“Then she went a little crazy,” Lily explained.

“A lot crazy. I just knew I was right, and for once we were going to have the opportunity to the turn the tables on Whitney,” Flame admitted.

“She was crawling around all the computers in the laboratory, picking up wires and following the network of cables from one computer to another. Then she held up the router and started yelling, ‘Look at this, look at this.’ I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at.”

Flame grinned at her. “It had one too many wires coming out of the box. I knew we had him by the-” She broke off. “I knew we had him. The file protection system on these computers is set up on the local area network, or LAN, to be able to access the files on any other computer-and why not? They’re all the doctor’s computers-it would only be the doctor working on one computer and accessing another. We’d been looking for an intrusion from outside via the Internet. All the firewalls are protecting us from outside intrusions. Dr. Whitney is getting in by masquerading as an insider, as another computer on his own LAN. One of the lines was bogus, and I knew it would take us to the doctor. I traced the line straight to a wall.”

“This is where we get a little technical,” Lily said.

“Not too,” Flame assured Ian. “We discovered the network cable is hooked via a CSU/DSU box into what we realized is a leased T3 line. And before you ask, a CSU/DSU box is a channel service unit/data service unit or digital service unit box, and that’s what identifies the fact that it is a leased line. This is a superfast dedicated connection across the phone lines. The DSU connects to the LAN inside the house and the CSU connects to the lease line.”

Ian frowned and glanced around the room. “I don’t get this. The line goes through the wall and goes to a leased line? He rents a line?”

“A leased line is actually composed of three parts,” Flame explained. “Two local loops and a long haul. The first local loop runs from this house to the nearest POP, which basically is point of presence of the long distance carrier or carriers. There has to be a similar local loop running from wherever the doctor is currently to the POP nearest him. The long distance carriers, one or more, use the normal phone lines to connect the two local loops. The fact that two local loops are completely private, plus special equipment on the hardware/software long haul, guarantees the entire connection is private.”

“So he has to be in the country,” Ian said.

“Not necessarily,” Flame replied.

“There have to be records of who leased the line,” Kadan pointed out.

“Of course. Dahlia broke in and looked for us. It wasn’t very shocking to discover that an import company in Oregon, one owning a private jet by the way, a jet able to land in restricted military space all over the world, leased that line,” Lily said. “Shockingly enough, the man who signed for the purchase of the private jet also signed for the purchase of the one that went down in the Congo. That man doesn’t have a Social Security number or birth certificate that we could find.”

There was a small silence. “It is Dr. Whitney, isn’t it?” Ian asked. “He’s alive then.”

“We don’t know. Certainly if it isn’t him, it’s someone he worked closely with who was privy to all of his experiments,” Ryland said.

Lily cleared her throat. “No matter who my father was working with-or for-he would never have shared all of his information. He has to be alive. In my opinion, he’s alive and he’s continuing with his experiments.” She pressed her hands protectively to her stomach. “He’s out there, and he’s watching us.”

Ryland put his arms around her, leaning to nuzzle the top of her head. “But aren’t we watching him now?”

Flame nodded. “He isn’t going to be able to get to you, Lily. Not you and certainly not the baby.”

There was a murmur of agreement through the room and Lily relaxed visibly.

“How are you watching him?” Ian asked.

“I hoped I could access his computer as easily as he was accessing ours. I actually identified all of our computers and isolated his, so I knew I had the right one, but he had disallowed access.” Flame smiled. “So I changed tactics. I knew he was accessing certain files on a regular basis. He follows all of Lily’s findings and wants to see her updated reports on each of us.” She smirked. “He was particularly interested in my file.”

“What a shocker, cher,” Gator murmured. “I’m interested in it too.” His hand swept down her arm, his fingers tangling with hers.

Flame relaxed, leaning back against Gator. “I created a little surprise of my own for Dr. Whitney. I created a Trojan and embedded it in one of the regularly viewed files. First I had Lily update my file in order to entice him to take a long look at it.”

“What does that do? How’d you do it?” Ian asked.

Flame shrugged. “I assumed he was using Windows XP because all the computers here are XP. So I programmed the Trojan to do one thing. It goes into the controls for Remote Desktop on his computer and adjusts the settings that allow users to connect remotely to this computer across a LAN. Of course, we had to wait for the doctor to read the file embedded with the Trojan so he could unwittingly activate the program for us, but with Lily updating, he took the bait.”

“That’s amazing, Flame. You can actually read his computer files?” Ian asked.

Flame nodded. “It’s so perfect. If he weren’t masquerading as another computer on our LAN, we couldn’t turn around and return the favor by using Remote Desktop control, which is only possible for other computers on a LAN. But now we’ve activated the Remote Desktop setting on the doctor’s computer, we have access to his computer as if it were our own.”

“So what is he up to?”

Flame nodded toward Lily. “She can explain it better than I can.”

