Gino Mazza rested one hip against the wall and regarded his best friend and team leader, Joe Spagnola. Joe shouldn’t have been up, running around, let alone called to the Pentagon just to get their orders directly from Major General Tennessee Milton, the man overseeing the Air Force’s Division of GhostWalkers.
He knew Joe. They’d been kids together. That seemed so long ago. Gino had grown up in an extremely wealthy family, so much money it had been said they could buy a small country if they wanted. That money hadn’t done them much good when their home had been invaded and his parents and grandparents from both sides had stood in front of him and been shot down one by one for their efforts to prevent the men from kidnapping him. It had been his twelfth birthday. He’d been shot three times and left for dead because, once you killed the family, who was going to pay the ransom?
Of course, each family member had one heir. Gino. He inherited a fortune from his grandparents on his father’s side. Again, on his mother’s side. Then from his parents, and he received everything from his mother’s private trust. He got everything and he had nothing. He would much rather have had his family back. He’d turned his back on the money, detesting that someone valued it far more than the lives of his family.
Gino carried scars from those three bullets. He had earned a hell of a lot more since, but those scars ran the deepest. They reminded him every day that families could be fragile. His parents had been decent people—no, good people. He thought of them every single day and wondered what he would be like if they’d lived. Most certainly he’d be a better man.
Joe Spagnola’s family had taken him in. The two fathers had known each other since they were children. It was Joe who’d found Gino and saved his life. Life was very different after that. Ciro was head of a crime family and was every bit as ruthless as Gino’s father was kind. How the two men were best friends remained a mystery, but it was Joe’s father, not the police, who’d found the men who had wiped out Gino’s family. The men were tortured mercilessly before they were killed. They died hard, and Gino watched it all.
Joe and Gino were sent to the best schools. They also were required—and that was a polite way of saying it—to learn martial arts from dozens of trainers, the best in the world. Boxing and street fighting followed, and they trained for hours every day. They learned how to use a variety of weapons: knives, sticks, guns, everything Ciro and the trainers could conceive of.
Gino followed Joe into the Air Force and from there, pararescue training. Then the GhostWalker program. If there was one thing both men knew how to do, it was to take care of themselves. Until Joe tried to save a woman from herself. Senator Violet Smythe had stuck a knife in Joe and twisted it for good measure, making sure to do as much damage as possible. He was still healing and had no business getting on planes and flying to Washington at the major general’s insistence.
“Major General received a personal call from Dr. Whitney,” Joe announced, looking around the room at his team—at the nine men serving under the major general with him. None of them liked the idea that Dr. Whitney, the man who had created the GhostWalker program, would dare to call their boss.
Whitney wasn’t sane. They’d all agreed on that. Worse, he was a megalomaniac with far too many friends in high places and way too much money.
“It seems one of his GhostWalkers has gone missing. She was sent to Shanghai to Cheng’s facility there, the one Bellisia barely escaped from with her life. Whitney’s agent apparently managed to wipe the computers of all data, including everything Cheng had on the GhostWalker program, but she’s being held prisoner. He wants us to go in and get her out.”
There was a shocked silence. Mordichai Fortunes cleared his throat. “Wait. Whitney wants us to work for him? After all the shit he’s pulled on us, he wants us to do a job for him?”
“Doesn’t he have his own little army?” Rubin Campo asked. His voice was mild. Gino had never heard him speak above that soft, accented tone.
“Yeah, he’s got an army,” Joe agreed. “But they aren’t like us. Cheng is a powerful man with a lot of clout in Shanghai. Whitney’s soldiers are more like tanks. Or robots. They self-destruct very fast. You all know that. He’s still experimenting, and his experiments have gone in another direction. We don’t like Whitney, but the fact is, one of us is a prisoner in enemy territory and in danger. She’s a GhostWalker, the same as we are.”
Gino noted Joe looked uneasy when he glanced at Ezekiel Fortunes. The two had clashed when Ezekiel had met his wife, Bellisia. Joe had ordered her incarcerated briefly, just until they finished an important mission they were running. Ezekiel hadn’t liked it and he’d let Joe know. Gino straightened from his lazy pose against the wall. He made the move subtly, silently, gliding into a better position to defend Joe if there was need.
