“If they make a try for you?” she echoed. “You’re setting yourself up as bait.”
He nodded. “I told you, vacations aren’t my thing. If Miss Crystal is being held somewhere, or is dead, I want to know. I’m not letting her suffer, thinking no one is looking for her. Maybe if enough people ask, they’ll have to produce her.”
“I don’t know if I like this plan.”
“I’m good in the water, babe. You just think about trying to fix my leg. In the meantime, we have to eat breakfast because I’m starving, and then we’re going to see that movie you’ve been wanting to see. And tonight, we’re on the roof again. I like being on the roof.”
Mostly, he was going to take the day to sort through everything Burnell, Jay and Dozer had told him. He was also going to send out for more information on everyone staying at the bed-and-breakfast. In the back of his head, the whisper of conspiracy was getting louder.
5
Malichai rolled over and stared up at the stars. Amaryllis lay beside him on a blanket. The roof was flat and closed in on all four sides by a low redwood planter filled with green, lacy plants. The flat space was accessed through the attic. The roof jutted out over the porch at the front of the building. Few knew that one could hide right there in plain sight and look out over the beach and the rolling waves. The view was incredible.
“I’ve never smiled so much in my life,” he confessed, knowing he was probably giving away too much, but he didn’t care if he left himself vulnerable. He liked Amaryllis—a hell of a lot. He needed to quit dancing around the issue and just come out and tell her he was very serious and wanted her to go home with him when he went.
Doing the dishes, listening to her exchange banter with Jacy and Marie and including him in their circle as they teased one another made him feel part of her. He knew he was getting the genuine Amaryllis, just as he was giving her the real Malichai.
“You don’t smile very often?” She turned her head to look at him.
He kept looking at the stars, knowing he shouldn’t give her any more, but he couldn’t stop himself. For him, this was real. This woman. His chance. The more he was in her company, the more he was certain she was the one.
“I’m not a man given to smiles, mostly I save them for Wyatt’s little girls and Nonny.”
“That’s so crazy.” She rubbed the pad of her finger over his lips. “You have a beautiful smile. I noticed the first time I ever saw you laugh. Why wouldn’t you want to smile?”
He resisted pulling her finger into his mouth. “I guess I didn’t have a lot to smile about after my drug-addicted mother thought that renting out her little sons to men for sex for drug money was a good idea.”
“Oh my God.” Amaryllis sat up straight, looking horrified. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “Seriously? She seriously did that? Malichai.”
“I have an older brother. Ezekiel. He’s not all that much older, but he took Mordichai and me and hit the streets with us. We learned to steal food, pick pockets, do all kinds of very bad things.” He flashed a small grin at her. “Ezekiel used his fists to protect us and the territory we claimed. Eventually, he taught us to fight and then made us get schooling. He found two other boys that knew nothing about the streets and brought them in. They’re still with us.”
She lay back down, blinking up at the stars. He could see the little teardrops that looked almost like diamonds on the ends of her lashes.
“That’s just horrible. I don’t know what I thought—or hoped. Maybe that all mothers were like Marie. She’d do anything for Jacy. She would have done anything for her husband. I think he felt the same, yet he died. Life sometimes doesn’t make any sense to me.”
He rolled to his side, propped himself up on his elbow and reached across her to curl his fingers around the nape of her neck and sweep his thumb from her high cheekbone to the corner of her mouth.
“Amaryllis, the last thing I wanted to do was make you sad. I remember being scared, but after a while, I wasn’t scared anymore. I got strong. I learned survival skills. Those skills allow me to do the work I do. I can save other men, good men like Marie’s husband, men who belong home with people who love them. Their wives. Their husbands. Their children. What those lessons taught me so long ago gives me the skills I need now.”
He watched her throat work as she swallowed, nodding as she did so. “Your injury isn’t a small one, Malichai. You hide it very well, but I could see when you were standing too long, like when you did dishes, that it really bothers you. Now, I’ve seen it and I know it’s bad. Please don’t tell me it’s all right, because I know that it isn’t. What really happened to you?”
“I seem to be doing all the talking, honey, and I’m not used to it.” He bunched her hair in his fist and ran thick strands through his fingers. She remained silent, just looking at him with those sapphire eyes that seemed to look right through him.
“I told you, we were getting some very courageous soldiers off a mountain. We’d destroyed most of the enemy’s weapons, the ones capable of taking out helicopters, or at least we thought we did. As we were trying to load the wounded, we came under fire. More fighters had arrived, and they were manning a few of the guns that hadn’t been destroyed. The hell they unloaded on us was murderous. We were exposed and they had enough ammunition to take down the mountain, or at least it felt that way. It was bad. It happens all the time.”
Malichai rolled back over and stared up at the stars again. They were beautiful. Bright. A field of diamonds overhead. He needed that kind of beauty in the world after witnessing so much ugliness. To his shock, she slipped her hand into his, threading her fingers through his as if she were weaving them together, and then she leaned into him, her soft body nearly blanketing his. She didn’t speak, she just waited.
