Night Game

CHAPTER 10

Flame was weeping. Gator’s belly knotted. The sound was soft and muffled, probably by a blanket, but he could hear her even through the pounding rain and it broke his heart. He tied his skiff to a post beside the airboat and jumped onto shore. The ground was spongy and his boots sank a couple of inches into muck. In his life, he had never imagined the sound of a woman quietly crying would tear him up the way it was doing. He should have come to her immediately instead of taking the time to shower and pick up a few supplies.

He paused outside the door. What was he going to say to her? Kadan, Tucker, and Ian had all agreed with him that it was possible that Peter Whitney was still alive. They had no idea why Burrell had been murdered. If the one obviously enhanced sniper hadn’t been with the others, Gator would never have suspected that Burrell’s death had anything to do with Flame or the GhostWalkers-now he just didn’t know.

The other GhostWalkers were with his grandmother and he felt far better about her having protection after Burrell’s death-especially as he needed to be with Flame. A shower had helped stave off exhaustion for a short time while he packed a few supplies, but he was feeling the effects of psychic and physical fatigue.

Gator pushed open the door to find Flame straight ahead, leaning against the wall, a throwing knife in her hand. She looked as if she’d been crying for hours, but she faced him with determination. Her hair was still damp from her shower and she wore jeans that were too big and an oversized men’s plaid shirt he recognized as belonging to Wyatt.

“I’m alone,” he assured her.

The tension went out of her and she relaxed visibly. At least she hadn’t thrown the knife at him. That was some progress.

“What did you find out?”

“Not much. A couple of men from my squad showed up and helped Ian and me clean things up. Burrell’s been reported missing and I told the police you were with Grand-mere and me all afternoon and when we came back, we heard shots coming from the island and while we were investigating the shots, someone started the house boat on fire. I stuck to the truth as closely as possible.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes again. “I can’t believe he’s dead. That someone would murder him. All he wanted to do was live on the waterfront and listen to the music in the bayou while he smoked his pipe. He never hurt any one in his life. This isn’t right, Raoul. It just isn’t right.”

“No, it isn’t right,” he agreed, the lump in his throat j threatening to choke him.

“We just left him there in the alligator hole.”

“He would have wanted us to cover for you. We don’t know who we’re dealing with yet, Flame. I was going to track for the forensic people tomorrow if they hadn’t figured it out. It’s been raining heavily and the rain may have wiped out most of the tracks. Burrell’s island is a good distance from where we took down the killers and nothing will lead them to the preserve. The bodies are gone. Even if they find the wrecked Jeep, none of us touched it.”

Another sob escaped, but she choked it back, turning away from him. “I hate this. I hate being out of control.”

He didn’t know how to comfort her. Strange when he’d always been so good with women, but now, when it mattered to him, he didn’t know the right thing to say or do. He rubbed her arm awkwardly. “You have every reason to cry.”

She shrank away from him, glaring. “I’m not crying.”

“Cher.” His tone was incredibly tender and her eyes filled up all over again. He watched her wipe at them with the back of her hand. “It’s okay to cry. It’s good to cry.”

“No it’s not. Why do people say that? Crying is a complete waste of time. It doesn’t do any good whatsoever. Your face swells up and turns red. Your eyes burn and you get the headache from hell. Will crying bring Burrell back?” She sank down onto the bed, back against the wall, drawing her knees up. “I cried once in a while after I learned to screw up Whitney’s camera and recorders. It didn’t make me well. It didn’t get me out of the cage he put me in. It didn’t do a damn thing but give him satisfaction when he found out. I’m not crying.”

Gator shoved a bag, the one he recognized from the first night he’d met Flame, into a corner of the cabin out of the way before stripping off his shirt and tossing it onto the back of a chair. He pulled a bottle of water from his pack. “Here, drink this.”

“Thanks.” She took the bottle, watching as he tugged off his boots and tossed them into the corner of the room beside the large bag. “I’m not sleeping with you so you may as well take the bed. I can sleep on the floor.”

