“Would you find someone for me, Zeke?”
He dropped his hand to his hip but didn’t rub. He just took a deep breath. “His name is Jerry Lannis. Kid took a hit for his team in Afghanistan. Lost an arm and a leg. Rubin helped him out, kept him alive, and he was flown to Germany. Can you find out where he is now and how he’s doing?”
He should have done that. Followed up on the kid, maybe gone to see him. How many kids had there been? They’d rescued so many. Brought them home to their loved ones just like this, shattered. He thought because they had loved ones they’d be just fine, but he hadn’t considered the cost to their pride. Their manhood. Shit. He pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes and shook his head.
“I don’t know, Zeke. I don’t know if I can face her.”
“Do you think she’ll think less of you?”
“I think less of me. Not other soldiers. I look at them and admire their courage. But when I think about facing her, I think about what I’m bringing to the table for her, what I’m offering her.”
“You’re still the same man.”
“Minus a leg.” He knew he sounded like he was whining, and it was the last thing he wanted to do, but hell, it was Amaryllis. “I know what you’re saying, Zeke.” He rubbed his pounding head. He was so damned tired. He just wanted to crawl under the covers and end the entire conversation, wake up and find out it was all a really bad nightmare. “Can you get Nonny for me?”
Ezekiel nodded. “Will do.”
Nonny came into the room smelling of sage and lavender, the way she did in the swamp. She looked the same, beautiful and old and wise, never changing, always to be counted on. He wanted to cry the moment he saw her, and yet at the same time, she gave him tremendous courage. She came right to the side of the bed and took his hand, leaning down to brush his cheek with her thin, dry lips.
“Be strong, son. You’ll need every bit of courage I know you have, to get you and your girl through this, but you’ll do fine because of who you are.” She squeezed his hand.
Her skin felt paper-thin, but she had strength. She took the little stool Ezekiel had brought in close to the bed, and Zeke sank into the chair across the room. Malichai knew his brother was still in protection mode just by the fact that he stayed in the room. He was in the shadows, staying still and quiet, but he was there, just in case.
“Thanks for coming, Nonny. I know how much you love the swamp and the little girls.”
She flashed him a smile. “Mostly miss my pipe. No place out here I can just light up without someone saying it isn’t healthy.”
“That’s true,” he agreed.
“But I’ve got you and Trap’s little twins, and I got to fly in Trap’s jet. Never saw anything like that before. Almost worth giving up the house just to live in that thing.”
He had to smile. Nonny would never give up the home her grandsons had built for her. She loved the swamp. It was a huge sacrifice for her to come to see him, but she’d never admit it.
“You’ve met Amaryllis.”
Nonny nodded. “A wonderful girl and very devoted to you. She’s a stayer. She’s going to be there through the lean times, Malichai, that’s the kind of girl she is. Like Zara and Pepper. Like Cayenne and Bellisia. She’ll stay with you and make a home with you the way I did with my Berengere.” There was love in her voice when she mentioned the name of her husband. “She’s a good woman, but then you boys tend to find you the good ones.”
“Don’t like thinking about her having to deal with this,” he said gruffly and tried glancing down, but couldn’t quite make himself do it.
Nonny’s fingers tightened around his. “If she lost her leg, Malichai, would you stay with her and deal with it? Would you think she was less than who she is?”
“No, but that’s different.”
“Why?”
“I’m a man. I’m supposed to protect her. Have two legs to support her and keep bastards like Whitney from coming at her.”
“What about if she had to have a hysterectomy or she gets breast cancer? She had to have her breasts removed. Does that make her less than a woman in your eyes?”
“Hell no.” He had a visceral reaction to that. He would never want Amaryllis to think he wouldn’t want her because she had to have a breast removed or she had to have a hysterectomy and couldn’t have children. “Amaryllis is important to me, not because of all those things, but because of who she is.” And he meant it. She wasn’t her breasts or her womb. He got Nonny’s point. He couldn’t help how he felt, no matter how sexist it was or how ridiculous, and he knew it was. It was a gut reaction. Maybe others didn’t have it, but he did.
