Night Game (32 page)

Kadan shot him a quick glance. “No wonder he’s dead.”

The GhostWalkers spread out across the small island, several feet between them as they began to stalk their prey. The men ahead of them would have no choice but to keep moving or turn and fight. They wanted to regroup. And they didn’t want to take on a skilled army no matter how small it was. Gator continued to pulse low-frequency waves in front of them, not hard enough to kill, but to make the men sick.

“They’re splitting up,” Tucker announced, pointing to tracks. “Can you hear them, Gator?”

Gator shook his head. “Their shielder is strong. He’s been very resistant to the sound waves. I figured they’d split up. It’s the only chance they really have for any of them to get out.” With the sound waves coming at them, they knew if they split up, they had a better chance to elude the pulsing waves Gator was sending at them.

Ian indicated he was climbing He slung his rifle around his neck and went for the tallest cypress tree in their vicinity. As he climbed, Tucker, Kadan, and Gator looked over the tracks carefully.

“That’s the shielder,” Kadan said, indicating a path to their right. “He’s moving fast.” For the first time there was a note of worry in his voice. “He’s locked on and is hunting.”

Gator felt a sudden cold chill go down his spine “Flame’s back there.” He indicated the other side of the island. “I’ll take the medic kit to her.”

The sound of rifle fire reverberated through the swamp. Birds rose shrieking their annoyance. Ian joined them on the ground. “Knew one of them would get the clever idea of lying back to wait for us. He was sitting in a tree a few hundred yards from here.” He nudged Tucker. “Must have not liked your looks. He had his sights set for you. Guess I saved your life.”

Tucker gave a derisive snort. “Guess you’re full of yourself. Bullets bounce off me. I’ve got my superman shirt on today.”

“Is that where my shirt went? You thief. I been looking for it ever since I did laundry.” Even as they wrangled back and forth good-naturedly, they were scanning the ground for more tracks.

Kadan dropped down to examine a footprint. It was small and right over the top of it was the shielder’s print.

“There’s blood here, Gator, and it isn’t from one of their team,” Kadan announced.

Gator crouched down to touch the smears of blood on the leaves. “She left me. Damn her for this. She left me.”

The earth vibrated beneath their feet and shook the smaller puddles of water gathered in several depressions, drawing his attention. He sucked in his breath and fought back the need to express his anger and growing fear. Already the trees around him were shaking. He drew in a hard breath. “One of them is tracking her. When I catch up with her, I’m going to shake that woman until her teeth rattle.”

That’ll help,” Ian agreed. “Betcha that will get you a lot a points. Where’d you ever get the rep for being charming?”

Gator flashed him a single warning look. His stomach churned with alarm for Flame. She was on the move and she was losing too much blood. He had held on to his control every moment of the hunt, yet now he felt wounded, a terrible hole torn through his gut and he wasn’t so certain he could hold back the intense emotions crowding in, all conflicting with each other. “I’m not letting her go.” He made the announcement between his teeth.

Ian shrugged his broad shoulders. “No one expected you to, bro.”

“She expected me to.”

‘She doesn’t know what a stubborn son of a bitch you are.” Tucker pointed out.

“Let’s go get her,” Kadan said.

CHAPTER 13

Flame sat in the mud with her back against the tree, breathing through the pain shooting down her arm. “Rat bastard alligator. I don’t care if you were just looking for a meal. I should have made a purse out of you.” She glanced down at her muddy boots. “And shoes. Real alligator leather shoes too.”

Her arm hurt like a son of a bitch, but that wasn’t the reason tears burned behind her eyes and her throat felt clogged. She was leaving New Orleans and Raoul Fontenot. It wasn’t safe for her to stay. She wouldn’t be able to find poor Joy Chiasson or avenge Burrell’s murder. And there would be no making love to Raoul Fontenot. She closed her eyes briefly, regret pouring through her. She’d never wanted a man the way she wanted him. Just the simple sound of his Cajun drawl made her body hot. She even liked his swearing.

Flame groaned. She was a lost cause. Raoul was a dream, a life out of her reach and she wasn’t going to die for something she knew she couldn’t have. Whitney was too close. She could smell him. He had locked on to her presence and he was sending in the troops to retrieve her.

Raoul had never been her enemy and he would try to protect her. After spending time with him she felt she could only do the right thing for both of them. As long as she was around he would be torn between the people he loved and her. He believed in the GhostWalkers—and maybe he even had reason to—but she would never be comfortable with them.

Gator wanted and deserved a home and family, a woman to take home to his grandmother, one who would produce babies he could put in her arms. That woman could never be Flame. If she stayed he would need to defend her and no matter what his dreams of family, he would never leave her. That was the kind of man he was. Flame gritted her teeth and forced herself into a standing position, holding on to a tree trunk to steady herself. Waves of dizziness washed over her. She fought back the feeling and looked around her, trying to get her bearings and pick the safest way back to the frontage road. She couldn’t get in Raoul’s path. He was bound to use low frequency sound waves and they would affect her in the same way they would their enemies.

