“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.