Christine Feehan

by Deadly Game

  “This is bullshit, Ken. I can put a bullet in her head and be done with it.”

  Mari raised her hand. “Do I get a vote?”

  “You’re bleeding all over the place again,” Ken said. He stood, lifting her into his arms, the pain driving the air from her lungs. “You can’t kill her, Jack. You have to protect her from everyone—even me.”

  Mari tried desperately to cling to consciousness. The movement wrenched her leg, made her stomach protest with a violent heave, but she refused to faint, needing to hear every word.

  Jack shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “What? You didn’t see me acting like an animal? You know exactly what it’s going to be like—a long drop into hell. I’m not doing that. I refuse to be him. I’d rather be dead.” Ken placed Mari back on the gurney, careful to avoid jarring her leg. “Take a look, Jack, see how much damage she did.” He stepped away from her side, not looking at her, not touching her, his voice as empty as his expression.

  “You look.” Jack reached down and snagged the gun. “Are you going to be stupid again?”

  Ken refused to answer. Jack stepped closer to the gurney and suddenly jammed the weapon against Mari’s head. “I swear to you, on our mother, if you even think about doing that again, I’ll blow her brains out.”

  Ken instantly came to life, his face darkening, eyes narrowing to slashing silver slits. “Get the fuck away from her or we’re going to have trouble, Jack.”

  “She can bleed out for all I care, Ken. Anything happens to you, anything, by your hand or someone else’s, she’s dead. You got that? I give you my fuckin’ word on that. She’s dead. You know me. You know I don’t ever stop. You think long and hard about that before you try this shit with me again.” Jack withdrew the weapon, threw it to Ken, and shoved past him to stalk over to the doorway.

  Ken stood for a moment just holding the gun, staring after his twin. He said nothing, just stood in silence, his knuckles white where he gripped the butt of the gun. Finally, he shoved it inside the holster under his arm and took a deep, calming breath before looking at the blood seeping into the sheet.

  Mari inhaled sharply, trying to find a way to ease the tension. “Well, that went well. I can see that he does have a bad habit of wanting to shoot people. He wasn’t kidding.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” Ken pushed the sheet off her leg. “Did you have to land so hard? You really made a mess.”

  “It hurts,” she admitted and reached out to catch his arm. “You didn’t hurt me. I participated. It wasn’t all your fault, you know. I could have said no.”

  He shook his head and she felt the tremor that ran through his body. “You have no way of understanding what’s going on here.”

  “I have more understanding than you think I do,” Mari said.

  Jack leaned his hip in the doorway, glaring at both of them. “Then tell us.”

  She flicked him a quick glance. “This is about Whitney’s breeding program of course. We’re all caught up in it. This is one big experiment. Is Briony pregnant?”

  Jack stiffened. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because Whitney was desperate for me to get pregnant. He was furious with Brett for not getting the job done. Once I found out she was with you, it wasn’t all that hard to realize he wanted her in the same condition.”

  Ken shook his head. “It’s far more than that.”

  “We already knew what he was doing, Ken,” Jack said. “We’ve known since he sent his team to retrieve Briony. He wants the babies.”

  “He did what?” Mari pushed at Ken, demanding an answer.

  He ignored her, shaking his head at his brother. “Don’t you understand? He knows. He did this. He knows about me.”

  “You aren’t making sense,” Jack said.

  “He means Whitney,” Mari interpreted.

  Ken nodded, brushing his face with his hand, smearing Mari’s blood along his jaw. “I’ve always suspected he was psychic. He knows about me. He knows what I’m like and he set this up. It can’t be anything else, Jack. He knew if he sent her to me what I’d do.”

  “He thinks he knows you, just like he thought he knew me. I still have Briony. And I’m fine with her. You see us together; I might get a little jealous now and then, but I’m not like him and you aren’t either.”

  Mari looked from one to the other. “Who is him? You’re no longer talking about Whitney.”