Ordinarily, when they were having a meeting, it was understood that Joe was in charge and no one contradicted him. He gave orders and they obeyed. That was military life. The thing was, they weren’t ordinary. They only had one another. There were four teams of GhostWalkers, but each of those four teams were somewhat isolated from other military units. That meant sometimes the lines blurred for them when they talked to one another. Or like now, when Joe was about to say something he believed Ezekiel clearly wouldn’t like.
“Whitney called Major General the moment he was informed that his agent hadn’t returned to her hotel. He said it was imperative we get there as soon as possible to get her out due to Cheng’s reputation of torturing and killing anyone he doesn’t like.”
Gino figured it stood to reason Cheng wouldn’t like an industrial spy, let alone one that would wipe out the data on GhostWalkers that Cheng had worked so hard to collect.
“I spoke at length with Bellisia and she assures me that she knows the woman; her name is Zara Hightower. Apparently, Zara has always been Bellisia’s closest friend.”
There it was. Bellisia was Ezekiel’s wife and he was very, very protective of her. Gino kept his movements subtle, but he was careful to be in a place he could move fast to intercept any aggression on either part if necessary. Ordinarily, Joe could protect himself, but his wounds had been serious. He doubted Ezekiel would really do anything to try to hurt Joe, but Gino had been protecting him since they were children, and the habit wouldn’t die.
“Zara works outside Whitney’s seeming control quite a bit of the time. She was allowed to go to school, and he sent her to the best. A childhood prodigy or something. You know how Whitney loves brains. She taught at Rutgers and now works mainly consulting. She is invited all over the world by businesses to give talks on artificial intelligence and her particular subfield, which is learning machines.”
“So, she’s given a tremendous amount of freedom,” Mordichai said.
“You talked to Bellisia without talking to me first?” Ezekiel sounded mild enough.
Gino inched closer. Ezekiel was never good when he sounded that calm.
Joe ignored Ezekiel and focused on Mordichai. “Certainly more freedom than most of his women. She’s written up in all the journals and her name is everywhere in conjunction with artificial intelligence.”
Wyatt nodded and glanced across the table at Trap. “She and her team have developed some leading-edge programs in her field.”
Trap rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was considered leading-edge himself in researching new drugs for various diseases as well as in quite a few other fields. “I remember reading, very early on when she was a professor at Rutgers, one of the youngest, just a kid, she was creating some kind of knowledge compilation program to teach other programs to learn faster or something along those lines.”
“Which is?” Malichai prompted.
“You would tell the knowledge compiler what kind of program you wanted, what it would have to do, and the knowledge compiler would automatically write the program for you. She had four of her PhD students working on different pieces of the overall program. It was in such a way that each student had an important and exciting research problem they had to solve as they were constructing their piece of the overall program.”
Wyatt nodded. “It was a win-win situation for both her and her students. They got their PhD dissertations and she got her program.”
“Now that knowledge compiler program she built with her students back then is a piece of her current VALUE system,” Trap added.
“She’s the real deal, Joe,” Wyatt continued. “Smart as hell. I had no idea she was a GhostWalker. Never met her. Did you, Trap?”
Trap shook his head. “We traveled in different circles, but I started at the university when I was in my teens, obviously before her. When I heard of her, I kept up with her progress, just to see how she was doing. She’s younger than me, but after I read about her, I wanted to see how well she did for herself.”
“I would think Whitney would make sure none of us ever met her,” Ezekiel said. “Just my wife. Bellisia. Her best friend. My wife. The woman Joe talked to without talking to me first. I thought we had multiple discussions about that, Joe.”
“If we did, I don’t remember, Zeke,” Joe said, finally turning to face him. “Bellisia had no problem telling me the things I needed to know without you holding her hand. I didn’t bite her. We just talked.”
“Like anyone’s going to bite that woman,” Malichai whispered in a too-loud voice. “If she bites you back it’s over, as in you drop dead.”
