Spider Game

by Christine Feehan

  She didn't deny it. Instead she shrugged. "I had to let Comeaux make his move. Just to make certain I wasn't making a mistake."

  "Why'd you come into my room?" he persisted.

  She looked shaken--confused, a frown moving over her face. "I-I don't know. I couldn't help myself. The first time, I just wanted to make sure you were all right and then . . ." She trailed off.

  He nodded, knowing exactly why she'd risked coming to Wyatt's compound when an entire team of GhostWalkers was staying there. She hadn't raised a single alarm. He didn't ask her yet how she got in, but he didn't want her to do it again. Sooner or later someone would spot her. They were the type of men who shot first and asked questions later. Eventually he would have to know to protect the household, but asking now would only spook her, so he backed off.

  "Wyatt has his three daughters there, Cayenne. No one is taking chances that someone might try to harm the girls. It isn't safe for you there. Not until everyone gets to know you. I bought the building where they were holding you and I'm renovating it. I started with the laboratory."

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "I knew you bought the property and brought all those workmen there so they could tramp through it, making it look . . ."

  "Like a home? Yeah, baby, that's me. Why? Are you staying there?" He flashed a small smirk at her. "I knew you were there. You give yourself away with all those spiderwebs." Now they were sparring, doing the dance he knew would come eventually when she tried to push him away.

  She pressed her lips together and turned her face away from him. "Stay away from there, Trap."

  "I'm moving in tomorrow. You want to see me, you come there."

  "I'm not playing around," she hissed at him again. "You take too many chances. You act like you don't care whether you live or die."

  "Been alone most of my life, baby. It gets fucking lonely. Got a couple of men on my trail who want to kill anything that matters to me, so I don't let anything matter." His eyes bored into hers. "Until you. You matter, Cayenne, whether it makes sense or not, so if you want to kill me for giving a damn about you, make your try."

  She sat back in the chair and ducked her head. Clouds of dark hair fell around her face, hiding her expression from his sight. Moodily his gaze drifted over her. Possessively. He felt possessive. He felt rage at what had been done to her simmering just below the surface. He was a man of discipline and control and yet he was close to losing both.

  Wyatt, will you get a bottle of cold water for her?

  You goin' to cut me up I come near your woman? Wyatt was already at the bar talking to Delmar and keeping a wary eye on the Comeaux brothers.

  Why the hell would you think that?

  Because you've surrounded the table with shadows and that shimmer shit no one can breathe. I don' want to choke to death and leave Pepper with our three girls to raise all alone. She might not take kindly to that.

  Trap glanced across the bar to see Wyatt grinning as he reached for the bottle of water Delmar handed to him. Wyatt wasn't wrong. Trap had enclosed them in shadows and a protective ring that would keep anyone else away. He forced himself to relax and breathe. He hadn't made a mistake like that in years. Hearing what her life had been like, just the small bit she'd revealed, had thrown him.

  Wyatt handed him the bottle of water, sent Cayenne a cocky grin and made his way to the table where Mordichai sat with his brother Malichai. Trap twisted off the cap and gave Cayenne the bottle.

  "Drink water when you prefer it and the hell with everyone else, baby," he advised. "Live free. I don't give a damn what anyone else thinks of me. I care about my team and Wyatt's family and now you. That's it. Everyone else can go to hell."

  "Not me." She shook her head decisively. "You can't trust me, Trap. Don't for one minute think you can."

  Her fingers moved on the table, a small drumming pattern, not loud, but definitely hypnotic. He put his hand over hers. She gasped as if he'd burned her and nearly pulled her hand back at the contact.

  "Be still. Breathe."

  She left her hand under his, but her green eyes moved over him broodingly. "I can't breathe. If I do, you're inside me. I feel you there in my lungs, moving through my body. You're a liability. You'd better hear me this time. When I get cornered"--she leaned close--"I'm lethal."

  "We all are, baby. Every one of us. Look around you. You see them. You feel them. Every last one of us is enhanced, just like you."

  "You aren't flawed. You weren't scheduled for termination."

