They’ll go on like this for hours.
14
Leila leaned on the railing of the porch surveying the grounds around the cabin. One would never know that an entire camp had been set up anywhere in the vicinity. She’d pictured the tents right outside the cabin, maybe surrounding them, but they were unseen, just like the GhostWalkers seemed to be when they wanted.
Diego stood close to her. Very close. She wasn’t a woman who had ever felt the need to be protected, but she found herself liking the way Diego had such a protective vibe when he was near her. He liked physical contact. She would never have thought she’d want to be affectionate around others or have Diego hold her hand or put his arm around her waist, pulling her close in front of his friends, but she did like it. She wanted it. Maybe needed that closeness with him.
“I can disappear in a wilderness,” she admitted, “but I couldn’t hide an entire camp the way your friends have.”
“Does it bother you to have them all here?”
When he asked the question in that low, velvety voice, his palm slid up her back to curve around the nape of her neck. The movement was a slow caress that sent little flames flickering over her nerve endings. She decided it was Diego, not Mordichai, who was the leading authority on women, but she wasn’t going to give him more of an advantage than he already had.
She thought his question over before she answered. “It isn’t that they bother me. How could it? They came here to help. They’re willing to put their lives on the line for us. I’m just not used to being in such close proximity to so many men. I trained alone for the most part. The men who did come near me were usually those who were having trouble with the enhancements, and their aggression and dominant levels were out of control.”
Diego’s fingers moved on her neck, a slow massage that sent that burn flickering through her veins. At the same time, she felt tension she hadn’t known she had easing.
“These men are all enhanced,” he said, bending his head close so his lips whispered over her ear. “They are aggressive and dominant. Each of them. Some admittedly more than others, but they are. They consider you family, Leila. They would never hurt you or Grace, and they would fight to the death for you.”
She pressed her lips together, leaning back into his massage. She knew he was trying to reassure her, but her experience with many of the enhanced soldiers hadn’t been positive.
“Why do you suppose these men have been able to live with the enhancements when some of the other soldiers from Chariot’s lab have been affected so negatively? It doesn’t make sense. Chariot’s people were careful in their selections. The men they chose were good men. I don’t think any of them have the number of enhancements you and your friends do, and yet often they can’t handle it.”
“Whitney does a pretty thorough mental evaluation before he selects soldiers for the GhostWalker program. He prides himselfon finding the men who can deal with the genetic enhancements. We weren’t told that would be in the works. All of us had tested for strong psychic abilities, and we were on board for enhancing those abilities. But Whitney was looking for men he could enhance genetically as well. I think the evaluations played a large part in finding those of us who could take the levels of aggression in the predatory DNA he put into us.”
“It’s scary to think that every one of these men have such predatory traits.”
He turned her to face him, tipping up her chin so her eyes met his. “I do, Leila. I have so many aggressive predators in me it isn’t funny. In certain situations, I feel more animal than human. I can’t say to you that aggression and dominance aren’t a huge part of me. I need to hunt. I don’t have to kill, but it is entirely too easy for me under the right circumstances. Most of us are that way. We have a code we strictly adhere to. And we help each other. We realized that there were no advocates for us, so if we wanted to survive, we would have to form close bonds between all the GhostWalker teams and back each other up.”
Leila wasn’t sure why she found it reassuring that Diego was so honest about the dominant traits in him, but because he shared with her so openly, she felt more comfortable with him. Trusted him more. It didn’t make sense, but there it was.
One of Diego’s more dominant traits was his protective nature. She wanted that for Grace and any future children she had. She wanted the stability of a home. Many of these GhostWalkers were married. According to Diego, they were devoted to their wives. She had paid close attention to the way they harassed one another, and it was always with affection. Each man had been introduced to her, and they had treated her with care and respect. Not one of the men had acted as if they were interested in her sexually. Theydidn’t make her skin crawl or raise alarms. They treated her more as if she were a sister than anything else.
One of the things that stood out the most when she was introduced that morning at breakfast was the way Rubin and Ezekiel stayed close to her. Rubin had actually stood on the other side of her, one hand on her shoulder. Ezekiel had come up behind her for the introductions. She should have felt very vulnerable with him behind her, but she didn’t. She felt safe. She could feel the waves of protection coming off the three men—Ezekiel, Rubin and Diego—and it felt good. She was very aware she wasn’t one hundred percent physically fit. These men she was being introduced to were elite soldiers. More than soldiers.
“You must think Chariot isn’t going to let me go. All of you must think that.” Her stomach knotted, and the tension came right back.
“I doubt he would allow it without persuasion of some sort.”
Her heart slammed hard against her chest. She pressed her fist over it in the hopes of quieting it. “I left Gracie with Marcy. She might be married to Commander Chariot, but she has always been a friend and advocate. If there is one person on this earth aside from you, Diego, that I trust, it’s her. But Chariot knows she’s watching Gracie. When I’m away, she always does. He probably has my baby in his home right this minute. Sometimes Marcy will stay at my little apartment in the dorm building, but there are times when she takes Grace to their home.”
“You’re worried that he’ll hold the baby hostage and insist that if you want her, you have to return to them.”
She nodded. “I think he will, yes.”
“You do know how fucked-up that is, using a baby to force her mother to continue working for them. You don’t even get paid, Leila. He’s not treating you with the respect he gives his soldiers.He sends you out on assignments that can get you killed with no backup. I doubt he was responsible for the decision to send your sister to Whitney, but he certainly knows about it. Just the fact that some of the soldiers were bringing you up the mountain to rendezvous with a helicopter to take you back to Chariot and the others were taking your sister down the mountain to return her to Whitney tells you how much Chariot is concerned with your well-being.”
“It really doesn’t matter if he’s a complete bastard, Diego. If he holds Grace back and won’t allow me to take her with me, I won’t go. I won’t leave her.”
Diego swept his hand down the back of her head in a soothing caress that allowed her heart to stop pounding. It wasn’t just a caress; it was a gesture of solidarity. He spoke volumes without saying a word. She loved that about him. She also believed in him. It made no sense. They weren’t paired by some strange phenomenon. She had only been with him a couple of weeks, but those days had been intense. They had focused completely on each other, and more, they could each see into the other using telepathic communication.
“I think someone else has arrived,” she whispered to Diego.
Diego circled her waist with one arm and tucked her into his side. “We’ve got two men coming toward us, just now emerging from the forest. The one hanging back a little is Trap Dawkins. Don’t take offense at anything he says or doesn’t say. He’s probably one of the brightest men on the planet. I don’t say that lightly. He’s a self-made billionaire, married to Cayenne, one of Whitney’s rejects, and he’s neurodivergent. He doesn’t like to engage in conversation, but Draden and Wyatt are working with him on social cues. He’s a father now and knows it’s going to be important to make those kinds of efforts.”
“He looks uncomfortable. He doesn’t have to be introduced.”She wasn’t certain she could go through too many more introductions without wanting to make a run for it.
“Trap has abilities we may need to retrieve Grace. He was the one who managed to free Wyatt’s daughters from a holding cell. They were scheduled for termination. Cayenne was as well. Without Trap, we never would have gotten to those children or Cayenne.”