Gator sat down beside her. She flinched when he jarred her leg. “I didn’t ask you nor was I going to seduce you, not, mind you, that it wouldn’t work.”

“You were going to ask me. And seduction wouldn’t have worked.”

“I wasn’t going to try,” he repeated.

She frowned. “Why not? What’s wrong with me? I think you’d try with an alligator so why not me?”

“An alligator? I draw the line at reptiles.”

“Fine, I take it back. Why aren’t you going to try to seduce me?”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You mean why aren’t I going to seduce you? Grand-mere raised a gentleman. You’re too upset for me to take advantage of you right at this moment. We can both sleep on the bed and I’ll be have myself.”

Her gaze moved over his face. “But you would have tried to seduce me if I wasn’t so upset, right?”

“W-e-1-l,” he drawled. “I don’ know if I would have or not. You have a thing about knives.”

She made a face at him. “You like my knives and you know you do. It turns you on every time you think about them.”

He didn’t deny the obvious. “Did you huck one at me the other night after you left the club? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Huck? Is huck a word? No, I don’t huck knives; I throw them with deadly accuracy. If I threw a knife at you, you’d be in the bottom of the bayou. I saved your ass, actually.” She wiped at her eyes again, took a drink of water, and twisted the cap back into place.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you aren’t quite the Mr. Invincible you like to think you are. You got someone mad at you the other night and he was just drunk enough and mean enough to try to take you out. You’ve grown complacent, and complacency can get you killed.”

“You were following me?”

“I was baby-sitting. You and your drunken idiot brother and friend. Someone had to do it and I didn’t see anyone else volunteering. Personally, I don’t think you have all that many friends.”

“It was Vicq, wasn’t it? He waited for his chance and threw the knife.”

She shrugged. “I was pretty certain he wasn’t going to just walk away quietly. He isn’t the quiet type. Did you know that he dated Joy? They went out twice. She called it off when he gave her a black eye for looking at another man.”

Anger churned close to the surface. “How the hell did you find that out? If Wyatt had known he would have been gunning for Vicq.”

“Word is, everyone is afraid of the man.”

“I’m not.”

“Which is why I was baby-sitting you.” She sent him a look of censure. “Just because you’re enhanced doesn’t mean you can’t be killed. You dismissed him because he isn’t combat trained. He’s dangerous, Raoul, and you should have known that. I could see it in his eyes. He likes violence and he gets away with it. I’ll bet he’s very abusive toward women as a rule. He’s going to beat his wife and children and he’ll have fights all the time hoping to hurt or do worse to the men he picks the fight with. He likes it. He likes hurting people and probably animals as well.”

“How’d you find out he went out with Joy?”

“I talked to her mother. She told me Joy came home crying and had bruises on her face. They didn’t want her father or brothers to find out because Vicq has such a bad reputation. Joy’s mother mentioned it to the police but they didn’t even question him.”

“It wasn’t in the police report, I read the report myself.”

“What a shocker. You said Vicq’s last name was Comeaux. Did you notice the police officer’s last name on the report? Everyone is related to everyone.”

Gator swore softly in Cajun. “I should have caught that. So Vicq Comeaux is actually a suspect. You haven’t tried to question him, have you?”

She frowned at the sharpness in his voice. “I’m not that stupid. I don’t think anyone would get anything out of him by questioning him, and certainly not a woman. The best way is for someone to get drunk with him and talk trash about women. He’s going to brag.”

“You know a lot about people, don’t you?”

“It’s a survival technique. I learned it early on. Whitney was a hell of a teacher.” She turned her face away from him, but not before he caught the glimpse of pain in her eyes. “My bet is on the boyfriend. Parsons’s son,” she continued, leaning her head against the wall and stretching her right leg out in front of her. “Something isn’t right about him.”

“I had the same feeling. Take the jeans off.”

Her gaze leapt to his, held there. “You said you weren’t going to try anything.”

