Jonas studied the little house, not moving a muscle. He doubted if the structure contained more than one or two rooms, unless it went back farther into the mountain. That was his biggest worry. Considering the mist, flowers and the woman commanding wild animals, the idea that Whitney was involved was logical. That meant the house could be an entrance to a far greater complex belowground. This could be the threat he was feeling, although it was still vague and distant. So far, he’d only sensed the presence of one woman.
He knew that women Whitney had experimented on had escaped his compound. He also knew that, rather than trusting the GhostWalker teams who aided their getaway, the women had followed their original plan and scattered to make it as difficult as possible for Whitney to reacquire them. The women were distrustful of any GhostWalker, any of the soldiers Whitney had experimented on. Who could blame them?
Jonas knew the women had all been taken from orphanages as children, raised under horrific conditions, used in Whitney’s scientific experiments so he could perfect his enhancement methods before he tried them on his soldiers. He raised the girls in a stark environment, training them to be soldiers, only to decide later to use them in his breeding program.
At first Whitney had paired specific couples, using pheromones so they would be attracted physically. He had hoped to create surgical strike teams composed of bonded couples, a man and a woman, so it would be easier for them to slip into any country without being identified as soldiers. The paired couple’s skills and enhancements would complement one another and enable the pair to handle any mission more effectively than an entire team of special ops soldiers. For all his evil, Whitney was an unswerving patriot. By creating bonded-pair teams of more efficient, more powerful supersoldiers, he was certain he would be saving American lives.
Later, he decided the next step in perfecting his enhancement program was to experiment on the children of the soldiers he created. He no longer bothered ensuring the women were attracted to the men he paired them with in his breeding program. It was no wonder the women didn’t trust anyone who had been enhanced by Whitney.
Jonas inhaled slowly. The camellias gave off no real fragrance. None. Still, he was certain there was a wholly feminine feel to the mist and weaves of illusion, to the binding of nature. It was too light, too subtle, to be a man’s hand. He had to be cautious. Whitney had trained female soldiers, and there could still be one or two active in his ranks. His heart wanted to accelerate, and he had to actively fight to keep the adrenaline from moving fast through his veins. He felt as if he were on the verge of a great discovery.
He couldn’t take chances. Kyle and Jeff were with him. Not only were their lives in his hands, but his team counted on him. He forced air through his lungs, careful to modify each exhalation to match the temperature and vapor content of the surrounding mist. He had no choice but to settle in and wait. That was what predators did. They had patience. They waited for prey. He was a phantom, unseen. He’d disappeared into thin air, and he could outwait anyone or anything.
2
Camellia Mist paced back and forth in the confines of her small house, feeling a bit like a caged animal. She felt a threat approaching across the periphery of her senses, but not a single one of her warning systems had raised an alarm. There were three men camping just inside the lines of her property. It had never happened before, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t. Besides, the threat didn’t feel as if it were coming from them.
The men were sick and disoriented, at least from what she could discern from the reports of the owls and wolves she had keeping a close eye on them. One of the men in particular looked to be in bad shape. He was apparently the most affected by the sonic disruptions she’d woven into the mist. She didn’t like making innocent hikers ill, but she had to keep them away from her gardens—and from her. She hoped they would camp for the night and get back on the main trail. In the morning, she planned on doubling the mist around them, leaving just a slight opening to lure them away from her refuge.
Still, she had this terrible, nearly overwhelming feeling of doom. That was never good. She didn’t have premonitions often, but when she did, they weren’t without cause. She felt . . . hunted. Had Whitney found her? She couldn’t imagine that he would. She had been very careful not to leave any trace behind. So very careful.
She’d avoided people, lived off the land, become a complete recluse. She was almost entirely self-sufficient up here in her secluded little garden, and the few times she needed supplies she couldn’t harvest, hunt or make herself, she snuck into town at night and broke into stores, avoiding the cameras, careful to take only what she absolutely needed to survive. She always took enough supplies to see her through several months so she wouldn’t have to make trips during the winter months, when the snow was deep and shut down the trails and roads.
How would Whitney have found her? He always planted tracking devices in the women, but she found the one in her hip and cut it out. It hadn’t been that deep. Had there been a second one? If so, why would he have waited so long before he sent someone after her?
Chewing at her lower lip, a nervous habit Whitney had detested in her and in all the girls, Camellia went to the bed and lay down so she could run her fingers over her skin to feel for any foreign object, no matter how small. She had very sensitive fingertips. More, the blood in her veins was connected to nature, to the plants that grew within the perimeter of her land. She tapped into that environment now, seeking an outside source to aid her in examining her body for anything that Whitney may have surgically placed in her without her knowledge. She found nothing.
No trackers, then, that she could find, yet that feeling of dread refused to go away. If anything, the awareness of a predator closing in on her increased to such an extent that she leapt to her feet and rushed to change into clothes made of soft, organic material that would blend with her garden and allow her to disappear at will. Since no warning had been triggered, she couldn’t explain why she was so certain someone was stalking her, but she was absolutely sure. She needed to be outside where she could see what was happening around her and let her plants talk to her.
If the threat was beyond her garden—could it be coming from the GhostWalkers who, as she’d recently discovered, had well-established fortresses several miles below her on the steeper side of the mountain? She would reach for the reptiles, the frogs and lizards. GhostWalkers rarely suspected them, where they often did birds and mammals. Just the idea that a GhostWalker might be stalking her was terrifying.
She had made up her mind she would never return to Whitney’s compound and his disgusting breeding program or his horrible experiments. She would rather spend the rest of her life alone with her plants. She’d built a life for herself here. Solitary, yes, but she had everything she needed. As long as she didn’t have some kind of serious accident, like break her leg, she was almost entirely self-sufficient. She had a good first aid kit, and she knew how to take care of most injuries, even severe ones. She’d set up perimeter scouts and defenses. And just to be on the safe side, she’d thoroughly explored the surrounding forest and mapped out multiple escape routes in case Whitney’s soldiers found her.