Street Game

CHAPTER 7

“Okay, honey, you’re scaring the hell out of me. You’ve got to wake up for me.”

Mack’s voice penetrated the layer of pain Jaimie seemed to be drowning in. Her lashes fluttered, but she couldn’t quite pry her swollen lids open. Every inch of her head hurt, even her teeth. She detested psychic overloads.

She moistened her dry mouth, ignoring the metallic taste of blood. “Go away.”

Because she wasn’t getting up, not even to hear his voice again.

“Thank God, Jaimie.” Relief poured into Mack’s voice. “I was about to call for help. Open your eyes.”

She swallowed a protest. “What part of ‘go away’ didn’t you understand?” She didn’t dare move. Not any part of her body. Certainly not her head. Top, looks like you’re about to have company, Gideon reported. Big son of a bitch. Looks like a model. Really good-looking. There’s something about the way he moves.

.. There was speculation in Gideon’s voice.

Mack signaled to Kane as he slipped a gun out and positioned himself in front of Jaimie’s bed. Kane slipped across the room, standing to one side of the window to peer down at the street. Ethan disappeared entirely.

“Jaimie’s persistent assistant,” he said. “Javier is coming up on him.”

Watch yourself, Javier, Gideon cautioned. He knows he’s being watched, Gideon added. Boss, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I swear he moves like Superman. I think he’s the one watching Jaimie. And that shot yesterday? The winds were ferocious. I had a good angle, but he didn’t. To make a shot like that, only a handful of people in the world could do that. If it’s him, and I think it is, he’s good, Mack. I don’t think you’re crazy, Gideon. Javier, don’t approach him. Keep moving. You’re taking my fun away.

Kane swore under his breath. “Javier just buzzed by him, doing a few showy tricks. He’s got four other kids with him. Jaimie’s little friend watched them every step of the way. Never took his eyes off of them. He’s not going to be easy, Mack.”

Javier, stop playing with fire. That man’s the real deal. I need you to get back here in a few when it’s safe.

Javier snorted. I can take him, Top. You give the word. You’ll stand down.

Waiting for orders as always, came the prompt reply.

Mack snorted. Javier did whatever the hell he wanted to do and then grinned at Mack sheepishly while Mack lectured him. I need you on the computer telling me everything you can about this guy. I don’t want the bullshit cover story. I want his real identity and who sent him.

Can I come in behind him and use Jaimie’s sweet equipment? Javier sounded eager.

Only if you don’t mind if she gets mad at you for touching her babies, Mack said.

“At the door, Mack,” Kane reported.

On cue the fog horn blared. Mack stabbed his finger on the intercom. “Yes?”

“I want to see her. Jaimie. I want to see her.”

“She told you to take the day off.” Mack didn’t pretend to be oblivious of the man’s identity. What was the point?

“Yeah, well, it’s me or the cops. I want to see her for myself and if you think I’m bluffing, try me.”

He saw us getting her into the car somehow, Kane sent telepathically. He knows she’s hurt, probably had a scope on us and saw the blood as we carried her. You’d want to do the same, get a visual checkup. The guy has balls, Mack. Yeah, well, he’d better watch that he doesn’t get them whacked off. “Come on up, then,” Mack invited into the intercom and waved Kane over to the door. “But come up unarmed.”

“I don’t need weapons,” Joe said, his voice utterly calm.

Kane flashed Mack a grin. “You got to hand it to the guy.” There was admiration in his voice. “He knows he’s walking into the lion’s den.”

“He won’t come without a weapon.” Mack made it a statement.

“No, he won’t,” Kane agreed.

Mack put himself in front of Jaimie, reaching down for a moment to wipe strands of hair from her face. She appeared to be sleeping again. He was terrified of her slipping into unconsciousness and then a coma. Bleeding on the brain often occurred with psychic overload and more than one death had resulted. His heart beat too fast and he was edgy as hell, not the perfect time for her friend to show up. The man was arrogant enough to take the freight lift, not bothering to try to surprise them by silently creeping up the stairs. He stepped out of the elevator looking down the barrel of both guns without so much as blinking.

“Search him,” Mack said to Kane.

