Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
He knew he sounded belligerent when Rhianna put a hand on his arm. Her touch was very light, but it was a reminder of who he was talking to. He knew none of this mess was Mack’s fault. It just was—a mess. And this was Gideon.
“She doesn’t know most of us,” Kane said. “Paul’s idea can still work. We go to the bar. One or two at a time, not sitting at her station, not paying attention to her. Paul can sit at the bar with Mack and get close enough to her to examine her. Is that feasible, Paul?”
“That could be difficult. If she’s moving around and there are quite a few people close by, it wouldn’t be easy,” Paul said. “I’m not a miracle worker.”
“We could go during her slowest time,” Mack said. “I could engage her in conversation. Talk about my wife.”
“If you made one misstep with her, she would know. She’s looking for us now,” Javier pointed out.
“We’re GhostWalkers,” Mack said. “If we don’t want to be seen, no one sees us. We hide in plain sight.”
“But not from each other,” Jaimie reminded him. “Don’t be so arrogant. She’s a GhostWalker too. She may not remember, but she has all the instincts, doesn’t she?”
“I didn’t think so,” Javier said. “At least not at first. I followed her home from the bar a couple of times she was followed. I took care of it because she didn’t seem to notice. Now, I don’t know. Her lungs are shit. That’s for real. She couldn’t outrun anyone if she tried to. I don’t know how she is at self-defense, because I’ve never seen her in action.”
“She seems like a decent person,” Ethan said.
“You know I don’t like being around many people outside of”—Javier circled the group with his finger—“but Rory can be included in those I’m fond of now. She’s genuinely a good person. I spent a couple of weeks watching her before Gideon ever approached her. I didn’t want her hurting Gideon. I like her, and that’s saying something.”
“I knew Rory as Laurel when we were children growing up,” Rose volunteered. “Whitney despised her because she had trouble breathing. She had an amazing memory, and she was good with languages. She had skills when it came to weapons and hand-to-hand combat. That didn’t matter, because she didn’t have what Whitney called ‘staying power.’ He wanted her to run for hours. She couldn’t run. And she couldn’t hit the times he demanded of her. He made them impossible. The more she failed, the worse her punishments were.”
“What does that mean?” Ethan asked.
“He would make it so she really couldn’t breathe. He’d force her to wear a mask over her mouth and nose, and then send her out to run in the heat. He’d have two of his soldiers chase her. They weren’t kidding around either.”
“Meaning?” Marc Lands asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“They would kill her if they could.”
The team members looked at one another with horror on their faces. “How old was she?”
Rose shrugged. “He started that kind of thing with a few of the girls when they were very young. Around seven or eight. The ones he didn’t like and thought were expendable. He believed she was useless and wanted to teach us all a lesson. None of us knew what that lesson was supposed to be.”
“But she survived,” Mack said.
Rose nodded. “She always came back. The soldiers didn’t. It was always hours later.”
“Did you ever ask her how she did it?” Kane asked. His hand slid up to Rose’s neck. He cradled his son’s little bottom in the crook of his other arm. Sebastian was listening intently, as if he understood every word being said.
Rose shook her head. “We were careful not to ask those kinds of questions of each other. We didn’t want Whitney to know any of our psychic abilities. By the time we were five, we understood he would use anything against us. We even tried to pretend we weren’t close, because he would use friendships against us. He tricked us all the time. We were young and wanted to believe him.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“He rotated girls in and out of the facilities.” She rested her head against Kane’s arm. “I was about ten when Whitney gave us all puppies to take care of. Each of us got one. We were so happy. We had the responsibility of looking after them and training them ourselves. Laurel and a couple of the other girls were younger, but they still took care of their puppies. When the dogs were a year old, he took us all to the arena. He had fighting dogs brought in, and one by one, he put our puppies in with them. In front of us they were killed. He blamed us and told us we didn’t prepare them. We didn’t teach them survival skills.”