He felt like a fool talking about it. He didn’t want to. He was no hero and he knew it would come off to her that way. Or bragging. He wasn’t bragging. He didn’t want to even think about it. He had no choice. In order for the wounded to be brought to the helicopter rendezvous safely, he’d had to clear those bunkers and get rid of the weapons.
“I charged straight into the gunfire.” He’d used his enhanced speed, going low and then high. “The bombardment of gunfire was horrendous, never stopping, and I felt bullets whipping around me, some so close they ripped my clothing and in a few cases skin.”
He touched his arm without thinking. “Sometimes I can still hear that sound. It was like continuous thunder rolling right over top of me. Worse.” He shook his head. “It was bad.”
“Keep going.”
If anyone else had asked him, he would have told them to go to hell. “I tossed grenade after grenade into the bunker while the enemy continued to fire at me until the grenades exploded. Some of the enemy must have split up, spread out and went to the other bunkers we thought we’d destroyed in the middle of the night. Or they brought weapons and ammunition with them. Who knows? In any case, they began firing at me too.”
She sat up and turned around to face him, tucking her legs tailor-fashion, but still holding his hand. Her eyes shone like twin jewels, never leaving his face.
“The smell of blood and death is difficult to get out of one’s nose. The images of blood and shrapnel and what’s done to a human being are equally as bad to purge. I had to go into that mess because the firepower coming from the second bunker was a steady stream. I used the still-intact mortar gun and immediately engaged the enemy. I was lucky because Rubin was there with his rifle and he’s damn good. He picked off a couple of them.”
He fell silent, rubbing his thigh without thinking.
“Malichai?” She said his name gently. “Tell me what happened.”
He shrugged. “Everything went quiet and I stepped out to check the bunkers, to make certain they were clear so the wounded could be loaded into the helicopter.” He shook his head, remembering the silence. The smell of gun
powder, of blood. Even of death. The wind was blowing, he remembered it on his face.
He almost hadn’t heard the sound of the machine gun as it spat out angry bullets, all with his name on them. “I don’t know how many times I was hit, but it felt like a dozen, maybe more. All up and down my leg, from my calf to my thigh. I knew I was a dead man. I went to the ground. The bones in my leg were shattered. There was so much blood. I had field dressings with me, and I slapped them on as fast as I could in order to try to stop the bleeding.”
He couldn’t tell her what those field dressings were or that second-generation Zenith had saved his life.
“The bone was broken. Shattered. In so many places.”
She knew. There was no hiding it from her, not after she had used her ability of psychic healing. She hadn’t yet learned to control it, but she definitely had the power.
“Yeah, it wasn’t the best of news for me. I was down, but the field dressings helped stop the bleeding and Rubin was taking out anything that moved. He kept shooting while I dragged myself across the distance to the bunker and tossed grenades in until my arm didn’t want to work anymore.”
He didn’t tell her the ground was nothing but rock covered in snow and bullets hit all around him. Or that it was the strength in his arms that allowed him to drag himself, leaving a trail of blood behind him, basically pointing to his position, even though the clothes he wore and his special enhancements would have made him impossible to see.
Amaryllis was horrified. “You attacked them, even as wounded as you were?”
“I didn’t think I had a whole hell of a lot to lose. The way I was bleeding, I was a dead man anyway. I had to give the helicopter a chance to take those boys home.” To him, the logic made sense. “In any case, Rubin was picking them off, so I just hucked a few grenades and it was almost over. I still had to make it back to the helicopter and it seemed a million miles away. Rubin came after me, rifle slung over his shoulder. He hauled my butt up the side of that mountain to the clearing, and I’m a heavy man.”
She was silent for a very long time. Staring at him. Those eyes drifting over his face and down his chest, then back up to his face. “That’s incredible, Malichai. What you did, what both of you did, was incredible.”
“One of the other soldiers had done something similar before me. He was wounded, but he’d gotten the others undercover and kept them going until help arrived. By that, I mean for days, under heavy fire.”
“And you’re going back to that?” She looked appalled at the idea.
He reached up and found her hair again, that silken mass that appealed to him, the way her eyes and mouth did. He could look at her face for the rest of his life.
“I’m a soldier, honey. Of course I’m going back.”
“You’re not.” She started to protest and then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m arguing with you. I think you’re extraordinary, not just because of the rescue, but the way you are with Jacy, with everyone. You always show respect to everyone. You’re quiet about it and never look for someone to notice what you do. You’re just so ready to pitch in and help out. I watched you, afraid you had another motive, but you’re genuine.”
“Babe. Come on,” he said gently. He curled his palm around the nape of her neck. “You’re my other motive. Would I help Marie out without you being around? Absolutely, I would, but I want you to see that guy, the one willing to help his woman out no matter what the problem is. I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never met anyone like you. I never thought I’d meet a woman like you.”
Amaryllis didn’t want him to go any further. He was so amazing. So extraordinary. He looked at her as if she was. He did so much for everyone around him. Complete strangers. Men he knew nothing about. He sacrificed himself. His body. His life. He risked everything. In spite of the worst childhood, he still managed to be connected to people in a positive way.
