He glanced down at the woman lying motionless on top of him. They were both covered with streaks of black mud. He pushed strands of her dark hair aside. “Dahlia. Wake up.” She had finally lost consciousness out in the channel after fighting every step of the way, holding back the wash of energy to keep from giving away their position and gamely keeping up with him until her body said enough. “You’re beginning to worry me.” It was the truth, and he objected to worrying on principle. It was a useless pastime and one he avoided at all costs. He shook her gently. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty, wake up for me.”

Nicolas sat up, ignoring the shrieking protest his body made. She looked vulnerable, starkly white beneath the mud. Just looking at her caused a curious shift in his belly. He was a man very much in control of himself, and yet, Dahlia had awakened something long dormant and apparently strong within him. It was uncomfortable not recognizing exactly what he was feeling.

Thunder boomed directly overhead, rattling the trees and shaking the ground. Rain poured down on them, a heavy deluge soaking them within minutes. Dahlia stirred, her slight body shrinking away from the impact of the stinging rain. She turned her head to try to escape the onslaught. Her lashes fluttered, drawing his attention to their length. She looked up at him. He caught a glimpse of fear quickly masked. She looked around her, slipping off his lap to break physical contact.

“I guess I passed out. The overload gets me every time.” Her gaze touched his face, jumped away. “It can be a liability.”

He shrugged, the gesture casual. “I’m a GhostWalker too, remember? I know what it’s like.” He got to his feet and reached down, offering his hand.

Dahlia hesitated a moment before she put her hand in his. “I still don’t know what a GhostWalker is.” She took a careful look around. “You got us to the right place. The trapper’s cabin is that way.” She indicated an area to their right.

Nicolas shouldered his pack. “Do you remember Dr. Whitney? Dr. Peter Whitney?” He watched her closely. Her face changed—her expression went blank. There was instant withdrawal, not only physically; she distanced herself from him in her mind. He could feel the separation and it was almost a blow. That stunned him. Uncertain if he could cover his rare inner turmoil, he was the one to look away, studying the direction she indicated before setting out.

“I remember him.” Her voice was low and filled with distaste.

“Did you figure out what he did to you?” Nicolas kept his voice neutral and continued to walk ahead of her, keeping his back to her so she wouldn’t have to hide her expression from him. Or maybe he needed to hide his expression, he wasn’t entirely certain which it was. Before he’d started off on the trail, he noticed she was shivering, her body reacting to the harsh conditions. In spite of the deluge of rain, the air was still warm. It made him want to gather her up and hold her close. He shook his head in an effort to rid himself of his extraordinary thoughts.

Dahlia listened to the sound of the rain. She always found it soothing. Even now, with it pouring down on top of her, she felt she could lose part of herself in it. The part that hurt people. The part she could never control. When she sat out in the rain, it washed her clean. “I feel as if Whitney stole my life. Yet at the same time, I feel as if I should be grateful to him. He built my home and he hired Milly and Bernadette. He also provided me with everything I could need or want. My brain requires. . .” She broke off and stared at the silent trees on either side of them, afraid she might shame herself with tears. She was exhausted and vulnerable, filled with such grief she could barely breathe. She couldn’t even look at Nicolas’s broad back while they walked, not if he wanted to talk about Dr. Whitney.

“You aren’t alone, Dahlia. Whitney brought over a number of children, most infants, from various foreign countries. He found the little girls in orphanages, and he was very wealthy so he didn’t have much opposition. No one wanted the children, so when he paid for them, the authorities closed their eyes and asked no questions.”

Her heart accelerated with every word he spoke. She forced herself to listen to the cadence of his voice. He might not have an inflection, but there was a carefulness, a way he had of speaking that told her volumes. Nicolas was not as unaffected as he seemed. “I was one of those children.” She made it a statement.

“Yes.” He stopped on the small strip of solid ground and surveyed the grove of trees growing in knee-deep water straight ahead. “We’re going to have to cross this.”

Dahlia sighed. “I told you it was difficult. I’m sorry.”

Nicolas turned his head and grinned at her. It was fleeting and barely lit his eyes, but it warmed her. “I think we’re already soaked.”

