“Who did you send your backup to?”

“Another GhostWalker, a woman good with computers. I ran into her hacking the CIA computer.”

“You can’t hack their program.”

“I can if I wrote it. She couldn’t. She was looking for the same thing I was. We’ve been sharing information”—she held up her hand—“and before you lose your mind, I’m careful.”

“Did it occur to you she might be a plant?”

“She was more worried about me than I was about her,” Jaimie said. “I hacked into her computer and found all her files. We established an uneasy truce and I sent her several things she didn’t have on Whitney. She doesn’t know who I am. I know her identity, though. She’s married to a GhostWalker. She was an orphan Whitney experimented on. He gave her cancer more than once.”

“You have to go, Mack,” Kane called over the intercom.

Mack sighed. “Give me a few more minutes, Kane. I’m gathering intel.” He began pulling on his clothes. “Get dressed, baby. And don’t leave this place while I’m gone.

Stick close to the boys.” He leaned down to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I’m going to take out Thornton and any threat to Kane, Brian, and Sergeant Major.”

“Just be careful,” she cautioned.

“My middle name.”

CHAPTER 17

Gideon eased the ache in his leg with the smallest of stretches. “No movement yet, boss, he’s still in there sitting by his fireplace with a drink as if he has all the time in the world.”

Mack glanced at his watch. The lights in Jefferson’s house had been on for hours.

He wasn’t retiring anytime soon. He seemed to be waiting for someone—or something. There was no way he could possibly know he was a target. The three had slipped from the warehouse unseen and boarded a military flight. Tucked in the trees, they’d already spent enough hours to be getting cramps, waiting for Jefferson to go to bed.

“Well, he doesn’t have all the time in the world, Gideon, and you’re right, he’s waiting for someone.”

The tree they’d set up in was enormous. The great sprawling branches were thick, and they dipped and twisted, giving them a tremendous platform to work from. Phillip Thornton’s house had been modest, in a quiet neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac.

As James Bradley Jefferson the third, the man had treated himself to a home he felt he deserved. The long drive led to a two-story brick estate. Tall pillars rose around the wide verandah, a proud Southern home, surrounded by shrubbery and rolling lawns.

The property was nestled in thick trees, an old growth of evergreens, one of the few stands left in the area. The terrain lent the estate a natural seclusion.

“Any phone calls?”

“One, boss, from Senator Romney. But he’s definitely waiting for someone. He’s checked his watch at least three times. The directional mike is working perfectly. If he does have a visitor, we’ll be able to hear every word.”

“I want it recorded,” Mack said. “We need everything we can get on him. And no evidence left behind. Not so much as a scrape on a tree. When we take him down, no matter how natural his death appears, there will be an investigation.”

“He the one after Kane and Brian?” Javier asked, bringing his travel mug to his mouth. The hot coffee warmed his insides. There was malice in his voice.

“Jefferson has a hard-on for both of them,” Mack said. “Sergeant Major turned his report over to General Chilton and I’m guessing Chilton turned it over to Jefferson.

Either way, all the evidence they gathered is now destroyed. And Jefferson sent those killers after Jaimie.”

Gideon and Javier exchanged a long, knowing look.

“We know he’s working at Langley, we’ve watched him come and go,” Javier said. “I could have taken out the bastard a hundred times already.”

Mack shook his head. “It has to be a natural death or an accident no one can dispute. If I can get close enough to him, I can kill him and everyone will think he’s had a heart attack.”

Again Gideon and Javier exchanged a long look. Mack almost never mentioned his psychic abilities. His was a rare talent. Mack always played things close to his chest and when he’d filled out the forms, he had never revealed his ability to manipulate electrical energy. They’d heard the rumor that one of the GhostWalkers’

wives from Team Two could do the same, but they’d never met her and the rumor wasn’t confirmed. Mack’s talent made him invaluable to the team and the fact that no one, not even Whitney, knew he had the ability, made him the perfect assassin.

Getting up close to Jefferson was another matter. He’d proved to be very cautious.

Years with the agency and working with Whitney had made him wary of everyone.

He changed his route at a moment’s notice. Few knew his schedule ahead of time. It was impossible to know which car he would be using. When a car was summoned, it was gone over meticulously for bombs. He had to be taken in his home.

Mack watched Jefferson through the bulletproof glass of his study. “He’s waiting for a woman.”

Gideon turned his head back toward the house, narrowing his eyes. Jefferson used a remote to light a fire in his fireplace. He poured two drinks from a Waterford decanter on the table beside the sofa. He pointed the remote again and music flooded the room.

“Very high-class seduction scene,” Javier said. “Where’s the caviar?”

“He’s setting the scene, all right,” Mack said, “but I don’t believe he’s in love with this woman. Look at him. He’s setting a seduction scene, but he’s after something else besides sex.”

“He’s got something in his hand,” Gideon said. “Can you make it out, Mack?”