  “I am,” Ken said to Jack. His voice was a low, soft whisper of sound, but the impact it carried was lethal. “I am exactly like him.”

  “That isn’t true, Ken,” Jack denied.

  “The hell it isn’t,” Ken snapped. “Do you know what I wanted to do to her when I knew another man had been inside of her? Touching her? Hell, Jack. I don’t even know her. I don’t know the first thing about her. I’m not in love. She’s not in love with me; how could she be? But it didn’t matter. I wanted to pound into her, make her forget anyone else, punish her for daring—daring—to allow another man to touch her that way. I wasn’t gentle with her; I didn’t want to be. I wanted her to know who she was with.”

  Jack hit the back of his head against the doorjamb. “This is insane.”

  “I’ve always known he was alive, living in me. I’ve always known it. And that son of a bitch Whitney knew it too. He wants to see what will happen to us. How his little game will destroy our family. Fast. Slow. A big explosion, a quiet bullet to the head. He’s just sitting back and watching us, Jack. The bastard is wired to us some way. He wants to force the issue to see if you’re up to the job of putting a bullet in me.”

  “And what good will that do him?” Jack asked.

  “He wants to see what it does to Briony, to see if both of you are strong enough and worthy enough for your kids to be his supersoldiers. Mari is expendable to him; she always has been. Why do you think he tried to get a baby out of her by someone else? He didn’t want his work to be a total loss.”

  Mari turned her head away from both of them. She could hear the anguish in Ken’s voice, and it ripped her up inside. He didn’t love her. How could he? She didn’t know whatever was in Ken and Jack’s past, but she heard the ring of truth in Ken’s voice and things were making sense. Whitney detested her because he couldn’t control her very well. He had to use threats against the other women to keep her in line. And she was strong, always a threat to him and his programs. She asked too many questions. Whitney had been furious when Brett was unable to get her pregnant.

  She tried to separate herself from what he was saying. It was all happening to someone else. A woman she didn’t know. She was a soldier and needed to get back to her unit. It’s where she belonged—what she understood. She wasn’t the type to lie helpless, tears burning in her eyes, while a man used her body, but she’d done just that, helpless to resist Ken’s mouth and hands.

  With Brett, it was a fight every single time he came near her. She was committed to defending herself and her right as a person to choose whom she wanted to be with. With Ken, she desperately needed him near. Every moment she spent in his company worsened the addiction to him, until she felt frantic with wanting his touch.

  “Could Whitney do that?” she asked, searching her memory for an unguarded moment he might have let something slip. “What’s your last name?”

  “Norton.” It was Jack who answered, his eyes still locked on his brother.

  Again her heart jumped. She recognized the name and she should have known. Snipers. Not just any snipers. The elite.

  Ken wiped the blood from her leg, all the while avoiding touching her skin. Pride should have kept her from looking, but she was fascinated by the way his body moved, by the glide of his hands, always so careful to keep from contact. The memory came out of nowhere, triggered by the mesmerizing ripple of muscle beneath skin. Whitney’s face contorted with anger.

  Damn the Nortons anyway. How did you let them slip away from you, Sean? I made it easy and you still blew it.

  It won
’t happen again, Doctor.

  Sean had been standing close to her while Whitney jabbed her with a needle right before one of their missions. She remembered the surreptitious brush of his hand to encourage her. She’d always hated needles, and only Sean had known that little weakness.

  Ken stiffened, his fingers circling her foot like a vise. “Who is he?”

  Mari blinked, glanced at Jack and back to Ken. “I don’t know what you’re asking me. And you’re hurting me.”

  Ken let go of her as if she’d burned him, wiping his palm along his thigh. “The man you were just thinking about. I caught the impression of him. Big man, standing by Whitney. You like him.”

  “You caught all that just by touching me?”

  “Damn it, answer me,” Ken ordered.

  “Ken, back off,” Jack warned.