A reluctant smile touched her mouth briefly. “I guess we are.”

“Is the rain getting the mud off of me?”

She tilted her head. A hint of laughter crept into her eyes. “Actually it’s running down your face in a rather dramatic fashion. I think you’d even manage to scare an alligator.”

“Before you start laughing at me, you might take a look at yourself.” Nicolas made the mistake of reaching out to brush at a streak of mud on her face. At once her amusement vanished and she moved her head to escape his touch. His hand dropped to his side.

“Were you one of those children Whitney took out of the orphanage?” She met his gaze, a dark, almost belligerent challenge.

Nicolas stepped into the water. It was deeper than he thought. He reached back and shackled Dahlia’s wrist, not giving her time to pull away from the contact. She initially resisted, a slight instinctive pull away from him, but he saw her set her jaw and step into the black water right beside him. “I came much later,” he answered matter-of-factly, pretending not to notice her aversion to being touched. The water was over her breasts, nearly to her shoulders.

“What did he do?”

“He had an idea that he could enhance psychic abilities. He thought if he could find children with some signs of talent, he could boost their capabilities and improve on their ability to serve their country. He took the children to his laboratory, hired nurses for them, and conducted his experiments.”

“What exactly did he do to us?”

“Do you remember Lily?” He stopped walking to look down at her.

Her breath caught in her throat. “I didn’t think she was real.”

“She’s very real. Whitney kept her when he got rid of all the others. He told her she was his biological daughter and raised her as such. She had no knowledge of the enhancements, only that she was different and couldn’t be around people for very long. She lived a fairly solitary life. When some of the men in my unit were killed and Whitney suspected murder, he brought her in on the project to try to help him figure out what was happening to us. Peter Whitney was murdered before he could tell her anything. Lily figured it out and helped us all. She’s been looking for all the other girls he brought over from the orphanages ever since. That’s how she discovered the sanitarium and you.”

Dahlia rubbed her temple. “I actually feel sick for her. It must have been a terrible blow to find out the truth about Whitney. I remember her as being so nice. I always felt better if I was with her.”

“She’s an anchor. Like I am. We trap emotions, and to some extent energy, away from the others so they can function better. Is Jesse an anchor?” He slipped the question in deliberately as he turned away from her, tugging her through the water with him.

“I don’t know. He must have been. It was easier to be in his presence. I never really questioned why. I felt calmer and more in control when he was around.”

Nicolas felt a strange burning in the region of his belly. His chest grew tight. “Were you and Jesse close?” His tone was strictly neutral.

She glanced at him, suddenly nervous and not knowing why. “I guess we were. Closer than I am to most people. I don’t know many people. I counted Jesse as family, the same way I did Milly and Bernadette.”

There was honesty in her voice. Innocence. He let his breath escape slowly, not liking himself very much in that moment. He was learning things about himself he had never considered a part of his character before. It wasn’t pleasant. “I’m sorry about the two women, Dahlia. They were already dead when I got there. I managed to take out the man who shot Jesse, but then things got a bit hot.”

“I know you would have saved them if you could have.” And she did know. “Tell me more about Whitney. What did he do to us?” Just the dreaded name conjured up memories she had worked to suppress.

“Lily can give you all the technical data if you want it. I listened to it and understood about a third of what she was saying. But basically, he removed all the filters in our brains. We’re always on sensory overload. Of course he went a bit further and used electric pulses and designer drugs, but you get the idea. We feel things and hear things and can do things most people can’t, but the cost is enormous. At least I volunteered. You had no choice. Whitney has a lot to answer for.”

“Yes he does.” Dahlia closed her eyes against the flood of bleak memories. Sounds of crying children. Pain that raged in her head night and day. The shadowy figure always watching, never smiling, never pleased. Not human. She thought of him that way. A tormenter, devoid of all feeling. He was a monster from her nightmares, something she pushed far away and tried never to think about.

“Dahlia?” Nicolas drew her under his shoulder. It was a measure of her distress that she didn’t notice. She had such an aversion to physical contact, yet she remained close to his body. He could feel her shivering right through the soaked clothes. “I don’t want to upset you. You’ve had a rough day. We can have this conversation another time.”