Joe shook his head. “Not a good idea to put your hands on me. I’ve got a dead man’s switch and you come near me, or make a move for Jaimie, and we all go up.”

He smiled and there was amusement in his black eyes as they glittered at Mack.

“Just to let you know, I don’t bluff.”

“I don’t guess you do,” Mack said without lowering his weapon. “You take out the bogey on the roof?”

“I think your man and I hit him at the same time.”

“Nice shot.” Mack gave credit where it was due.

“Thanks. I don’t miss what I’m aiming at.”

“You want to tell me what you want with Jaimie?”

“You’re the one standing over her with a gun. She looks in bad shape. You tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“You can find out about us the hard way, just like we’re doing with you,” Mack said. “You think I’m going to hand it to you?”

“This is going to be a damn long day and she could be in real trouble,” Joe pointed out.

“She’s my family.” My everything. Mack didn’t say it aloud, but he might as well have, with the gruff voice he used.

Those black eyes studied him. “I look out for her. Step aside and let me see to her. I have medical training,” Joe added.

He’ll have to let go of the switch, Kane pointed out.

True, but he’ll be next to Jaimie. If he’s an assassin… Joe sighed. “Keep the gun to my head. Let me take a look at her.”

Mack stepped aside. “I’ll kill you without hesitation if you even look like you’re going to harm her.”

Joe’s eyebrow went up. “Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.” He walked straight across the floor to the bedside, turning his back on Kane without hesitation.

Cocky bastard, Kane observed.

Joe knelt down beside Jaimie, his back to both of them. They knew it had to take courage to do it, but the man ran his hands gently over her face. “Hey, sweetheart, can you open your eyes for me? I need to look into them. I want to hear you talk.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mack. “Has she talked? Slurred her words?”

“She told me to go away and let her sleep,” Mack admitted, “so she knew what was going on, and no, she didn’t slur her words. But she’s in pain. She was moaning up until a few minutes ago.”

Sweetheart? Who the hell does he think he is, calling Jaimie sweetheart? he demanded of Kane.

Noticed that, did you? Kane shook his head. Let it go, Mack. He’s worried about her. She always was more sensitive than the rest of us to violent energy, and someone died back there.

She should never have opened herself up. We could have protected her if she hadn’t done that.

We don’t know how her radar works. Obviously she had no choice if she wanted to find out the enemy’s position. Mack, she’s in trouble, we both can see it.

“Tell me what you need for her,” Mack said. His gun never wavered. His gut told him Joe Spagnola was there to help Jaimie, not hurt her, but it would take one moment to kill her.

“My medical bag is in the lift.”

Kane immediately retrieved the small bag, opened it, and went through it carefully. Joe didn’t even glance at him, but had placed his fingertips on Jaimie’s head and closed his eyes. Marc was an accomplished medic in the field, working with wounds, but he didn’t have the ability to work with brain bleeds. Strokes and even death could follow. The moment the fingers locked onto her skull, Jaimie’s facial expression turned to a frown, and her body became restless beneath the thin sheet.

“She has leaking blood in several spots, although none appear too bad. No big clots.”

“Can you stop it?” Mack asked. Do you think he’s a psychic healer? The real deal?

I don’t know, boss, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing, Kane answered.

“I’ll try working to seal off the weak areas. Sometimes I can and other times I don’t have the strength to tap into the energy I need. It all depends on how severe the problem is. I have some medication in my bag that should help. Do either of you know how to set up an IV?”

“We both can.” Nearly every GhostWalker could. All of them had fundamental lifesaving skills.

Kane removed the necessary equipment and began the preparations while Mack watched Joe closely. The man kept his fingers on Jaimie’s skull, and they could feel the pull of energy around him as he seemed to gather and use nearly every bit in the room. For a moment the smell of burned flesh permeated the room and Mack’s heart jumped in response, but he held still, the feeling that Joe was working to help Jaimie strong.

She moaned softly and tried to turn her head, her body moving restlessly under the covers. Her legs thrashed and she lifted her hands, trying to push him away, batting feebly, but very persistently.

“Hold her down,” Joe ordered. “It hurts like hell. Basically I’m trying to manipulate the energy to do what we’d do in surgery.”