“Don’t think he’s worried about you biting her, Joe,” Mordichai announced. “Zeke’s got himself in trouble and he’s worried she’s going to be looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Ezekiel wadded up the sheet of paper in front of him and threw it at his brother. “Shut the hell up.”
Gino relaxed, allowing the coiling snake inside him to unwind. He should have known Ezekiel’s brothers would take care of the tension that hadn’t quite worked itself out between Joe and Zeke.
“So, getting back to the problem Major General sent us,” Joe said. “We know for sure that Zara Hightower is one of us, and right now she’s sitting in Cheng’s fortress. If we don’t go get her, the chances that she will survive are zero.”
“Did Whitney admit to planting the same virus in her that he planted in Bellisia?” Ezekiel asked. “Does she need the antidote?”
“No. Funny that he managed to leave that out when he talked to Major General,” Joe said. “Bellisia stated Zara was never allowed to leave without the virus capsule in her.”
“How do we know that’s true?” Diego asked. “Whitney might have told Bellisia and the other girls that. This Zara could be working for him and leading us into a trap. For all we know, Whitney could have sold us to Cheng. He sold out Ezekiel.”
“No,” Joe denied. “He didn’t. That was all Violet.” He touched his abdomen, unconsciously smoothing his fingers over the wound the senator had inflicted when she’d betrayed them all. “She sold out Zeke and the rest of us when she gave Cheng the GhostWalker program. Whitney’s insane and he’s willing to do just about anything to experiment, but he is a patriot and he wouldn’t give us up. That much I believe, and so does Major General.”
Wyatt groaned. “That means we’re going to China to rescue this chick. Do you know how much trouble I’m going to get into from Pepper if I leave right now?”
“Major General didn’t give us any choice on this one, although, of course, it’s all volunteer.”
A little snicker went up around the room.
“Whitney said he’d allow us to keep the woman without his trying to get her back if we rescued her. One more GhostWalker, a brilliant one at that, a female—of course Major General is going to make the bargain. Neither Whitney nor Major General wants Cheng to recognize that she’s a GhostWalker. He’ll take her apart if he finds out,” Joe said.
“No wonder Whitney didn’t tell the general about the virus. He figures we’ll rescue the woman and then she’ll haul ass back to Whitney as fast as she can go so she doesn’t die. If she doesn’t make it back and dies before she can get there, at least Cheng doesn’t have her. Whitney wins all the way around,” Mordichai said.
“Aside from what Bellisia thinks, Joe,” Gino said, “do you think we can trust that this woman isn’t working with Whitney and that’s why he wants us to go in after her? He could just let the virus kill her. There has to be more here than any of us are seeing.”
Joe sighed. “Nothing with Whitney is straightforward. Nevertheless, we can’t leave her in Cheng’s hands. This is a suicide mission as far as I can tell, so in spite of what Major General says about mandatory, this is volunteer basis only. If you do agree to go, you would have to leave in three days at 21:00 that evening.”
Gino knew if there weren’t enough volunteers, Joe would go. That meant he was going either way. He couldn’t let Joe go, still healing from the wound that nearly ended his life.
“Three days doesn’t give us very long to train,” Ezekiel pointed out.
“Right now, construction is huge in China, particularly in Shanghai. Apartments are going up for the elderly. Several American contractors are working with crews there and have been for a while. New workers move through there all the time. You’re going in as workers scattered among several different crews. Our equipment is being transported with the equipment needed for the construction project. You’ll have to leave when the next crews are changing out so there is no suspicion. This company is already established and they bring in new workers and equipment all the time,” Joe stated.
“How big a team do we need?” Ezekiel asked.
“It has to be small. Five-man team. If it goes to hell, less men to get out.”
“I’ll go,” Ezekiel said immediately. “This is Bellisia’s best friend. She talks about her all the time.”
“I’m in,” Gino said immediately.
“Count me in,” Draden Freeman volunteered.
“Not doin’ much in this next week,” Rubin said with a small shrug.
“Likewise,” Diego added, which wasn’t a shock to anyone. Rubin and Diego watched Ezekiel’s back whether he liked it or not. It probably had something to do with him looking after them when they were all on the streets.
