“He had to breathe for us underwater. I’m good in the water and can stay down a long time, but not like Tom. He was all over it. Give us air, work on the tree, and give us more air until he had that sucker off of us. Ian kept splashing around and Gator kept up his crazy antics as bait and Jonas and Rye worked above the water to help lift the tree.”

Azami pressed her lips together tightly, regarding Sam without speaking. She knew, in spite of all the joking and laughter, just how dangerous the situation had really been and how close Sam and Tucker had come to losing their lives.

This is the kind of work you like?

Sam nodded slowly. Does it bother you?

“What happened to the Frenchman? Did he get away?” Azami asked aloud.

I am samurai. I have chosen a life of honor. It’s only fitting that the man I am considering sharing my life with would do so as well. I do not fear death and clearly you do not either. My father taught me never to fear death, but to live my life to the fullest, to embrace every moment as if it might be my last. My choice for a partner is one who lives his life in this way.

“Hell no, he didn’t get away,” Ian said. “We dragged him back with us and handed him over to the French. They were very glad to get him, and I believe they put him on trial for treason. He deserved whatever they threw at him.”

There is no doubt in my mind, Azami, we belong. He no longer needed to touch her to know she was committed to him. Her warmth was in his mind, filling the lonely places.

He had lived on the streets, scrounging his way, one step ahead of the gangs and the pedophiles until he’d tried to steal a car with the idea of getting out of the city. He had no plan at the time, only a desperate need to get away from where he was. General Ranier told him it was providence that he had tried to steal Ranier’s car, allowing them to meet. Secretly, Sam didn’t care what it was, only that they had met and the general had given him an education and a direction. Now there was Azami. She was his direction and the path seemed very clear to him.

“Uh-oh,” Ian whispered, overly loud. “We’re about to get busted.”

Azami moved even closer to Sam, protectively, her body shielding his from the door. He had to smile. His woman wasn’t going to sit peacefully in a corner in the face of a threat.

“It’s Ryland,” he said softly.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. The movement was graceful, a whisper of silk and sin, temptation in the form of long lashes and serenity masking fiery passion. His heart jumped toward hers. Azami smiled at him. Intimate. Only for him. Such a brief exchange, but it was enough to know she was his. All that she was, was his.

Ryland filled the doorway, his broad shoulders so wide they nearly took up the space entirely. In his arms, Daniel snuggled against him, alert, bright, ready to join in the fun with all of his uncles.

“Do you think you’re making enough noise?” Ryland demanded. “It’s the middle of the night, in case no one’s noticed.”

“Did we wake Daniel?” Ian asked, instantly concerned. He held out his arms to the boy. “Come here, my little man.”

Daniel looked past Ian, his gaze clearly settling on Azami. He broke into a smile and instantly took his index fingers and hooked them together, signing “friend.” He held out his arms toward her and nearly launched himself from Ryland’s arms.

Azami took the boy and hugged him to her. “Hello, my little friend. Did we wake you up? Your uncles were just telling me some exciting stories about things they’ve done.” She spoke to him as if he were an adult, not a toddler, looking into his eyes as she held him close.

Sam could imagine her with their child, a protective mother for certain, he could see it in the way she held Daniel.

“You’ve met?” Ryland asked.

His tone put Sam on edge. He sat up straighter and swung his legs over the edge of the bed in preparation—for what, he wasn’t certain. Ryland had sounded more than suspicious—he’d sounded accusing as well. More so, his team had gone onto alert. This was Daniel—the most protected member of their family—and a stranger had gotten to him right in their midst.

“Daniel has been telling us all about his new friend. We thought he had made up an imaginary friend to play with.” Ryland’s gaze shifted to Ian’s face. Ian—Azami’s guard. If she’d met Daniel, where had that meeting taken place, and how?

Ian squirmed uncomfortably. It didn’t matter that they’d all been laughing with Azami moments earlier; every man was looking at her as if she was the enemy. Sam slid to his feet, steadying himself against the bed for a brief moment before he found his footing again.

This time there was no mistaking Ryland’s accusation, and Sam understood. Lily had been upset over the idea that Daniel would have to have an imaginary playmate. More than that, Daniel was to be protected at all times from outsiders and yet the child had greeted Azami as an old friend, which implied multiple meetings. He was always naturally suspicious of strangers.

“He’s a wonderful boy, and so very bright,” Azami said, as Daniel snuggled against her. She rocked him gently. “He came into my room on the first night. I heard a small noise in the fan and a screw dropped out onto the floor. I looked up and he was looking down at me, laughing. He was quite curious that you had company and didn’t introduce him. I explained that not all strangers were good people and some could be dangerous to him and that you were protecting him. He signs quite well.”

Azami never raised her voice, or appeared in any way as if she recognized the heightened tension in the room. She seemed relaxed, her attention focused on the toddler, but Sam wasn’t deceived in the least. She was a force to be reckoned with and for some reason, his teammates didn’t feel her energy as he did. That continued to worry him.

There was a long silence. No one expected that explanation, but they shouldn’t have been surprised. Daniel was definitely an escape artist. He liked small spaces and already he was using tools like a pro.

