The men moved in the same tight formation, Dahlia locked in the center while they escorted her to the waiting plane. Max followed her into the small compartment. “You should have said something, Dahlia. You should have at least reported it to the director. Henderson would have had me bring you in to protect you.”
“No one was supposed to know about me, Max,” Dahlia pointed out. She sounded weary, sad. Already moving away from them all. “What does that tell you? And how did they know where I lived?”
“You can’t think someone at the NCIS is involved.”
“When they sent a team in to find me at the safe house in the Quarter, someone took a shot at me. They knew right where to find my home in the bayou, Max. It isn’t that easy to find.” She didn’t look at him but kept her face averted.
Nicolas put his arm around her and drew her close, the grief in her voice twisting at his guts. “You can see why we’re not taking any chances.” He had already done his best to probe Logan Maxwell’s mind, but the man had strong barriers up. The same kind of barriers Lily Whitney had taught the GhostWalkers through mental exercises. He recognized the mark of Special Forces, a warrior trained and honed by battle. Maxwell wasn’t the type of man to back down easily, and Nicolas doubted if he could be bought.
They settled in the plane with Max behind the controls. “Jesse know about these men, Dahlia?”
“Nicolas is the one who pulled him out of the fire, Max,” Dahlia said quietly. “And if Jesse lives, it was Nicolas who saved him.”
Max glanced at Nicolas, noting the proprietary way he held Dahlia, the protective body language. “Then I owe you. Jesse’s a good friend of mine. You all better strap yourselves in for takeoff. I’m not hanging around just in case. I heard Jesse was in bad shape. The admiral went to see him, but wouldn’t disclose where he was, not even to us. And he wouldn’t say what happened to him or what kind of shape he’s in.”
“And that should tell you something,” Nicolas pointed out.
Dahlia looked from one man to the other. Nicolas could be terribly intimidating when he chose, and right now, he had his stone face on. His eyes were hard obsidian and his mouth was a merciless slash. He pinned Maxwell with his icy cold gaze and refused to let up.
“I suppose it does,” Max agreed with a heavy sigh. “I don’t want to believe it, but I’m afraid the evidence points that way.” The engine was already on and the plane began to vibrate as he went through his checklist automatically before taxiing down the runway.
Nicolas waited until they were in the air. “Jesse Calhoun is a GhostWalker, psychically enhanced. I’m guessing you are as well. How did Whitney get ahold of you? And do any of you have the physical and mental repercussions associated with the experiment?”
Max’s cool gaze swept over both Dahlia and Nicolas. “You know I can’t talk about that.”
“But you know Dahlia’s a GhostWalker.” Nicolas made it a statement. “It’s why they used both you and Calhoun. You’re anchors. She could travel with you without too many repercussions.” Just the mere fact that Maxwell knew the term GhostWalker spoke volumes.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter,” Max intoned, staring straight ahead.
“You don’t have to. Calhoun recognized my name, and he knew what I was. He’s a strong telepath and there’s no way he was born that way. We also are aware Dr. Peter Whitney enhanced several men using his own private laboratory when complications began to arise from his military experiment. He didn’t want all his eggs in one basket, so to speak, and if we were all murdered, he had a few for backup, just in case.”
Dahlia made a soft sound of distress and turned her head away, reluctant to allow them to see her expression. Whitney had been the monster of her childhood, but as a child, she’d believed his experiments had been done only to her. She’d even been told the other girls were a figment of her imagination and at times believed it. “What was wrong with him?” she murmured aloud. “How could he experiment on human beings? He knew what was happening to us when we were children, but he repeated the experiment, not once, but twice. It’s horrifying.” She didn’t realize her fingers had curled into tight fists until Nicolas put his hand gently over hers. She looked at Max. “I trusted you. Both you and Jesse. You knew I felt isolated and alone, yet neither of you said anything or even mentioned you knew Whitney. Damn you both for that.”