Dahlia looked up at the rain, nearly stumbled in the water. The night sky was dark and cloudy and felt very much like her weeping heart. “I have to be careful.” She tried to keep her voice as expressionless as his. “If I feel too much of anything, bad things can happen.” She looked up at his face. In the night he looked made of granite, not flesh, a beautiful stone carving with amazing eyes. “Did he do that to me?”

“Yes.” There was no reason to deny it. Peter Whitney was dead, murdered by a man far more unscrupulous and far more lethal than Peter had ever been. “I’m sorry. I wish I could say we’ve found a cure, but we haven’t. We’ve found a way to make it easier to live among other people, but so far, there is no way to reverse the process.”

The water was becoming shallow. Dahlia waited until they were back on solid ground before looking around to try to get her bearings. “It’s over there, just through that grove of trees. The cabin is small and doesn’t have hot water, but we can improvise. It sits right on the bank of a canal that runs like a ribbon through the island. Very few locals come out here because accessing it so difficult. A few of the older trappers come once in a while.” She talked fast, trying to keep his words from sinking in. She hadn’t realized until that moment, until he said there was no way to reverse the process, how she’d hoped he’d tell her they had a miraculous cure for her.

She forced herself to shrug. “I’m alive. Did I thank you for that? I doubt I would have made it away safely by myself. I would have tried to rescue Jesse right then, with all of them there. Do you think they tortured him to get him to tell them where I was?”

Nicolas wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her over a rotted tree trunk, setting her smoothly down without missing a stride. “These type of men torture for the thrill of it. They don’t need excuses.”

They rounded a slight bend and found the shack. It sat on the edge of a canal, just as Dahlia had said, one wall sagging ominously. Cracks showed through the wood in places. A burlap sack covered a window, but the crooked door was locked.

“I’m going to get Jesse back,” Dahlia said, staring at the lock.

It was a simple combination lock. As Nicolas reached for it, the center spun, first one way and then the other. Tumblers clicked into place, and the lock sprang open. It happened fast and smooth and Nicolas realized Dahlia had opened the lock without really thinking about doing it. She reached around him and took it from the latch and shoved the door open. “I’m not leaving him with those men.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to leave him behind.” He looked around the small room. A mattress stuffed with moss lay on the floor. “He’s like us.”

Dahlia looked at him sharply. “Whitney experimented on him?”

“He’s telepathic. I’ve never come across a natural telepath that strong. I’d say he was enhanced, and as far as I know, no one else had Whitney’s formula.” Nicolas took out this canteen and handed it to Dahlia. “We have plenty left. Drink as much as you need.” He looked around him. “It isn’t a five-star hotel, is it?”

Dahlia wrapped her arms around her waist, desperate to control the continual shivering. More than anything she wanted to be alone. She hadn’t spent so much time with another human being in as long as she remembered, not even Milly and Bernadette. She forced a small smile. “I’m going outside for a while, so if you need to do anything private like dry off, the place is yours.”

“There’s no need to keep watch yet. I’ll know if someone comes up on us. You’re the one needing to dry off. My pack is waterproof. At least it’s supposed to be.” He placed his rifle on the rickety table before dragging out a shirt. “Wear this and we can spread your clothes out to dry.”

Dahlia took the shirt with reluctance and watched him as he took apart the rifle. He dried each part of the weapon carefully and oiled it. She looked around the small room. There was no hope of privacy, so she moved to the corner as far from him as possible and turned her back on him.

“You have to be prepared for your friend to be dead, Dahlia.”

She threw her wet clothing aside. “His name is Jesse, Jesse Calhoun.” She glanced back to see if he was watching, but he kept his back to her. She stripped off the thin, pale blue bra and tossed it on the heap of soaked, muddy clothes and pulled the dry shirt on quickly. “It wouldn’t make any sense to kill him. If they were going to kill him, they would have done it back at the sanitarium. They’re using him as bait to draw me to him. What other possible motive could they have?” She peeled off her jeans and underwear, trying not to be embarrassed, trying to act as though it didn’t matter to her.

