The chair never moved, remaining balanced on two legs as Trap took another long pull of his beer. He put the bottle down with deceptive gentleness on the table. The movement was precise and deliberate. Just like Trap. Just like everything Trap did.
"They found us when I was nine. My father came into the house late at night while his two brothers poured gasoline up and down the walls inside and outside the little house we rented. He dragged my mother out of bed, down to the room where my little brother and sister slept. He shot them both and then shot Mom in the head."
Trap's expression didn't change. His tone didn't change. He might have been reciting a story he'd read in the papers. Wyatt's fist clenched beneath the rickety table, but he didn't allow his expression to change either.
"Dru and I were talking together in our secret hideaway. When we first moved in, we found a closet that was really shallow and after Mom went to bed, we'd sometimes get up and read or discuss something interesting we'd learned that day. We heard the shots and we went to find Mom, to see what was going on. Dru threw herself in front of me when he came at us. He shot her twice and her body landed on top of me. I could see her eyes, Wyatt. Wide open. Blank. She had beautiful eyes, but all of sudden, there was no light. No brilliance. My beautiful sister, so smart, so funny, the only one who could relate to me, who really saw me, saw into me, was dead. Gone. Just like that."
"Fuck, Trap," Wyatt said softly. What else was there to say? This was far worse than anything he had imagined.
"He should have just shot me," Trap said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself. "If he had any intelligence at all, he would have just shot me like he did Dru. She was so smart, Wyatt. A gift to the world. She could have done things, but he took her life for no reason other than he was a fucked-up asshole."
Still, even with the language, there was no change in Trap's voice. None. That rage was buried so deep, so much a part of him, Wyatt doubted he actually knew it was there anymore. He held up two fingers, knowing Mordichai was watching them closely. Most likely the other members of his team were doing the same, not knowing what was going on, but willing to help in any way they could.
The GhostWalkers who had come with them were spread throughout the bar, one sitting on a barstool, one lounging by the famous piano the owner of the Huracan Club, Delmar Thibodeaux, guarded with a baseball bat, and a couple of others sitting at table across the room. All would be watching Trap's and Wyatt's backs, and at the same time appearing as if they had no cares in the world.
Neither man spoke until Mordichai plopped two icy cold bottles of beer on the table and sauntered away, pretending like all the team members were that he had no clue Trap and Wyatt were in a nightmarish discussion.
"How'd you stay alive?"
"He dragged me out from under Dru. I think he wanted to beat me before he shot me, but as I came up I rammed my head into his groin and twisted the gun from his hand as he went down. I'd already calculated the odds of success and knew I had a good chance. I shot him twice before he was on me. He had a knife in his boot."
Wyatt had seen the wicked scar that seemed to take up half of Trap's belly. He'd been what? Nine, he'd said. His own father had wiped out his family, killing his mother and brother and sisters. Wyatt pushed down the rage swirling deep in his gut. He drew in a deep breath to keep from annihilating the room. The peanut husks on the floor jumped several times like popcorn in a popper and the walls of the bar shimmered and breathed in and out. He took several breaths to get himself under control.
"He stabbed me twice. Once in my belly and again in my thigh. I hung on to that gun, but I went down in all the blood. That's when my uncles came in. They came at me, but I lifted the gun and both backed off fast. I guess they were either cowards or they knew my father was done for, because they left him there bleeding out, threw gasoline all over the floor, lit a match and told me to burn in hell. They got out. I crawled out. Still got the scars on my legs and feet from the burns."
Wyatt clenched his teeth and then carefully brought the bottle to his mouth. He needed action. Something. He almost wished a fight would break out as they habitually did in the bar. When he was younger, he often came there to drink, fight and find a woman, just like most of the other men in the swamp and bayou did. Now he came to drink and fight. He had a woman waiting for him at home.
"I had one living relative, my mother's sister. She was fifteen years younger than Mom, barely twenty-three, and single, but she came and got me and I lived with her. We changed our names, moved and thought we were going to be all right. At twelve I founded my first company after selling two of my patents. We lived good for a while."
