Viper Game

“How did you get in here?”


Her voice alone gave him the sensation of fingers trailing down his skin. “I told you, we’re like you. We all have different skills. I can get through walls, although this concrete was thicker than I realized and I already went through a wall once. It’s hard on the body.” And clearly just as hard on his brain.

He couldn’t stop staring at her. She was shapely, an hourglass figure, perfectly proportioned for one so petite. Her small fingers stroked the bars of the cell with a mesmerizing slide. There was a pull about her, a lure, and he was afraid most men would succumb. He was a little worried that he knew just what she was.

“I’m Trap Dawkins. I came here to help Wyatt, a friend of mine, get his kids out of this place. Pepper said there was another woman here, so we figured we might as well break you out as well while we were at it.”

“I appreciate that. I’m Cayenne, and I don’t have a last name. At least I was never called anything but Cayenne.”

She had an accent – a French one, but he knew her training would have included proper accents for every language taught to her. She used her looks and her voice as a temptation. Still… There was more, something else. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but it was potent.

He didn’t move, but continued to look at her. “I haven’t made up my mind yet whether or not I take the chance and get close enough to that cell to open the locks. You’re a black widow, aren’t you?”

She smiled at him. Her teeth were small and very white. Her smile was beautiful. Inviting. “Some call me that,” she admitted, as if amused by the accusation.

The smile in her voice only added to the sensation of dainty fingers sliding over his body. Her lips parted in invitation. “Come here. A little closer.” She beckoned to him with her finger, a seductive dare in her tone.

He stared her down while his brain tried to work out the puzzle of who and what she was. How she worked. What danger she represented. He was a soldier, but more, he was analytical. He didn’t ever think with his emotions. Her voice, her enticement played to a man’s instincts and emotions. He felt it, the dangerous, magnetic draw, but his brain shielded him from her temptation.

When he didn’t respond, her lashes swept down and then up. Her full, curved lips pursed in an alluring pout. “Can you open the cell? Do you have keys?”

“I can’t bring anything metal through the wall.” He stuck as close to the truth as possible. He was getting his strength back, his insides settling slowly.

Trap couldn’t blame her for using her wiles on him, she was probably terrified. She had to know those in charge were going to kill her, and then he came along and as far as she was concerned, he was probably another experiment she was being subjected to. She was fighting for her life, trying to figure him out the same way he was trying to figure her.

“How did Whitney find you?” he asked, needing a few more minutes to decide to chance opening her cell.

“So you do know Peter Whitney.” She couldn’t disguise the malevolence in her voice or the sudden flash of hatred and defiance in her eyes.

“Actually, I’ve never met Whitney while I was awake,” Trap said. “I believe when I was put under on an operating table, he came in and did the surgery, a bit more than I ever expected. But I wouldn’t know him if I met him on the street.”

“I can hear your admiration for him in your voice.” She gripped the bars on the cell so hard her knuckles turned white.

“If I have admiration for him, and I don’t believe I do, it would be for a great mind,” Trap explained, shrugging. “A mind that has clearly gone insane. No one is stopping him. No one is putting the brakes on him. He’s got too many friends in high places and too much money. We’ve tried tracking him, but he moves all the time and there’s no way to pinpoint a location where we can get there before him and then kill him.” He said it matter-of-factly – the hope of all GhostWalkers. He hoped she could hear the sincerity in his voice.

Her green gaze moved over his face as if trying to see behind his skin to his bare bones. “I don’t know whether or not to trust you.”

Her eyes were blazing green. An astonishing green. Two glittering emeralds as cool as a forest and as bright as a sun. He wasn’t going to allow those eyes or those long black lashes to influence him.

“We’re both in the same boat,” he admitted. “I’m wondering the same thing. I don’t want to let a serial killer loose on the world. Are you like him? Like Whitney?”