Mind Game
Page 45
Max cast him a suspicious glance. “I know the agents in our office in DC. I can’t imagine any of them betraying their country. Or Jesse for that matter. Who are your suspects?”
“Everybody is a suspect until we find otherwise,” Nicolas said. He watched Dahlia closely as he carried on the conversation with the pilot. All the while his thumb brushed back and forth across her inner wrist and he willed her to snap out of her depression. Had they been alone, he was certain he could find a way to make her laugh again, to shake off the melancholy, or maybe it was the seizure. He didn’t know a lot about seizures. That was Lily’s department. He knew seizures were dangerous and that Dahlia was humiliated that they had found her having convulsions. She hadn’t spoken to him all the way back to the Quarter, or even later, in the hotel after her shower when he’d drawn the sheet over her and promised he’d be back with clothes. She’d been so unlike herself, no snappy comebacks, no sassy remarks.
Dahlia, don’t go so far away from me. Nicolas made his tone as intimate as possible. I know you’re tired and upset, and you have every reason to be. If you want to toss your job with the NCIS, I’m behind you all the way. Just don’t put me in with the rest of them.
Dahlia leaned her head back against the seat. His words slipped into her mind almost seductively. His voice was tender, gentle, whispered over her skin and found its way into her heart. Tears burned close, and that was unacceptable to her, not in front of all these people. Not in front of Max. Don’t be nice to me right now, Nicolas. I need you to wait until we’re alone.
His heart nearly stopped. She was telling him things she didn’t even realize herself, but he knew. Deep down, where it counted, he knew. Dahlia wasn’t turning away from him. She didn’t want kindness, she was too vulnerable. She was waiting until they were alone. He tightened his fingers around hers and held her hand for the rest of the flight. He didn’t talk to the pilot again until they were circling above the small, private landing strip.
“Don’t put down yet. Circle low so we can take a look at what we’re up against.” Nicolas bent forward, peering out the window. Kaden and Gator did the same, using high-powered glasses to check the terrain.
Max complied and set the plane down when Nicolas gave the order. He had almost brought the plane to a stop at the end of the runway when Nicolas reached over and removed his gun. “Wouldn’t want you to get any ideas. We’d like you to be our guest for a while.”
“This isn’t necessary. I’d never harm Dahlia, and Jesse’s my friend.”
“Then you won’t mind coming with us for a little while. We won’t be long. The investigation should only take a day and then we’ll need you to fly us out of here.”
“Dahlia,” Max brought the plane to a complete halt and turned off the engine. “You don’t believe I’d hurt you, do you?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “You already have.” She took the hand Nicolas held out to her and swept past the pilot, leaving him to the waiting GhostWalkers.
Nicolas walked her to one of the waiting cars Lily had provided for them. Dahlia hesitated when he opened the passenger door for her. “Where are we going?”
“To a condo. Lily has a couple of places available for us. I asked her to give us one of our own. The others will be close by.”
Dahlia slid in and waited until he was in the driver’s seat. “What about Max? I’m disappointed in him, but I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“We’ll hold him until we’ve gone in and checked the residences of the agents for anything that might tip us off to who’s behind all this. By now, Lily’s talked to the admiral, and he’ll know what we’re doing.”
She averted her face and stared out into the gathering darkness. She didn’t want to talk about Henderson. He had to have known of the GhostWalker program. He certainly knew Whitney, and he knew about her. If both Jesse and Max had been psychically enhanced, Henderson would have known. And he’d let her believe she was teetering on the brink of insanity, not confirming nor denying Lily and the other girls’ existence. What had been the point? What would it have hurt to tell her the truth?
“Why didn’t he tell me, Nicolas?” Did she want to know? She could feel her insides knotting, tensing, churning with a kind of fear she didn’t want to identify. Was she finally overloading?