“I’m not. For God’s sake, woman, you’re beautiful, but don’t flatter yourself. I’m not after your body. I’m after your leg. That’s a single body part.”

“You are too after my body. There’s heat in your eyes and” – she waved her hands around- “evidence elsewhere.”

He leaned close until his breath was warm on her lips. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, cher. I’m a man. When I get near you, there’s going to be a lot of evidence that I want you. Now get rid of the jeans. I want to see your leg.”

“I’m not showing you my leg.”

“Do you have any idea how stubborn you can look? Our children better never give me that look, although I won’t mind if they give it to you. You’d deserve it.”

“Where’s my motorcycle?”

He groaned and leaned back, hands behind his head. “Don’ be askin’ me questions that are going to get you all riled up. You’re tryin’ to get out of strippin’ for me and it won’t work. I’m going to look at your leg so you might as well just get it over and take the damned jeans off. They’re too big for you anyway.”

“I don’t have anything else to wear. My clothes were on Burrell’s houseboat.”

The little catch in her voice made his stomach flip. “Don’ start crying again. I can’t take it.”

“You just got through telling me it was good for me.”

“I was being manly and comforting you. Now it’s just plain self-preservation. I’ll buy you clothes tomorrow. You can get ten pairs of jeans for all I care.”

A faint smile curved her mouth. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

He continued to look at her pointedly.

Flame heaved a sigh. “I don’t have any underwear on. I wasn’t going to wear your brother’s. My leg is sore. I kicked the driver to make him wreck. Well,” she hedged, “I was hoping to break his neck and eliminate him altogether.”

He reached for the waistband of her jeans. “We’re going to have to do something about that temper of yours. You can’t go around killing people because they piss you off, not even when you have reason to be pissed off.” His fingers brushed bare skin. Soft skin. Her belly was firm, but so damned soft he wanted to lean forward and press his mouth against it.

She stiffened, her hands covering his, stopping the movement but holding his fingers against her stomach. He could feel the tremor running through her. “I’ll do it myself.”

“And I was having such fun.”

“Look the other way. I’m not putting on a show for you, perv.”

He closed his eyes obediently and lay back on the bed again, suddenly tired. It had been a long, frustrating day. He had more questions than answers. Burrell was dead. He was no closer to finding Joy Chiasson than the day he’d arrived in New Orleans, and he was certain when Flame peeled off her jeans, and he got a good look at her injured leg, he wasn’t going to like what he saw.

She wiggled against him as she dragged off the jeans. Twice he heard a gasp escape as she tried to be careful removing the garment. He opened his eyes just as she dragged a sheet around her.

“Fils de putin!” He bent closer to inspect her leg. “Maudit!”

“You’re looking.”

“Hell yes, I’m looking.”

“Stop swearing. It’s not that bad. A few bruises, a little swelling. What did you expect? The bike was going fast, so was the Jeep and I kicked him as hard as I could. It wasn’t all that soft when I landed either.”

“How did you manage to make it back through the swamp on this leg? You were running full-out, I saw you.”

She shrugged. “I found out a long time ago, you can endure anything if you have to. Whitney didn’t defeat me, Raoul. I learned a lot of very valuable lessons.” She looked him straight in the eye. “He isn’t going to get me back. I’d rather die. If you or anyone else managed to get me there, I’d take down his house and everyone in it. I mean it. Think long and hard on that before you decide to try bringing me back.”

He looked down at her mottled leg. From knee to hip her thigh was black and blue with ugly swollen blotches that might indicate internal bleeding. “Fils de putin.” He swore again under his breath, his hands going to her leg, lifting it onto his lap as if he could magically take the pan away.

“Are you listening to me?”

“I heard you. You need to see a doctor, Flame.”

“I meant it. I can’t go through that again. I really meant it.”

“I know. What the hell are we going to do about your leg?” His palm stroked down her skin, his touch feather-light, barely there, but she felt it all the way to her bones. I’m taking you to Grand-mere. She knows the treateur- the healer. They’ve been best friends for years.”