“I had a hankerin’ to see China,” Mordichai objected.
“Me too,” Malichai added.
“Too late,” Ezekiel said. “We’ve got our five-man team.”
“Well shit,” Mordichai said. “That woman of Trap’s is still tryin’ to learn to cook and on her night, I swear the woman’s tryin’ to poison us all. I might pay one of you to stay home this trip and give me a break.”
“My woman’s going to hear what you have to say, Mordichai, and she’ll tie you up to the ceiling,” Trap threatened.
The others hooted because it was a very real possibility.
Joe waited for the laughter to fade. “Major General has given his permission to incorporate the women if you need them as backup or in any other capacity. Cayenne and Bellisia, obviously not Pepper, Wyatt, so don’t give me that glare, although she did try to pay me to ship you out.”
That brought smiles. Pepper was in her first trimester and already Wyatt was a wreck. Even with being a doctor, he was nervous, standing over her, ordering her around, walking with her three times a day, watching every bite of food that went into her mouth, making certain she was taking her prenatal vitamins and generally hovering. It wouldn’t have surprised Gino if Pepper had tried to bribe Joe to send Wyatt out on a mission.
“Was that Whitney’s idea—to send the women—or Major General’s?” Ezekiel asked.
Joe frowned. “Good question. If Whitney planted that seed, it would be best not to let them anywhere near Shanghai. If it is an ambush, they’d be right back in Whitney’s hands—or worse—Cheng’s.”
There was a small silence. No one was willing to risk their women, but on the other hand, Bellisia and Cayenne were both lethal and would be a huge asset if needed.
Ezekiel shook his head. “I don’t like it. Too convenient. Whitney wants them back. He’s not getting them. I know Bellisia would want to go to help Zara out, but until I know Zara isn’t working with Whitney to make that happen, I want Bellisia right here where she’s safe. Cayenne as well. Mordichai will just have to put up with their cooking.”
This time it was Ezekiel who waited for the laughter to fade. “We need intel on where she’s being held. Do we have any?”
“Whitney turned over all his intel on Cheng to Major General and he’s sent it to us. You should consult Bellisia as well to double-check it. She might remember more than she already gave me. She was actually there and might have a better understanding of where they might be holding Zara. She said the top floor, nearest the roof, was where they took prisoners they interrogated, so her best guess was that they would hold her there,” Joe said.
Ezekiel was all business. He nodded. He took having four of his colleagues, brothers really, entrusted to him very seriously. “What did she tell you about Zara?”
“She goes in without a weapon. She’s an industrial spy, not a government spy. She can’t take pain at all. Bellisia said if Zara hadn’t been so brainy, Whitney would have gotten rid of her a long time ago. He wants them all to be stoic. No matter how much he tried to condition her to pain, she couldn’t take it.”
Gino knew exactly what that shit meant. The woman was subjected to pain in order to gain a higher tolerance for it. That was Whitney’s fucked-up way of thinking. He’d like to put a cap in the bastard’s head. Torturing girls. Children. Experimenting on them because he found them in orphanages and considered them throwaways. Yeah, he wanted to go to Shanghai.
“What do we know about Cheng?” Ezekiel asked.
“Bernard Lee Cheng was born of an American mother, an actress, and a very ruthless businessman there in Shanghai. His mother was beautiful and his father powerful. Between the two, he had contacts in both countries and grew up to be very, very powerful, more so even than his father,” Joe said. “He inherited the business from his father and has built it beyond anyone’s imagining. There isn’t a secret anyone has in any government that he doesn’t eventually find out about.”
“And Bolan Zhu? What do we know about him?” Ezekiel persisted.
“Cheng’s right-hand man,” Joe said. “He’s a little murkier. Served in the military and acquired a certain reputation. He’s the enforcer for Cheng and scares the shit out of just about anyone he comes in contact with. His expertise is taking apart people, and he does it efficiently. There’s very little about his personal life. Like Cheng, he doesn’t have a permanent woman, but there have been many. None last more than a few weeks for either of them. Nothing is known about his parents. Nothing at all. His life started there in the military as Bolan Zhu, but his earlier childhood was wiped out.”