He reached over and put his hand over hers. “Dahlia, whatever these people do, they think they’re doing it for their country. It’s never personal with them. Henderson has spent his life in service. He may have thought he was protecting everyone. You’re an unknown to them. If they watched your childhood unfold on those tapes, if they followed your training, they’d see one side of you only. All the times you couldn’t control the energy and accidents occurred are caught on tape. That’s what they’d see. Not the Dahlia who practices with amethyst spheres until she can use the energy up. Or the Dahlia who works at becoming a human superconductor and races up the walls.”
“Floats,” she corrected.
“What?”
“Technically I float, not race,” she explained.
Nicolas smiled. “And they don’t see the scientist in you. They’ve missed all that about you because they see one side. When people don’t understand what’s happening, they’re afraid. Whitney never figured out what was wrong. He didn’t factor in that you would draw energy in complete opposition to the laws of the universe. Because Whitney didn’t know about the energy and couldn’t explain what was wrong, Henderson and his people didn’t know.”
“You always seem to say the right thing to make me feel better.”
Nicolas didn’t think so. She wasn’t feeling any better, but she was making an attempt to make him feel better. He remained quiet until he found the condo and got her inside. Lily had promised there would be clothes for Dahlia and sure enough, the closet in the bedroom had several pairs of jeans, shirts, and a dress or two and the dresser had underwear. Dahlia stared down at it then looked at him inquiringly.
“Lily. Don’t ask me how. We give her a shopping list, tell her where we want the stuff, and she delivers. Anything from weapons to ladies’ underwear.”
“She’s very involved in what you all do, isn’t she?” She worked to keep the wistful note from her voice.
“Yes. She’s a tremendous asset to us. Whitney set up trust funds for all of us, but when we’re out on a mission or we’re working for the Whitney Trust, Lily uses the power and money behind her name.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No.” He shrugged. “Whatever works and smoothes the way.” He lifted the pair of silky pajamas from the drawer. “These are beautiful, but I’m fond of you in my shirt.”
Dahlia took the pajamas out of his hands. “You’ve never seen me in anything else. You might change your mind.” The pajamas were a soft pale blue. The top was a little sexier than she’d ever worn, but Nicolas had seen her without clothes so she didn’t mind trying it. “I’m going to take a shower. Would you mind trying to find something for my headache? It just refuses to go away.”
“I’ve got something in my pack.” He retrieved the pack from the entryway where he’d left it when he’d gone through the condo on a quick check for exits and fast escapes. The water was already running and the bathroom steamy when he stepped inside the tiled room. Dahlia was in a large square Jacuzzi, her body covered with churning bubbles and her head pillowed by a small rolled towel on the back of the tub. He could see her br**sts floating enticingly, peeking through the curtain of bubbles. Steam drifted around her, giving her a mysterious, elusive appearance. Her mane of black hair was slicked back from her face and her incredible skin gleamed at him. Nicolas felt the sexual jolt all the way through his body. How could he look at her body, her incredible skin, and not feel the urgent demand of every cell in his own body? She opened her eyes to catch him staring at her.
“Are you coming in?”
His breath caught in his throat. “Is it a good idea?” There were lines of weariness on her face and he couldn’t tell if the droplets of water on her face were from the steam or from tears. “Baby, you’re so tired, and I don’t know if I’ve got the willpower it would take to keep my hands to myself.”
“I want you to come in with me. The water’s hot and relaxing. We both need it, and it was such a nice surprise.”
Nicolas didn’t wait for a second invitation. He stripped quickly, loving the fact that she never took her eyes from him. She didn’t wince or look away from the stark demands of his body. He watched her take a deep breath and let it out, focusing on him completely in the way she had.
He stepped to the side of the Jacuzzi. “It is a nice surprise.” He stepped into the hot churning water. At once the bubbles licked at his thighs. Before he could sink down into the water, Dahlia cupped his sac, her hands hot and moist. The temperature in the room increased along with his pulse.
“Has anyone ever told you what a really extraordinary person you are, Nicolas?”