  “You had your chance, Jack.” Ken shot him a hard glare. “Now we all have to live with the consequences.”

  Mari laid her head on the blanket stuffed under her head, her eyes narrowing on his face, lending her a kind of tunnel vision. She recognized the familiar signs of her temper kicking in. “Wait a minute. I have a horrible feeling I’m beginning to understand what’s going on here. Call me slow, but for some reason, although you’re men, I expected you to act with intelligence.”

  “Mari …”

  “You don’t know me well enough to use my name. You don’t know the first thing about me or my life. I’m your prisoner, remember? You shot me.” Her voice was tinged with fury, so she kept it ultra-low, but it was too late to rein her temper in. She was already looking for something to smash over his head. “Don’t you dare Mari me. I don’t care if I have a broken leg. If you want to torture me, get on with it, but I’ll be damned if you sit there being smug and acting like a jealous lover because of Brett. Brett, of all people. That’s what set you off. I get it now. The ‘did he touch you like this’ and then losing your mind. What a complete ass.”

  “Mari …”

  “What a moron. Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch my leg.” Adrenaline poured through her body, so that she found herself shaking. “Do you have any idea what that man is like? What it’s like for a woman to have someone who repulses her touch her? Go to hell, Ken. Next time you want to put a gun to your head, I’ll help you pull the trigger.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jack said.

  “Are you kidding me? I’m the one who has to endure Brett—or anyone else—at Whitney’s whim. Not you, not Ken. And catching a glimpse of a soldier who has treated me with decency and respect—one I admire—is cause for jealousy as well?”

  Ken remained very still, his fingers still circling her foot, the physical contact sending electric sparks zinging along her nerve endings, adding to the flood of anger building like a volcano.

  “Who is he?” Ken repeated.

  She was already in pain. What the hell? She used her good leg, snapping it up and out, straight at his face, using enhanced strength, needing the satisfaction of scoring just once against him. He was messing with her mind and Mari found that unacceptable.

  He blocked the blow with one arm, hard enough to make her leg go numb, never letting go of her other foot, not even loosening his hold, as if her attack had been so inconsequential he almost hadn’t noticed it.

  “It was Sean, wasn’t it?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jack repeated. “Whitney didn’t do this.”

  Mari pressed her lips tightly together, studying their faces. Ken hadn’t moved a muscle, his hand still around her toes. She could feel the warmth of his palm, was all too aware of him as a man—not a captor—not an enemy.

  “Fill me in.”

  “The old man managed to leave his legacy with one of us,” Ken said, his tone matter-of-fact.

  But he was shaken. He covered it well, so well she doubted Jack could see past his mask—that false emotionless mask Ken showed to the world. But when he touched her, when they were skin to skin, she saw more, felt more, knew more than he ever intended—and he was definitely shaken.

  “I was the lucky one our father handed down his legacy to, and Whitney knew all along. I thought I had buried it deep where no one would ever know, but he’s psychic and he read me like an open book, and all this time he’s been waiting his chance.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “You think he wants to see your reaction to her when he’s paired her with other men?”

  “He thinks I’ll kill them—or her.”

  Mari’s stomach did a somersault. There was quiet truth in Ken’s voice. She moistened her suddenly dry lips. “Someone really needs to fill me in here, because, quite frankly, I don’t like the sound of that. Whitney has a way of manipulating people into doing exactly what he wants them to do and I’m not exactly his favorite person.”

  “Ken.” Jack ignored her. “He isn’t reading you. He has no idea of your character. You think the old man is lurking around inside of you. Hell, I thought the same thing, but it isn’t true. We were investigated. Whitney has a high security clearance and he read everything in our files.”

  “What is everything?” Mari asked, trying desperately to ignore the way Ken’s individual fingertips were bringing points of fire to her ankle.