“I’d have to agree. They took him for insurance. They figured if they didn’t get you, they’d take him and you’d follow.”

“Which is exactly what I’m going to do.” She glared belligerently at his back. Not that he’d told her it was a stupid idea, but his neutral tone was becoming irritating. Of course she had to go to Jesse’s aid. Jesse would never leave her in the enemy’s hands.

Nicolas kept his head down and his eyes on his rifle as he wiped it with a cloth. He could feel her mounting agitation and guessed, from his experience as a GhostWalker, that her rising anxiety stemmed from being in such close and continual proximity to another human being. Added to her grief and shock, it was a dangerous combination. “I don’t see any other recourse,” he agreed. “Since they know we’re coming after them, and we can’t forget they’ve put an assassin on our trail, we’ll have to outsmart them.”

“I’m glad you understand.” She rinsed the mud from her clothes before spreading them out to dry. She turned to watch as Nicolas set his rifle aside and pulled a few more items from his pack. One was a pillowcase she recognized from her room.

Nicolas opened a small tin and pulled out a tablet, setting it on a box. In spite of needing to keep her own distance, Dahlia moved closer, her eyes alive with curiosity. “What is that?”

“I’ve got waterproof matches in here. Some things are a bit damp. We were in the water a long time.” He shielded the flare of the match with his hand and lit the tablet. “It’s called a Sterno tab and it should give us enough heat to stop you from shivering.”

Dahlia could already feel the heat flaring from the small object. “What else do you have in that bag? I don’t suppose you brought food with you.”

“Well, of course I did. Men don’t go anywhere without food.”

His eyes sparkled with brief amusement. Warmth washed over her. It was a small thing, but it had never happened before. Dahlia crossed her arms beneath her breasts and turned toward the warmth of the tablet, refusing to look at temptation. It didn’t last long.

Nicolas began to deposit weapons on the wooden box that served as a table. Two boot knives. Two knives that had been tucked into a harness lying flat against his ribs. Another knife produced from a sheath between his shoulder blades. A nine mm Beretta and a belt filled with ammunition. She stared at it all. “Good grief. You certainly believe in having an edge.”

“A person can never have too many weapons.”

She studied him, the fluid way he moved, his watchful eyes. Everything about him screamed lethal. “You are a weapon.”

He gave a small, fleeing grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “There you go. It’s called being prepared.”

She was all too aware of him stripping off his wet clothes and tossing them aside. The man had absolutely no modesty, and her gaze kept straying to him in spite of her resolve. His size dwarfed the room, and her. He was tall with wide shoulders and obvious muscles. He turned slightly and she caught sight of the nasty wound on his side, up high, near his heart.

“You’re hurt.”

He shrugged. “A few weeks ago. It’s almost healed.” He dragged the first aid kit from his pack.

The wound didn’t look healed or several weeks old to her. It looked raw and painful. “You should have told me.” His black eyes moved over her face. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking but something in his gaze disturbed her.

“What could you have done about it?”

“I would have tried harder to keep from passing out.”

“Can you do that?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. I pushed my limit this time, but maybe with more incentive I could have forced myself to keep going.” Even now her arms and legs ached from the long swim. She rubbed her hands over her biceps. “At least you wouldn’t have had to drag me along with your pack and rifle.”

“You don’t weigh enough to notice.”

She turned away from him, back to the warmth of the tablet. She knew she was small. Even Jesse teased her about needing to grow. It was a sore subject, but she tried never to show it bothered her.

“Here’s some face wipes. Instant cleanup and then we can eat.”

Dahlia turned just as he tossed the small box of wipes to her. She snagged them out of the air and knew immediately he was testing her reflexes. “I’m fine, Nicolas. I passed out from the overload of energy, not because I wasn’t strong enough to continue. It happens a lot. I stay away from situations that can cause it. Really, you don’t have to worry, I’m perfectly fine now. As a matter of fact, because I can utilize most energy, I last longer at physical things than most people.”

