“Tansy?” There was another male voice on the phone. “I’m afraid Mommy can’t talk right now. Neither can Daddy. You have twenty-four hours to get back here or they’re both dead. Say you understand.”
Fredrickson, Dad’s bodyguard, she identified to Kadan.
“What are you doing, Fredrickson?” she asked.
Her mother screamed again; this time the sound was filled with pain, not shock.
“I understand,” Tansy said and hung up the phone. She didn’t want to give Fredrickson, or anyone else, a chance to cause her parents further pain. “Get me a plane.”
“Take a breath. Let’s get a plan first.”
Tansy knocked his hand away. “The plan is, I do whatever Fredrickson wants me to do. I’m not letting him kill my parents.”
“He’s not going to kill them,” Kadan said. “As long as they don’t have you, no one is going to kill them. When they acquire you, your parents’ usefulness will be gone. That’s when they’ll be in real danger.”
“You heard my mother scream.”
“That was deliberate to frighten you into immediate compliance.”
She glared at him. “Well, it worked. Get me a plane.”
Kadan regarded her with that cool, impassive gaze she was coming to dislike. “Sit down, Tansy. We need to think, not run off half-cocked.”
“Screw you, Kadan.” She turned away and headed for the door.
His fingers settled around her wrist like a steel hand-cuff. “You’re too emotional for this kind of work. Settle down.”
She swung back, using her momentum to put power behind the punch she threw at him. Her fist went straight and true for his jaw, but he caught it, the sound loud as her knuckles slammed into his palm. He simply turned her, locking her tight against him.
“Don’t be stupid, Tansy. I’m not the enemy. If you want your parents to survive, sit the hell down and let’s figure out how to get them out alive. We need to know what’s going on here. Is it connected to the murders? Is this about Whitney and you finding out about him? Fredrickson was obviously a plant in your house, but who put him there? Who does he work for?” He whispered the words, low and cool, in her ear. His breath was warm, his body hot, his grip too strong to break. “Use your brain.”
Tansy hated that he was right. Hated it. She wanted to take another punch at him just for being right. “Let go. Just let go. I’m sitting down.”
Kadan reluctantly released her, his eyes narrowed, watching her closely. Waiting. She felt him in her mind and glared at him.
“I need the layout of the house and grounds, with as much detail as possible, and that includes position of furniture and lighting. I need to know about security. Cameras. Guards. Alarms. Codes for alarms. Everything you can give me.”
Tansy leaned her forehead into her hand. “You were right.”
He was the devil as far as she was concerned, and he couldn’t really blame her. He waved her admission aside. “Let’s hear what they have to say before we condemn them. You just have to be very careful. Whitney is a monster.”
She flicked him another quick look. “I know he’s a monster and he must have something on them. Whatever it is, it has to be bad for them to go along with anything that man has done. I’ve been the insect under his microscope. What are we going to do to keep him from killing my parents?”
At least she had included him. “We’re going to take them back. I’ll make a couple of phone calls and get some help.” Kadan didn’t want to think too much about the way her father had said to Fredrickson, You don’t have to do that. She’ll come back, but the words were engraved in his mind and the ramifications a scary thing.
She dragged air into her lungs. “The GhostWalkers. You’re going to ask them to help us.” There was fear in her voice.
“And you’re going to know they aren’t involved. We won’t be able to prove it, but you examine each of the game pieces, and when you meet the team, you’ll know if any of them match any of the game pieces, right? You have strong impressions of personality.”
“Of course I’ll know. What happens if one of them is involved?”
“You signal me; I take out a gun and execute him.”
There was another small silence while she examined his face, looking for a sign that he was joking. “We bring him in for trial,” she corrected.
“There isn’t going to be a trial for any GhostWalker caught murdering civilians. There’s an execution order. Every GhostWalker is on the chopping block, thanks to these killers. When I know who they are, I’m authorized to hunt them and terminate.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
For a moment something hot swirled beneath the cool ice of his gaze. “These men are soldiers, more than soldiers. They are superweapons, sworn to protect this country and everyone in it. They are betraying every soldier who has gone before them, the soldiers fighting now, and all who come after. We have a code. They’ve broken that code. And more than that, Tansy, you better know exactly what we’re up against.”
“It’s always difficult to go up against psychos.”
He shook his head. “Superweapons. Never forget that these men we’re chasing are not just well-trained soldiers, which would make our job difficult enough. I’ve had every kind of training possible. So have these men. I’m enhanced psychically. So are they. I’m enhanced physically. They are as well. If someone comes after me to kill me, they have one chance. One. They have to take me by surprise; after that, I’m hunting them and they’re dead. These men are like me. Once they know we’re on to them, they’ll disappear and we’ll never find them unless they surface to retaliate.”
She nodded slowly. “Unfortunately, I have to agree with that assessment after handling the stallion. The man who owns that game piece definitely thinks he’s superior and above all laws. His sense of entitlement is absolute. I believe he would come after us in a heartbeat, and it would never occur to him that he would lose.”
“He’s going to lose,” Kadan said, no inflection in his voice.
There was no inflection in his mind either when she touched it. Only resolve and a belief that he was far more intelligent than his adversaries and that his code demanded the men committing the murders pay for casting a shadow over his fellow GhostWalkers. They would pay for betraying their country and the honor of every soldier the GhostWalkers represented. A shiver went down her spine. Just like the murderers, Kadan believed he was superior and far more intelligent. Faster. Stronger. That his training could see him through any situation. He believed in his teammates and he had a strong patriotic sense of duty. More than anything, these men had betrayed all soldiers, their country, and their code. Sentence had already been passed. To Kadan, they were walking dead men.