Street Game
Page 6
“He’s going to stay, isn’t he?”
Javier cursed inwardly. “Yeah, babe, he’s going to stay. He’d never take a chance with your life either.”
She sighed and shook her head. “You hungry?” Her head came up suddenly and she half turned toward the stairway.
Javier followed her gaze, keeping his voice as casual as ever. “I’m always hungry.
You know that.”
You have a couple of rats poking around your back door, Mack’s voice whispered in Javier’s mind. I’m working my way up behind them.
Javier set down his coffee cup, caught Jaimie’s arm, and tugged even as she was moving away from the refrigerator, her eyes wide in understanding. Escape route?
She didn’t ask questions. Jaimie wouldn’t. She was a professional all the way—
there’d never been a doubt about that. And she had known about the same time as Mack had spotted them. She always knew. She led the way across to the corner on the water side. Moving a small table, he could see the door in the wall.
Down a chute. I have a boat waiting.
He gave her the signal to stay put right there and drew out a gun to hand her.
Jaimie shook her head. He gave her his sternest scowl. It did no good.
Jaimie refuses a weapon, Mack.
Damn it.
The cold, grim tone made him hesitate. Mack wasn’t going to help his cause by getting angry. The last time Jaimie had a gun in her possession, things hadn’t ended up going very well.
Jaimie, damn it, don’t give me trouble, Mack snapped, shoving the words into Jaimie’s mind. We’re in a world of hurt right now. Take the damn gun and use it if you need to. You know how to shoot.
She didn’t argue. She took the gun from Javier and laid it in her lap. She kept her face averted. Javier felt as if he’d slapped her. Tattling wasn’t fun.
Jaimie stayed very still, drawing her knees up, trying desperately not to allow images into her mind. This wasn’t her life. She had left it all behind. She’d tried to tell Mack what was happening, but the adrenaline rush was too addictive for a man like him to do without. Who could ever compete with that? He didn’t care that the experiments had altered them genetically as well as enhanced their psychic abilities.
Their GhostWalker team had brought them all back together. That was what Mack and Kane saw. A chance to be together again, to look out for one another, to use their considerable talents in a positive way and prevent the others—men like Javier who needed action—from doing anything that would land them in prison. Mack hadn’t seen how aggressive all the men were becoming. He hadn’t noticed a lot of things he should have noticed. He was swept up in the training and forgot the things Jaimie was good at.
She saw people differently. She felt things—knew things—and she knew they were being lied to. She saw through the patriotic talk and the propaganda, but Mack couldn’t hear her. He’d already been so far into the experiments and training that there was no reasoning with him. He knew she didn’t like urban warfare. She didn’t ever want to have to make a judgment call and risk killing an innocent. All Mack saw was a chance to use his incredible psychic talents to save the world.
Because Jaimie was wired that way, and she never stopped digging, she managed to piece together a little information on the existing GhostWalker teams. There were four that she’d uncovered. The first and oldest was comprised mainly of men with army backgrounds, Rangers and Green Berets, although there was an FBI agent with extensive military training on it as well. The men had undergone a tremendous number of experiments as well as training. A few of them were anchors, men who would draw the overload of psychic energy from the others so they could function properly. They usually worked together as a team, the anchor staying close to those who couldn’t work without one.
The newspapers had reported that Dr. Peter Whitney, the brains behind the GhostWalker experiments, had been murdered, yet she’d had contact with him after that time. Brian Hutton had worked in a unit that had guarded a facility where he’d been working, and several others, Kane among them, had done so as well. She had a high security clearance and had continued to help analyze information. During that time she’d kept tabs on her family to ensure they were all doing fine and no one was double-crossing them as she suspected had happened to Team One.
She rubbed her temples, trying to stop the headache already pounding there in spite of Javier’s presence. Team Three—Mack’s team—was comprised of all anchors, very rare in the world of GhostWalkers, and she knew they often had to work alone on their assignments, impossible for someone overcome by psychic overload. She had been the exception. She still wondered why they’d made the exception for her, as she wasn’t an anchor and couldn’t work alone. She believed Mack and Kane had something to do with the decision, but she couldn’t be certain. She’d never been able to access her own records. For all her skills, she hadn’t been able to get to her file—
and that bothered her more than anything.