  "Fuck that reasoning, Cayenne. You're intelligent. Because you scare the hell out of them doesn't mean they're right to terminate you. Why would you accept any judgment they pass on you? Whitney and this man who had you in his lab, Braden, are megalomaniacs, believing they have the right to take children, infants . . ." For a moment a deep well of rage showed in his eyes, burning blue behind the ice.

  He took a breath and flicked a glance at the shimmer surrounding them. It took effort, but he breathed away the evidence of that fury.

  "To make his superior soldiers as well as the elite GhostWalkers, Whitney first experimented on little kids. God knows how many children he killed because they weren't to his liking. He put men like Braden in place, scattering them in various countries in labs to do his dirty work. Wyatt's brother Gator is a GhostWalker. His woman was repeatedly given cancer by Whitney when she was a child. He had another girl living in a sanitarium, training, running missions from right here in the swamp. She was forced to return here. The tract of land and the building I just bought? Whitney owned that. He had the sanitarium there, and it was burned to the ground because he suddenly decided the girl he'd forced to live there was expendable and he sent a hit squad after her. That's the kind of man who decided you had to be terminated. Seriously, baby, get that flawed crap out of your head."

  She sat back and slowly pulled her hand out from under his. Her lashes fluttered, and he felt that small movement as if she'd fluttered them against his skin. Up close she was potent. He could see every breath she drew. The creamy swell of her breasts lifted when she drew in air. The temptation to tug at the ribbons of her camisole and open that crisscross of blue was difficult to resist. She was very lucky they were in a public place.

  "Tell me about Wyatt's daughters."

  It didn't surprise him that she knew all about Wyatt and his daughters. She'd been rescued when their GhostWalker team had gone to rescue the toddlers from termination. When the soldiers had come in an effort to try to reacquire them, Cayenne had aided the GhostWalker team in protecting them. The triplets were not yet two and all three of them injected venom if they bit anyone. Wyatt and Trap had been trying to find a way to prevent that from happening.

  "They're happy. Nonny, Wyatt's grandmother, is an amazing woman. She's in her eighties, but she goes out in the swamp and transplants flowers and shrubs to keep her pharmaceutical bed alive and thriving. She adores those girls and treats all of us like family."

  "What's that like?"

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  "Being a family."

  Such a simple question, but it fed the rage building beneath the ice. He had to work at controlling the shimmer. Around him the faint, nearly transparent veil thickened, taking the air out of the room. Several men coughed.

  Take a breath, Wyatt advised.

  This is fucked up, Wyatt. But he took the breath. Killing everyone around him wasn't going to help her. He made himself breathe. Deep and even. Finding a rhythm. Letting the ice inside consume him. He knew he was broken on the inside. He'd accepted that premise a long time ago and then used it as his strength. Cayenne hadn't had a chance. Living in a fucking lab. What the hell was that? Who would do that to a child?

  "Were there other women?" he prompted. "Like Pepper, Wyatt's wife. Did you get to see them? Talk to them?"

  She shook her head and rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold.

  Trap took the jacket from where it was hanging on the back of his chair and wrapped it
around her. She looked startled. Looked as if she might protest. She didn't. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and held it close to her. It was his favorite jacket. He wore it a lot. That meant his scent was all over it. Now his scent surrounded her. There was a certain satisfaction in that.

  Trap never thought that he'd ever be in this position. He had accepted that he wouldn't have a woman of his own. He wasn't that boy anymore. He had made himself into something dangerous. Something lethal. He knew some of the GhostWalkers were concerned with the experiments done on them with the DNA of animals, but he was stronger and faster, and he'd always been strong and fast. Now he was a predator, and he needed to be. He was actively hunting his uncles. His friends were like him. They were building fortresses in order to survive any attack on them or their families. Let his uncles come for the woman that meant something. He would be ready for them.

  He'd been prepared to send Cayenne away. To find a way to reverse what Whitney had done, but the moment she'd stepped through the door of the bar, he knew he wouldn't do that. He didn't have anything or anyone who mattered to him other than his teammates. Unexpectedly, Cayenne was very important to him, and the more he learned about her life, the more he was determined to make the rest of it something else altogether.

