Shadow Game (27 page)

"Arly danced with me. Arly and John were very much like fathers or uncles. They had nearly as much say as I was growing up as my father, maybe more. Dad was absentminded about parenting. He didn't remember I existed for days at a time if he was working on something."

"You didn't mind that?" Her voice was so matter-of-fact it astonished him. His mother had been interested in every aspect of his life. He couldn't remember a subject they hadn't talked about.

"That was just Dad. You had to know him. He wasn't all that interested in people. Not even me." She shrugged as she drew on a pair of dove gray trousers that molded to her hips. There wasn't a single line to mar the way the material lovingly hugged her bottom. "He was good to me, Ryland, and I felt loved, but he didn't share time with me unless it was something to do with work. He had exercises he insisted I do on a daily basis to strengthen the barriers in my mind. I intend to teach them to your men. I live in a protected environment, but I'm able to function out in the world when I have to. I'm hoping to at least provide that for you and the others."

She had slipped on a silk blouse over a wispy lace bra. Ryland reached over to button the tiny pearl buttons because he had to touch her. His knuckles brushed her breasts and her nipples tightened immediately in response. Her vivid gaze met his and they stared at one another in helpless hunger.

Holding the edges of her blouse together, he bent his head slowly to hers and took possession of her mouth. He wanted to put his mouth right over that silk and lace and suckle her breast, nip and tease and see her eyes cloud with passion and her skin flush just for him, but he contented himself with thoroughly kissing her instead.

"Ryland." Her voice was shaky. "Is this normal?"

"I've never felt this way about another woman. How the hell would I know if it's normal or not?" He kissed her eyelids, the corners of her mouth. "Whatever it is, it seems normal for us and that's good enough for me." Resolutely he finished buttoning her blouse, bending his head for just one moment to plant a kiss on the tip of her breast, nuzzling her through the silk.

Lily had the mad desire to grab the nape of his neck and force him to her aching breasts, just hold him there, while his tongue and teeth and the heat of his mouth worked their magic on her. Her body was sore, but deliciously so, reminding her continuously of his possession.

"Lily." He said her name and she blinked up at him, coming out of her daydream, realizing her hands were tracing the definition of his muscles, sliding over his body as if it belonged to her. "Don't we have work to do?"

"Try not to be so distracting," she ordered. "I have an idea that might help Hollister. Being here, in this house, should provide relief for all of you. The walls are extra thick and each individual room is soundproof." She looked at him soberly. "That's the other flaw, you know, Ryland. I'll never be normal. I need this house in order to survive. Everything here is designed to keep my world protected. The amount of land surrounding the house. The day staff is in and out in a matter of a couple of hours and I never come into contact with them."

Ryland caught her face in his hands. "I don't care what you need to exist, Lily, as long as you do. That's all that matters to me. We're all counting on you to teach us how to live in the world again. You have a job, you're a contributing citizen. We're hoping you can do that for us. Allow us to live again."

She looked at him, completely unaware her heart was in her eyes. "I hope so, too, Ryland."

Lily had expected rejection. It made him crazy to think that she wouldn't know her worth. He could feel her pain simmering just below the surface and his heart ached for her. She had just lost her father and she was discovering more about him and about her life than she could handle all at once. And he had brought her even more trouble, allowing her to risk everything by hiding fugitives in her home.

He swept a hand through his hair, turning away from her. "I'm sorry, Lily, I had nowhere else to bring them." He sat heavily on the bed, reaching for his shoes.

Lily dropped her hand onto his head, her fingers tunneling in his damp hair, connecting them. "Of course they have to be here. I'm going to lay out exercises that must be done several times a day. I have all the recordings of the earlier work done with the girls, with me. I think that's a large part of the problem. They were all so eager to use you in the field, they didn't prepare you properly for the assault on your brain. They opened the floodgates and didn't give you even the flimsiest of barriers to protect you. You all relied on your anchors. And once you were separated only the anchors could exist without continual pain."