Joe looked around the room. “There’s nothing about this that’s good. Not one damn thing. I don’t like that Whitney called Major General personally. I don’t like that Major General suggested the women go along. I don’t like that we can’t get to you if things go to shit, and the number-one thing you can count on is things always go to shit.”
Ezekiel shrugged. “You keep everyone safe here and we’ll get the job done and bring her home.”
“Be prepared for a virus. Gino, you’re on the woman. You can find the capsule and hopefully get it out before it breaks open. If not, you’ll only have a couple of days to figure out the antidote. Whitney wasn’t generous enough to give us one,” Joe said. “If she’s working with Whitney and is any kind of a threat to us, Bellisia, Cayenne, Pepper or the children, kill her.”
Gino nodded, although there was a nasty taste in his mouth. He didn’t like killing women. It was a line he’d drawn, but sometimes, out of necessity, it had to be crossed. When that happened, it stayed with him. He could put away the others, but women haunted him. He remembered each of the few, the circumstances and the way they looked crumbling to the ground. He looked away from the others, but he nodded all the same.
No one could be allowed to be a threat to their family. The men in this room, their women and children and Wyatt’s grandmother, were family. They had one another and fought together and pooled resources to stay alive, carving a fortress out of the swamp in order to better defend themselves against anyone trying to harm them.
“You’ll go in with the contractor’s crew and once in Shanghai, you won’t have much time so orient yourselves immediately. For those going, you’ll do a night jump, HALO from a commercial charter plane, the company working in Shanghai uses. You’ll land on the roof of this building. You’ll have to watch for the series of water tanks so you’ll need to land north to south with the predicted winds.”
A high-altitude, low-opening jump—a HALO—at night was done often, but this would be a precision landing with no room for error, and if there was a guard on the roof … The room went silent. A jump like that might really be a suicide mission.
“What kind of security they have up there?” Gino asked.
“Cameras, no guard. That’s where Rubin is going to come in. You’ll have to jump first out of the plane, Rubin, and disrupt those cameras as you’re coming down.”
Rubin nodded, but Gino looked at Joe sharply. They had two men with the particular psychic ability to disrupt electrical equipment and Rubin was one of them. His brother Diego was the other. How had Joe known they’d volunteer? He’d known exactly who would go. Probably, he was counting on all of them volunteering. No one would leave another GhostWalker behind in enemy territory, especially one who had risked her life to save the rest of them. A woman. Damn Whitney to hell for using women.
“We know she’s being held on the top floor, but we don’t know the room. That floor will be heavily guarded with cameras everywhere. It will take both of you to take those cameras out while the others take down the guards. Gino, Draden, the two of you do your thing that you never explain to any of us and find where she is fast. Get her out of there.” Joe sighed and looked around the table at his men. “This is a non-sanctioned op. You can’t kill anyone. We take only less than lethal arms. In and out like ghosts.”
Ezekiel nodded. “We understand, Joe.”
“That being said, if you have no choice, if it’s them or you, kill them,” Joe said. “And get the hell out fast. Leave no trace if possible, so it’s thought to be an enemy of Cheng’s. He’ll know the GhostWalkers came for her, because Violet gave us up, but the government won’t.”
“We’ll get the job done quietly,” Ezekiel assured.
“You’ll need to carry a lot of gear on the jump because you’ll be using the powered paragliders to leave from the rooftop. Anyone who prays, now is the time to start. You’ll need favorable winds. With good winds, you should get close to thirty miles with the gliders. That should get you to this park, right here on the map. That will put you a quarter mile from the embassy. You get her there, and they have to help you, we’re golden. With any luck, you’re at the embassy before any authorities are notified with some bogus story Cheng comes up with.”
Powered paragliders were heavy. This was getting worse and worse. A small landing target with a series of water towers on it. A high rise, which meant winds. In the city. Gino shook his head and looked around him. The others were thinking the same thing he was and it wasn’t good. Their chances were looking worse every minute.
“How is her disappearance going to be explained as well as her exit from the country?” he asked.