  He wasn't certain why she would be paired with him, but there was one thing all the GhostWalkers were certain of--the pairings worked. The couples worked as a team in the field. They were extremely physically compatible, and all of them had developed incredibly strong emotional attachments.

  Trap hadn't thought himself capable of emotional attachments for a long time--until he met Wyatt at the university and then his GhostWalker team. He had chosen to follow Wyatt into the military because he wanted the psychic enhancements. He was grateful for the physical as well. He was determined to find his uncles and kill them. He would hunt them until the day he died. That had been his reason--to turn himself into a weapon--even more of one than he'd already made himself.

  "Trap." She said his name low. Her voice a caress. A soothing rasp of velvet over his skin. Trap. She moved inside his mind much more intimately. "What is it? What is making you so upset?"

  He stared at her in astonishment. He hadn't changed expression. He'd been extremely careful that the cloud around them stayed thin. Nothing should have betrayed his emotions. How had she known?

  Deliberately he ignored her question. "You wanted to know what a family is like. Wyatt's grandmother always has something on the stove cooking. She has music playing in the house and she dances with the girls. Pepper, Wyatt's wife, dances now as well. The house always feels welcoming . . ."

  Cayenne shook her head. "Not Wyatt's family, Trap. Yours. What is your family like?"

  His heart jerked hard in his chest. He didn't want to lie to her. Or scare her. He'd shot his own father. Deliberately. He'd been nine years old, and he would have killed his uncles if he could have as well. What did he tell her? His woman. She had a right to know the danger she faced when gave herself to him--and she was going to give herself to him. He would accept nothing less.

  "My family is Wyatt and the team, Cayenne. I don't have anyone else."

  "But you did," she persisted. "You were born into a family, not taken from an orphanage and put in a lab or, like me, made in a test tube."

  He sighed. "I tell you this, baby, and you're going to run for the hills. I don't want you to do that. How about I promise I tell you after the first time you let me have you. Once I've been inside you, once I've claimed you for my own, it will give me a fighting chance that you'll stay with me."

  There was a short silence. "You know about my childhood. It's only fair to tell me about yours."

  "I'll give you this, Cayenne, you'll know the worst of me, what I'm capable of, what I was born capable of doing, not what anyone shaped me into."

  She reached out, and this time, she was the one who took his hand. "Tell me."

  He shook his head. "I'm not sharing that fucked-up shit with you before you commit to me." He had to change the subject and turned the spotlight back on her. "Coming here, choosing victims and robbing them is not okay. You know that, and you can't keep doing it. These men may not be enhanced, but sooner or later, you're going to slip up and you'll make a mistake. Then you'll have to kill an innocent to defend yourself or they'll kill you."

  "I have to eat," she whispered. "Do you think I want to rob people? I make certain whoever I choose is someone who deserves a little payback."

  "If you want to eat, you come to Wyatt's. His grandmother would welcome you. If you don't want to do that, come to me. Tell me what you need."

  Her green eyes flashed bright, anger stirring. Pride. "I don't need your charity, Trap. I don't want it." She picked up the origami crane he'd made from the paper he'd scribbled formulas on.

  "It isn't charity," he hissed. "Why are you being so damned stubborn? I'm not going to hurt you."

  "No, but I could hurt you." She glanced down at the crane, started to say something and then noticed the writing along the wing. "P = #AR. HYP." She didn't ask a question, but she repeated it softly as if musing out loud. Very carefully she unfolded the crane, revealing Trap's formula and his assessment.

  She glanced up at him. "You used the difficult way. You built a temporal model, didn't you? I can see your equations."

  She smoothed the paper, running her gaze over the formulas. "I worked this out last week using a spatial model. The peanut husks are concentrated under the bar stools, and I counted around one and multiplied, and around the tables, especially during the first three days after Delmar sweeps. If you notice, almost all the husks around the round tables form a donut ring that runs about one foot under the table to about twice the radius of the table."