He felt her breath on him, the flick of her tongue. He closed his eyes for a moment, briefly savoring her touch. “Dahlia.” He caught her shoulders and held her away from him. “This isn’t about me. I want you, honey, you have no idea how much, but when we stop, it’s all going to be there between us, and I don’t want that.”
Dahlia leaned back again, her expression impossible to read. “So what do you want, Nicolas? Everyone wants something.”
“Of course I want something. Don’t you? Don’t you want something for yourself? Doesn’t a relationship matter to you? Isn’t that wanting something? Hell, yes, I want something from you, and it isn’t just your body.”
“Is that what you think I was offering you?”
“Wasn’t it?”
Dahlia was always as honest as she could be with herself and she didn’t like the answer. “Okay, maybe I was. Maybe I wanted that to be what you wanted from me.”
“I love you, Dahlia.” He sank down into the churning water and pulled her into his arms. “I love all of you.”
She turned her face into his throat and wished she could cry like a normal person. She felt she was screaming inside, clawing at her own heart, yet she couldn’t tell him.
Couldn’t share it with him. This one person who had shown her kindness. Who proclaimed to love her for who she was, monster or not. She kissed his throat and pushed away from him.
“Did you bring the aspirin?”
“I left the tablets on the sink.” Nicolas leaned back as she climbed out of the Jacuzzi. “This is one of those moments when the relationship manual would come in handy, don’t you think?”
A fleeting smile curved her mouth and was gone. “I don’t think the manual covers this, Nicolas. I don’t think anything does.”
She took the tablets and dried off, leaving him to the hot water as she paced through the house in her silken pajamas. Dahlia wandered through each of the rooms on bare feet wondering what it would be like to be a normal woman with a family, to have a house like this one and fill it with laughter and happiness. Her hair was damp from the Jacuzzi and made a wide wet column down her back. Even the water bubbling around her, as hot as she could stand it, could not take away the ferocious headache jabbing through her skull. She paused by the window and stared out into the night, feeling restless and moody. She wanted to walk away into the night and disappear. Had she been in the bayou, she might have done so.
Nicolas came up behind her and leaned over her, putting a hand on either side of the windowsill caging her in. “Come to bed, Dahlia. You need to sleep.”
“Everybody is a suspect until we find otherwise,” Nicolas said. He watched Dahlia closely as he carried on the conversation with the pilot. All the while his thumb brushed back and forth across her inner wrist and he willed her to snap out of her depression. Had they been alone, he was certain he could find a way to make her laugh again, to shake off the melancholy, or maybe it was the seizure. He didn’t know a lot about seizures. That was Lily’s department. He knew seizures were dangerous and that Dahlia was humiliated that they had found her having convulsions. She hadn’t spoken to him all the way back to the Quarter, or even later, in the hotel after her shower when he’d drawn the sheet over her and promised he’d be back with clothes. She’d been so unlike herself, no snappy comebacks, no sassy remarks.
Dahlia, don’t go so far away from me. Nicolas made his tone as intimate as possible. I know you’re tired and upset, and you have every reason to be. If you want to toss your job with the NCIS, I’m behind you all the way. Just don’t put me in with the rest of them.
Dahlia leaned her head back against the seat. His words slipped into her mind almost seductively. His voice was tender, gentle, whispered over her skin and found its way into her heart. Tears burned close, and that was unacceptable to her, not in front of all these people. Not in front of Max. Don’t be nice to me right now, Nicolas. I need you to wait until we’re alone.
His heart nearly stopped. She was telling him things she didn’t even realize herself, but he knew. Deep down, where it counted, he knew. Dahlia wasn’t turning away from him. She didn’t want kindness, she was too vulnerable. She was waiting until they were alone. He tightened his fingers around hers and held her hand for the rest of the flight. He didn’t talk to the pilot again until they were circling above the small, private landing strip.
“Don’t put down yet. Circle low so we can take a look at what we’re up against.” Nicolas bent forward, peering out the window. Kaden and Gator did the same, using high-powered glasses to check the terrain.