Kadan held up his hand. “First of all, by reading the files, is there any way to positively identify who is spying on us?”

Lily shook her head. “We can’t see who is creating files, but certainly I recognize my father’s type of notes. He likes to put everything into numbers, a kind of code, and definitely there are many files filled with numbers. In order to read the data, I have to break the code. It’s rarely the same in each file.”

Kadan glanced at Ryland. “Someone very high up in the government has to be helping him. How sanctioned can Whitney be?”

There was a small silence, no one wanting to mention the inevitable suspicion. They were under the direct command of one man, General Ranier.

Lily shook her head. “I know what you’re all thinking. General Ranier has been a close friend of my family for years, but he can’t be involved.”

“Why not?” Logan asked.

Lily ducked her head. “Because if one more person I love is living a lie and betraying us, I don’t think I could live through it.”

Ryland swept his arms around her and pulled her up against his body. “We’ve got Dahlia back and now Flame. We’ll find the rest of the girls and we’ll have our own family, Lily. No matter what happens, you have us.”

“I’m scared, Rye,” she admitted. “I’m really scared this time.”

“We’re not going to jump to any conclusions about General Ranier, Lily,” Kadan assured her. “And, Logan, you’ve got your own worries with the admiral who runs your unit. If we have a line into Peter Whitney’s computer, we might get lucky and come across an indication if either the general or the admiral is in any way associated with the doctor. In the meantime, we’d all better be very careful when our orders come down.”

“To call me here, you must have found something on Jack or one of my other team members,” Logan said.

Lily took a deep breath and nodded. “For purposes of simplicity, we’re going to refer to whoever is behind this as Dr. Whitney. Most of us believe he’s alive and pulling all the strings. Dr. Whitney appears to be trying to bring the women he first experimented on together with the men he later worked on. We believe he’s doing so as part of a much larger plan. Each of the women so far has been both psychically compatible and sexually attracted to one of the men. The couples work well together as a single weapon. As a team, they’re fully functional in a combat situation as well as being able to live and function in the world, which they cannot always do alone. Dahlia, if you recall, could not be out of the sanitarium for any length of time, but with Nico, she’s able to live a seminormal life.”

“So far, that part doesn’t sound half-bad,” Logan said with a faint smile.

“There are a few perks to the job,” Gator said, waggling his eyebrows at Flame.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have a clue how I got into this.” She flashed a small smile at Logan. “Raoul is right, there are definite perks.”

“So the doctor wants the men to hook up with the women,” Logan said. “What’s the big deal?”

Lily frowned. “He made us all into weapons. Together, as a couple, we seem to be far more powerful, complementing or even amplifying the enhancements. Where before, a team could be sent in and the odds of success went up tenfold, imagine how much better if only two people could be sent in to clean up a mess, especially if the couple were as powerful as, or more so than, an entire team.”

Logan switched his gaze to Gator and Flame Fontenot and Nicolas and Dahlia Trevane. “Do you think it’s true? The two of you could handle a mission without the entire team and do just as well?”

The couples looked at one another, then nodded. “There’s no doubt, Logan, depending on what needed to be done,” Gator answered. “Flame and I manipulate sound, and without using Kadan-or someone else-as a shield to stop the corridor, it would get tricky, but we could definitely get the job done. Our abilities are amplified when we’re together. Both Flame and I are physically enhanced as well as psychically.”

“We are too,” Dahlia said, taking Nico’s hand. “And like Gator and Flame, we work very well together.”

Logan sighed. “This physical enhancement you’ve all mentioned… ”

“And you know perfectly well your entire team is enhanced,” Lily broke in.

Logan ran his finger around the collar of his shirt. “It’s just gene doping. Inserting our own DNA into our cells to pump them up, right?”

“That would be what most doctors are doing these days, but Dr. Whitney took it a step further,” Ryland said. “He developed a chromosome in order to insert DNA and enhance the entire body both physically as well as psychically.”

“Now I’m not understanding,” Logan admitted, frowning.

Lily tapped her pencil on the table again, the only sign that her earlier nervousness remained. “Actually, chromosomes come in pairs. Technically, he developed an extra pair of chromosomes. And that gave him eighty thousand extra genes to play with, which can encode a lot of capability. Whatever psychic attributes you already have, the experiments increased, but more were added when he inserted the extra chromosome for physical enhancement. For instance: there is a huge evolutionary distance between man and mosquito, but in spite of that, at a molecular level, both are equipped with the same chemosensory system.”

Logan whistled softly. “Whoa there. That’s a darned big jump from computers to chromosomes and mosquitoes. I’m guessing there’s a reason for that.”

“I found a file on Dr. Whitney’s computer relating to Jack Norton and one of the women he first experimented on. Apparently Jack and Ken Norton had, prior to undergoing physical and psychic enhancement, tremendous talent already in both areas. Both have extensive military training and are highly skilled.”