He studied her averted face as he pulled on a much drier pair of jeans. She didn’t look fine. She looked pale and sad. He had no idea how to comfort her. Women weren’t his forte. She was doing a lousy job wiping off the streaks of mud. He took the wipe from her hand and awkwardly did it for her.

Dahlia’s survival instincts shrieked at her to pull away, but she stood her ground. Nicolas was never awkward, not in any situation she’d seen him in. Yet she could feel how uncomfortable he was and recognized that he was trying to soothe her.

“Whitney’s dead. He was murdered trying to protect the men in my unit after he experimented on us. After his death, several tapes were found. You were in them, that’s what led us to you. In all the tapes of you learning martial arts you attacked or defended ahead of your partner. You felt the energy coming at you before they moved, didn’t you?” He brushed more mud from her face, his touch so gentle she could barely feel it, yet electricity crackled in the air between them.

There was admiration in his voice and respect. Dahlia tried not to show it affected her, but her heart did its funny little flip at the unexpected comment. She nodded. “That’s pretty much how it works. Everything gives off energy, including emotion. So when I’m practicing with someone, I can feel the force of the attack before it actually reaches me. And I can take that same energy and use it myself.”

“That’s pretty incredible, even for a GhostWalker. But you aren’t telepathic?”

“Not strong. I can’t ordinarily initiate, even with Jesse, and he’s a very strong telepath. You warned me, didn’t you? I heard your voice warning me off. You must be a very strong telepath as well.” She glanced at him, at the shadows in his eyes. “Why do you call yourselves GhostWalkers?” She didn’t object to the title, in fact, there was something very comforting in knowing others were like her. That she wasn’t entirely alone, but part of a group, even if she didn’t know them.

“We call ourselves GhostWalkers because we were put in cages and no longer considered human, or alive. And we knew we could escape into the shadows, into the night, and the night would belong to us.” He tilted her face up for his inspection, two fingers beneath her chin. “There, I think I’ve got it all.” His hand slipped away, taking his warmth with him. She watched him scrub the mud from his own face.

“Who are we?”

“Whitney thought his experiment failed because all of you from the orphanage were children and you weren’t old enough or disciplined enough to cope with the effects of what he’d done. He waited a few years, believed he refined the process, and drew from a military pool, thinking highly trained and disciplined men would fare better.”

“I take it they didn’t.” She took the wipe from his hand and gestured until he bent down. Dahlia wiped the streaks of mud from his face.

Nicolas felt the breath leave his body. She wasn’t touching him, not with her fingers, not skin to skin, but it felt as if she were. His lungs burned for air, or maybe his body burned for something else. Something far more intimate. He didn’t dare move or breathe in case she stopped. Or didn’t stop. He was uncertain which would be safer. His reaction was so unexpected, so foreign to his nature, he stilled beneath her hand, a wild animal gathering itself for a strike. He could feel himself coiling, waiting. The strange part was, he had no idea what he was waiting for.

For a moment the room crackled with tension, with arcing electricity. It jumped from her skin to his and back again. “Stop it.” She said it in a low voice.

His black gaze collided with hers. Air rushed into his body and took her scent with it. He should have smelled the swamp, but instead he smelled woman. Dahlia. He would always know when she walked into the room. He would always know whenever she was near. It had to be a chemistry thing. “I didn’t realize I was the one doing it. I thought it was you.”

“It’s definitely you.” She handed him the dirty wipe and stepped back, putting space between them.

She was giving them both the opportunity to drop the subject. She wanted to let it alone. Nicolas wasn’t so certain he wanted the same thing. Her moving away from him didn’t stop the flood of awareness. He rubbed his hand over his arm. She was there, under his skin, and he had no idea how she got there.

“Do you really have food in that pack?” Dahlia asked.

Nicolas let the heat in his gaze burn over her face. She stood her ground, but he felt her tense. He let the air escape his lungs. Dahlia was not prepared to accept any part of him. He relaxed and smiled at her. A quick, deliberate, male grin that said all kinds of things and yet said nothing. “And coffee or cocoa.”

“I think you’re a magician.” Dahlia eased away from him even farther, moving around the makeshift table to put the rickety piece of furniture between them as if that would stop the strange awareness that was growing with every moment. Her heart was beating loudly, a hard, steady rhythm that told her she was in trouble.