Mack holstered his weapon and sat on the other side of the bed, leaning his weight on her slender body while Kane put the catheter into the back of her hand.

“She should have gone to the hospital,” Mack said, angry with himself. He didn’t trust her being in a hospital. It would be far too easy for an assassin to get to her. Too many doctors, nurses, and orderlies going in and out of her room. Joe shook his head. “Too risky. She’s a target. You couldn’t take the chance and you know that.”

Jaimie continually moved her head, trying to get his hands off of her. Her moans were becoming cries of distress. Mack leaned close to her and whispered in her ear.

“I’m here with you, honey. He’s trying to help you.”

His voice seemed to soothe her a little. She subsided, her fingers sliding across the sheet to find his leg.

“You know why they want her dead?” Mack asked.

“I have my suspicions. I hope I’m wrong. I originally was assigned to guard her to keep any foreign governments from trying to acquire her. What about you? Do you know?”

“We just arrived last night. We grew up together.”

“You must be Mack McKinley. I read her file. She had a very different background. All of you were friends before you ended up on the same team.” Joe visibly relaxed, although his fingertips never lifted from Jaimie’s skull. She cried out softly in protest again and began to thrash under him again. Kane gripped her hand to keep her from ripping out the IV. Her lashes fluttered and she tossed her head, trying to get rid of the insistent fingers and the heat they were generating.

“This is hurting her,” Mack said. “She wasn’t doing this before.”

“I’m operating without anesthesia. Did you think it would be easy? She’s a GhostWalker, she’ll be able to handle it.”

“She’s not like the rest of us,” Mack protested. His stomach was in knots and there was a bad taste in his mouth. He felt as if they were torturing her. Jaimie wasn’t cut out for what they did, no matter how powerful her gift. If she opened herself in public, too much energy rushed in to overpower her. He had believed that with practice, all of them could protect her. They were anchors and in theory, the energy should rush to them, but something about Jaimie was different. He’d known it since she was a child, that her psychic gifts worked differently than all of theirs, and that hers was stronger.

“What was she doing?”

“Jaimie isn’t an anchor. If she uses her abilities, she pays in a big way.”

Joe did look at them then, staring from one to the other. “I read that all of you belonged to Team Three and all of you were anchors. She should have been protected.”

“It doesn’t matter when it comes to Jaimie.” Mack’s gaze met Joe’s. “Why do you think you were here? They probably told you to record everything you could about her. No one can figure her out. Short of taking her to Whitney’s lab and dissecting her, they don’t know how her radar ticks or anything else about her. And as for a foreign government kidnapping her, she may have to worry about Whitney wanting to do the same thing. He likes his little experiments.”

“Whitney didn’t send me,” Joe said.

“Sergeant Major Griffen did, Mack,” Kane said. “Acting on my request.”

There was a long silence, punctuated by Jaimie’s distressed moans. Mack kept his face absolutely blank. He didn’t know or trust Joe Spagnola all that much and refused to spill his fury over Kane’s admission in front of a stranger. Once again, Jaimie had tried to tell him Kane had been involved in the “coincidence” but he’d chosen not to listen or believe her. If it felt like betrayal to him, then how would it seem to Jaimie? And the man she’d spent time with, carefully chosen out of hundreds of applicants, how would it feel to her to know he’d been working undercover to watch her? Most important, when GhostWalkers usually could identify one another just through the psychic energy, how had Joe managed to mislead Jaimie? And did Griffen or those above him know?

His stomach was a mass of hard knots and he couldn’t believe the anger roiling in his gut. Kane was his best friend, the man who walked through death with him, waded through blood. Trust was everything, and he had trusted Kane implicitly his entire life. He had allowed Jaimie to walk away from him because he wasn’t about to abandon Kane and the others after he’d led them to Whitney.

As if sensing his distress, Jaimie opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes were bloodshot, red and not very focused, but relief swept through him at the awareness there.

“Hey there, honey. You’ve given us all a bad scare.”

Her perusal took in Kane and then Joe, who still had the pads of his fingers in firm contact with her head. The heat he generated couldn’t fail to tip her off to what he was. That should have made him happy, that she’d think her hero had feet of clay, but instead, he felt sad for her. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her tight against him, shelter her from every hurt.