“We’ve got that covered. She was very ill and went to the embassy for help. They flew her out of the country to get medical aid for her. Someone from the embassy will go to her hotel room and collect her things. Cheng will know who took her, but what’s he going to say to the authorities? They aren’t going to like him kidnapping an American professor who is famous in her own right. He can’t very will admit to that.”
Ezekiel nodded. “Everyone get some rest and be back here at 7:00 so we can get to work. We want to run this precisely. We’ll need the rest of you to help us have a mock-up ready of the building, rooftop and floor. Gino, she’ll be going out with you on the glider. If she’s in bad shape, and we’ll have to expect that with Zhu on board, you’re not going to have much time to prepare her for the escape. She may be unconscious. And it has to be said, it’s possible she’s already dead. If so, we take her body out of there.”
Gino shrugged. He was strong. Extremely strong, enhanced strong, and he’d started with that trait long before Whitney got creative. He could deal with the woman, unconscious, dead weight or not.
“If she’s alive, she may fight you,” Joe said. “Bellisia didn’t trust us at first, and Zara has no reason to either. She’ll have been in their hands three days by the time we can get there. In Zhu’s hands, three days is likely to be a lifetime, especially for someone who can’t take pain.”
“She’ll tell them what she knows,” Diego said, rubbing his hand along the barrel of his rifle. He carried the weapon just about everywhere he went, like a security blanket. “And they’ll stop working on her.” His tone was hopeful.
Gino knew it wouldn’t matter if the woman gave Zhu everything. He’d want to make certain there wasn’t more. The torture wouldn’t stop until she was dead.
“I don’t think she will,” Joe disagreed. “According to Bellisia, she might be terrified of pain, but she doesn’t break. Her best defense is ignorance. Her cover is solid because it’s the truth or as close to it as possible.” He looked to Ezekiel. “Stay, let’s go over this so you can look to see if there’s any holes in my plan.”
Ezekiel nodded. Gino studied the two men. All differences had been put aside for the mission. They were good. He walked out of the room, Draden pacing along beside him. Draden was considered the epitome of what a man should look like. He’d made his way through college and grad school on modeling. He’d been in high demand for some of the most high-end companies imaginable. The ladies loved him, calling out to him as he passed them on the street. Draden ran most nights, sometimes with Gino, but mostly alone. Whatever demons drove him, they were deep. Mostly, he kept to himself, even among the GhostWalkers, just as Gino did.
“This is a bad one,” Draden observed.
“They usually are.” Gino was noncommittal.
“She’s a beautiful woman. Has brains too,” Draden continued.
Gino paused and looked at him. “Spit it out.”
“Just saying you want me to take over if the job needs doin’, I will. Won’t like it, but I’ll live with it. You don’t sleep so good.”
Gino didn’t know how to feel about the offer, but Draden wasn’t going to have to do his job for him. He decided to be grateful. Brothers did that, noticed when something didn’t sit well and tried to help out, but Zara Hightower was his responsibility and he wasn’t shirking. Draden didn’t sleep much better than he did, if at all.
“Thanks, man, I appreciate the offer, but it’s mine to do if necessary.”
Draden nodded and peeled off, heading toward the road. He ran before he slept. Always. Sometimes miles. Sometimes all night. The man rarely slept and seemed like a machine. Gino shook his head and headed toward the house. He wanted to find his laptop and research Zara. There was something about her that caught at him.
He wasn’t like the others—well—maybe Wyatt, a little bit. He didn’t want a warrior woman. Bellisia and Cayenne were lethal. Pepper was as well, in her own right, but killing had a vicious backlash for her and was dangerous. She did it if she had to, but all of them were aware the consequences for her could include death so it was a last resort.
Gino knew if he had a woman, he wouldn’t want her anywhere near killing. He’d killed enough for both of them. He didn’t want his woman trying to stand in front of him like his parents and grandparents had done. He’d watched them be mowed down, one by one. It was never happening again. With the help of Ciro, he’d shaped himself into a killing machine. He was quiet and deadly. He never picked a fight. He faded into the background whenever possible, but he could take apart a man if needed and not look back. He didn’t need or want his woman to be anything like him. Listening to Joe and the others talk about Zara, it had occurred to him, just crept right into his mind, that she wasn’t anything at all like him.
