“Thank you, Jonas.” She didn’t know what else to say. The response seemed inadequate since he was laying himself out there, and she had retreated so far and wasn’t willing to inch back.
“You were explaining how the mycelium network works. I think I understand now. All along, I’ve had that advantage and I didn’t even know it. How are you able to tap into it whenever you want to?”
Again, he deliberately took the spotlight off the personal. He had done that for her more than once, and Camellia was grateful.
She pushed her hair behind her shoulder, trying not to look too closely at Jonas’s golden, very focused eyes. “I’d read everything I could about mycelium prior to discovering I was connected to it. Fortunately, I’m good at retaining what I read. So once I realized what was happening, I would visualize this huge system, like the Internet but connected to my own body, and I’d send messages along my pathways to it, trying to find how and where we were actually connected. I knew there had to be a way to strengthen the link between us. I’d already made a point of practicing every skill I had, so I just began to practice strengthening that one as well.”
Jonas nodded, his gaze never leaving her face. “That’s the kind of thing I do. Sometimes, though, strengthening particular skills turns out to be a mistake. More than once, I’ve honed a particular talent only to realize it amplifies a need for violence, which is the last thing I want.”
Camellia understood. He wasn’t certain what having the connection to the mycelium would do to him. She knew why he would be wary of any new talent that cropped up. She had studied Whitney and his cruelties up close.
“Are you going to tell me the real reason you didn’t go down to either of the compounds and let the women know you were up here, Camellia?” Jonas asked softly. “Especially Marigold. You had to know she was there once you stumbled on the homes. She was your friend. You don’t have to tell me, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense that you didn’t want anything to do with the teams. You could have visited with the women and then walked away. No one could have held you if you didn’t want to be held. You’re too good at what you do not to have studied both places for their security. You didn’t just have a look and then make a run for it. That’s not your personality at all.” He looked around the garden. “You plan out every move. Your backup plan has backup plans.”
Jonas had slipped that question in there when she was feeling relaxed with him. Now the tension coiled in her like a tight spring. She moistened her lips. He was too much like her, even though she’d cut herself off from him. He thought the way she did. What difference did it make if he said something to the others? She didn’t think he would. Marigold wasn’t married to a member of his team. Even if she had been, Jonas struck her as a man who kept things to himself unless he thought he needed to provide details for security.
Camellia sighed, stood up and half turned away from him, pacing across the porch toward the very edge so her face was nearly completely hidden from him. “It was a long time ago, or it seems like it now. We planned our escape as best we could, but we knew the chances of getting free of Whitney’s compound were slim. He’d put us in his breeding program, and we were fighting off his chosen supersoldiers, the ones he thought had great genetics. We all wanted out of there. Whitney had gone to another base, and one of our teams of soldiers was assigned to protect Senator Freeman and his wife, Violet, from a possible assassination attempt.”
She was well aware Jonas had to know about the incident. The GhostWalkers had been involved. “Marigold was friends with all the soldiers. She’d been part of their command at one time. She talked them into letting her go with them. Her goal was to talk with Violet and Senator Freeman about what was going on at the laboratory. We hoped the senator would come and put a stop to it. We didn’t realize Violet was willing to sell us down the river for her own ambitions. She was raised with us, so we thought she was one of us.”
“So,” Jonas said, “a huge break in trust.”
Camellia nodded her head slowly. “We were in dire straits. Rose was already pregnant. We had to get free. Some of the younger ones were talking about suicide. I have to admit, I was going to fight until one of them killed me. I was never going to allow Whitney to force a man on me and then take my child from me. Marigold felt the same way, so we started looking for ways to get all the women out at the same time. If Marigold could get Freeman to come to the laboratory and help us, that was one way; otherwise, we would have to overpower the guards and make a break for it. That would be risky. Our best bet was Mari.”
Camellia turned to face Jonas again, pushing back against the support column, her fingers biting into the wood. Jonas listened intently, those golden eyes never leaving her face, making her feel as if everything she said was important to him—making her feel as if she was important to him.
“It was a huge risk for Marigold to go with the soldiers on their mission to protect Senator Freeman and Violet, but she went. There was what they thought was an assassination attempt. Mari was shot and taken prisoner. Apparently, another GhostWalker team had also been assigned to protect the senator. But it was a setup. Freeman was supposed to die. In any case, Mari was taken prisoner by Team Two, Norton’s team. She fell in love with Ken Norton. Whitney’s team, of course, was frantic to get her back. She wasn’t supposed to have been out of the laboratory. The team found her, but apparently that was because the GhostWalker team allowed them to find her. She was determined to get back to us. Whitney always threatened that if one of us escaped, he would kill one of those left behind.”
Just cracking that door open elevated Camellia’s heart rate. The blood began to pound through her veins. She suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t a grown woman, totally confident in her ability to defend herself. She was back to being that young girl, just finding herself, just becoming a woman, just learning about her skills and talents. She was filled with fire and defiance against a dictator who continually tore the girls down and used them cruelly.
Middlemist Red dipped its branches, and the blossoms smoothed over her face and along her arms to soothe her. Red had been her only friend, and the touch on her skin reminded her that it had been far too long since she’d felt the touch of another human. That want—or maybe need—was growing in her, and she had to push it down ruthlessly. Dredging up her past relationships would help, would be a reminder that friendships were illusions. The only person she could count on was herself.
She didn’t want those eyes of Jonas’s to look so closely into her. She felt exposed now, but she’d gone this far. Cracked the door open and let her secrets start spilling out.
“You know Whitney through his experiments, but we lived through them and his sadistic cruelties every day of our lives. He gave us pets to love and care for and then had them ripped to shreds in front of us as a lesson. They were all killed because we failed to teach them survival skills in a fighting ring. We didn’t even know something like that existed.”