He’d chosen this life for them all, and he’d embraced it. There was a part of him that still did, maybe the biggest part of him. He loved what he did. He had even grown to love the psychic and genetic enhancements. But Jaimie was everything to him. He needed her. He just didn’t know how to reconcile the two. He had told her so many things that night. He’d like to forget he’d said them, but two years had gone by and he had plenty of time to remember word for word how he’d told her she’d come crawling back, begging him to take her back, that she couldn’t make it without him. He’d been so angry at her-at least he thought he’d been. Over those long two years he realized he’d been angry at himself for ever putting her-any of them-in the dangerous position they were all in. It was his responsibility and he couldn’t walk away, not even when he couldn’t seem to breathe without Jaimie.

There was knowledge in her eyes and he knew she accepted Kane’s betrayal better than he did. Maybe she even understood it. Jaimie seemed able to see things he didn’t. She put her hand up and tried to push Joe away.

“Let me, sweetheart,” Joe said. “I can explain.”

“We both can,” Kane added, more, Mack suspected, for his benefit than Jaimie’s.

“Just let him work on you. You know how dangerous brain bleeds are.”

Jaimie tangled her fingers with Mack’s and clung, but she forced herself to stop fighting.

“Her name is Jaimie,” Mack said. “Not ‘sweetheart.’ ”

Joe glanced at him. “You’re looking for a fight, but you’re not going to get one from me. I was just-”

“Doing your job,” Jaimie cut him off, closing her eyes, not wanting to look at his face. “I hear that a lot. It’s such a great excuse, isn’t it? Following orders.”

She hadn’t known Joe was a GhostWalker or that he’d been sent to watch her. At first she’d suspected. He’d been her second choice, but her first choice had taken another job. She’d thoroughly investigated Joe and everything checked out. Even that, she knew, could be manipulated so she’d interviewed him several times, trying to trip him up with questions. If a story was rehearsed, it was often retold nearly word for word. Joe had been an easy talker.

And she should have recognized another GhostWalker. Or at least someone with psychic abilities. Judging by the heat in her head, he definitely had psychic abilities.

“It’s not like that, Jaimie,” Joe protested.

“Really? You didn’t answer my ad and apply for the job? You didn’t have a cover in place-a very good one, I might add. I’m pretty certain you never mentioned you were keeping an eye on me.”

“That your place across the street my men uncovered?” Mack asked.

“I couldn’t believe your man spotted me. He’s one of a very few who ever have.”

“He ID’d you walking up to the front door as well.” Mack didn’t identify Gideon. He didn’t know what was going on and protecting his men was instinctual. Jaimie tried to think through the pain. It mattered little if they gave her explanations.

Betrayal had a certain smell to it and that scent had been all over Kane. Why not Joe? That bothered her. She’d become fond of him. They’d spent many hours isolated together, working to turn the warehouse into a home and office. In all that time, how could she not have known what he was?

She felt him lift his fingertips away and the burning sensation eased. She could taste blood in her mouth. The overloads were getting worse, not better. She hadn’t said anything to anyone because who could she tell? Who could she trust? She didn’t dare go into a hospital. And what could a doctor do for her? Only Whitney might have a chance of helping her, and he was a monster without scruples. She’d probably come out from under the anesthesia and discover he’d given her wings.

“She should be better if I can get this medicine into her IV,” Joe said, sitting back. For the first time he looked strained, his handsome face lined with fatigue. Mack held out his hand. “What is it?”

Kane put the medication in Mack’s hand. Mack closed his eyes, blocking out all sights, concentrating on the vial held between his palms. He inhaled deeply, scenting the liquid, looking for trace amounts of poison, sensing whether or not it could bring Jaimie harm. It bothered him that she couldn’t read Joe, and that Gideon, who had the eyes of an eagle, hadn’t spotted him easily. He wouldn’t have known Joe was a GhostWalker if he’d passed by him. If Whitney ever realized that both Joe and Gideon weren’t recognizable as GhostWalkers to the others, both men would be in danger. Whitney would move heaven and earth to find out why. Mack handed him the vial and watched him put it into Jaimie’s IV.