Max complied and set the plane down when Nicolas gave the order. He had almost brought the plane to a stop at the end of the runway when Nicolas reached over and removed his gun. “Wouldn’t want you to get any ideas. We’d like you to be our guest for a while.”
“This isn’t necessary. I’d never harm Dahlia, and Jesse’s my friend.”
“Then you won’t mind coming with us for a little while. We won’t be long. The investigation should only take a day and then we’ll need you to fly us out of here.”
“Dahlia,” Max brought the plane to a complete halt and turned off the engine. “You don’t believe I’d hurt you, do you?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “You already have.” She took the hand Nicolas held out to her and swept past the pilot, leaving him to the waiting GhostWalkers.
Nicolas walked her to one of the waiting cars Lily had provided for them. Dahlia hesitated when he opened the passenger door for her. “Where are we going?”
“To a condo. Lily has a couple of places available for us. I asked her to give us one of our own. The others will be close by.”
Dahlia slid in and waited until he was in the driver’s seat. “What about Max? I’m disappointed in him, but I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“We’ll hold him until we’ve gone in and checked the residences of the agents for anything that might tip us off to who’s behind all this. By now, Lily’s talked to the admiral, and he’ll know what we’re doing.”
She averted her face and stared out into the gathering darkness. She didn’t want to talk about Henderson. He had to have known of the GhostWalker program. He certainly knew Whitney, and he knew about her. If both Jesse and Max had been psychically enhanced, Henderson would have known. And he’d let her believe she was teetering on the brink of insanity, not confirming nor denying Lily and the other girls’ existence. What had been the point? What would it have hurt to tell her the truth?
“Why didn’t he tell me, Nicolas?” Did she want to know? She could feel her insides knotting, tensing, churning with a kind of fear she didn’t want to identify. Was she finally overloading?
He reached over and put his hand over hers. “Dahlia, whatever these people do, they think they’re doing it for their country. It’s never personal with them. Henderson has spent his life in service. He may have thought he was protecting everyone. You’re an unknown to them. If they watched your childhood unfold on those tapes, if they followed your training, they’d see one side of you only. All the times you couldn’t control the energy and accidents occurred are caught on tape. That’s what they’d see. Not the Dahlia who practices with amethyst spheres until she can use the energy up. Or the Dahlia who works at becoming a human superconductor and races up the walls.”
“Floats,” she corrected.
“What?”
“Technically I float, not race,” she explained.
Nicolas smiled. “And they don’t see the scientist in you. They’ve missed all that about you because they see one side. When people don’t understand what’s happening, they’re afraid. Whitney never figured out what was wrong. He didn’t factor in that you would draw energy in complete opposition to the laws of the universe. Because Whitney didn’t know about the energy and couldn’t explain what was wrong, Henderson and his people didn’t know.”
“You always seem to say the right thing to make me feel better.”
Nicolas didn’t think so. She wasn’t feeling any better, but she was making an attempt to make him feel better. He remained quiet until he found the condo and got her inside. Lily had promised there would be clothes for Dahlia and sure enough, the closet in the bedroom had several pairs of jeans, shirts, and a dress or two and the dresser had underwear. Dahlia stared down at it then looked at him inquiringly.
“Lily. Don’t ask me how. We give her a shopping list, tell her where we want the stuff, and she delivers. Anything from weapons to ladies’ underwear.”
“She’s very involved in what you all do, isn’t she?” She worked to keep the wistful note from her voice.
“Yes. She’s a tremendous asset to us. Whitney set up trust funds for all of us, but when we’re out on a mission or we’re working for the Whitney Trust, Lily uses the power and money behind her name.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No.” He shrugged. “Whatever works and smoothes the way.” He lifted the pair of silky pajamas from the drawer. “These are beautiful, but I’m fond of you in my shirt.”
Dahlia took the pajamas out of his hands. “You’ve never seen me in anything else. You might change your mind.” The pajamas were a soft pale blue. The top was a little sexier than she’d ever worn, but Nicolas had seen her without clothes so she didn’t mind trying it. “I’m going to take a shower. Would you mind trying to find something for my headache? It just refuses to go away.”