Something was going on and the men didn’t seem to question it as she had. Team Two was comprised of mainly SEALs. There had been a few shady things happening within that team as well. Jaimie scrubbed her hand over her face. Two of those men had been lured into the Congo and tortured, barely escaping with their lives. Someone was trying to destroy the teams. To her mind, the third team, Mack’s team, was the most vulnerable.
As urban warfare specialists, Team Three was sent over and over into situations that would fray the nerves of the most skilled combatants. Urban warfare was a dangerous art, a unique combat that only the most gifted and steady men could really handle for long periods of time and, sadly, it was becoming a necessity. She feared for the team’s vulnerability. If someone in their own government was working against them, it wouldn’t be that difficult to put them in harm’s way.
As for the fourth team, comprised of mainly the elite Air Force Pararescue Special Forces, they were ghosts in the wind, as was their commander. She had uncovered little about that team beyond their confirmed existence.
The tapping of a finger on the counter caught her attention. She looked up. You all right? Javier asked.
She nodded. But she wasn’t. Her stomach was in knots and she wanted to throw up. This was not coincidence. She’d worked hard to get out of that life, to build a future, not only for herself but for the others. They would need it later, when all was said and done—if they survived. Psychics had a difficult time without a controlled environment. She meant to build up a surplus of money and a safe haven for her family. Instinctively, like she knew so many other things, she knew everything she’d worked for was being threatened.
Mack’s voice whispered in Javier’s ear this time, using the radio so Paul was a part of the orders. “Come up behind them, Kane.”
Gideon’s voice interrupted. “We’ve got a sleeper, boss. Third window, second story. I caught a flash.”
“You certain?”
“Don’t insult me. He had to have seen Javier take out his men.”
There was a small silence as Mack examined the two dead men. “These men are military,” Mack’s voice nearly growled. “What the hell’s going on?”
Javier’s heart jumped. “You telling me I killed a couple of our own?”
“We’re getting pictures and fingerprints. No IDs on them, but they’re military.
They came prepared to take her,” Mack assured. “They have an injector that looks like a tranq, but we won’t know until we test it. Ties. Firepower. They aren’t innocent, so don’t sweat it.”
Easier said than done. Javier shook his head and tried a few deep breaths to settle his churning gut. His every instinct had told him they were the enemy, but military?
The same side? “What the hell are we into here, boss?”
Jaimie shook her head. She couldn’t hear what Javier was saying, but she could read lips. They were all questioning what they were involved in. She’d made a mistake thinking the government would let her go. Once a GhostWalker, always a GhostWalker. She thought working as an analyst would satisfy them, but obviously she’d been wrong. Whatever was happening, the power orchestrating behind the scenes was determined to draw her back in, and planned on using Mack and her family to do it.
A spurt of resentment had her kicking out at the wall in defiance. She’d told Mack. How like him to just go his own way with all of them following him, no one bothering to think about the how and why of anything. Now they were all in this mess. She’d done her best to convince them, but would any of them listen to her? She had a brain. A big brain. High school at eight. Graduating with honors from the University with a doctorate by the time she was twenty. Come on. Of course they wouldn’t listen to her. Mack was so much smarter.
She kicked the wall a second time, wishing it was his shin. Mack. He was out there in the night, staring up at her window, gun slung around his neck, putting his men—no, not just his men; his family—in deadly peril, and loving every moment of it. Worse, even with all of her intellectual reasoning, she was just as bad as the others, following him anywhere he led, even when she knew it was down the wrong path.
Who could resist Mack? Not her. Certainly not her. And he was back. He’d looked at her so differently. Not even in the year they’d been lovers had he ever looked at her with that particular expression he’d worn tonight. Not even when passion had burned hot and out of control between them. Not ever.
She pressed a hand to her stomach. Did she never learn? He was poison to her.
She forced herself to look at Javier, to concentrate on his lips.
“He’s on the move,” Mack’s voice intoned in Javier’s ear. “Don’t let him get away.”