“I’m giving her a painkiller as well,” Joe said. “It will make her sleepy. I’d like to stay for a few hours and check on her. She’s not entirely out of danger.”

Mack knew Javier was on the second floor using Jaimie’s equipment to ferret out Joe Spagnola’s secrets. He nodded his head. “Thanks.”

He still hadn’t really looked at Kane. He wasn’t certain he could without punching him right in the face. Kane had asked for the sergeant major to put someone on Jaimie without even coming to him about it. To take manpower from one of the teams, and Joe Spagnola was definitely an elite GhostWalker, Griffen would have asked something in return. Mack knew that somehow Jaimie was going to be part of the price tag.

Joe stood up and stretched.

“I’d be careful moving around,” Mack said.

Joe’s eyebrow shot up. “I spent a good deal of time studying the safety areas of this room from the rooftops and windows. Your sniper doesn’t have a shot.”

“Not if he’s outside,” Mack agreed.

Joe hesitated and then went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Corona, shaking his head, clearly uncertain whether or not to believe Mack. “I see someone’s been enjoying my beer.”

“I thought it was Jaimie’s beer,” Kane said.

“She doesn’t drink,” Joe said and took a long, slow swallow.

Mack frowned. “You seem to know a lot about Jaimie.”

“I know she has nightmares. Bad ones.”

Mack couldn’t think for a moment; the roaring in his head was so loud it drowned out his ability to reason. He got up abruptly and paced across the floor to stare out the window.

“You going to tell your sniper to stand down anytime soon?” Joe asked.

“I was.” Mack whirled around to face him. “I changed my mind. How the hell would you know Jaimie has nightmares?”

Joe shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago, she found a murder victim just a few feet from her door. It was pretty messy. A woman knifed just outside her doorway. She’d been stabbed multiple times. Jaimie hadn’t been home and coming home to that really messed her up.”

Mack kept his back to Joe, his gaze meeting Kane’s. “How many times?”

“What do you mean?”

“How many times was the woman stabbed?”

“Sixteen.”

Mack drew his breath in through burning lungs. “How old was she?”

Joe lowered the beer, aware of the rising tension. “The vic was thirty-one. Lisa Carlston. She taught at…”

“An elementary school,” Mack finished. “Third grade.”

There was silence in the room. Mack sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. “Ethan, stand down,” he ordered.

“You really did have a gun on me the entire time,” Joe said. “I never spotted him.”

“Ethan’s like that,” Kane said.

Joe looked around the room, into the shadows, and he still didn’t see the hidden GhostWalker. “You knew I would come.”

“If you were sent to kill her, you would have killed her,” Mack said. “Anyone who can make the shot you did would have gotten her a long time ago.”

“So all this was…”

“I don’t take chances with Jaimie’s life,” Mack said.

Joe handed him an opened beer. “What’s going on? How did you know the victim was an elementary teacher?”

“With dark hair,” Mack said, his voice heavy with a sigh.

“Dark curly hair,” Kane added.

“Like Jaimie,” Joe said and put down the bottle of beer.

“Like Jaimie,” Mack agreed. “Like her mother.”

Joe swore. “Who was an elementary school teacher.”

Mack nodded. “Jaimie found her just outside the door of their home stabbed sixteen times. It was Jaimie’s sixteenth birthday. She came home late from work, and there was her mother lying dead on her doorstep.” His voice shook. The memory still had the ability to shake him.

“No wonder she had nightmares,” Joe said. “I had been following her, so I was with her when the cops came. She held it together, but when we came up here, she went to pieces. I got her to sleep and I stayed because I was worried. There didn’t seem to be a connection and she didn’t say anything, not to the cops and not to me. Of course at the time, we didn’t know who the dead woman was or anything about her.”

Mack exchanged a long look with Kane. “Jaimie would have known the significance of sixteen stab wounds. She’s brilliant. Things don’t get past her.” Yet she hadn’t called him. Hadn’t turned to him.

“I don’t understand,” Joe said. “What the hell are we dealing with? I was asked to keep foreign governments off of her. Someone made a try for her a week ago, but he was no foreign government; he was one of ours. At least he appeared to be.”