Wyatt’s three little girls came running out of the house straight at him. All three. He didn’t know the first thing about kids. Hadn’t thought to find out about them either. Not in this lifetime, but these three little girls blew right past that notion and wormed their way into everyone’s affections—his included.
He crouched low as they got to him so they could fling their arms around him. Triplets. Hard to tell them apart unless you knew what you were looking for. Beautiful little girls with their dark, thick curls, skin like their mother and eyes like their father. They had been deemed mistakes and had been scheduled for termination. Pepper had gotten one out of their prison, and Wyatt and their team had rescued the other two—and Cayenne.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“We’re going to hide in the swamp and see if Daddy can find us,” Ginger, the spokesperson for the three, said.
“Did Pepper or Nonny give you permission?” he asked. “It’s late. Past your bedtime.” They were dressed in night clothes, which meant Pepper had put them to bed. They were little escape artists.
The triplets looked at one another. Gino shook his head, lifted all three of them up and stood. “You three. Ginger, you’re such a little ringleader.”
She grinned at him, completely unrepentant. “I know. Nonny says I keep everyone on their toes.”
“You’re not walking on your toes, Uncle Gino,” Cannelle pointed out.
Although extremely intelligent, the children were very literal. He kept a straight face. “No, you’re right. It’s a saying, remember, Pepper explained that concept to you?” He kept striding toward the house, picking up speed, not wanting them to realize he was taking them back inside before it was too late.
“How are we supposed to know when it’s a saying?” Thym protested, patting his face with her little hand.
That did something to him. He liked that her hand was so tiny, brushing over his rough shadow. She seemed intrigued with the dark sandpaper along his jaw, rubbing at it over and over. His heart melted just a little when he’d been so certain it was made of stone. It was the three little girls who had given him back some humanity.
Pepper burst out of the house, glaring at her little ones. “You do not get to take advantage of me throwing up in the bathroom, you little hooligans.”
They didn’t have to ask what a hooligan was. Pepper called the triplets that often, and the word had been explained. Gino set them on the porch just as Wyatt’s grandmother stepped outside. She smiled gently at the girls and seated herself in the rocking chair, and gestured, using her pipe, toward the three little rockers Wyatt had made for his girls.
“Girls, your mother wasn’t feelin’ well this evenin’, was she?” The tone was mild.
Gino’s stomach turned to knots. How did Nonny do that? She didn’t raise her voice, but just by the tone and words, you knew she was disappointed. No one ever wanted to disappoint Nonny—especially the triplets. Their little faces dropped as they all obediently sat in their appointed rockers.
“I wanted Daddy to come and find us,” Ginger said, her lower lip starting to quiver. “He works all the time now.”
Gino leaned one hip against the post. Pepper, Wyatt’s wife, was gorgeous. Not just gorgeous, that didn’t begin to describe her. She was exotic. Sexy. Every movement she made was sensual. She was enhanced that way, and sometimes just looking at her hurt. Right now, she looked beautiful but very tired. Her pregnancy appeared to be a rough one.
He wanted to put his arm around her and offer her a little sympathy like any brother might do for his sister, but one didn’t touch Pepper. There was something on her skin that could cause a man to need her. They were all very careful around her. Fortunately, her husband watched over her, and he came up behind Gino and went straight to his wife.
“Hey baby. Did they wear you out today?” He brushed gentle kisses over her mouth and then sank into a chair and pulled her down onto his lap. “You girls were good for Mommy while I was workin’?” he asked.
Ginger, Cannelle and Thym looked at one another and then shook their heads. Ginger looked down at her hands. “We snuck out of bed while Mommy was throwin’ up and were goin’ to hide in the swamp and make you find us,” she said. “We don’ like you gone so much.”
There was a small silence while Wyatt regarded his children. Gino went on into the house, giving Wyatt and his family privacy. The men were all building homes close, with Trap’s home the fortress to defend should they come under attack, but most of them were still using the Fontenot home as a barracks until the buildings were complete.
