PROLOGUE

The lights from oncoming cars hurt his eyes and seemed to pierce right through his skull, stabbing at his brain until he wanted to scream. He quickly tuned the radio station until the soft, sexy voice of the Night Siren flooded the car. It was taped, but it helped. His vision tunneled, so that everything took on a dream-like quality. Buildings flashed by, cars appeared as streaks of light rather than solid matter.

“Where are we going?”

He jumped. For a moment he had forgotten he wasn’t alone. Throwing an impatient glance at the whore seated beside him, he felt the terrible pounding in his head, which had just begun to ease, return. In the dark she looked a little like the woman he needed. If she kept her mouth shut, he could pretend. Tempted to tell her she was going to hell very soon, he forced a slight smile instead. “You’re getting paid, aren’t you? What difference does it make if we drive around for a little bit?”

She leaned forward and fiddled with the radio.

He slapped at her hand. “Don’t touch anything.” He had the station tuned right where he wanted it-needed it. The Night Siren’s voice was drifting out over the airwaves, making his body hard and his head clear. The woman wasn’t going to make it through the hour if she touched that dial again.

He kept his eye on the car he was following. He knew what he had to do. He had a job and he was damned good at it. The whore was such a good cover, and gave him such an anticipation of the pleasure to come later. He hadn’t been caught yet. Damn Whitney for his interference. The doctor had threatened to send someone else again. Stupid man didn’t like his reports. Well, f**k him. The doctor thought he was so superior, so intelligent, and was worried-worried-about the situation deteriorating. What a crock of bullshit. There was no situation, nothing was deteriorating. He could handle surveillance on a GhostWalker any day of the week.

Whitney thought his precious GhostWalkers were supersoldiers to be revered. Well, screw that. GhostWalkers were genetic mutations, aberrations, abominations, not the f**king miracles Whitney purported them to be. The entire lot of them should be wiped from the face of the earth, and he was the man to do it. They were government experiments that should have been scrapped long before they were ever let loose on the world.

He saw himself as the guardian, the lone man standing between the mutants and the humans. He should be revered. Whitney should bow down to him, kiss his feet, thank him for his reports and his attention to detail…

“You never told me your name. What do I call you?”

The voice jerked him out of his reverie. He wanted to slap the little whore. To pound his fists into her face until there was nothing there but bloody pulp. To take her head between his hands and hear a satisfying crack just to shut her up, but that was for later. If she kept her mouth shut he could fantasize that she was the Night Siren.

The Night Siren belonged to him and he’d have her soon enough. He just had to get rid of the GhostWalkers once and for all. And then she’d do everything he told her.

“You can call me Daddy.”

The whore had the audacity to roll her eyes at him, but he resisted the urge to punish her. He had other plans for her.

“I am a naughty girl,” she said and leaned over to rub his crotch. “And you obviously like me that way.”

“Don’t talk,” he snapped, and sighed when she opened his jeans. Let her just go to work on him while he took care of business. It would keep her mouth and hands occupied. He could look at her skin and hair and everything would be all right. It was going to be a long night tonight, and at least he could look forward to later.

Up ahead the car he’d been following pulled to the curb. It was a strange thing to do, but he couldn’t get caught-and he couldn’t lose them. He pulled over as well and waited while the whore worked on him, the rush beginning to flood his veins like a drug.

Chapter 1

Saber Wynter leaned back against the plush seat in the low-slung sports car and stared incredulously at her date. “Am I hearing you right?” She tapped a long, perfectly polished fingernail against the armrest. “You’re saying you’ve taken me out on three dates, and you’re claiming you’ve spent a hundred dollars…”

“A hundred and fifty,” Larry Edwards corrected.

One dark eyebrow shot up in disbelief. “I see. One hundred and fifty dollars, not that I have any idea what you spent it on. Your favorite restaurant is a truck stop.”

“The San Sebastian is no truck stop,” he denied hotly, staring into her violet-blue eyes. Unusual eyes, beautiful and haunting. He had noticed her voice immediately on the radio-the Night Siren, everyone called her. It seemed a husky whisper of pure sensual promise. Night after night he’d listened to her and fantasized. And then when he met her…she had great skin and a mouth that screamed sex. And those eyes. He’d never seen eyes like that. She looked so innocent, and the combination of sexy and innocent was just too hard to resist.

But she was proving to be difficult, and damn it all, what did she really have to brag about? She was skinny, looking like a lost waif, nothing to be all haughty and uptight about. In fact, she should be grateful for his attention. As far as he was concerned, she was nothing but a tease.

She shrugged in a curiously feminine gesture. “So you think because you spent this money on three dates it entitles you to sleep with me?”

“It damn well does, honey,” he snapped. “You owe me.” He hated that distant, clinical look she gave him. She needed a real man to put her in her place-and he was just the man to do it.

Saber forced a smile. “And if I don’t-how did you so delicately put this?-if I don’t ‘put out,’ you intend to dump me off right here in the middle of the street at two o’clock in the morning?”

She hoped he would make a move or force the issue, because he was going to get a lesson in manners he was never going to forget. She had nothing to lose. Well, almost nothing. She had stayed too long this time, made too much of a life for herself, and if she wiped up the floor with good old Larry the Louse before she disappeared, she’d be doing the women of Sheridan a favor.