“Take me tomorrow. I can’t be around anyone tonight.” Her chest hurt. She felt as if someone had dropped a hundred pound weight on her. A part of her wanted to scream and scream, another part wanted to flood the world with tears, but the worst part of her, something cold and dark and ugly, wanted to go hunting. “Did you tell Lily you found me? She’s the one who sent you after me, didn’t she? If you or your friend told her…”

“Lily doesn’t know we’ve had any contact. No one told her anything. If Whitney is alive and he’s aware of your presence here, it didn’t come from any of us.”

She believed him. She rarely believed anyone, not really. Not all the way. But with Raoul, she felt almost as if she knew him intimately, the real Raoul, not the one every one else saw. And God help her, she actually believed him. “Maybe I’m just tired.” She murmured the words aloud.

“You didn’t do this, Flame. You didn’t cause Burrell’s death.”

“How do you know that? Whitney’s capable of anything, even killing a kind old man just to get the end results of his experiment. He must have changed a lot over the years to have you think he wouldn’t do it, or he hid that side of himself well.”

“I didn’t much like him. None of us did. He was cold. Inhuman.” He shifted her as gently as possible until they were turned around in the bed. “Lie down.” He waited until her head was on the pillow before he pulled a blanket over her. “I never could understand how Lily loved him. She didn’t know he wasn’t her biological father. She found out after he died.”

“He isn’t dead.”

“Maybe he isn’t. In all honesty, you’ve got me halfway believin’ the man is out there somewhere recording every move we make.” Gator switched off the lights and stretched out on the bed beside her, careful to avoid touching her leg.

“I should leave.”

He heard the sound of his heartbeat accelerate. He knew she heard it too. The protest surged up, a strong tidal wave of denial. The walls rippled with a low pulse of dissent. She laid her hand over his.

“I’m not going. I have to find out who did this to Burrell. I’m just saying, it’s the smart thing to do. And there’s Joy. Someone did something to her. I wish I could believe she was dead, but I don’t.”

In the darkness he turned his head to look at her. “You don’t think she’s dead? Why? What makes you think she’s still alive?”

She would never have told anyone else. Ever. She would have gone to her grave and never told a single soul. Sometimes when I go places I hear echoes of sounds.” She waited for him to snicker. To laugh. To say she was crazy.

He twisted his fingers through hers and brought her hand up to his chest, over his heart. “Go on.”

“I think plants sometimes absorb the sound. It gets trapped there in certain plants and I can hear it.”

“You think the sound is trapped in the plants?” The pad of his thumb brushed idly over the back of her hand. “I’ve heard it too, the echo of screams, or laughter. The murmur of voices. At first I thought it was because my hearing was so acute, but then I realized that I was hearing something that had taken place in the past, minutes to months earlier. I thought it could be pockets of space, like the air pockets in a car when it sinks under water. But sound disperses. That didn’t make any sense at all. But plants don’t have ears. How the hell would they hear?”

“The echo of the past in certain places really bothered me.” She sniffed, still trying to get a handle on her emotions. It helped that Gator had bantered a little with her, but she still wanted to cry a river of tears for Burrell. For Joy. For herself. She forced control, wanting to share something of herself with Gator, just because he cared enough to comfort her. The casual rubbing of his thumb over her hand should have been trivial, but it wasn’t.

“I did consider that maybe Whitney had managed to drive me out of my mind, but then I remembered it had happened a couple of times when I was really young, before I realized just what a monster he really was, so I did some research. I wrote down each time I heard the sounds and tried to remember everything that was around me at the time. The one thing each incident had in common was that there were plants there. Not a single plant, but a large group of plants.”

“I never thought of plants. How would they hear things?”

She was acutely aware of his thumb on her hand, stroking caresses back and forth. It wasn’t sexual. She almost wished it were. There was comfort, an intimacy, the small gesture tying her to him where any other touch might have driven her away. She stared up at the ceiling, shocked she was talking about things that mattered to her, revealing secrets she’d never dared to tell another soul-things she’d never wanted to tell another person.