“Malichai, you’re going to have times when you’ll be depressed and you’re going to want to send Amaryllis away, but you have to fight those inclinations. This can tear your relationship apart or strengthen the two of you until you’re unbeatable. She’ll stand with you. I can guarantee you that she will. You have to let her because if you do, the two of you will have something so special all the way to the end of your days.”
He believed her because Nonny would know. She had a gift. If she said Amaryllis would give that to him, and he to her, it would be so. He just had to overcome this problem he had, this idea that he was inferior because he didn’t have a leg. He tried again to look and he just couldn’t quite make himself do it, but his hand slid from his hip to his thigh. Down just a little farther. His heart went crazy. There wasn’t much there. Even enough left for a prosthesis? How much of a stub did one need? Because they needed something.
“Take a breath, Malichai,” Ezekiel’s voice came out of the shadows. Steady. Reasonable. Not in the least upset. He was breathing in and out. Malichai followed because he always followed his brother wherever he led.
The sound of the machine he was hooked to stabilized. Went back to a regular rhythm. He glanced at Nonny, a little ashamed. She gave him her familiar grin. That helped to steady him as well.
“Are you ready to see your girl? She’s been very anxious to see you. She has something she wants to talk to you about and she says it’s very important.”
Malichai knew he couldn’t continue to put Amaryllis off. He didn’t want her hurt. The doctors would be coming in soon and he needed to see her alone. He had to “read” her. To make certain for himself that she wanted to stay with him and go through the long process he knew it was going to be for recovery.
“I’m ready.” He wasn’t. He looked at his brother and saw Ezekiel’s quick look at him. If anyone knew him, it was Zeke. Ezekiel knew he’d just lied to Nonny. That probably earned him a place in hell.
Nonny took him at his word and went to the door to call Amaryllis in. Then she was there, his woman, smelling the way she always did, a breath of fresh air in the midst of the hospital smells. She looked beautiful, but again, he could see that she’d been in tears. She smiled at him, and came straight to him, leaning down to brush several kisses across his lips.
“You scared me, Malichai. You really did,” she said softly.
“Not any more than you scared me, going after Callendine, Amaryllis,” he said. “Were you able to get him?”
“Absolutely. He died right there in the parking garage. Every one of them was taken down. Including Tania and Tommy Leven. They were in on it too. Bellisia caught up with them making out in the parking garage after coming out of the convention center with Salsberry. Apparently Tania is Tommy’s wife, not his sister. She contacted Linda online because Linda and her sisters volunteer for nearly all the various conventions and she figured they would know just about everything about the buildings, including how to get in and out of them fast.”
“And Linda’s gay,” Ezekiel said. “And fell for it.”
Amaryllis nodded. “Yes. She’s very upset that she did. The military police were able to collect tons of evidence. I think they were happy as well, other than they couldn�
�t really explain the strange poisons in the men who died.”
“Wouldn’t worry about it,” Ezekiel said. “Someone higher up will bury the entire thing.”
“I hope they’ll at least get to the aide who sanctioned them,” Amaryllis said. “And the vice president.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Ezekiel said. “We all know that, but the president’s been warned.”
“Do you think he knew about this?” Malichai asked.
“No, I don’t believe he did. I think he was honestly outraged,” Ezekiel said. “Joe flew to Washington along with Major General to speak with him, and Joe has a way of knowing who is lying and who’s telling the truth. He believed the president, and that’s good enough for me.”
Malichai circled Amaryllis’s waist with his arm. She was on the side where his leg was gone, and he didn’t like that. He didn’t want her looking, yet at the same time, she needed to see what she’d be dealing with for the rest of her life if she stayed with him. “Babe, I want you to know, if you want out, now’s the time to say so, no hard feelings, just walk away and I’m okay with it.” He forced himself to make the offer.