“I’ve got something in my pack.” He retrieved the pack from the entryway where he’d left it when he’d gone through the condo on a quick check for exits and fast escapes. The water was already running and the bathroom steamy when he stepped inside the tiled room. Dahlia was in a large square Jacuzzi, her body covered with churning bubbles and her head pillowed by a small rolled towel on the back of the tub. He could see her br**sts floating enticingly, peeking through the curtain of bubbles. Steam drifted around her, giving her a mysterious, elusive appearance. Her mane of black hair was slicked back from her face and her incredible skin gleamed at him. Nicolas felt the sexual jolt all the way through his body. How could he look at her body, her incredible skin, and not feel the urgent demand of every cell in his own body? She opened her eyes to catch him staring at her.
“Are you coming in?”
His breath caught in his throat. “Is it a good idea?” There were lines of weariness on her face and he couldn’t tell if the droplets of water on her face were from the steam or from tears. “Baby, you’re so tired, and I don’t know if I’ve got the willpower it would take to keep my hands to myself.”
“I want you to come in with me. The water’s hot and relaxing. We both need it, and it was such a nice surprise.”
Nicolas didn’t wait for a second invitation. He stripped quickly, loving the fact that she never took her eyes from him. She didn’t wince or look away from the stark demands of his body. He watched her take a deep breath and let it out, focusing on him completely in the way she had.
He stepped to the side of the Jacuzzi. “It is a nice surprise.” He stepped into the hot churning water. At once the bubbles licked at his thighs. Before he could sink down into the water, Dahlia cupped his sac, her hands hot and moist. The temperature in the room increased along with his pulse.
“Has anyone ever told you what a really extraordinary person you are, Nicolas?”
He felt her breath on him, the flick of her tongue. He closed his eyes for a moment, briefly savoring her touch. “Dahlia.” He caught her shoulders and held her away from him. “This isn’t about me. I want you, honey, you have no idea how much, but when we stop, it’s all going to be there between us, and I don’t want that.”
Dahlia leaned back again, her expression impossible to read. “So what do you want, Nicolas? Everyone wants something.”
“Of course I want something. Don’t you? Don’t you want something for yourself? Doesn’t a relationship matter to you? Isn’t that wanting something? Hell, yes, I want something from you, and it isn’t just your body.”
“Is that what you think I was offering you?”
“Wasn’t it?”
Dahlia was always as honest as she could be with herself and she didn’t like the answer. “Okay, maybe I was. Maybe I wanted that to be what you wanted from me.”
“I love you, Dahlia.” He sank down into the churning water and pulled her into his arms. “I love all of you.”
She turned her face into his throat and wished she could cry like a normal person. She felt she was screaming inside, clawing at her own heart, yet she couldn’t tell him.
Couldn’t share it with him. This one person who had shown her kindness. Who proclaimed to love her for who she was, monster or not. She kissed his throat and pushed away from him.
“Did you bring the aspirin?”
“I left the tablets on the sink.” Nicolas leaned back as she climbed out of the Jacuzzi. “This is one of those moments when the relationship manual would come in handy, don’t you think?”
A fleeting smile curved her mouth and was gone. “I don’t think the manual covers this, Nicolas. I don’t think anything does.”
She took the tablets and dried off, leaving him to the hot water as she paced through the house in her silken pajamas. Dahlia wandered through each of the rooms on bare feet wondering what it would be like to be a normal woman with a family, to have a house like this one and fill it with laughter and happiness. Her hair was damp from the Jacuzzi and made a wide wet column down her back. Even the water bubbling around her, as hot as she could stand it, could not take away the ferocious headache jabbing through her skull. She paused by the window and stared out into the night, feeling restless and moody. She wanted to walk away into the night and disappear. Had she been in the bayou, she might have done so.
Nicolas came up behind her and leaned over her, putting a hand on either side of the windowsill caging her in. “Come to bed, Dahlia. You need to sleep.”
