“You didn’t see a body and Whitney is a master of illusion. My guess is she was taken to another of his facilities.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“No, but we’ve had a lot of time to study Whitney.”
“Really?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I lived my life in his compounds, with his experiments. He’s a megalomaniac. He believes rules don’t apply to him and that he’s smarter than everyone else. He believes everyone else is a sheep and that he can manipulate them with ease. And he can—and does all the time.”
“He’s one man, Mari,” he said gently.
“If men like the senator and Jacob Abrams can’t keep him under control, how can we? If he ordered a hit on either one of them, he has the means to get it done.”
“Maybe,” Ken conceded. What the hell is the holdup, Jack? She’s shaking and beginning to sweat.
Jack hurried into the room. “I’m sorry. Kadan called.”
“He could have waited.” Ken’s voice was gruff. He pushed the needle into the IV. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes,” he assured Mari, his thumb sliding over her skin as if it were an accident. “If not, we’ll bring in the doc.”
There was real concern in his voice, but his face was as expressionless as ever. She couldn’t help looking at his brother’s face. Jack had a couple of scars running down one side of his face, as if Ekabela had gotten his hands on him and just gotten started. They only served to add to his good looks. It gave him a rough edge that was intriguing. Ken’s face was a grid of scars, giving him the appearance of someone very frightening. A child might run from him.
She felt his eyes on her and turned her head to catch him staring at her with glittering eyes. She flashed a small smile. “You two look amazingly alike. He has that stubborn set to his jaw that you do.”
He dipped a cloth in cool water and sponged the beads of sweat from her forehead. “How long do you think we have before they find this place?”
“With Whitney’s connections? If you used a helicopter and any aid at all from military or black ops personnel, he’ll have the information in hours.”
“That’s what I thought too. We moved you once after the surgery, but we had to use a helicopter. We’re going to have to move you again.”
“Let them take me back.”
“No.” His voice was soft, a hiss of sound, low and mean, sending chills through her body. “We’ve already called the helicopter. When you wake up, we’ll be in another safe house.”
“And it will be a matter of hours before he has that information. Eventually he’ll catch up with us and someone will get killed.”
“We’ll keep moving until they can take you off the IV. Doc says another twenty-four hours. We can buy that much time.”
It hit her then what he’d said. When you wake up. “You drugged me.”
“I’m not stupid. The minute you thought your people were anywhere near, you would use telepathy to call them. Of course I drugged you. Do you think I didn’t see your body when they cut your clothes off? Somebody beat the hell out of you with a cane.” His voice was so low she could barely catch the flashes of repressed rage. He dragged his shirt up to show the crisscross of scars, long and deep, making a patchwork quilt of his body. “I know what it feels like to have someone cut and skin you like an animal—to treat you like you have no rights and no feelings—that you’re nothing at all.”
“Stop it.”
He swung around so she could see the mess that was his back, the numerous skin grafts and the terrible scars that remained of a once beautiful man. He spun back around, his face close to hers, his silver eyes, fierce and steady and totally implacable. “I saw what they did to you and you’re not going back there.”
“Stop it.” Her voice came out in a whisper. “Don’t say anything else.” He had reduced her to that helpless creature, crawling across the floor, determined she’d never beg for mercy, never give what was demanded of her. She saw herself through those silver eyes—not the soldier who commanded respect, but that animal, half-mad with pain and despair, torn and bleeding and without hope.
Of all the people in the world, it had to be Ken who saw the mess Brett had made of her body. I can keep this up all night, Mari; eventually you’ll give me what I want. It will just hurt a lot more, but I don’t mind that. Ashamed, she pulled the blanket closer around her as Brett’s words echoed in her mind. Of course he hadn’t touched her face. Whitney would have killed him, but sooner or later, Whitney’s threats wouldn’t be enough to deter Brett. In a way she felt sorry for him. Whitney had programmed him, turned him into an animal who no longer thought about right or wrong, only what he wanted—and he wanted Mari. He would be on the team that came for her, and he would kill anyone who stood in his way.
She reached down to touch her hip. There was a bandage there. They’d found and removed the tracking device Whitney had implanted. She should have known they would find it. She had been certain her team would be able to find her quickly, using that tracking system, but now they would have to rely on Whitney—or Abrams and his military contacts—and that would take some time. There were few trails leading to the GhostWalkers and no one carried identification. If they died during a mission, they were buried quietly, without public fanfare, because no one knew they existed.
Ken jerked down his shirt, covering the scars running down his belly, disappearing even lower into his jeans. He leaned over her, his hand spanning her throat, fingers stroking a caress over her silken skin. His whisper was soft, lips against her ear so that his breath was warm, fanning curls of heat through her body. “I don’t live by anybody else’s rules. I make up my own.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, a bracelet that went halfway around, but her fingers dug into his skin, into the ridges of his scars as her lashes drifted down. “Don’t let anyone else see me. Especially not Briony.”
Ken closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against hers. It was sheer hell to be so close to her and not touch her. Even with blood and sweat and the drugs, her scent drove him crazy. Whitney’s experiment into pairing through scent was more than a success. But even more than the physical need, he felt the urge to protect her. Maybe it had been the sight of her broken and battered body when they’d cut off her clothes. Maybe it had been the sound of Nico and the surgeon swearing, or Jack’s hiss of rage. All he could remember was feeling the impact like a punch to his gut, and then later, when they’d rolled her over to examine her back, he felt his heart being ripped from his body.