For the first time something moved in his cold, piercing eyes. Trap raked his hand through his blond hair, hair that definitely identified him as an outsider there in Cajun country. Had he not been with Wyatt, he would have been the first target chosen for anyone looking for a fight. The fight wouldn't have ended well. Trap wasn't a man who enjoyed a good friendly brawl. You didn't put your hands on him. You didn't threaten him. Even there in the Huracan Club with his team around him, he kept to himself. Wyatt could see the name Johansson suited Trap far better than Dawkins. Trap definitely had some Swede in him, with his build and blond hair.
Wyatt didn't want to hear what happened to Trap's aunt, but he had to know. There were too many flames burning icy hot behind the blue glacier of Trap's eyes.
"For a while?" he prompted.
"Yeah. For a while. I made a lot of money, even through my early teenage years. Went to school, could have taught most of the professors. Did a lot of research in pharmaceuticals, and we both know you can make a fortune there. I just kept making money." He made small circles on the table with the edge of the beer bottle. His gaze once again held Wyatt's. "You know that money didn't mean a fucking thing to me, Wyatt. Not one damned thing. I can't help the way my mind works. The money made it easy to get the lab I wanted and the equipment, but that was all. I live simply. I don't use it."
Wyatt frowned at him. "Trap, I've known you for years. We went to school together. We were both younger than everyone else and yeah, smarter, so we naturally gravitated toward each another. We went into business together. You don' have to convince me you aren' into money."
"She was kidnapped. They took her right out of the house when I was working in the laboratory. She would always come and get me for dinner. I could skip other meals, but not dinner. She didn't come. When I went into the house, the place was a wreck. She fought them, and I hadn't heard a fucking thing."
Wyatt listened to Trap's voice, but he couldn't hear any expression at all. Just the soft monotone Trap often used.
"I paid the ransom, of course. Millions, enough to set them up for life in another country where they could change identities and live life large. I paid it immediately. They returned her body to me on my front porch. She was dead. They'd used her." Trap's blue eyes went so cold the temperature in the room actually dropped. "Hard. They made certain there was plenty of evidence so I would see that. They hurt her in every way possible before they killed her. They left me a note. Quoted an eye for an eye. They made it very plain that any woman I was with would suffer the same fate."
Trap took another long swig of beer. "I knew it was my uncles. I pointed the cops at them. I hired detectives. They disappeared. Their tracks were so well-covered that I knew they had changed identities. Even bribing the best in the business, I didn't find out who they'd become. All that money I'd made wasn't worth shit, Wyatt. It didn't buy her back for me, and it didn't find her killers."
Wyatt sank back in the chair and regarded his friend. He understood Trap's antisocial behavior much better. He had buried himself in work, cut himself off from everyone, making certain he had few ties. He hadn't blindly followed Wyatt into the GhostWalker unit, he wanted the skills. He hadn't given up on finding the men who murdered his aunt. He would never give up. He didn't tie himself to a woman or let himself feel affection for one. He used his work to keep hi
m apart, to keep his mind occupied so there would be no chance that he would ever put another woman in jeopardy.
"Trap," he cautioned softly.
"She isn't a problem," Trap said just as softly. "Cayenne. She isn't a problem. Fucking Whitney paired us together. I don't ever think about a woman, not even after I've fucked her. Not ever. I go to my lab, and I work until there isn't a trace of her left. This woman I let out of a cage, not knowing if she's going to try to kill me. I just see her a couple of times and I can't get her out of my head. I can't, Wyatt. She's no problem to solve. He fucking paired us together."
Both men fell silent. Dr. Peter Whitney had been the brains behind the GhostWalker program. He'd sold his experimental ideas to the military. They'd tested psychic ability. Those accepted into the program had to test off the charts for various abilities as well as have the personality and physical abilities to withstand Special Forces training. Once accepted into the program, they were enhanced and then trained in every type of combat situation conceivable.