“That’s right, darling.” He smirked at her complacently. “I think you’ll agree you need to be a little reasonable about this, don’t you?” He slid his hand along the back of her seat, fingers not quite touching her. He wanted to. Usually by now he was doing a lot of touching, loving watching the woman squirm. Loving the power he had over them. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t forcing her mouth to his, yanking open her blouse and taking what he wanted, but as much as he longed to do that, there was something inside of him warning him to go slower, to be a little more cautious with Saber. He was sure that very soon she would sit quietly and he’d be able to do whatever he wanted with her. He expected her to cry and plead for him not to leave her there, but instead, perfect little white teeth gleamed at him like bright pearls, making his stomach clench.

He looked so smug Saber wanted to slap his boyish good looks right off his face. “I’ve got some bad news for you, Larry. The sad truth is, I’d rather pull out my fingernails one by one than sleep with you.” She slipped out of the low-slung car. “Your breath stinks, Lar, and let’s just face it-you’re a creep.” She slammed the door with such force he winced visibly.

Fury swept through him. “This is a bad section of town, Saber. Drunken cowboys, drug dealers, deadbeats. Not a good idea to stay here.”

“Better company, I’m sure,” she taunted.

“Last chance, Saber.” His eye twitched angrily. “I’m doing you a favor here. Sex with a scrawny thing like you is no Fourth of July. Basically you’re a pity f**k.”

“So tempting, Lar, so very tempting. Did that get results from some scared teenager? Cuz it’s really not working with me.”

“You’re going to be sorry,” he snapped, furious that nothing he said seemed to get the reaction he wanted. She talked down to him like a princess to a peasant and made him feel like slime under her shoe.

“Don’t think it’s over, hotshot,” she warned, still hanging on to her smile. “This will make a great little story on my radio show. I’ll build an entire program around the theme: worst jerk you ever dated.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“You’re not dealing with a sixteen-year-old, Larry,” she informed him coldly, too angry to laugh at the situation. He had no idea who-or what-he was dealing with. The idiot. He thought he could force her into sleeping with him by threatening to dump her in a bad part of town? She wondered if his plan had actually worked for him before. The idea made her fingers itch to get at him. She held on to her cool and stared him down.

Swearing furiously, Larry revved the motor and, laying a trail of rubber, screeched away, leaving her standing in the middle of an empty street.

Saber stamped her foot as she glared at the disappearing tail lights. “Darn it, Saber,” she muttered, kicking at the curb in frustration. “If you insist on going out with jerks, what do you expect?” She was tired of trying to be normal. Weary to death of pretending. She was never going to fit in, not in a million years.

Raking a hand through the mass of thick, blue-black curls spilling in unruly confusion around her face, she took a long, slow look around. Larry hadn’t been kidding-it was an appalling part of town.

Drawing a deep breath, she muttered, “Just wonderful. There are probably rats down here. Starving rats. This is not good, Saber, not good at all. You should have kicked the hell out of him and stolen his car.”

Sighing heavily, she headed down the cracked, dirty sidewalk toward the only streetlight, which illuminated a telephone booth. “It will be my luck the stupid thing is broken. If it is, Larry,” she vowed aloud, “you will definitely pay for your sins.”

Because, of course, she couldn’t have a cell phone like everyone else. She didn’t leave paper trails for anyone to follow. Next time, if there ever was a next time that she was stupid enough to go on a date, she would take her own car and she would do the dumping.

A forty-five-minute wait for a cab. Bravado would only carry so far. She was not going to wait forty-five minutes in the dark surrounded by rats. No way. How incompetent of the taxi service not to have planned their resources better.

In a fit of temper she slammed the phone in its cradle, giving only a fleeting thought to the dispatcher’s ear. Saber kicked the side of the booth and nearly broke her toes. Howling, jumping around like an idiot, she vowed eternal revenge on Larry.

She should have stayed in the car and faced him down instead of letting him drive off. He was a worm crawling his way across the earth, but he was no monster. She knew monsters intimately. They dogged her every step, and soon-far too soon if she didn’t leave-they would find her again. A slimebag like Larry was a prince in comparison. Larry certainly hadn’t recognized the monster in her. If he had touched her…She pushed the thought away and made herself think normal. She should have decked him though, just once, for all the other women who would be put in the same situation because he liked power. She was fairly certain most women would have had the desire to at least punch the bastard.

Saber sighed softly and shook her head. She was putting off the inevitable. She wasn’t walking home and she couldn’t very well stay where she was. She was going to pay royally for this, but what was one more lecture out of several hundred? Fighting for a deep controlling breath, she punched in the numbers, her fingertip unconsciously using a rather vicious stabbing motion on the blameless telephone.

Jess Calhoun lay sprawled out full length on the wide, leather, specially built futon, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Suffocating silence surrounded him, wrapped him up and pressed heavily down on him. The sound of the clock ticking was only in his mind. Endless seconds, minutes. An eternity. Where was she? What the hell was she doing out at two thirty in the morning? This was her night off. She wasn’t at the radio station working later than usual, he’d already checked. Surely she hadn’t been in an accident. Someone would have notified him. He’d called every hospital in the area, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that she wasn’t in any of them.