There was a long silence. She didn’t respond. He could hear the sound of the machines beeping and coughing as they did their jobs, spitting out information to the room and the nurses down the hall. He had no choice but to look up at her. Amaryllis looked down at him with her amazing blue eyes. She searched his face for a long time.
“Do you really think I’d leave you, Malichai? Do you think I’m that shallow? I love you. Absolutely love you and I’d do anything for you. In fact, now that you’ve brought the subject up, I’ve had . . . no . . . we’ve had an offer. Dr. Whitney called me a few nights ago and had a long talk with me about some research and work he’s been doing lately. I followed it up by looking into the things he was saying, and everything checked out.”
Ezekiel stood up and came around to the other side of the bed. “Amaryllis, you can’t trust a thing Whitney says. He’s very self-serving.”
“Yes, I know that. I know that’s true, other than when it comes to his GhostWalker program. He wants that to be successful. Any mistakes he makes when it comes to a GhostWalker preys on him. He’s OCD about it and can’t seem to let it go. I believed everything he said to me, although I’m certain he was twisting some facts to suit him.”
Malichai didn’t like the fact that Whitney knew how to get in touch with her, but there was no hiding the Owen deaths, or the military investigations or the bomb threats. Amaryllis was involved with the bed-and-breakfast. She was surrounded by GhostWalkers and Whitney would see that, but he also would know how to find her.
“This isn’t on him. He didn’t have anything to do with second-generation Zenith or my reaction to it,” Malichai said. “If that’s even the problem.”
“Trap says that’s it,” Ezekiel said. “He’s been working on it when he’s not been helping Cayenne with the twins. He says the problem appears to be with your bones and the DNA in them. So Amaryllis would have a similar problem using second-generation Zenith. The first time you used it just set you up for the fall. He can explain the entire sequencing thing to you and how it happened, because Trap loves that kind of thing, but I’d prefer not to go there.”
Malichai didn’t care one way or the other as long as it stopped right there. “Is it going to continue throughout my body?”
“From what he says, no. They stopped it climbing up your leg. It was aggressive because you had so many bullet holes and used five patches. That was a lot of the Zenith, and the exposure was all the way up the bone. The bone just disintegrated. Believe me, brother, Rubin examined every single bone in your body to ensure there wasn’t a problem anywhere else.”
That was a huge relief. Malichai had worried that eventually whatever was eating his bones was going to continue right through his body like a cancer.
“Why didn’t you tell me Whitney had called you, Amaryllis?” Ezekiel asked.
As head of the family, he was used to making decisions or at least being consulted. As one of the GhostWalkers’ commanding officers, he was in a position of leadership.
Amaryllis shrugged. “Before I said anything to anyone about Whitney’s proposal, I wanted to see if it had any merit. I lived in his compound for years. I grew up there. I watched him. I know him fairly well. This seemed like it could be the truth, but I didn’t want to give Malichai and the rest of you false hope.”
Malichai immediately noticed that she had distanced herself from them. It wasn’t Malichai and her. Or the GhostWalkers and her. It was Malichai and the GhostWalkers without her. He didn’t like it, but this time he managed to control his heart rate and kept the rhythm steady.
“There’s a little salamander that lives in water, called the axolotl, with the largest genome ever fully sequenced. Universities are very interested in this particular salamander. In fact, it’s becoming very popular because it has the ability to grow any limb back, including eyes. They can regenerate spinal cords, any limb you cut off, even parts of the brain, but most salamanders can do that.”
Malichai had a feeling he knew where this was going. He glanced at his brother. Another Whitney experiment. Whitney was always a step ahead of science because he was willing to step on the toes of others in their fields and also to try things before they had been tested to see if they were safe. What would Malichai be willing to do for another leg? His own leg? Would he be willing to try an untested method? An unexperimented one? A part of him didn’t want Amaryllis to go any further. He was tired and he could barely keep his eyes open. His nonexistent leg throbbed and burned and itched. He couldn’t look down at it. He didn’t want her to. He hadn’t yet gotten to the point of acceptance. She couldn’t offer him a way out and expect that he wouldn’t take it.