He was listening to the tone of her voice. She had switched on him again, almost musing aloud rather than conversing. Her mind was turning over the problem, examining it from every angle and coming up with solutions at a rapid rate. It made him smile. His Lily. He savored that.
His
. She belonged to him in every way.

"Depriving you of your anchors set all of you up for continual trips to the hospital. I have to get in there and look over the records, see if the same people were working each time."

"Wait now, Lily." She was walking briskly out of her room toward the kitchenette that seemed to accompany every wing of the house. Ryland followed in her wake, his heart in his throat. "You damn well aren't going back to that place."

She looked at him with cool eyes. "Of course I am. I work there. I own stock in the company. The research I've been working on for the last four years could save lives." She stalked across the marble tiles to the gleaming refrigerator. "Whoever murdered my father is at Donovans and I'm going to find them." There was no challenge, no defiance, only a calm, quiet statement. She handed him a glass of milk, drank one herself.

There was no point in arguing with her when she was in her present mood. Ryland quirked an eyebrow at her. "This is it?" He stared at the white liquid. "No coffee? No breakfast? I give you a night of unbelievable sex and you give me a glass of milk?"

Lily smirked at him. "Get it straight, Miller.
I
gave
you
an unbelievable night of sex and I don't cook. Not ever."

"Oh, I see how it is. The incredibly intelligent woman doesn't know how to cook. Admit it, Lily."

Lily rinsed her glass in the sink. "I was given gourmet cooking lessons by one of the top chefs in the country." She waved her hand at the cupboards. "Feel free to fix yourself something. Rosa keeps it stocked with things in hopes I'll eat more."

"I'm intrigued. You really can cook?"

Lily found the mosaic tile on the counter interesting. "I didn't say that, exactly. Only that I had the lessons. The man may as well have been speaking Greek." She grinned at him. "Well, not Greek, I can speak Greek, but I couldn't understand a word the man said. It's an art form and I have no creative talents whatsoever."

He put his arm around her, pulled her beneath his shoulder. "Fortunately I'm a great cook." He kissed her temple, a mere brush of his lips but he felt the answering tremor in her and it pleased him. "I think you have the potential to be very creative," he whispered suggestively. "You just chose the wrong art form."

Lily found herself blushing. Even his tone of voice slipped under her skin and heated her blood. She suddenly found she was a lot more creative than she had ever imagined. She shook her head firmly. "Stop trying to tempt me. I have work to do with Hollister and the others."

His hand slipped from her shoulder, trailed down the neck opening of her silk blouse to skim along her bare flesh. Lily sucked in her breath against the trail of flames he left behind on her skin. "Am I tempting you, Lily? You always look so cool. I always have a mad desire to melt the ice princess."

She
never
felt cool around him. She didn't reply, forcing her mind to consider the facts. "Ryland, maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. Let's turn it around. Let's say the experiment had a high degree of success. There were several deaths and the men were suffering seizures and brain bleeds."

"I'd say that wasn't a high degree of success." He kept pace with her, a scowl on his face. "Don't go scientific on me. These men are human beings with families. They're good men. We're not just writing them off as lab rats."

Lily sighed. "You're too close, Ryland. You have to learn how to step back. They're expecting that reaction. It's human nature. A few deaths, call it off. The results aren't worth the price."

"Damn it, Lily." He could feel his temper rising. His palms itched to shake her. Her tone was impersonal, a computer calculating. "A few deaths aren't worth the price."

"Of course they aren't, Ryland. Put emotion aside for just a few minutes and consider other possibilities. You said yourself that the first year everything went fairly smoothly. You were used in training missions and your team performed well."

"There were problems," he said, reaching past her to open the door to Jeff Hollister's room.

Lily could see the gathered men, still holding vigil over then-fallen companion. It wrenched at her heartstrings the way they guarded him. Big, tough men, capable of being lethal should the occasion call for it, but talking soothing nonsense to a friend when he was down and sitting up when they had comfortable beds, just to see to his needs.

"Any change?" she asked Tucker Addison. In the light of day, the man looked like a linebacker to her. She couldn't imagine him going unnoticed in an enemy camp, but his hands, as they tucked the blanket closer around Jeff Hollister, were gentle.

