Lightning Game (GhostWalkers #17) -Christine Feehan Page 0,86

They don’t have wings or webbing, but they do have artificial help.

Why doesn’t it get caught in the branches of the trees? Diego asked. That would make them larger and bulkier.

They have to train precisely to retract before they hit the branches, Rubin guessed. They moved with such blurring speed. We can’t underestimate them for a minute. Our advantage is going to be that they’ll underestimate us.

So far, I hadn’t noticed that we have too many advantages, Diego said. And we’re on our home turf.

Rubin had to agree with him there. The fact that they hadn’t realized there was an entire team waiting to take Jonquille from them in their own forest, even with the great horned owl watching for them, was humbling. They were so sure of themselves in the woods, and that could have cost Jonquille dearly. Even if they lost her temporarily, they would get her back. He’d call in their team and find a way to track her. He was tenacious, if nothing else. She had to know he’d be coming for her.

Did you bring a tracker with you?

I always do, why? Diego asked.

Just in case, Rubin said. I want to be ready for anything.

We’re going to get her back.

Yeah. I know. But Rubin wasn’t so certain.

Have you located his partner? Diego asked.

No, but he has to be close. This one was no doubt lead. The second one is probably coming up behind him by a mile or so. The good news is, we know the number of men they have in their unit. They’re losing them fast.

From his vantage point in the oak, Rubin looked at the surrounding trees. The oak was the largest and sturdiest of those growing in that particular region. The forest was particularly thick with spruce and oak. The section hadn’t been logged in decades, and many of the original trees were still intact.

The two assassins were following Rubin and Diego to kill them. They didn’t appear to know anything about either man. They hadn’t expected them to be with Jonquille. They didn’t expect either man to turn back on them and hunt them. The squirrel men were moving fast, clearly believing themselves superior to their adversaries. Would the second assassin take the line of least resistance and use the same tree as the first one? Rubin would have boxed Diego’s ears for making a mistake like that, but it was possible these men had never been up against actual soldiers with the same skills and abilities as they had. One of their weaknesses might be that they were just a little bit lazy.

When you interrogated the squirrel man, what did he say he knew about Jonquille? Why did they want her?

He didn’t have time to tell me. He died. That was the weird thing. He kept bleeding. That wound shouldn’t have killed him, but it just wouldn’t stop bleeding.

You didn’t load your bullets with something to make him bleed out, did you? Rubin poured suspicion into his voice.

You’re so funny, although that’s not a bad idea.

It wasn’t the wound, but something else. Could he have been using first-generation Zenith? By now, everyone knows not to use it. Whitney had to have warned all his colleagues that it does give any soldier in the field using it the necessary clotting to stop bleeding and the adrenaline to keep going, and then it does the exact opposite and kills them. That’s common knowledge.

Diego’s sigh was in his mind. I saw no evidence of a Zenith patch, first or second generation. Whitney might not have warned Chandler because he wouldn’t have known Chandler was creating his own personal army of elite soldiers. Whitney wouldn’t have liked that, and he would have put a stop to it. I don’t think he bled out because of Zenith. It was something else. Another reason.

These men could be experiencing problems in the same way some of the other GhostWalkers do, Rubin guessed. The squirrel man you interrogated said nine were expendable. Maybe that meant they weren’t perfect. They had flaws like the orphans. Like Jonquille.

The last thing he wanted was for Chandler to use Jonquille in more experiments. She’d been adamant that she wasn’t going back to Whitney ever again. She’d rather be dead. No doubt she felt the same way if Chandler was going to experiment on her.

You said Jonquille was doing research in laboratories. What kind of research? Rubin asked. He wasn’t going to get into a discussion with his brother on how to load