“He says that the axolotls use stem cells to regenerate and he’s completed the sequencing of the genome. He claims he has unlocked a method to signal the pathway between genes and activate the ability to regenerate the genetic material and ultimately tissue. In other words, he can get Malichai to regrow his leg using some drug or gene-editing tool such as the one he already used on him. He would turn all of this technology over to Lily if Malichai would be willing to be the first to be experimented on.”
Ezekiel shook his head. “You know better than that, both of you. Whitney is a genius and he’s further ahead in gene-splicing and gene sequencing than just about anyone on the planet, I’m not arguing with that. He steals from other researchers and steps on them to get ahead and never feels bad about it. We know that because he used Zara to steal from researchers and she was very good at it. I’ve certainly heard of the axolotl salamander. I believe Trap keeps some in his laboratory there at his house. He says they can regenerate new limbs in three weeks without scarring. He believes they’ll be the ones to aid humans in the future, but Whitney? Letting him back into your life for any reason? No way. That’s disaster. Trusting him? It isn’t going to happen, Malichai.”
It was his leg. His body. Malichai wanted to shout that at his brother, but he knew he would sound like a child. This was his first day and he had to take a breath and really think things through. Ezekiel was right. Any bargain with Whitney was always a steep one. He had a price and sometimes that cost was hidden, but it was there, and you had to figure it out. He was willing to let Whitney put any kind of animal or insect DNA in him if that was the cost, ramp up his testosterone or give him silk armor, whatever it took to grow back his own leg. That was his choice, and no one had a say in that but him.
“What else did he say?” Malichai asked, ignoring his brother’s outburst because Whitney would have said more than what Amaryllis was giving him.
“It doesn’t matter because you aren’t doing it,” Ezekiel snapped.
Malichai had been looking at Amaryllis, not his brother, and there was something that came and went on her face very fast. One moment t
here, the next gone, but he caught it. Yeah. Whitney had given her a price.
“Baby,” he said softly. “Tell me what he said to you.”
Just his tone alone kept Ezekiel silent.
She shrugged. “He said I had to come back.” She sounded nonchalant, as if it wasn’t the biggest sacrifice in the world. As if she hadn’t planned her escape so carefully to get out. “He wants to study how I can heal others in exchange for you regenerating your own limb.” She knew if Whitney got his hands on her again, there would be no way out for her. He would put her in his breeding program and her life would be hell. She would do that—for him. Give up her life in order for him to have a leg.
Malichai felt anger welling up. That was so Whitney. He’d challenged Amaryllis, dared her to show him whether or not she loved Malichai enough to save his leg by returning to him.
He was silent, counting to a hundred slowly, not wanting to sound like Ezekiel, a dictator, not wanting to tell Amaryllis what she could or couldn’t do. That wasn’t the right way, not with her, not with anyone, but especially not with her. He lay back and closed his eyes, so tired he wasn’t certain he could ever open them again, but he kept his arm around her. Needing her. Needing the closeness. The connection.
“He doesn’t know us, does he? He doesn’t know how much I love you or how much I need you. Or you me. I’d never give you up for a leg. For any body part. You wouldn’t trade me either.” He poured absolute belief into his voice. “The truth is, Amaryllis, I’m a GhostWalker. My training alone is worth millions of dollars to the government. They aren’t going to let a little thing like my leg being amputated stop me from deploying when they need me. I’m going to have the best prosthesis available, most likely the most futuristic one, if Whitney hasn’t already given Trap or Lily his research on this salamander. It doesn’t matter to us what they do or how they do it. Crawl up on the bed with me and lie down. I just need you close.”