“There’s an Asian plant with transparent leaves called Hydrilla verticillata. Under a microscope you can see live streaming protoplasm. And before you think I’m brilliant and a scientist, I looked it up and someone else had conducted an experiment. In the research I read about, Huxley used a tuning fork and managed to speed up the protoplasm by using sound.”

“And this relates to the voices we hear, how?”

“I love the sarcasm in your voice. You’re such a skeptic.” She laughed softly, a small sound that actually held humor when deep inside she was weeping. Flame had a difficult time analyzing why she wanted to share her theories with Gator and why he could make her smile in the midst of overwhelming grief. She didn’t even know why it was okay with her to be lying in the dark, his body solid and warm and so comforting she wanted to cling like a small child to him. The sound of the rain beat down on the roof and only added to the surreal feeling.

“Well come on.”

“We can destroy things with sound, why not make them grow? For years scientists have believed songbirds contribute to plant growth by singing all the songs in the early-morning hours. A French physicist conducted a very successful experiment exposing how plants respond to sound waves. He composed musical note sequences that helped the plants grow. Each note is chosen to correspond with an amino acid in a protein with the full tune corresponding to the entire protein. It’s done with electromagnetic energy…”

“Sound waves.”

“Exactly. He also warned musicians not to play the notes because they might become ill.” She loved the sound of his voice, the way he drawled his words. She could lie in the dark and listen to the combination of his voice and the rain forever.

“So low frequencies. You think the plants absorb and possibly retain low-frequency notes in their makeup?”

“As well as high acoustical sounds. Like laughter. Like screams. The low murmurs we hear and the edge of violence.”

He brought her hand up to his mouth, his teeth nibbling gently at her knuckles. He seemed unaware of his action, but she felt it all the way down to her toes. Her stomach did a series of interesting little somersaults. She tried to be analytical about the strange sensation, but all she could think about was the feel of his teeth and tongue on her skin.

“So you caught something repeating back from the past that had to do with Joy? Where? What?” His teeth nipped the end of her finger, a tiny stinging bite instantly gone when he drew her finger into the warmth of his mouth.

Her breath hitched but she couldn’t quite bring herself to pull her hand away from him. She heard her accelerated heartbeat, but it meant she was alive, living, able to experience whatever she could before time ran out. She wanted to be with Raoul Fontenot, tonight, this night, when her world had once again crashed and she’d failed vet another human being. She wanted to lie beside him and feel his heat and his solid body, to let him comfort her in the darkness.

“I heard Joy cry out. She begged someone not to hurt her. Most of what he said was very unintelligible, but I caught something about her coming to enjoy the things he would do to her. I don’t think whoever took her meant to kill her, at least not right away. I think if we work fast enough, we have a chance of finding her alive.”

“But you have no clue who the man was?”

“None. The more I tried to listen, the less I heard. The bottom line is, we have to find Joy Chiasson. I won’t be able to live with myself if we don’t. I believe she’s alive and I think she’s in the hands of a monster.”

“Then we have to search together. Where did you hear this?”

“Just outside the Hurican before I went in to sing. She was there.”

“Everyone knows that, she never made it home from the club. You’re not going back to the Hurican to try to tempt every pervert there to follow you home.”

“I wasn’t tempting perverts.”

“That’s exactly what you were doing.” His teeth nipped a little harder at her finger but before she could protest, his tongue swirled around to ease the slight ache. “You were trying to draw out whoever took Joy and make them come after you. You had no backup, no real plan, no help whatsoever.”

“So what’s your big plan? I don’t see hanging out in the clubs did you much good. You had less information than I had.”

“I found out that James Parsons lied his ass off to the cops. He isn’t the least bit broken up over Joy’s disappearance, other than the attention it’s gotten him.”

She gave a little sniff of pure disdain. “You didn’t find that out in the club. You met him and we discussed it.”