“You can do anything for a short period of time. Control. Discipline. Patience.” How many times as a child had she recited the same familiar mantra when Whitney had made her so ill? How many times had she knelt on the cold bathroom floor near the toilet, rocking back and forth to ease the nausea brought on by the chemotherapy treatments?

She’d slept on the bathroom floor, a thick blanket under her with Dahlia and Tansy pressed tight against her on either side. She hadn’t thought of those days in years, hadn’t allowed herself to think about the other girls. It hurt to remember them. Their voices and laughter. The sound of their sobbing when the pain of working with their psychic talents became too much.

Tansy had brushed her hair for her when they were allowed to be together and when it all fell out, she’d cried with Flame. Who else had been there? Dahlia. She’d been fairly good friends with Dahlia, the other “bad” girl. And Lily. Flame sucked in her breath sharply. She remembered laying her head in Lily’s lap while she stroked Flame’s bald head, rocking gently and whispering that everything would be all right.

Back then, she’d believed Lily. And maybe that was why her betrayal went so deep. Flame worked for months on her first escape plan, hoarding the secret closely, confiding in no one. Until that one moment of weakness. She’d been up all night retching from the aftereffects of chemotherapy, helplessly weeping over the loss of her hair, and the other girls had sat with her, holding her hands, washing her face, and sharing her tears. Stupidly, foolishly Flame had confided in the other girls. Lily protested vigorously, claiming she feared Flame would die without treatment—but Flame didn’t care. She’d figured Whitney was going to kill her anyway.

Lily hadn’t allowed Flame that freedom. She’d gone to her father and told him of Flame’s plan. Whitney’s men were waiting for her when she escaped. She’d been punished, kept locked up for weeks without seeing the other girls. She’d been so sick and Whitney forced her to take the medicine, even giving her shots while strong men held her down. Lily had crept in once to admit what she’d done and whisper she was sorry, but Flame turned her face away and never spoke another word to her.

Pain shot through her head momentarily taking away the pain in her arm. It robbed her of breath and she bent over, dragging air into her lungs to keep from fainting. It was odd, but she always associated pain with her memories of the other girls. She tried never to think of them, not as children, not when they were with her.

Flash wiped her mind blank, pretending it was a chalkboard and she could just simply erase all thoughts. She wouldn’t think of her past. She wouldn’t think of Raoul and her bleak future, and she wouldn’t feel the broken bones in her arm or the raw flesh where the alligator had taken hold of her. She would concentrate only on walking.

The rain seemed endless, as if the storm had stalled right over the island. She was soaked and muddy, blood running down her arm, hair plastered to her face. She stumbled again and stopped, the jarring pain making her sick. She looked around carefully, frowning as she did so, all senses going on alert.

All she really wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. The kick came out from behind a tree, slamming into her hard, driving her back and down so that she landed on her butt, cradling her arm protectively. She actually saw white stars as she fought to keep from fainting. When she could control the pain she forced her head up to look at her assailant. A man dressed in military- issue camouflage clothes stood over her pointing his rifle at her face.

She started to laugh, the sound slightly hysterical. “You know, this hurts like a son of a bitch. You’d be doing me a favor. Go ahead and shoot.”

“Get up.” He glanced right and left and then reached down, grasping her good arm and yanking her to her feet.

She went boneless, turning into a helpless rag doll. The barrel of his rifle dipped low as he used his strength to drag the dead weight of her body up. Blood dripped steadily down her useless arm and hit the reeds with small splatters. She concentrated on the pattern of the drops, focusing to keep from feeling the pain pumping through her, making her sick as he jarred her broken bones. The moment her feet were under her, she lashed out, kicking the rifle from his hands with enough force to send it spinning into the water.

He swore at her, circling a safe distance from her feet. “You’re losing a lot of blood. Eventually you’re going to go down and then I’ll just drag your ass through the swamp.”

“You can’t wait. They’re hunting you and this time there’s a pack after you. You don’t stand a chance and you know it.” She reached back between her shoulder blades and slid a knife out. The hilt was familiar and oddly comforting in her palm.

“I think I have more time than you do. You’re going to pass out.”

She drew in air, slow and even, watching him, turning in a slow circle to stay facing him, using the minimum amount of energy. “Men always underestimate women.” She watched the middle of his chest, able to see arms and legs, his entire body as he continued his slow stalking cir de. “You shouldn’t have come after me. You can walk away from this right now. Whitney will never know. If you don’t, I’ll have to kill you.”

He spat on the ground. “So you’re a tough chick.”

“Oh, you have no idea how tough.”

He moved with blurring speed, kicking out at her bro ken arm in an attempt to quickly end the standoff.

She stepped aside, just barely, just enough to allow the booted foot to miss her by a hair’s breadth. As she stepped she slashed his calf with the knife, slicing through his heavy clothes to cut deep.