  “Jack, it has nothing to do with that. He probably did read the files, but he knows. He set this up because he wants to see how I’ll react and how Mari will react, and now that you have Briony to protect, he wants to see how you’ll react.” Ken’s fingers dug into Mari’s ankle, and he suddenly turned his glacier-cold gaze on her. “My father was an insanely jealous man. He brutally murdered our mother and tried to kill both of us. Whitney knows it and he set this up. You. Me. Jack. Briony. It’s all one big game to him.”

  “Well he’s playing a deadly game then,” Jack said. “Because no one controls us, Ken. We do what we’ve always done; we make our own rules and we stick together.”

  “What about her?” Ken’s reply was so low Mari barely caught the words.

  Jack sighed. “You know it’s impossible to leave her behind, so we’re going to have to work through it. It wasn’t that easy for me with Briony, but we managed.”

  “I’m not you, Jack. I’m telling you, I’m like he was.”

  “No, you’re not.” Mari was firm, startling both men into noticing her. “If Whitney saw that information in a file somewhere, yes, he’d use it against you. He’s very good at twisting people into knots, exploring their weaknesses, but if he has psychic abilities and he touched you, he didn’t read that in you.”

  “How do you know that?” Ken’s fingers continued that gentle brushing along her toes, his grip as strong as ever, but the touch had lost its warning and had become an involuntary caress.

  “Because I touched you.”

  Ken blinked. It was his only movement. There was no change of expression on his face, but she knew he’d reacted.

  Jack edged closer. “You have that kind of ability? To read people when you touch them?”

  “She doesn’t,” Ken denied. “She’s lying to try to ease my mind.”

  “You wish. I don’t even like you. Why would I want to ease your mind? The worse you feel, the happier I am.” His eyes had gone to cold steel, but she held his gaze and shrugged with feigned casualness. “I couldn’t care less whether you believe me or not.”

  “Do you?” Jack asked.

  Mari studied their faces. There were definite chinks in their armor, whether they wanted to admit it or not. “Not strong, but strong enough to know Ken isn’t a flat-out murderer, especially not of women. He would carry out an order, but he wouldn’t just go around killing someone for no real reason.”

  “Good to know.” Ken let go of her foot and took away the warmth. “If you’re so good at all of this, why don’t you tell me who this man is and we can let it go?”

  She frowned. “You know it was Sean.”

  “And he’ll come after you.”

  “Whitney will send him, yes, but if you’
re right that this is an experiment, why would he do that? Why would he send someone to bring me back to him? Wouldn’t he want to see what happens between us?”

  “He’s sending Brett first,” Ken replied. “That’s all part of his happy little plan. And then he’ll send the other one because there’s a bond between you, and Whitney knows it—and he knows I know it and he knows I’ll kill them.”

  There was an edge to his voice that alarmed her, his tone low and mean and without mercy. She wanted to say it shouldn’t matter, but she already knew the power of Whitney’s experiments, and she had enhanced scent, just as Ken did, just as Jack did. That made the pheromone response all the more potent. Whitney had created a powerful sexual attraction that transcended common restraint and threatened the discipline of even the strongest soldier—just as the doctor had planned.

  If Ken was really like his father, as he evidently feared, she could be in more trouble than she’d ever dreamed. She doubted if she could resist Ken Norton if he made sexual advances toward her, but she would try. What she hadn’t counted on was caring one way or the other about the man. She was drawn to him, not just sexually, but emotionally, and that made no sense to her and almost scared her more than the physical attraction.

  “My leg hurts and this conversation is making me feel sick. I shouldn’t be giving out information to you. We’re enemies.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t think we are. If you were really ordered to protect the senator, as we were, then we’re on the same side. You have the GhostWalker crest tattooed on your upper back.” He shoved up his sleeve. “We’re a member of an elite unit of the Special Forces and we all work for the United States. We’re on the same side, Mari. I don’t know how the wires are getting crossed, but I suspect Whitney has something to do with it.”

  “You think Whitney has gone rogue.”