“Briefly. It was a brief discussion. I have sharp perception when it comes to readin’ people, cher.”

“Only after I said he was a good suspect,” she reminded. “Was there a fire in here? You have scorch marks on the windowsills and around the door. What happened here?”

“Dahlia was here. After the attack on the sanitarium, Nico, one of the men in the GhostWalker squad, brought her here. She has this little problem with energy although she’s working on controlling it.”

Dahlia. Flame remembered Dahlia, a rebel, so very much like herself. Whitney had despised them, even in the early ages when they were barely five years old. Dahlia had been in so much pain, rocking back and forth, the nurses begging Whitney to let her be with Flame or with Lily. Either of them could ease the pain, but Whitney had isolated her, just as he’d isolated Flame. The terrible memories crowded in, memories of unbearable loneliness, of fear arid rage. Memories of the slow realization that Peter Whitney, the man who held absolute power over her, was a monster. Worse, that one moment in her childhood when she’d become aware that a monster had begun to grow inside of her. A small sound of despair escaped. She never opened those doors, never looked back. But it was all there, reaching out with greedy claws to suck her down into a dark hole she remembered all too well.

Flame yanked her hand away from Gator and pushed at him. “Leave. You have to go.” She was going to cry again, she could feel the choking in her throat, the burning in her eyes and the weight pressing hard on her chest. “Hurry. Get out of here.” Because if she sank into that darkness, she couldn’t trust herself and she wasn’t going to take a chance on hurting Raoul.

“Maudit! Stop pushing me away. I’m not going anywhere.”

She buried her face in the pillow. “You have to. You don’t understand how dangerous it is for me to lose control. I can’t stop crying and I’m so angry with Whitney. I try never to think about him because I don’t know if I can maintain discipline. You have to leave. Please, I’m asking you to leave. You don’t know what I’ve done. What I’m capable of doing. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Do you think you’re the only dangerous person here, Flame? I’m like you. I’m worse than you. He developed me into a damn weapon and sent me into a field to test the results without having a clue what would happen. I went like a good little soldier and I did what they told me to do. I killed five people. One was a friend of mine. I injured nineteen others. Try living with that on your conscience. Whatever you’ve done is nothing, nothing compared to that.” He pulled the pillow from her face, bracing his hands on either side of her head to stare down into her eyes. “I murdered them. Men I’d sworn to protect. Don’t talk to me about discipline or danger. I smile and I swallow anger and I back away from anything that might make me lose control. Not now. Not this time. I’m here to stay. You got that? Are you hearing me? I’m not leaving this time. I’m not giving up something I want as badly as I want you because that fils de putin did this to us.”

She shook her head, her fingers brushing his face. Lightly. With tenderness. There was regret on her face. “I don’t even care if he did something to make us want to be together. You’re an incredible man, but you’re a family man, Raoul. You know you want it all. You want a wife and a house filled with children. You deserve that. Wyatt will get married and your children and his children will all be best friends. You can’t want me the way you’re looking at me. You don’t even know me.”

“Flame.” There was a stark ache in his voice. Heat. Desire. He had never wanted a woman in the way he wanted her. “Don’t say I don’t know you. I’ve known you forever. You see me. The real me. You see me where no one else does, where no one else ever will or could. You can’t ask me to give that up. And I know you. You don’t have to be afraid or hide from me.”

“I had cancer. Not once, but several times. I can’t have children, Raoul. I don’t have a future with a family.”

“We’ll find a way.”

“There is no way and you know it. And Whitney isn’t going to let me have a happy ever after. He invested far too much time and money in all of the girls he brought over from the orphanages. And if you think Lily isn’t involved, tell me why she hasn’t figured it out yet. She’s smart. She’s very smart.”

“Not when it comes to her emotions.” He leaned forward, lowered his head. Just enough to brush his lips against hers. He didn’t know if he was comforting her- or comforting him. It was just imperative to kiss her. To feel the softness of her mouth against his. To feel her response to him, as natural as breathing. He wanted to gather her into his arms, hold her against him and just shelter her there.