“He’s moving across the rooftops with incredible speed, boss,” Gideon said. “I’m after him, but I don’t have a prayer of catching this guy. He’s souped-up with something.”
“Who’s on the move, boss?” Javier stirred, tried to peer out the window at the rooftop across from him. Something was moving fast, no more than a shadow. No more than a ghost. “The son of a bitch watching Jaimie?”
Jaimie’s heart jumped. She always knew when she was being watched. Her internal alarm system never failed. How could it be possible that someone had set up to watch her and she hadn’t known? Maybe Mack was wrong. Doubt ate at her. Mack was many things, but he was seldom wrong about this kind of thing.
“He’s gone, boss,” Gideon reported.
“We’ve got the bodies and we’ll take them in. Gideon, you and Kane find out who’s watching Jaimie. Go through that room with a fine-tooth comb. Get me something. Brian, you and Jacob follow the two creeping around Jaimie’s warehouse and report back to me. I don’t need to tell you that I don’t want you seen and I don’t want them dead.” Mack paused. “Javier, get on Jaimie’s computer and find everyone places to rent around Jaimie’s warehouse. Scatter them so that we have every angle covered. Houseboats, whatever. If you have to arrange to get someone thrown out so we get what we need, do it. But do it tonight. Kane and I will be staying with Jaimie.”
Javier glanced at Jaimie, who scowled back at him. “Does Jaimie know she’s going to be having permanent guests, boss?”
Jaimie’s eyes widened as she heard what he was saying. Javier turned away, feeling slightly guilty; after all, Jaimie was a sister of the heart. “I don’t think she’s going to like that much.”
“Well, that’s just too damn bad, now, isn’t it, Javier,” Mack said.
CHAPTER 3
Mack and Kane and all the boys hadn’t been near her in two peaceful years. Now, within two hours of their arrival, it had started all over again. Blood and death. Jaimie stared out the window, her gaze fixed on the ever-changing motion of the dark water below. Javier had spent the night and the next day with her. Now he was gone and Mack and Kane were on their way up, finished with all their paperwork and cleanup and coming back to—what? She couldn’t go back to that life with them. She wouldn’t go back.
Javier cursed inwardly. “Yeah, babe, he’s going to stay. He’d never take a chance with your life either.”
She sighed and shook her head. “You hungry?” Her head came up suddenly and she half turned toward the stairway.
Javier followed her gaze, keeping his voice as casual as ever. “I’m always hungry.
You know that.”
You have a couple of rats poking around your back door, Mack’s voice whispered in Javier’s mind. I’m working my way up behind them.
Javier set down his coffee cup, caught Jaimie’s arm, and tugged even as she was moving away from the refrigerator, her eyes wide in understanding. Escape route?
She didn’t ask questions. Jaimie wouldn’t. She was a professional all the way—
there’d never been a doubt about that. And she had known about the same time as Mack had spotted them. She always knew. She led the way across to the corner on the water side. Moving a small table, he could see the door in the wall.
Down a chute. I have a boat waiting.
He gave her the signal to stay put right there and drew out a gun to hand her.
Jaimie shook her head. He gave her his sternest scowl. It did no good.
Jaimie refuses a weapon, Mack.
Damn it.
The cold, grim tone made him hesitate. Mack wasn’t going to help his cause by getting angry. The last time Jaimie had a gun in her possession, things hadn’t ended up going very well.
Jaimie, damn it, don’t give me trouble, Mack snapped, shoving the words into Jaimie’s mind. We’re in a world of hurt right now. Take the damn gun and use it if you need to. You know how to shoot.
She didn’t argue. She took the gun from Javier and laid it in her lap. She kept her face averted. Javier felt as if he’d slapped her. Tattling wasn’t fun.
Jaimie stayed very still, drawing her knees up, trying desperately not to allow images into her mind. This wasn’t her life. She had left it all behind. She’d tried to tell Mack what was happening, but the adrenaline rush was too addictive for a man like him to do without. Who could ever compete with that? He didn’t care that the experiments had altered them genetically as well as enhanced their psychic abilities.