Mack nodded. “One of my boys took a couple of them down the other day. Former Marines. They were both reported dead over three years ago. Neither had been in the GhostWalker program but they’d both seen plenty of combat.”

“Same with the one I took out. I did it quietly and Jaimie never knew,” Joe said. He sighed. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Black Ops,” Mack said. “This is no foreign government after her. It’s our own.”

Kane leaned forward to look into Joe’s face. “Our two were set up for torture and interrogation, not kidnapping. They were going to kill her.”

“She’s too valuable to kill,” Joe said. “She’s got too much training. Why would they put out a hit on her, and yet send me to guard her?”

“Because two factions are at work here, that’s why,” Mack said and stood up, pacing across the room, unable to contain the energy spilling out. Ordinarily he’d be talking it over with Kane. Jaimie had hit on something big and someone wanted her silenced, but now he didn’t know who he could trust.

Kane shot him a look as if catching his thoughts, but remained silent. Mack was grateful. He didn’t want to brawl in front of Joe, but the moment Kane said the wrong thing, there were going to be a few punches thrown.

Jaimie moaned softly and Mack immediately crossed to her side and sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s all right, honey. I’m here with you.”

He knew Ethan wouldn’t take his eyes from Joe and he could fully concentrate his attention on Jaimie. She was asleep. And she was weeping. He’d seen it before. Sometimes she even walked in her sleep, going from room to room, trying to find her mother. He’d had years of those nightmares, heartbreaking and far too frequent. The year they’d spent together, the nightmares had lessened.

Mack bent over her, his fingertips gentle as they brushed at her tears. “I’m here, baby, you’re not alone.”

She opened her eyes then, but there was only anxiety and blankness. He knew she wasn’t aware. “I have to find her. She isn’t here. I can’t find her.”

His heart clenched so hard it felt like a heart attack, the pain gripping him until he could barely breathe. “She’s safe now, Jaimie. She’s where no one can hurt her.”

How many times had he murmured those words, trying to soothe her, quiet her mind when she was caught in the throes of a nightmare? It had always been Jaimie and her mother. Stacy had been fifteen when she’d given birth to her daughter. Her parents had thrown her out and she’d lived on the streets with the incredibly intelligent infant. Stacy had done her best for her daughter, working as a waitress and taking classes at night. It couldn’t have been easy and Jaimie had adored her mother. He stretched out beside her, laying his claim in front of Joe. Jaimie was his. She would always be his, no matter how bad he screwed up, no matter how many mistakes he made. He’d find his way back to her, because in the end, Jaimie was his world. He locked his fingers with hers, feeling a little helpless, as he always did when she was caught in the middle of a nightmare, restless and lost in another world he couldn’t travel into. He wasn’t a dreamwalker like Lucas or Ethan and he didn’t know what would happen if one of them entered her nightmare with her. All of them lived with enhanced psychic abilities, but they were all learning to cope with the skills, even after all this time. For him, he knew his abilities were growing. He could move from one place to another in seconds. At first it had been short distances, but now those distances were growing. It seemed that way with all of them, the psychic talents developing stronger over time and with use. Why, then, hadn’t Jaimie known Joe was a GhostWalker? Why hadn’t she sensed Gideon on the roof? And why was her reaction getting worse when she used her psychic abilities?

Because they were getting stronger. He closed his eyes as he brought her hand to his chest, just over his heart. That was the only explanation. Jaimie’s abilities were growing and the price was higher. Her talent was highly unusual. She could feel intent and, if expanded, she could take in an entire structure. Thinking about it, he realized she’d read the energy around her entire building and down the streets. What had she been reading on the street today? How large of an area?

She would be able to find positions on battlefields, know where snipers had positioned themselves, know if an assassin was in the crowd. She was too valuable to want dead, yet someone very high up had ordered her death. Was she close to finding Whitney’s supporters? She must have triggered a red flag in her search. That would be like Jaimie. She would go in where others would be terrified. She might not pull a trigger to kill someone, but she wouldn’t flinch when uncovering corruption and seeking justice.