Gino went down the hall to his room. He didn’t have to share with anyone and he pulled off his boots immediately, grabbed his laptop and sank down onto the bed. There were hundreds, no thousands of entries about Zara Hightower. She’d been a child prodigy just as Trap had been. Gino wondered if she had the same problems as Trap. Trap had Asperger’s and missed a lot of social cues. Draden interpreted for Trap often, and Gino had found himself doing so as well. He studied Zara’s face. She was looking straight at the camera, something Trap wouldn’t do in a million years.
She was beautiful. He found an image of her in color. That hair of hers was the perfect mixture of red and gold. She wore it long, but usually in a tidy braid down her back. There were only two images of her with her hair outside that braid, and both times the wind was blowing and the sun was shining. The thick mass looked like spun silk gleaming in the sun’s rays, more red than gold, but a soft, barely there red.
Her eyes were very large, a slate blue framed with long lashes. Her mouth was generous, her teeth very straight. She had legs that went on forever and he knew he shouldn’t be looking that close—not at someone he might have to kill. He cursed and slammed the lid down on his laptop. What was he thinking? He didn’t look at women that way. He hadn’t for a long, long while. If he needed relief, he found it for a night and walked away.
The problem was those three little girls. Wyatt’s daughters. His wife. Cayenne and Trap. He never thought Trap would get married, but the man was crazy about Cayenne, couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off of her. They shared those soft, intimate looks. She made Trap smile when Gino had never known him to. Then there was Ezekiel with Bellisia. The two were inseparable. And Nonny, Wyatt’s grandmother. She was the glue that held them all together. She’d made a home for all of them, and Gino hadn’t had a home in a very long time.
Gino knew he wasn’t the kind of man to find the happily ever after, because what woman could put up with him? He wasn’t like the rest of them. He’d watched the others succumb, even Trap, to their women. When Cayenne wanted to join the men in a firefight, she did it. So did Bellisia. Pepper might be the guardian of the safe room, but she wasn’t in it. His woman would be. He had a coldness in him the others didn’t. Trap was antisocial, he could be dark and very dangerous, but he didn’t have that well inside him that turned to ice and allowed him to do ugly, vile things when needed. Wyatt was way dominant, but again, he didn’t turn to a cold, unnatural place when riled. Zeke was always interesting. He was the sweetest man on the planet, but he had a wealth of darkness shadowing him. He had been given that strand of big cat DNA just like the rest of them, so he was a hunter, but to his woman, he was beyond nice.
Gino leapt off the bed and paced across the room to stare out the window into the gathering night. Zara Hightower was physically beautiful the way Draden was beautiful. The kind of looks that were noticeable and turned heads everywhere they went. She would always garner attention, if not with her looks, then with her brains. Gino was a man to fade into the background and his wife wouldn’t be somewhere where a fuckin’ goon could grab her and throw her in an interrogation room. With her good looks, she should belong to man like Draden, one who matched her, but could look after her.
He touched the pane, looking up at the stars just beginning to show themselves. Zara was the type of woman a man might come to crave. To obsess over. If he were the wrong kind of man he might come to think she could be taken against her will. She shouldn’t be all over the Internet. He was tempted to go back and look to see how many stalkers she’d had over the years because he was certain it would be more than one.
He swore again and tore his shirt off, pulling it over his head with one hand. The bullet holes from when he was a child were prominent on his chest, but along with them were dozens of other scars. He had them and he’d earned every single one. He wasn’t pretty nor, by any means, handsome. He was scary and he knew it. He had cultivated that stillness, that coldness he’d been born with in order to survive. Enhancement had grown all traits, good or bad, and that coldness had spread, obliterating most of the good he had left. The things he wanted from a woman weren’t for the likes of a woman like Zara.
He was restless, edgy, moody. He needed to be sharp for this mission. Joe had called it. It was a suicide mission. Precision jumping onto the roof of a high rise with heavy gear? Avoiding water towers when the target was already so small? He knew he would go no matter what, even if the others changed their minds. He pulled the laptop to him, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He was one of those men becoming obsessed with Zara Hightower and he didn’t even know why.