"No, ma'am. Last night, on and off for about ten minutes he seemed restless, but then he settled back down again."

Lily made a second examination of Jeff Hollister, paying particular attention to his skull. "Feel this, Ryland, he definitely has evidence of surgical scarring."

"Well, he did have surgery. He was rushed to the hospital to relieve swelling about three months ago," Ryland said. "They drilled a hole in his head."

Lily's gaze was cool and assessing. "I doubt they were relieving pressure in his brain; more than likely that's when the electrodes were planted." She stood for a moment looking at Ryland. "I know you did it yesterday, Ryland, but if no one minds, I'd like to examine all of the men. I want to be absolutely certain."

Gator leapt up. "Raoul Fontenot volunteering, ma'am." He grinned at her engagingly. "We could use my room, a couple of doors down and to the left."

"Thank you, but that won't be necessary," Lily answered, running her fingers over his skull while several of the men snickered. "You're fine."

Ryland took the opportunity to smack Gator on the head. "Your only problem is your skull's too thick."

One by one, Lily examined the rest of the men. Only Jeff Hollister showed signs of surgery. "Have any of the rest of you had seizures?"

"I did, ma'am," Sam Johnson, the only other African American besides Tucker Addison in the room, admitted. He was a big man, light on his feet, a man renowned for his hand-to-hand combat. Few could surpass him in a physical fight. He had been an instructor in the Special Forces team. "I was out in the field and had a small seizure during a mission. The video and voice feed on my camera and my partner's camera weren't working that day so there was no data on it. That's why it didn't show up in a report."

Ryland spun around. "You never verbally reported it?"

"No, sir," Sam said, glancing into the deepest corner where Nicolas sat so silently. "We talked it over and decided we'd better not. The men who went to the hospital all ended up dead within a few weeks. If it happened again, I was going to report it."

"But it never happened again," Lily finished for him. "Do you recall whether or not you had suffered a migraine prior to the seizure, maybe a day or so before it?"

"I had a hell of a migraine afterward, ma'am. I thought my head was going to explode, but I didn't dare go to the hospital so I rode it out with a little help from my partner. He knew some mumbo jumbo, cures from the old ones, and damn if they didn't work too."

Lily knew immediately the partner who knew "mumbo jumbo" was Nicolas. He apparently had an extensive knowledge of healing plants. She glanced at the man but he was staring straight ahead as if he didn't hear a single word.

"What about before that?"

"We'd trained for a couple of days and I was separated from Nicolas. He's an anchor, and I couldn't block out all the garbage coming at me. My brain felt like it was on fire. I started vomiting that night and couldn't see so I asked for medication."

"Who separated you from your anchor?" Lily asked.

"Orders came down," Sam said. He looked to Nicolas. "From Captain Miller."

Ryland shook his head. "I never have given an order separating anchors from the men assigned to them. It would defeat the entire mission." His gaze found Nicolas. "You thought it was me."

"I wasn't certain, Rye, and I wasn't going to take chances with his life. I watched you and waited. If it had been you…" Nicolas shrugged his shoulders casually.

Lily shivered as the flat, cold eyes moved over Ryland. Nicolas didn't have to voice a threat, it was there in his eyes, in his casual shrug.

"Russell Cowlings delivered the order," Sam admitted. "There was no reason to think you hadn't given it."

"The snake," Gator said. "He attacked us and tried to kill the captain."

"If I'm getting this right, Gator," Tucker said, "Russ did more than that. He set Sam up to die. Isn't that what you think, ma'am?"

"I think he did, yes. I think Sam had a violent headache after being separated from his anchor and when he asked for medication, he was given something that triggered a seizure. I don't think the seizures are caused by the enhancing process, or if they are, it's a rare side effect. And I don't believe the brain bleeds are caused by severe seizures. I believe the men you lost to those complications were at some time taken to the hospital and, under the pretense of relieving swelling, I think the men underwent surgery and electrodes were planted in specific parts of the brain. Eventually the men were subjected to magnetic fields of extremely high frequency. The heat generated tissue damage and caused hemorrhage.''