What was she? An assassin. A woman who worked alone. She’d trained alone. Grown up alone, even among the other girls. They’d been separated and kept that way for the most part. Until Marie and Jacy, she had no close bonds. When she planned her escape, she’d planned it alone. She hadn’t gone back to ensure the other girls had gotten away. She hadn’t taken the gunfire to make certain the other women had the time to get out. She’d known all along she’d convince only two of them to come with her. Once out of the compound, the plan was to separate and make a run for freedom. Each would be on her own.
She hadn’t even told them about her plan to escape until she had her chance, because she didn’t fully trust anyone. When the time came, she’d laid it out for them, knowing she was risking someone telling Whitney or, worse, Owen. She’d reasoned—and still believed—that had she told them earlier, the two who wanted to curry favor with Whitney would have told him immediately. One would have been indecisive and delayed any escape while the other two would have come with her. She’d studied them all carefully before she’d made her choices.
She closed her eyes, more ashamed than ever. She knew what she was. She knew the DNA Whitney had spliced into her. She had ruthless traits. He’d created her to be utterly ruthless until she was in a family unit and then she was utterly loyal to those she considered family. She wasn’t worthy of a man like Malichai, who sacrificed everything for his fellow man.
She wanted him with every breath she took. She’d never been so attracted. She didn’t see other men the way she saw him and when he told her the way he’d gotten hurt in that matter-of-fact way, everything feminine in her responded. She knew she could be loyal to him—that she would be. She also knew she wouldn’t do that to him. He needed someone special . . .
“Stop shaking your head.” Malichai regarded Amaryllis with a small smile, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of thick silky hair behind her ear. He loved her hair. “You’re an amazing woman, although I can see you don’t think so. And we have a lot more in common than you think.”
“I don’t understand what’s so special about me.” She pulled back slightly.
He held on to her. “You talk about me helping out Marie and Jacy. You give so much every single day and you don’t have to. You could work your eight hours and leave her. Instead, you take as much off her plate as you can manage. That’s extraordinary, Amaryllis. You’re kind and compassionate and you know what kind of mother you want to be.”
Amaryllis started to protest, but he put a finger to her mouth. “Honey, listen to me. I know I live in Louisiana and you probably get hit on every time a single man comes to the B and B, but I’m not talking a two-week fling here. I don’t have flings. I don’t even have one-night stands. I’m going to be honest, and you’re not going to like it much, but if I want sex, I pick up a woman in a bar, we fuck and then we part ways. I don’t go out on dates and I don’t think about the women I pick up ever again. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell you what they look like. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.”
“You’re telling me this, why?”
“Because I could close my eyes right now and describe every detail of your face and body. The way you move. The way you laugh. I could tell you what kinds of things you like, what you don’t like.”
“No you can’t.”
He smiled again, because he could see it on her face that she was so certain. “You’re a planner. You love Marie and Jacy and regard them as family. You like to cook but love to bake. You like old movies, mostly romantic ones, but prefer action if they have romance in them. Your favorite thing to do is read—again, romance. See the theme here?” His smile widened to a grin. “You get annoyed by pushy people, but you handle it. Love the beach and swimming in the ocean. You’re fast too in the water. You like to look at the stars and you know all the constellations. Every single thing I like, you like. Mostly, you like me.”
She couldn’t help but laugh, and he wanted her to. He was revealing a lot about his own feelings t
oward her.
“I pay attention to detail because you count. You matter.”
“How would you know all that so soon after we met?”
She was regarding him with suspicion again, and he didn’t blame her. It was too fast. He was acting out of character, telling her things he’d never tell anyone, skating along the lines of saying too much when he was classified. He’d kept it simple, but she could piece where the rescue had taken place, maybe even when. She was intelligent. Still, he wanted this woman for his own. He questioned whether or not she was a GhostWalker with the ability to shield her energy, but he knew she couldn’t possibly be there to hurt him. Whitney would never put one of his women undercover for over a year on the off chance that he would pick that particular bed-and-breakfast for his vacation.
Did it matter to him if she was enhanced? If she was one of Whitney’s experiments? No. Every team member had married a woman enhanced by Whitney. He liked to pair them, and Malichai knew that every time he inhaled Amaryllis into his lungs, he was a little more lost. Her intoxicating scent wasn’t what had him tied up in knots. That was all Amaryllis’s personality. Her character.
“You can’t know, Malichai. Not this fast. There are things about me you don’t know, things that aren’t so great.”
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Everyone has traits both good and bad. I do. You can’t know that I’m the one, honey, because you’re younger and haven’t been all over the world. You haven’t met what feels like a million women and none intrigued you. Amaryllis, I don’t have reactions to women like I have to you. I look at you and want you with every cell in my body. I think about you every minute. I was having nightmares, now I have erotic dreams.”
“They’ll go away.” Even as she denied it, he could see her neck and face flush with color. Her breathing turned a little ragged. Her breasts rose up and down with each labored breath. Even her nipples were peaked into two tight little buds. The night air wasn’t that cold.