Lily walked beside Lydia Fenamore down the long hallway to the room where Lydia did most of the therapy work for each of the GhostWalkers. “Is he a brain surgeon?”
“Yes, a brilliant man. Dr.Adams thinks very highly of him,” Lydia gushed.
Lily unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Brandon Adams has been my friend for a very long time, Lydia. When things went south for us here, he was the first person I thought of to help us, and he came through. As a rule, Brandon is a great judge of character. To my knowledge, he’s only gotten it wrong once or twice. What does Jacob Abrams think of your new man?”
Lydia stiffened, stopping just inside the door. She turned to face Lily, moistening her suddenly dry mouth with her tongue several times. Her gaze jumped from Lily’s face to look over her shoulder to where Jonas and Gator lounged against the opposite wall. Inside the room, Ryland and Kaden waited.
“What’s going on, Lily?” Lydia whispered.
“You tell me, Lydia,” Lily asked. “No, don’t. I take that back. You tellthem. They’ll know if you lie, and they won’t be nice aboutit. I won’t stay, because the methods they use to extract the truth from people who betray us aren’t exactly approved by the general population. I suggest you tell them whatever they want to know, although they know most of it already.”
She turned and walked down the hall without looking back.
Jonas thought she looked like a queen even with her slight limp. He gestured for Lydia to step all the way inside the soundproofed room.
“We won’t be disturbed in here. You can scream all you want, and you won’t upset any of the women or Daniel,” Jonas invited, his tone mild.
Lydia gasped and shook her head, but when he came up behind her, she stepped inside because he gave her no choice. Jonas entered the room. Gator followed him in and closed the door. The windows were blacked out on purpose so those inside had complete privacy.
“None of you scare me,” she declared, obviously terrified but determined to go on the attack first. “It was so easy to undermine all of you. You’re supposed to have this tight bond, but really, you don’t, do you? Ryland, you and your wife can’t even look at each other. She deceived you over your son, didn’t she? Went against your orders and recorded the things your son can do anyway,” she taunted.
Ryland smiled at her. “Clearly, you couldn’t access her records. If you had, you would have found all the things new mothers want to keep. First steps, first words. Photographs. Little videos of funny moments of the three of us. Daniel dancing, or more like wiggling. Nothing that any other mother wouldn’t keep. As for Lily and me, we fight like any couple, Lydia, and then we talk it out and make up. I trust her and she trusts me, so we work it out.”
The taunting smile faded from Lydia’s face.
“And if you think you caused a break between the two teams, you didn’t,” Jonas added. “The moment Camellia questioned why we trusted them so much on one hand and on the other seemed distrustful, we all put our heads together and realized somethingwas very wrong. Team Two never felt the break in trust, only Team One, so we knew immediately we had been compromised. We just had to figure out how. You were the logical choice.”
Ryland looked her up and down and then shook his head. “You are responsible for so many men dying, Lydia. And for what? Money. You wanted Abrams’s money. I hope it was worth it to you.”
She lifted her chin, looking defiant and not bothering to pretend she didn’t know what they were there for. “I don’t kill people, that’s your department.”
“You didn’t do the actual killing, but you’re the one who brokered the contract. You took it out for the money,” Ryland continued. “That makes you guilty as hell, Lydia. All those good men who died for absolutely no reason. Oliver wasn’t murdered. What you discovered and so quickly reported without investigating any further was a persistent nightmare one of the men had. He had discussed the nightmare with me and with Jonas. We brought in someone we thought could be trusted to help.”
Lydia raised her chin. “You can lie all you want, Ryland, but that was no nightmare. It was far too vivid.”
“Lydia,” Jonas said. “You know anatomy. You are very aware of the human body. Once you recorded what was said, did you actually listen to the recording again before you told Shaker and Tusker that I had murdered Oliver? I don’t believe you even listened to it twice.”
“Why would I want to relive the murder of my cousin? He was killed in a vile and brutal way. I never want to hear such a thing again. I left it to my older cousin to decide how he wanted to proceed.” She was defiant, her belligerence showing in every line of her body.
“It would be impossible for anyone to live through getting their arms ripped from their bodies, and yet in that nightmare, Jeff claimed he did. The blood loss would make it impossible, even for a GhostWalker enhanced by Whitney,” Ryland pointed out. “Butas you’re going to insist on being right, I’m going to show you proof of what really happened.”
Jonas’s head jerked up. “Ryland.” That was the last thing he expected. He knew there was proof of his innocence, but that also meant proof of Oliver’s guilt. He didn’t want that. “I don’t give a damn what she believes about me.”
“She needs to know she’s responsible for the deaths of all those men—good men. If they had made their way here and killed women and children, she would have been responsible for those murders as well.”
Lydia lifted her chin again. “Children that would turn out likehim.” She gestured at Jonas, sneering.
Ryland pointed to the large screen. “Body cameras are required when we go on missions. These are the actual recordings of what happened. There are multiple recording viewpoints because each man wears his own body cam.”
He didn’t wait for her reply, he simply started the recording. Jonas looked away. Thankfully, Ryland didn’t play any audio. The visual would be bad enough. He’d already relived this time with Camellia, he didn’t need to do it again. Jonas turned his back on the screen and pulled out his phone to text his woman.
What are you up to right now?
Working in the vegetable garden with Lily, Daniel and Azami.
I didn’t know Azami was here. When did she arrive?
Word went out that there was trouble coming, so she came home and brought her two brothers with her. They’re very intimidating.