There were four teams, and each had been enhanced not only psychically--as they'd agreed to be--but physically as well--which they hadn't agreed to be. The first team had many problems and a couple of their men had died--succumbing to brain bleeds. Whitney got better after that, improving with each new team, but it became obvious he had used animal DNA to make his superior soldiers.
It came to light that long before he had worked on adult men he had first begun his experiments on female children he had taken from orphanages from around the world--disposable children. He believed they could be sacrificed for the greater good. If his experiments worked on them, only then did he try to duplicate them in the soldiers.
He kept the women prisoners in various facilities scattered around the United States as well as in some foreign countries. He went underground once his experiments had come under scrutiny, but he had friends in high places. They not only shielded him, but believed in what he was doing, so they aided him.
One of his experiments was to pair a male soldier with one of his female experiments, using pheromones to entice them to each other. No one knew how he did it, nor was there a way to undo what he'd done, so when the male soldier came across the female, and she him, they were so attracted, it was impossible for one to walk away from the other. What Whitney hadn't counted on was the emotional attachment the pair formed. Or the camaraderie of all GhostWalkers.
They were not only elite, they were also different from every other human on earth. Some couldn't be in society without an anchor--another GhostWalker who could draw psychic energy away from them. The four teams had formed into a single unit looking out for one another. They trusted no one else and depended on one another. When one soldier found the woman he was paired with, she was protected by all of them--after all, Whitney had performed the same experiments on the women.
Each of the women was combat-trained and enhanced both psychically and physically. Some of them had been used for cancer research. Others had been forced into his "breeding" program. Wyatt had three daughters, little triplets, all of whom had snake DNA and were venomous. Trap had come to the bayou to help him find a way to keep them from hurting anyone if they accidentally bit while they were frightened or teething.
"How long have you known?" Wyatt asked. He wasn't going to argue. Trap wasn't a man given to fantasies, and the last thing he would welcome into his life was a woman--especially one he was paired with. One he couldn't ignore and set aside after he'd had her body.
"She bothered me on a level she shouldn't have from the moment I laid eyes on her. I thought--I hoped--it was because she was an experiment gone wrong and they issued a termination order on her. Maybe I could figure out what went wrong and I could fix her. My brain was already trying to assess her the moment I saw her and heard her voice, analyzing what her psychic abilities were and what DNA she might have been enhanced with."
"That makes sense." Wyatt wanted to pounce on that. Trap was holding himself together, but the rage deep inside was close--too close. He didn't dare set Trap off with so many innocents around. He felt the other members of their team moving into positions closer to them. Just in case. That meant they noticed the tension mounting as well. No one really knew Trap's full abilities, but it was generally considered that along with Ezekiel and Gino he was one of the most lethal men on the team--when it came to psychic enhancements.
Wyatt didn't want the building to shake apart and come down on half the men with families living there around the swamp and bayou.
"I tried to make it that, Wyatt," Trap said. "But she didn't let go. I think about her when I'm in the lab working on how to come up with a vaccine that will stay in the system for snakebite. Not once, in my entire life, have I ever been distracted from my work. I dream of her at night, and I have always commanded my own dreams. Not just any dreams, erotic fantasies, and I'm not prone to those, not even when I've gone a while without a woman. When I consider finding another woman to get relief, the idea is not only repugnant, but it's absolutely abhorrent."
"Fuck." Wyatt almost spat the word. "I see why you're putting yourself in this position now. It didn't make sense. You're the last person in the world to go to a bar every night. We've come here now for the last five nights. I thought maybe you wanted to get in better with the locals."
A faint gleam of humor moved through the ice in Trap's startling blue eyes. "Hardly. I did take your advice and hire a few of them to help with the renovations once escrow closed and the land and building became mine, but hanging out with them in a bar is going beyond the call of duty."
"How are the renovations coming?"