Their GhostWalker team had brought them all back together. That was what Mack and Kane saw. A chance to be together again, to look out for one another, to use their considerable talents in a positive way and prevent the others—men like Javier who needed action—from doing anything that would land them in prison. Mack hadn’t seen how aggressive all the men were becoming. He hadn’t noticed a lot of things he should have noticed. He was swept up in the training and forgot the things Jaimie was good at.
She saw people differently. She felt things—knew things—and she knew they were being lied to. She saw through the patriotic talk and the propaganda, but Mack couldn’t hear her. He’d already been so far into the experiments and training that there was no reasoning with him. He knew she didn’t like urban warfare. She didn’t ever want to have to make a judgment call and risk killing an innocent. All Mack saw was a chance to use his incredible psychic talents to save the world.
Because Jaimie was wired that way, and she never stopped digging, she managed to piece together a little information on the existing GhostWalker teams. There were four that she’d uncovered. The first and oldest was comprised mainly of men with army backgrounds, Rangers and Green Berets, although there was an FBI agent with extensive military training on it as well. The men had undergone a tremendous number of experiments as well as training. A few of them were anchors, men who would draw the overload of psychic energy from the others so they could function properly. They usually worked together as a team, the anchor staying close to those who couldn’t work without one.
The newspapers had reported that Dr. Peter Whitney, the brains behind the GhostWalker experiments, had been murdered, yet she’d had contact with him after that time. Brian Hutton had worked in a unit that had guarded a facility where he’d been working, and several others, Kane among them, had done so as well. She had a high security clearance and had continued to help analyze information. During that time she’d kept tabs on her family to ensure they were all doing fine and no one was double-crossing them as she suspected had happened to Team One.
She rubbed her temples, trying to stop the headache already pounding there in spite of Javier’s presence. Team Three—Mack’s team—was comprised of all anchors, very rare in the world of GhostWalkers, and she knew they often had to work alone on their assignments, impossible for someone overcome by psychic overload. She had been the exception. She still wondered why they’d made the exception for her, as she wasn’t an anchor and couldn’t work alone. She believed Mack and Kane had something to do with the decision, but she couldn’t be certain. She’d never been able to access her own records. For all her skills, she hadn’t been able to get to her file—
and that bothered her more than anything.
Something was going on and the men didn’t seem to question it as she had. Team Two was comprised of mainly SEALs. There had been a few shady things happening within that team as well. Jaimie scrubbed her hand over her face. Two of those men had been lured into the Congo and tortured, barely escaping with their lives. Someone was trying to destroy the teams. To her mind, the third team, Mack’s team, was the most vulnerable.
As urban warfare specialists, Team Three was sent over and over into situations that would fray the nerves of the most skilled combatants. Urban warfare was a dangerous art, a unique combat that only the most gifted and steady men could really handle for long periods of time and, sadly, it was becoming a necessity. She feared for the team’s vulnerability. If someone in their own government was working against them, it wouldn’t be that difficult to put them in harm’s way.
As for the fourth team, comprised of mainly the elite Air Force Pararescue Special Forces, they were ghosts in the wind, as was their commander. She had uncovered little about that team beyond their confirmed existence.
The tapping of a finger on the counter caught her attention. She looked up. You all right? Javier asked.
She nodded. But she wasn’t. Her stomach was in knots and she wanted to throw up. This was not coincidence. She’d worked hard to get out of that life, to build a future, not only for herself but for the others. They would need it later, when all was said and done—if they survived. Psychics had a difficult time without a controlled environment. She meant to build up a surplus of money and a safe haven for her family. Instinctively, like she knew so many other things, she knew everything she’d worked for was being threatened.
Mack’s voice whispered in Javier’s ear this time, using the radio so Paul was a part of the orders. “Come up behind them, Kane.”
Gideon’s voice interrupted. “We’ve got a sleeper, boss. Third window, second story. I caught a flash.”
“You certain?”
“Don’t insult me. He had to have seen Javier take out his men.”
There was a small silence as Mack examined the two dead men. “These men are military,” Mack’s voice nearly growled. “What the hell’s going on?”
Javier’s heart jumped. “You telling me I killed a couple of our own?”
“We’re getting pictures and fingerprints. No IDs on them, but they’re military.
