Lightning Game (GhostWalkers #17) -Christine Feehan Page 0,87

his own bullets with some kind of chemical that might make a flesh wound bleed more, nor did he want to think about what kind of experiment they might perform on Jonquille instead of on one of their soldiers.

I would think it would have to be something to do with lightning. You’re the lightning expert. They’re developing weapons, right? That’s Chandler’s thing. She’s the lightning bug, so to speak.

Rubin considered Jonquille his lightning bug, not the government’s. Or Whitney’s. Certainly not Oliver Chandler’s. Or his team of elite soldiers. What did this team want with her, and what research was she doing? He shouldn’t have treated her like an experiment. Diego was right, he didn’t have any real social skills. He hadn’t considered he might need them if he found the right woman. He’d never bothered. He didn’t stay very long in anyone’s company.

Did squirrel man mention which weapons they were developing?

Just about everything. The ball lightning—they have the use of that as a weapon. It isn’t known. The project was stopped supposedly for a variety of reasons, but they found the answers they needed for a delivery system and shut down funding to all other research, leaving everyone else without a means to complete them. They can create ball lightning and shoot it at a target.

Rubin thought about that. He wasn’t surprised by it. Several of the laboratories had been able to create ball lightning and shoot it at a target in the lab. He knew the military had the resources already sewn up in that area for weapons.

They also can do exactly what you did using Jonquille, although not quite as efficiently. Their ability to target using the real thing is not very effective because the split-second trajectory and timing even for a computer is not accurate.

Rubin believed that. Every experiment that he knew of had run into the same problem, other than the ones he’d personally conducted.

Why are you accurate when a computer isn’t? Diego asked.

I’m accurate with Jonquille. Not with every lightning storm. I’m already tuned to her. I can feel the lightning just the way she can. Without her, I think I’d hit the same percentage as the computer, but with her, I’m going to be one hundred percent accurate every time.

A prickle of awareness went through his body, just as it did every time an enemy was close. He’s here. Coming closer. Not as fast as his partner.

He hadn’t heard the buzz of the radio in the partner’s ear, so there was no contact between the two men. They definitely had confidence when they moved through the forest that they could track their prey. Like both Rubin and Diego, they used their enhancements—sight, smell, the senses of animals—to tell them what was happening in the forest around them.

Rubin and Diego gave off the scent of the woods. They blended in. They were accepted. The mountains were their domain and had been since they were born. Most of the creatures, like the raptors had at one time or another, hunted with them and benefited from it. They were conservators of the forest and its inhabitants. Both were careful of the fragile ecosystem, but they did their best to preserve their part of the Appalachian Mountains.

Once more, Rubin stayed very still, his body blending in with the thick tree trunk of the old oak. The assassin landed in a spruce about forty feet away, causing a brief little shiver of the branches. The tree went still and stayed that way for a good three minutes. Squirrel man didn’t launch himself as expected into the next tree. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to catch up with his partner.

Rubin focused on him now that he knew where he was. Squirrel man took a small envelope out of the tight vest he had zipped around him, slit it open with a long fingernail and emptied the contents into his mouth. He returned the envelope to the inside of the vest and zipped the vest again. Once zipped, the vest seemed to glue itself to him. The clothing was exceptional. Whitney was always working on camouflage clothing for the soldiers, wanting to ensure whatever they wore would allow them to fade completely into the background of whatever environment they were in. The clothes the squirrel men wore were very sophisticated.

The man turned to face the next large tree. There were several smaller ones in his way. Rubin wanted to see how he maneuvered through the branches of