Ryland glared at his son. “You went to our guest’s bedroom, Daniel? Do you think that’s appropriate behavior?” He signed as he spoke.

Daniel shook his head and pressed closer to Azami. He signed back to his father.

“I don’t care if she didn’t mind,” Ryland sounded gruff. “She is our guest. Her bedroom is a sacred place, a sanctuary for her. We don’t intrude. Do you understand?”

Daniel nodded his head.

“More than that, it isn’t safe for you to go meet a stranger without our knowledge. You have to have time-out for that.” Now Ryland sounded sterner than ever and Daniel’s face began to crumble, tears swimming in his eyes.

The men exchanged uneasy glances. None of them liked it when Daniel cried and he definitely knew it, playing them easily when he sat in his little chair sobbing.

Azami’s subtle move put her under the shelter of Sam’s arm. Daniel looked up at him, his lip quivering. Sam leaned down and brushed a kiss over the boy’s mop of hair.

“What does one do on time-out?” Azami asked. Her voice was softer than ever, but Sam felt the hair on the back of his neck raise. Clearly she didn’t like the idea of the boy being punished.

“Daniel sits in a chair for two minutes,” Sam explained hastily.

Daniel knew by the way she held him so protectively that he had an ally in Azami. He gave a little sob and pressed his face into her shoulder.

“You tie him to a chair?” Azami glared up at Sam.

Ian burst out laughing. “If you tried tying that boy to a chair, momma bear would come at you with teeth and claws.”

“And a very big gun,” Ryland added. “I don’t know what they do in Japan, but we don’t tie our children to chairs. He sits in it because we tell him to. It’s safe and doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t like the isolation and understands there are consequences for naughty behavior. In this case, he also violated a safety rule.”

“What happens if he gets out of the chair?” Azami asked. “Before the two minutes are up?”

“He is placed back in the chair and we go at it all day if necessary,” Ryland said. “Raising Daniel requires patience as well as love.” He looked around the room. “I think it requires all of us. We work together. Clearly we dropped the ball. I’m sorry he disturbed you on your first night with us. Thank you for being so gracious about it.”

“I rarely sleep at night. I needed to make certain my brothers were safe and had all they required. I felt better seeing they were assigned guards as well.”

Ian regarded her with a clear frown. “Are you saying you left your room last night?”

“Well, of course. The baby had to be put back to bed. I wasn’t going to shove him back up into the vent and hope he made his way back to his room safely,” Azami said.

“That’s impossible,” Ian denied. “I didn’t leave the door. I didn’t, Rye. I didn’t fall asleep tonight, or last night.”

Ryland turned piercing eyes on Azami, waiting for an explanation.

“Your son is an extremely intelligent and curious child,” Azami said. “And very gifted. Perhaps too gifted for his age.”

Ryland reached out and plucked Daniel from her arms. “What do you mean by that?”

Sam bristled at the belligerence in Ryland’s tone. “She didn’t mean anything,” he snapped before he could stop himself.

Ryland’s gaze jumped to his face.

“Sir,” Azami said calmly. “Your son is in the greatest danger possible and not from anyone outside this compound. From himself. Like Sam, like me, he is a teleporter.”

CHAPTER 10

A stunned silence followed Azami’s quiet revelation. The members of GhostWalker Team One exchanged uneasy, shocked looks.

Ryland rubbed his chin over his son’s thick cap of hair, his eyes closed briefly. Sam couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind.

“Are you certain?” Ryland finally asked. “I’ve seen no evidence of Daniel teleporting.”

Azami slowly nodded her head. “I’m very sure. He’s young and there’s an art to it, but learning can be both painful and dangerous, as Sam knows well. The gift didn’t really begin to manifest in me until around the age of ten. I would feel broken apart inside and find I’d moved from one corner of a room to another and couldn’t remember walking across the room. It was frightening. For a while I was afraid to tell my father, afraid I was losing my mind. Your son is a mere baby and he’s already experiencing that same sensation.”

Ryland buried his face against the baby’s neck, his arms tightening until Daniel squirmed and he was forced to ease up. He raised his head, his steel gray eyes meeting Sam’s. “Did you know?”

“I never even suspected, Rye,” Sam said. “Now that Azami pointed out the possibility, I can see that a few times, Daniel was in one spot and then he was a few feet away playing with my tools, but I didn’t feel the ‘broken apart’ effect until I was about eighteen. Neither you nor Lily has the ability to teleport, so it didn’t occur to me that Daniel would have it. But then, I don’t think my parents could do it, or they would have been all over television and selling their story for their drug money. Hell, Rye.” Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose, not knowing how to comfort his friend.

Daniel could very well teleport right into the middle of a wall before he ever fully understood the danger. Ryland and Lily had a difficult time as it was, let alone knowing their child could put himself in the middle of the forest, the mines, or up on the roof. The psychic gifts they had been born with, and then enhanced by Whitney, were both a blessing and a curse. Each talent could be extremely dangerous, especially in one young and inexperienced.

“You snuck past me, didn’t you?” Ian accused. “I knew I hadn’t gone to sleep.”