They came prepared to take her,” Mack assured. “They have an injector that looks like a tranq, but we won’t know until we test it. Ties. Firepower. They aren’t innocent, so don’t sweat it.”
Easier said than done. Javier shook his head and tried a few deep breaths to settle his churning gut. His every instinct had told him they were the enemy, but military?
The same side? “What the hell are we into here, boss?”
Jaimie shook her head. She couldn’t hear what Javier was saying, but she could read lips. They were all questioning what they were involved in. She’d made a mistake thinking the government would let her go. Once a GhostWalker, always a GhostWalker. She thought working as an analyst would satisfy them, but obviously she’d been wrong. Whatever was happening, the power orchestrating behind the scenes was determined to draw her back in, and planned on using Mack and her family to do it.
A spurt of resentment had her kicking out at the wall in defiance. She’d told Mack. How like him to just go his own way with all of them following him, no one bothering to think about the how and why of anything. Now they were all in this mess. She’d done her best to convince them, but would any of them listen to her? She had a brain. A big brain. High school at eight. Graduating with honors from the University with a doctorate by the time she was twenty. Come on. Of course they wouldn’t listen to her. Mack was so much smarter.
She kicked the wall a second time, wishing it was his shin. Mack. He was out there in the night, staring up at her window, gun slung around his neck, putting his men—no, not just his men; his family—in deadly peril, and loving every moment of it. Worse, even with all of her intellectual reasoning, she was just as bad as the others, following him anywhere he led, even when she knew it was down the wrong path.
Who could resist Mack? Not her. Certainly not her. And he was back. He’d looked at her so differently. Not even in the year they’d been lovers had he ever looked at her with that particular expression he’d worn tonight. Not even when passion had burned hot and out of control between them. Not ever.
She pressed a hand to her stomach. Did she never learn? He was poison to her.
She forced herself to look at Javier, to concentrate on his lips.
“He’s on the move,” Mack’s voice intoned in Javier’s ear. “Don’t let him get away.”
“He’s moving across the rooftops with incredible speed, boss,” Gideon said. “I’m after him, but I don’t have a prayer of catching this guy. He’s souped-up with something.”
“Who’s on the move, boss?” Javier stirred, tried to peer out the window at the rooftop across from him. Something was moving fast, no more than a shadow. No more than a ghost. “The son of a bitch watching Jaimie?”
Jaimie’s heart jumped. She always knew when she was being watched. Her internal alarm system never failed. How could it be possible that someone had set up to watch her and she hadn’t known? Maybe Mack was wrong. Doubt ate at her. Mack was many things, but he was seldom wrong about this kind of thing.
“He’s gone, boss,” Gideon reported.
“We’ve got the bodies and we’ll take them in. Gideon, you and Kane find out who’s watching Jaimie. Go through that room with a fine-tooth comb. Get me something. Brian, you and Jacob follow the two creeping around Jaimie’s warehouse and report back to me. I don’t need to tell you that I don’t want you seen and I don’t want them dead.” Mack paused. “Javier, get on Jaimie’s computer and find everyone places to rent around Jaimie’s warehouse. Scatter them so that we have every angle covered. Houseboats, whatever. If you have to arrange to get someone thrown out so we get what we need, do it. But do it tonight. Kane and I will be staying with Jaimie.”
Javier glanced at Jaimie, who scowled back at him. “Does Jaimie know she’s going to be having permanent guests, boss?”
Jaimie’s eyes widened as she heard what he was saying. Javier turned away, feeling slightly guilty; after all, Jaimie was a sister of the heart. “I don’t think she’s going to like that much.”
“Well, that’s just too damn bad, now, isn’t it, Javier,” Mack said.
CHAPTER 3
Mack and Kane and all the boys hadn’t been near her in two peaceful years. Now, within two hours of their arrival, it had started all over again. Blood and death. Jaimie stared out the window, her gaze fixed on the ever-changing motion of the dark water below. Javier had spent the night and the next day with her. Now he was gone and Mack and Kane were on their way up, finished with all their paperwork and cleanup and coming back to—what? She couldn’t go back to that life with them. She wouldn’t go back.
