Gator gestured imperiously toward the bike, clearly ordering her to get on it.
Flame ran to her bag, staying low as she swooped it up and secured it on her shoulder. She wasn’t about to get caught between a rock and a hard place. She’d take her chances with civilian guards rather than a genetically and physically enhanced soldier. She wasn’t about to kid herself. No matter how charming the Cajun might be, he was a weapon, the same as she was.
She ran for the center of the park where the shadows were the darkest. She heard Gator swear and her motorcycle start up, the engine loud in the silence of the night. He revved it up, deliberately drawing attention to his presence. Flame skidded to a halt and watched as he did several doughnuts with the bike, luring the guards in closer to him. They talked frantically into their radios and the SUVs circling the park changed directions to home in on the site.
Gator stopped his sweeping circles and signaled Flame to run. She heard the pulsing notes in her head, and realized he commanded sound in the same way she did. He could disrupt communications between the guards any time he wanted. Flame found a tree with high branches and heavy foliage and leapt up to conceal herself in its limbs.
The motorcycle roared off. The SUVs fell in behind him and, at the end of the street, the bike’s headlight went out. Once he got away from the streetlights, she knew Gator could maneuver by sound. The motorcycle was fast enough to outrun the SUVs. She sat there motionless, trying to puzzle out Gator’s motives. Nothing he did made sense, and she never went into battle without dear lines between friend and foe. He said he’d been sent to bring her back, but he hadn’t tried to force her. He hadn’t even asked her what she’d stolen or why.
The problem was-she liked him. She made up her mind fast about people. She was adept at reading them, and despite knowing she shouldn’t fall for his Cajun charm, and in spite of the bleak and dark and lethal shadows in his eyes-she liked him. She was honest enough to admit she probably was a little drawn to him because he was enhanced and he felt the same rush of power and same terror of making mistakes that she did. He had to suffer the same physical drawbacks and feel the same isolation.
It both amused and annoyed her that she couldn’t quite shake the pack mentality. She was solitary, yet she still wanted friendships and family and people around her, even though her particular brand of genetically engineered talent made it impossible for her. She was too sensitive to sounds. Filtering noises all the time was a difficult and wearing process. Flame required a lot of downtime when she could retreat into the haven of silence. She imagined Gator did as well. When she became intrigued by something she had a tendency to become obsessive-compulsive about it until she’d satisfied her curiosity- another one of her many failings. She was definitely intrigued by Gator.
The guards had fanned out and were covering the park, paying particular attention to the area where she’d parked her motorcycle. None of them thought to look up, but all of them were nervous. And it had nothing to do with being afraid of finding the thief. They talked in low voices when they came together and all of them were afraid of their boss. He wanted his briefcases back and he wanted them immediately.
Flame smirked. Let Saunders know how it felt. How many people in the bayou had he robbed? She listened carefully to the whispers, hoping to hear something about Joy Chiasson’s disappearance, but no one mentioned her. The smirk disappeared to be replaced by a frown. The authorities refused to believe that something had happened to the girl, but Flame was certain they didn’t want to know. Just as anyone in authority over Whitney hadn’t wanted to know how his valuable research had been done. As long as they got results, that was all that mattered.
She had hacked into Whitney’s files and learned about gene doping and genetic enhancement. He had used a virus to deliver the genes into her cells, and her immune system had tolerated it. She could run twice as fast for twice as long as most humans as well as do a host of other things, enough to know he had delivered the genes throughout her entire body.
She had a quick mind and she’d read everything she could find on gene therapy and knew Whitney was ahead of the game with his experiments. Of course, he’d used humans-not rats. She didn’t think he wanted the perfect soldier, or even the perfect child; he wanted his own creation. It was the end product that mattered, the idea that his brain had conceived and developed something superior. And if there were problems, it was the fault of the defective human-not his work.
As a child she had developed a very rare type of cancer, a blood disorder that Whitney had treated successfully enough to put in remission, not cure. And now, when bruises didn’t heal or she felt exhausted, she knew it was there, lying in wait to destroy her. The knowledge didn’t stop her from living her life or finding scumbags like Saunders to bring a little justice to. She might never have a chance at Whitney, but she could even the odds with others like him.
Saunders sold property to the older people in the bayou, the ones who didn’t believe in banks. He took their payments and when it came time for a balloon payment, just before they handed the money over, they were mysteriously robbed. Tonight, maybe a little justice was done.
The guards’ voices were beginning to fade and Flame immediately bounced sound waves through the park, using echolocation to pinpoint the position of each guard. Two patrolled on the side nearest the Saunders estate, while three others roamed through the interior of the park. Flame took the opportunity to leap from the tree, dropping close to the base, gloved hands up for defense, but close to her body so she presented the smallest possible target.
Where had Gator parked his Jeep? He wouldn’t park it on the street to be noticed by one of the guards, and he couldn’t have left it in the park. Where? She moved toward a cross street, down from Saunders’s estate but parallel to the park, keeping to the heavier foliage. She relied on sound to keep her informed, concentrating on echolocation, but keeping a visual as well.
The Jeep was parked in a driveway a block up and over from Saunders and just down from the park. The vehicle had the top up, but no doors on. Flame wrinkled her nose. She knew they were in for a shower and she was bound to get wet. On her motorcycle, it was perfectly fine, part of the entire experience, but in Gator’s Jeep, when she was already annoyed, the rain was going to be one more reason for revenge.
She waited until the guards were concentrated at the far end of the park before hot-wiring the Jeep and taking off. She didn’t use the headlights until she turned the corner and was out of harm’s way. She didn’t have the kind of patience needed for an encounter with Saunders’s men when she was angry and damn it, she was definitely angry that Whitney’s hunter had taken her beloved motorcycle.