  Trap stared at her, his heart stuttering in his chest. For the first time, he actually was completely shocked, but he shouldn't have been.

  "I just counted the husks around one chair at the four-chair table and multiplied by four to get a pretty good estimate of the total husks associated with the table."

  He leaned close. "You took the easy way out. And it isn't very accurate."

  She raised her chin. "I did not. I did it the intelligent way."

  "Over a week's accumulation the peanut husks turn to mulch and can't be counted. They get kicked around . . ."

  "I factored in the ones that fall beneath the bar and get kicked back where Delmar works. I came up with thirteen thousand, two hundred and sixty per week." She sent him her first real smile. The kind that made a man's cock hard. Made his heart jerk and happiness spill through his bloodstream like sunshine. She raised her green gaze to his. "Nice. You've got a brain."

  Hell, yeah, he had a brain. Excitement burst through Trap. He'd wondered why Whitney had paired him with Cayenne. Now he knew. She could satisfy his mind along with his body. She would be a complement to him in every way, not just in the field or in bed. She would stimulate his mind. Understand him. And he would do the same for her.

  Movement had her standing, and he turned his head to see the two Comeaux brothers exiting the bar. "That's my cue to leave. I don't want to see you around, Trap. You stay away from me. I mean it. This is the last time we're going to be friendly." She moved around the far side of the table when he stood also, shaking his head.

  "Damn it, Cayenne. Don't make us enemies."

  "That's what we are," she whispered. "That's the way it has to be. You don't know the worst in me, and I don't want you ever to know. Or to see. Or to experience."

  She hurried across the room to the door, taking his favorite jacket with her. She turned at the last minute and sent a whisper into the air. "See but not see. Hear but don't hear."

  Instantly he felt that pull in her voice, the one he felt when he'd gone into her cell to rescue her and she'd called him to her. He was much more resistant than the others, because he didn't allow emotions too close to the surface and her voice seemed to tap into an emotional stream. Now he knew how she kept the men in the bar from d
escribing her.

  He signaled to Wyatt and the others, although he didn't need to. They were already disposing of their beer bottles and making for the door.

  "I'll meet you back at home," Trap told them. "I've got a couple of things I have to do."

  Wyatt smirked at him. "Yeah, I'll bet you do. The boys will take the airboat home and I'll go with you in the Pepper. I'm thinkin' you need a babysitter."

  He wasn't going to stand around arguing, and when Wyatt put that smirk on his face, he was as stubborn as hell. Trap nodded and hurried out.

  CHAPTER 4

  The night air felt cool on Trap's face as they hurried out of the Huracan Club and down the steps onto the dirt that fronted the building. Humidity often kept the air a little muggy, a little sultry, and the perfumes of the swamp could be cloying. The brief rain left the trees and shrubbery glistening from the half-moon's beams. Water along the river sparkled liked diamonds.

  Trap and Wyatt stayed in the shadows, holding perfectly still. Motion drew the eye and out of habit, neither moved a muscle while they carefully checked the area around them. They had enemies far worse than the Comeaux brothers and never lost their vigilance. As if by mutual consent, without a word, Trap stayed in the shadows covering Wyatt while the Cajun sauntered to the boat. The smaller boat was lightweight and fast, able to move easily through shallow water and speed through the deeper channels.

  Wyatt was at home in the swamp and bayous. Born and raised there, he'd spent his youth hunting and fishing throughout the entire area. His home had been built from the cypress trees growing on their property--trees that withstood the water and the insects far better than anything else. The other GhostWalkers were just beginning to know their way around the waterway. Trap didn't mind in the least sitting back and letting Wyatt take the lead.

  "She warned me off, Wyatt," Trap announced, with a small sigh.

  "She kissed the heck out of you," Wyatt pointed out.

  "I kissed her," Trap corrected.

  "She kissed you back, and that kiss didn't seem like a warnin' to me." Wyatt sent him another cocky grin. "Seems to me that was a 'hello handsome' kinda kiss. You probably didn't recognize it, not bein' Cajun and all."