“Ginger, I hope you’re hungry,” he greeted softly. “Nonny has fixed breakfast and it looks wonderful. Go on into the kitchen and eat. I’ll be right in. Nonny will help you.”
The child looked at Pepper. He couldn’t feel the shift in energy, but they definitely communicated with one another. Ginger slipped off the bed and hurried out of the room, running on her little bare feet. He’d wanted to get a good look at her feet and made a mental note to examine them soon.
“When were the orders to terminate the children given?”
“About three weeks ago.” Pepper turned her head to look up at him. “Why?”
Wyatt sighed. He didn’t know this woman. Could she be part of a conspiracy? She looked innocent enough. Beguiling was more like it. She’d already admitted to him she was made to be a seductress for Whitney.
“Where were you and the children before you came here?”
“In France. At a laboratory in France.”
“Yet you speak excellent English. Your accent is flawless.”
“I speak several languages.” Pepper struggled into a sitting position, clenching her teeth when pain beat at her. “Why? What’s wrong?”
He felt the same pain, a blow to his system, and had to breathe deep until he could accept and absorb it as she was doing. He steeled himself to interrogate her. He had to be certain before he put his team and his family in danger.
“What’s wrong is this all seems like an enormous coincidence to me. When did you first meet the children?”
She frowned at him and lifted a hand to push back the stray tendrils of hair tumbling around her face. The action lifted her breasts, immediately drawing attention to her body. He detested that his body reacted to her. That made him suspicious as well. He was a doctor, and he had both control and discipline. He’d never had a problem looking at female patients in his life. Not ever. Not once. Until Pepper.
Now, all of a sudden, he couldn’t get this woman out of his mind. He wanted to keep her. Make her his own. Keep her. Make it permanent. Hell. What was wrong with him? The driving need seemed to be so strong, he felt primitive when he was around her. Caveman primitive. He’d always been dominant, but he had never been jealous, not even of Joy when he stupidly and mistakenly thought he was in love with her. But this one… Pepper. He didn’t want his own friends coming near her.
“I think they were born in the same laboratory where I was kept. I was put in charge of caring for them when they were about three months old. I didn’t mind. I didn’t have a family, and I loved spending time with them. I was told when their teeth came in they might be dangerous but that I was immune to the venom.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “They neglected to tell me all three babies carried both types of venom and I wasn’t yet immune to viper venom.”
“And that’s what they were trying to do with you? Create an antidote to either of the two types of snakebites? A universal donor, so to speak.”
She nodded slowly, her strange eyes moving over his face. “Yes. Without causing so many allergic reactions. But then suddenly, after my fight with Braden, we were told we were being moved.”
“Right after?”
She wasn’t lying to him. He knew the truth when he heard it. Every small nuance of her voice, every tone, every breathy sound, connected to him.
“No. It was a few weeks later. Suddenly. Almost out of the blue. We boarded a private jet. The company, Wilson Plastics, has their own corporate jet. They flew us to a military base and then brought us here. That was just over two months ago.”
“And yet they didn’t issue termination orders until a couple of weeks ago.”
She nodded again, her gaze never leaving his face. “That’s correct, although I knew what that place was. I didn’t know why suddenly they would want to get rid of us. I actually thought it was me they were going to terminate. I wasn’t cooperating with them. They wanted to use me to assassinate someone and I refused.”
“Who?”
“A sergeant major in the Marine Corps. He’s a good man, at least when I did some research on him, he appeared to be. He’s married, and they told me it would be difficult to get him to have an affair with me. They could get me in to work in his office, and I was to take it from there.”
“Which sergeant major?”
“His name was Sergeant Major Theodore Griffen.”
Wyatt stiffened. Sergeant Major Theodore Griffen ran one of the GhostWalker teams. He sighed and shook his head. “Why would they allow you to research this man if they knew you had scruples? Why not just send you off, spinnin’ a story about how he’s sellin’ out his country?”
“I don’t know.” At his piercing look she shook her head. “I swear to you, I don’t know.”