“Don’t tell me you aren’t able to utilize animals, because I think you can.”
“Not like that. I wish I could.”
“It took me several years of working out patterns that would sound close enough to a male great horned owl calling to a female. She took less time to learn it than I did to develop it.”
“That’s amazing. Even just the fact that you persisted.”
He gave her a faint smile. “You’ll find I’m quite stubborn when I want to do something. I tend to persist until I get my way. I can work at something for years and never stop until I manage to attain my goal.”
“That’s not a bad trait to have. You sound like you think it is.”
“It can be very bad. I got myself into a lot of trouble when I was young. If my commanding officer knew half the things I did, he’d most likely throw me in the brig.”
“I doubt that. I think you’re considered very valuable by everyone but you.”
She could be right. He hadn’t given it much thought. “Please continue telling me about what happened with your daughter and how you came to be separated.”
Leila sighed. “Mistakes. Misjudging people. Not knowing who was an enemy and who wasn’t. I was sent out a few times to help in situations with troops. While I was gone, they had a woman looking after the baby. She seemed okay at first, but after the second time, when I returned, I found I didn’t trust her—or anyone else but Marcy, my commanding officer’s wife. Not that I trusted him. The baby is highly intelligent. They didn’t take that into consideration, or that I might have ways to communicate with her that they didn’t.”
She looked at him as if he might not believe her. He nodded, hoping to reassure her that he would always believe her. “Therehave been several GhostWalker babies born in the last few years,” he told her, still massaging the knots in her neck. Each time she gave him more information, she tensed as if she expected him to condemn her. “Every single one shows remarkable intelligence and the ability to understand and communicate before they are able to speak.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Grace isn’t the only one?”
She called her daughter Grace. Nonny, Wyatt’s grandmother, was Grace Fontenot. She was the best woman Diego knew. If Leila’s daughter was anything like Nonny, she would grow up to be an incredible human being. More and more, Diego believed he’d been born to be with this woman. Every sign seemed to point in that direction. They were even free of the taint of Whitney’s pairing that had originally bothered so many of the GhostWalkers. Everything he felt for Leila was from getting to know her. Being in her mind. Seeing who she really was.
He admired her courage. He respected her as a soldier. The fact that she was so injured and yet ready to defend their position got to him. He hadn’t expected the intense chemistry. She was injured. He was her doctor. He was caring for her in ways that forced an intimacy between them that should have been awkward. It wasn’t.
“No, Grace is in good company. I love that you named her Grace. Wyatt, a member of my unit, has a grandmother and a daughter named Grace. We all call his grandmother Nonny. She’s one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.”
“I liked the name. It’s maybe a little old-fashioned, but it suited her.”
There was love in her voice. Her face had gone soft. He’d never seen that look on his mother’s face. Not even when she looked at Rubin, and he was her favorite.
“You’re beautiful all the time, but when you talk about your daughter, you’re even more so.”
Faint color swept under her skin. “You always make me feel good about myself. Thank you for that, although I don’t know how to handle it. It’s a little embarrassing, but still makes me feel good.”
He brushed a kiss on top of her head. “Why did the woman watching Grace make you feel as if you couldn’t trust her?”
“Grace sent me impressions of a man in a white lab coat taking her blood. It hurt her. I realized that when I was gone, my commander would allow the lab to study Grace. I had no way to protect her when I was gone. I didn’t want them experimenting on her. I’d heard such terrible things about Whitney and what he was doing. The other soldiers would talk sometimes. It was terrifying knowing Bridget was with Whitney.”
He couldn’t imagine how painful it must have been for her to know her sister was in the hands of a madman.
“What changed everything? How did you come to a place where you tracked Bridget down?” Even as he asked her, he listened for the great horned owl’s response.
The large bird could elongate its body when sitting motionless on the branch of a tree. The coloration allowed it to blend into the bark, a perfect camouflage. Diego and Rubin had learned to mimic the owl, often sleeping in the branches of a tree when they were children out hunting for their families. They’d learned to camouflage and be still from the fierce predatory owl. They’d taken many lessons from the great horned owl. To strike fast and decisively, not giving opponents time for resistance. Mold their bodies to their background and go completely still, holding the position for hours. The owl was intelligent and fierce, protective and territorial. Diego had those traits in abundance.
“Marcy. She didn’t allow anyone, not even the commander, to touch Grace while I was gone. She didn’t approve of a lot of the things going on at the laboratory, or how I was raised as a soldier. She slipped a note to me when she handed me Grace. Grace wasbundled up and sleeping. I could see that Marcy was extremely nervous. Her eyes kept darting around the room, and when she spoke to me, she turned her face into the blankets and tote filled with Gracie’s things. I knew we were under observation, and she didn’t want anyone watching to know she was conveying anything to me but how my daughter was in my absence. I went along with it and didn’t even read the note until I was alone in the bathroom.”
“The woman was an ally?”
“Her name is Marcy Chariot. She’s a registered nurse and married to the commanding officer. She overhears quite a bit of what is going on when there are discussions about the genetic enhancements. She was appalled when she heard what Whitney was doing to some of the women. At first, she didn’t believe what she was hearing. She thought if the rumors were true, Whitney would be stopped. She asked her husband about it, and he told her many factions in the government believed he would create the soldiers of the future. Her husband told her that Whitney had a program imprisoning the women and forcing them to give birth to babies he could experiment on.”
Diego swore under his breath. He knew it was true. They’d actively hunted Whitney in the hopes of stopping him, but he had too many allies willing to shield him. They showed up at compounds known to be used by him, but he was always already gone.
“Marcy told me they were all disgusted with the way he had treated my sister and that she was in a bad way. They feared, because I had a baby, that he would force Bridget to have one and the experiments would continue on that child. Marcy had the last known location of Bridget. One of the officers had visited the compound and saw her. He said she looked as if she was very ill. Whitney was known to put cancer and bacterial and viral diseases into the women for his experiments. She worried that Bridget was being used that way.”
“Marcy has Grace now?” Suddenly, it was extremely important to Diego that the child was safe.
