Predatory Game (GhostWalkers #6)(62)
Author: Christine Feehan

“Yes. There isn’t a doubt in my mind he wants us to have a child together.”

“Well, I don’t have a clue why he wanted me to read those files, but this suddenly doesn’t feel like Whitney. I don’t know why he’d do this when it isn’t logical. Whitney may be a megalomaniac, but he has his own logic. He believes himself to be a patriot. He’s not going to be giving other countries supersoldiers, so who is leaking the information? Who’s looking for confirmation that you’re enhanced?”

Jess shook his head, his expression thoughtful. “It isn’t Chaleen. Her job is to find out what I’m doing besides working for Rear Admiral Henderson at NCIS. My team has been out on enough assignments to raise a few rumors, especially after the Congo incident. Senator Ed Freeman was involved with that. He’s high profile. Maybe it has something to do with the Congo, or the senator.”

She nodded. “He was my target. He and his wife. Whitney wanted them dead. He was in a recent accident and it’s rumored he’s in a coma.”

“He was shot in the head and taken to an undisclosed location. They’re keeping his condition very quiet, but you can bet every agency from here to hell and back is looking into it and there are going to be rumors and conjecture about an elite fighting team. Since the CIA was already suspicious, after the senator’s disappearance, I’m sure they want answers. What was in his file?”

“Whitney considered him a traitor and wanted both the senator and his wife dead. He actually arranged for me to attend a state dinner and shake hands with the senator. The plan was for me to induce a massive heart attack, and when his wife knelt beside him to do CPR, I would aid her, long enough to release a blood clot into her system. Then I was supposed to disappear before she went down as well.”

“You can do that?”

She was so small, yet she held so much power in her slender body. And it was somewhat disconcerting to think she’d been in his home, he’d introduced her to his sister and friends, and he’d never suspected that she could kill with a touch. The innocence in her eyes and the youthful features were all the cover she really needed. No one would ever suspect her. As a shielder, not even Violet, the senator’s wife, would have known that Saber was an assassin.

Saber shrugged. “I told you I could.”

The significance of what Saber told him sunk in. She had left the house in full assassination mode. “You slipped past Mari and Ken in order to kill Chaleen, didn’t you?”

She’d hoped he’d missed that. Jess didn’t miss very much. “Someone was out there watching you. I was afraid they’d been sent to kill you, so yes, I thought I might do something about it in order to protect you, but I changed my mind.”

“Ken came along.”

She shook her head. “He would have been too late. If I wanted her dead, she’d be beyond help by the time he arrived. He almost stepped on me.”

Jess shook his head, a slow grin of admiration escaping when he knew he shouldn’t feel that way. “He’s going to hate that.”

“Don’t tell him. Don’t tell any of them.” She ducked her head. “I don’t want them to know what I do.”

“Eventually they’ll have to know. You’re one of us. We work as a team.”

“Assassins don’t work with a team, Jesse. I go out alone. The orders come in and I play whatever part, slip in and out, and no one ever knows it was a sanctioned hit. I’m the weapon everyone’s been looking for. I can take out our enemies and no one will ever be able to prove a thing.”

“That doesn’t negate the fact that you’re one of us. We all have different-and lethal-capabilities, Saber. They’ll understand.”

“Do you really believe they’ll walk up to me and shake my hand the way they did earlier? They’ll be terrified.”

“I’m not terrified of you, Saber,” Jess said.

She lifted her lashes. “Well, maybe you should be.”

A slow smile softened the hard line of his mouth. Her heart lurched. He looked so sexy. It was no wonder that she’d fallen for him-she would have without Whitney and his pheromones.

“You said that before. I like to live dangerously.”

“You’re a nut.”

“Come on, baby. Let’s go to bed.” He held out his hand to her. When she put hers in his, he kissed her palm and then placed it on his shoulder so he could maneuver the chair through the wide hallways to the master bedroom.

Saber walked with him. “I’ve been thinking about this thing with Whitney. We’ve got him and the sicko who jacked off in my bedroom. Maybe they’re connected, maybe not, but I’m leaning more toward the theory that we’re missing some vital piece here, Jesse. Something right in front of our noses.”

He wasn’t going to discount her radar, because he was feeling the same way. Whitney had nothing to gain by snatching Saber before she was pregnant. Not when he’d gone to so much trouble to orchestrate the two of them meeting.

His bedroom was enormous, the four-poster bed dominating the room. It was low, custom built to make it easy for him to lock his chair and slide into the bed without help. The room was always surprisingly neat. Jess tended to toss his clothes over the backs of chairs or onto the nightstand, but everything else was in place.

“I’ve always been intimidated by that bed,” Saber said, stopping just inside the doorway. “It’s huge.”

“I won’t let you get lost. We just have to make certain Patsy doesn’t come barging in and find you here or we’ll be dragged to the nearest church and married before the day is out.”

“Don’t even say that. Patsy would be thrilled to catch me in your bedroom. She has visions of you producing like ten kids or something.”

He laughed. “My sister would make the best aunt in the world.”

“She needs to have children. You’d make a great uncle.”

The smile faded from his face. “She was so in love with David. I have no idea how to tell her David died because of me. I never thought my job or the choices I made would ever touch my family.”

“Oh, Jesse. Oh God.” Saber’s hand fluttered to her throat and then shot out to brace herself against the wall. “Patsy.”

He stiffened at her tone, pausing in the act of transferring to his bed. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We have to go to Patsy’s house right now.”