The humor deepened. "We're about finished. I know she's living there. No one has seen her, but things go missing, and all of a sudden the men are leery of working there, especially after dark. The workers think the place is haunted. Word leaked out that Wilson Plastics might have been a front for government experiments. I didn't let anyone go down into the lower region where the cells and the crematoria were until we'd gotten rid of all the evidence. Now, it's a beautiful apartment I designed for her. Still, word got out, and the men who really need or want the work show up, but they work in pairs and they won't stay late at all. I think she started the rumors and is sitting back laughing her pretty little ass off. Seriously, I only have a few odds and ends left anyway."
"Did you try to find her there? You hate coming here, that might be a better alternative."
"It's not going to happen. She's got her webs everywhere. The moment I come near there, she's gone. I don't want to risk driving her away."
Wyatt wished he'd had more than a glimpse of the woman Trap had rescued from those cells. Wilson Plastics had been a cover for a dangerous experimental laboratory and termination center for the experiments deemed gone wrong. His three little girls and the woman Trap was certain he had been paired with had been down in those cells, waiting to be killed and then cremated, their ashes taken out to sea so no one could ever know of their existence.
Prior to being Wilson Plastics, the land had been owned by Dr. Whitney. The huge building had been a sanitarium. Whitney had conducted his experiments on the orphans he "rescued" from around the world. The sanitarium had burned to the ground. Whitney's company had sold it, and Wilson Plastics bought the land. Wyatt's GhostWalker team had exposed the company for what it really was, and when the land came up for sale, Trap bought it.
Their pararescue team had decided to make a fortress together right there in the swamp. Wyatt's little girls and his wife couldn't possibly leave the swamp, not until Wyatt and Trap came up with the vaccine that would stay in the system without daily injections. They also had to either remove the venom sacs or find a way to keep the girls from accidentally biting while they grew up. In any case, Whitney was trying to reacquire them, and that meant they needed protection at all times.
"So you think your girl is a squatter, living on your property."
Trap nodded slowly, the humor still in his eyes. "Yeah. She's there
. And she's the reason we hear rumors about drunk men being robbed on their way home."
"Those men aren't the best of the bayou, Trap," Wyatt pointed out. "If she's the one doin' the robbin' she's pickin' the men who are particularly nasty to rob."
Trap shrugged. "Doesn't matter. That's not okay, and she knows it."
"She's got to eat."
The humor faded from Trap's eyes. "Seriously, Wyatt, if I'm feeling this way, can you tell me she isn't? She could come to me. If not me, then you. She knows we're GhostWalkers, the same as she is. She could come to us. She doesn't need to rob anyone and put herself in danger like that."
There was an edge to Trap's voice, and a faint shimmer moved through the room. The opaque disturbance made Wyatt uneasy. He glanced across the room to Mordichai, who had a frown on his face. He felt it too. Trap had an energy about him now, one that was distinctly lethal.
"She doesn' think she's the same as we are, Trap. She was listed for termination. She considers herself flawed, just as Pepper always did. Not one of us, but a throwaway. She isn't goin' to come to us. She figures we'll look down on her. That we'll judge her in the way they did. It's possible she doesn't trust herself to be around us."
"She doesn't trust us," Trap corrected. "I can't say as I blame her, but she feels it, the same as me, that pull between us, or she'd be long gone. You know it's true. She had no reason to stick around here. She has no place to stay, no money, nothing. No clothes. She's staying for me."
"She's a GhostWalker, Trap. By now she has all those things," Wyatt persisted. "She can slip in and out of any store or home without ever being seen. If she's the one robbing the drunks, then she's got money. You said yourself you're certain she's setting up her home there in the buildin' you just bought."
"I'm positive," Trap said. "So much so that I'll be moving there soon. I've nearly got the laboratory all set up. Most of my equipment is in. We've got a big workspace, and I can protect it easier than the one we set up in your garage."
"I don' know if I like you livin' there alone right now, Trap, especially if she's there. We don' know how dangerous she is. I know you're close to finishing the renovations, but Whitney could hit us any time. The boys haven't had enough time to set up all your security."
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