“Stop crying, baby,” he whispered. “You’re killing me. I hate to feel helpless. You know that.” He wasn’t good at some things. Kane often had been the one wiping Jaimie’s tears away when she was a child and other kids tried bullying her. Mack was usually the one that beat the crap out of them. “Wake up, Jaimie. You’re here with me.” He pressed kisses along her temple. Come on, honey, you’re safe. I’ve got you. He knew the instant she was aware of him lying beside her. He was in her mind, a place where he’d so often taken refuge in the past. He caught that brief flare of happiness, of completeness, and it settled the roiling in his stomach and mind. She hadn’t written him off quite as completely as she claimed, and she certainly didn’t hate him.

Every day had been endless without her unless he was in the field working. There had been a huge, empty hole nothing-and no one-could fill. He hadn’t bothered to try with anyone else. It was all about Jaimie. His other half. She had looked at him with stars in her eyes, allowing him the lead and following wherever he went. She hadn’t asked anything of him-until that night she left him. He was ashamed of himself, of his actions. He hadn’t wanted to admit to himself, let alone to her, what kind of power she had over him.

Jaimie. Honey. Can you hear me?

There was a small silence. He could hear the low murmur of Kane and Joe talking. He couldn’t hear Ethan, but knew he was somewhere off to his right in the shadows, probably clinging to the ceiling like an upside-down spider. He could hear his heart beat.

Yes. There was a sob in her mind.

I should have told you I wanted you to stay. I know it’s not what you want to hear right now, but I was a fucking coward. Give me another chance with you. I don’t want to go through my life without you. I should have asked you to stay. This time he counted his heartbeats. He felt her sadness beating at him. Her regret. His heart beat double-time.

I’m not the same person anymore, Mack.

Is there someone else? He braced himself. She was going to kill him. He detested good-looking, over-six-foot Joe Spagnola, who had stayed all night with her to help her through her nightmares when he should have been there holding her.

Of course not. I loved you-love you, Mack. I always have. You don’t just get over that. Well, I don’t. You were my world. It took a little time to learn to just exist without you.

He knew she was being truthful, not hurtful. She was giving him facts, her tone all Jaimie and a clear reprimand. He wanted to smile, relief flooding him. Satisfaction. There was no one else. Not even Superman. I’m not going anywhere again, Jaimie. She sighed and turned into him, her head finding a niche against his shoulder. Until the first time Griffen orders you into the field. That’s work, Jaimie. You aren’t going to be upset when I go to work. How are you ever going to know he isn’t sending you out on a suicide mission? That brought him up short. He trusted Griffen. He knew the sergeant major. The man was a patriot through and through and he always stood for his men. He was tough, but he took the heat from the politicians. Part of the reason Mack had agreed to the program was because they would all report directly to Griffen. He didn’t send his team out lightly.

Jaimie, I’m telling you I want you to stay with me. Be with me. And I don’t doubt it for a minute, Mack. She let go of his fingers and he immediately felt bereft. My head aches and I need to sleep. No nightmares, then.

And tell Joe I’m really not happy with him either.

Mack shifted, leaned in to kiss her temple, and rose. “She’s not happy with you, Joe.” He didn’t bother to keep elation from his voice.

“I figured that,” Joe said. “I’m going back to my suite. The place is a dump but it’s home, unless your men tore it up.”

“They left it intact.”

Javier, he’s on the move, Mack warned. “How long you figure you’re staying around?”

“Until Sergeant Major pulls me off the duty. And that isn’t going to be until we find the bastard coming at her.”

“Sounds personal to me,” Mack said.

“You bet it’s personal,” Joe said, for once shaken out of his usual calm. “She’s mine. I’ve been protecting her for months. I’m not about to turn her over to you or anyone else. So forget asking your sergeant major. I’m going to find the bastard who put that body on her doorstep and whoever is targeting her for assassination. Not on my watch.”

Kane and Mack exchanged a long look as Joe crossed the room, checked Jaimie’s pulse, smoothed back her hair, and then, without another word, went down the stairs. Ethan did a slow somersault from where he’d been clinging like a spider in the rafters and landed in a crouch. “You know, boss, you just might have a rival for Jaimie’s affections again. And this time, I don’t think he’s scared of you.”