Mack watched the man put the object in a small, decorative box. Jefferson moved the box twice and then shook his head and took it back out again. He crossed to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase, removed a book, opened it, and thrust the small object into the hollowed-out pages.

“It’s got to be a recorder,” Gideon said.

“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,” Javier observed. “No guards. He doesn’t believe anyone would dare retaliate against him. He has to know Sergeant Major’s gone off the grid.”

Mack’s smile held no humor. “Men like Jefferson come to believe they’re above the law. He makes his own laws.” He looked at Javier. “There has to be a code of honor. We make the same kinds of decisions he makes. We have to make absolutely certain we’re doing it for the right reasons. This can’t be about power or personal gain, or we’re just like him.”

“I get what you’re saying, Top,” Javier said.

“Or the rush, Javier,” Mack counseled.

“It’s never been about the rush, Mack,” Javier said. “It’s about running from myself.”

Their eyes met—held complete understanding.

“Car’s coming up the drive,” Gideon reported.

The Escalade had tinted windows. It slid noiselessly up the drive and a woman got out. She was tall and blond, her hair up in a sophisticated twist that made her look especially elegant. She wore a pencil-thin skirt and a silk blouse with matching jacket that should have made her look all business, but she managed to look sexy instead.

Diamonds clung to her ears and a single teardrop necklace glittered at her throat.

No one move. No communication. Mack sent the warning, careful to keep his energy low, to keep it from spilling out into the open where the woman might have a chance to feel it. Get her picture and send it to Jaimie for positive ID.

The woman stepped away from the car and looked carefully around, her gaze quartering the area, and then turned her attention to the house. She moved with unhurried, fluid steps up the walkway to the door. Jefferson greeted her before she could ring the doorbell. He waved her inside and only then did Mack let out his breath.

“She looks familiar,” Gideon said. “Like I’ve seen her before, but I’ve never really met a female GhostWalker other than Jaimie.”

“And Rhianna,” Javier supplied. He glanced down at his phone. “Jaimie’s on it, boss.”

“Shit,” Mack said. “That’s Senator Ed Freeman’s wife, Violet. I remember seeing her picture in the news right after her husband was shot. I forget the story. How the hell did a GhostWalker hook up with a senator?”

“And what the hell is she doing here?” Javier asked.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll assassinate him for us,” Gideon said.

Mack directed their attention to the couple in the house. Violet leaned in to brush a barely there kiss along Jefferson’s cheek. “If Jefferson thought he was going to seduce, he’s wrong. She’s deliberately tempting him, but that kiss was a definite signal to back off.”

“Maybe she’s wired too,” Javier ventured. “It would be pretty funny if they were bugging each other.”

“I don’t doubt for a minute she’s wired,” Mack said. “She’s exuding confidence and if Jefferson has a brain in his head, he’ll be very, very careful.”

“Kind of like entertaining a cobra in your home,” Javier said and smirked. He knew he looked like the boy next door. “Glad she’s one of us.”

“Data coming in,” Mack said, frowning down at the small phone in his hand.

“Never make the mistake of thinking Violet Smythe-Freeman is one of us. She sold out the women in Whitney’s compound. Kane warned Jaimie about her. She was raised with those women, one of the orphans Whitney acquired, and they all believed in her.”

“She turned on them?” Gideon asked as if disbelieving. “That would be like one of us turning on the others. We were raised together, a family, like those women.

That’s just . . .” He cast around searching for the right words to express his disgust.

“The word’s gone out to all the GhostWalker teams that she’s a traitor,” Mack read on. “She was at the compound to make an alliance with Whitney when everything went to hell. She was going to help suppress evidence on the breeding program if he backed her husband’s bid for the vice presidency. She and her husband are the ones who sent Team Two to the Congo and tipped off the rebels where they were going to be.”

There was a small silence while they absorbed the treachery of the woman’s actions. There were very few GhostWalkers and all of them knew just how difficult one another’s lives were. Violet had been raised with Whitney’s youngest, earliest victims, yet she appeared not to have any loyalty to them at all.

“I could take her out when she comes out, boss,” Gideon reminded.

“She’s not the objective,” Mack said. “We’re here to protect Kane and Brian and to get Jefferson off Sergeant Major.”

“I could stop the car down the road,” Javier offered.

“Too dangerous. Jefferson’s death has to look like a legitimate heart attack. If we take out a GhostWalker, they’re going to know someone was in the area.”

Gideon swore under his breath. “We have to just let her walk?”

Mack shrugged. “There’ll be another time and another place. There always is.

Right now, we’re here for Jefferson. We know he’s after Kane and Brian and he’s certainly the one who ordered the hit on Sergeant Major when they lost track of him.

We’ve got to look after our own first.”

Violet sank into a chair, accepting the crystal glass Jefferson handed her. “How’s the senator?” he asked as he gave the drink to her.

The voices sounded tinny through the recorder. Javier adjusted something Mack couldn’t see, frowning as he did so.