Flame kissed him tentatively, reaching a little to complete the contact between them. She felt the heat of his mouth spreading through her body, just that one touch, but it was enough to warm her, to push back the cold of death and grief and the fear of being a monster. Her arms slid around his neck to pull him closer to her.

Gator sank his mouth into the heat of hers. His body blanketed hers, a slow stretch over the top of her, so that he felt every soft curve of her body. Her tears were damp on her face and her mouth was fiery hot. “Stop crying. Nothing’s going to happen right now.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m crying.” She kissed him again, rested her forehead against his. “I don’t want to be anything like her, have anything in common with her-or with him.”

“Flame.” It was a protest, swift and sharp and shocked. “You’re nothing like him. Nothing like Lily. Why would you even say that?” He eased his weight off of her, settling next to her, his arms surrounding her, holding her to him when he felt she was on the verge of flight.

“Why do you think he chose us, Raoul? Even then we were different. He could see it in us.”

“You had psychic gifts.”

“It was more than that. I’m a freakin’ genius, Raoul. There isn’t a whole hell of a lot I don’t understand. I have a need of knowledge, a love of it, and I’m driven to feed that need. I have to have answers. I’m smart in every area until it comes to my emotions. That’s where I make all my mistakes. How did he know? How did he figure out by looking at infants he could take control of their lives and hang on to them forever?”

“He couldn’t know that, Flame. And you aren’t anything like him. He may have been smart, but I didn’t see that much emotion in him.”

“You didn’t?” She shook her head. “There was such rage in him. It consumed him. He was in terrible pain and he wanted everything and everyone around him to feel the things he was feeling. He had emotions and he wasn’t in the least bit of control of them. That’s what he hated the most.”

“I didn’t think about it like that.”

“Peter Whitney is my enemy. I studied him. I studied everything there was to know about him. I found every newspaper article about his grandparents, his parents, and about him. He was unwanted just the way all of us girls were unwanted. His family was all about politics and money. They had him because it was expected, not be cause he was wanted. Nothing he did was ever good enough for them. He was ignored and shoved aside in spite of his brilliance. And he hated that. He wanted to do something to make them stand up and take notice. Maybe he even wanted to embarrass them. Buying orphans overseas and experimenting on them would definitely do that. Especially since his parents frowned on his outrageous beliefs when it came to psychic ability. He had rage all right. And he sowed that same rage in me. In most of the girls. Probably all of them.”

“How long did he have you, Flame?” He felt the breath catch in her throat. She turned away from him, settling her head on the pillow, stretching her bruised leg with care, her back to him. “You never talk about it. Why is that?”

“What’s there to say? He had you, didn’t he? Do you talk about what he did? What you did? The training he gave you? I probably could have escaped sooner, but there was that terrible need for more knowledge. Until I realized it was what he counted on. How much I was becoming like him. All that rage and all that pain buried so deep I couldn’t find it. The focus was always on the training and the knowledge.”

“How did you escape?”

Instantly, as if he’d thrown a switch, she retreated, physically drawing back, her face carefully blank, her eyes cloudy and unreadable. She let out a small, forced sigh and rubbed at her temples as if they were throbbing, averting her face. “I’m so tired, Raoul. I need to sleep.”

Gator wanted to protest, but he could see it wouldn’t do him any good. She had shut down completely. He kissed the nape of her neck and lay listening to the steady rhythm of the rain. Eventually her body relaxed and he heard her soft breathing indicating she really had fallen asleep. She didn’t want to answer him. She was exhausted, that was true, but she had cut off communication immediately when he’d asked the question. He’d felt her instant withdrawal. He was coming to know her, the slightest nuances, and Flame hadn’t been about to tell him how she’d escaped.

Outside the cabin, frogs set up a chorus and once an alligator bellowed. Inside, he lay awake, wondering how he was going to keep the woman in his arms, the only one he’d ever wanted, for his own.