all they required. I felt better seeing they were assigned guards as well.”
    Ian regarded her with a clear frown. “Are you saying you left your room last night?”
    “Well, of course. The baby had to be put back to bed. I wasn’t going to shove him back up into the vent and hope he made his way back to his room safely,” Azami said.
    “That’s impossible,” Ian denied. “I didn’t leave the door. I didn’t, Rye. I didn’t fall asleep tonight, or last night.”
    Ryland turned piercing eyes on Azami, waiting for an explanation.
    “Your son is an extremely intelligent and curious child,” Azami said. “And very gifted. Perhaps too gifted for his age.”
    Ryland reached out and plucked Daniel from her arms. “What do you mean by that?”
    Sam bristled at the belligerence in Ryland’s tone. “She didn’t mean anything,” he snapped before he could stop himself.
    Ryland’s gaze jumped to his face.
    “Sir,” Azami said calmly. “Your son is in the greatest danger possible and not from anyone outside this compound. From himself. Like Sam, like me, he is a teleporter.”

C HAPTER 10

    A stunned silence followed Azami’s quiet revelation. The members of GhostWalker Team One exchanged uneasy, shocked looks.
    Ryland rubbed his chin over his son’s thick cap of hair, his eyes closed briefly. Sam couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind.
    “Are you certain?” Ryland finally asked. “I’ve seen no evidence of Daniel teleporting.”
    Azami slowly nodded her head. “I’m very sure. He’s young and there’s an art to it, but learning can be both painful and dangerous, as Sam knows well. The gift didn’t really begin to manifest in me until around the age of ten. I would feel broken apart inside and find I’d moved from one corner of a room to another and couldn’t remember walking across the room. It was frightening. For a while I was afraid to tell my father, afraid I was losing my mind. Your son is a mere baby and he’s already experiencing that same sensation.”
    Ryland buried his face against the baby’s neck, his arms tightening until Daniel squirmed and he was forced to easeup. He raised his head, his steel gray eyes meeting Sam’s. “Did you know?”
    “I never even suspected, Rye,” Sam said. “Now that Azami pointed out the possibility, I can see that a few times, Daniel was in one spot and then he was a few feet away playing with my tools, but I didn’t feel the ‘broken apart’ effect until I was about eighteen. Neither you nor Lily has the ability to teleport, so it didn’t occur to me that Daniel would have it. But then, I don’t think my parents could do it, or they would have been all over television and selling their story for their drug money. Hell, Rye.” Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose, not knowing how to comfort his friend.
    Daniel could very well teleport right into the middle of a wall before he ever fully understood the danger. Ryland and Lily had a difficult time as it was, let alone knowing their child could put himself in the middle of the forest, the mines, or up on the roof. The psychic gifts they had been born with, and then enhanced by Whitney, were both a blessing and a curse. Each talent could be extremely dangerous, especially in