What happened between them? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know, but she wanted it to go away. Dahlia didn’t trust anyone enough to share such a moment of total awareness. And there had been something proprietary in the energy rolling off of him. An element that was both male and very confident. Very determined. Extremely sexual. She glanced at him, then away. He was a hunter, a man who took months to single-mindedly follow a target and never missed. Dahlia shivered. She didn’t want him to focus on her.

“I think cocoa would be perfect. A hot cup so I can sleep.” She doubted she could do so even with the warm drink. She couldn’t remember ever sleeping with someone in the same room with her. The idea made her feel slightly ill.

Nicolas pulled out the MRE, a sealed bag of prepared food the military provided for troops in the field. “There’s plenty of food, Dahlia.”

“Is it edible?”

“I eat it all the time.”

A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “That isn’t saying much. You probably would eat lizards and snakes.”

“They can be quite tasty, cooked the right way. I often ate snake with my grandfather on the reservation where I grew up.”

He didn’t look at her, but kept busy preparing their meal. Dahlia had a better sense of him now. The conversation seemed casual enough, yet something in his voice told her he was imparting information he rarely shared with anyone. He was wearing only a pair of jeans. His bare chest was bronzed and heavily muscled. She couldn’t help her gaze straying occasionally in his direction.

She cleared her throat. “Your grandfather raised you?”

“I never knew my parents. They died shortly after I was born. Grandfather was a spirit guide and believed in the old ways. It was fun growing up with him. We spent months in the mountains tracking animals and learning to be a part of nature. He was a good man and I was lucky to grow up with him.”

“You must have learned a lot from him.”

“Everything but the one thing that mattered.”

The regret in his voice was genuine and it tugged at her. “What would that be?”

“How to heal. I know all the chants and the right herbs and plants, but I just don’t have the gift the way he did.” Nicolas divided some of the food and put the rest away. He had the feeling they might need it later, and he believed in being prepared. “He taught me that all lives are important and before we learn to take life away, we should learn to give life back. And he could. You should have seen him. He was a good man, highly educated. He also knew the history of my people and the old ways. He respected nature and life and he could bring harmony to a chaotic situation just by being there.”

Dahlia sighed. “He sounds like a very intriguing man. I had Milly and Bernadette. Bernadette was the medicine woman in the bayou. Quite a few of the locals would come to ask her to help them. She delivered babies and treated all sorts of things, mostly with plants and herbs. She was a trained nurse, but she told me her early and best education was here in the bayou with another woman who knew medicine. She taught me quite a bit. I liked being in the bayou, out in the open, away from everyone.”

She had to turn away from him, away from grief and anger. She had to be in control at all times, as long as she was in his company. He helped ease the bombardment of energy, but more than once, Dahlia had lost control and others had suffered the consequences. “I’m very tired. Do you think we should take turns being on guard?”

“I doubt it’s necessary. There are enough natural alarms around us. We’d both probably wake up immediately. I sleep light.”

She didn’t doubt that he slept light. There was something very self-contained about Nicolas Trevane. He exuded confidence and authority. “I’m going outside for a few minutes. If something does happen tonight or tomorrow, there’s a boat tied up just around the bend. It’s old and it leaks, but it has gas in the motor and will get you out of here.” It was one of the many avenues of escape she kept out of necessity.

“We’re sticking together, Dahlia. I hope you don’t think you’re going to hightail it out of here and go after Jesse on your own.”

She shrugged. “We’re adults, Nicolas. I have to do what’s right for me, and I guess you have to do the same. I’m not leaving Jesse behind, and I’m not about to ask you to risk your life going after these people to get him back.”

“My job is to keep you alive and escort you back to Lily. I guess we’re going in the same direction.”

“There’s a small condo in the French Quarter Jesse showed me once. We can go there. There are clothes and money and ID stashed for me.” She opened the door, let the sound of the rain into the small cabin, pausing in the open doorway to stare out into the bayou. “Do you think they know who you are?”

“I doubt they’ll ever find out,” Nicolas said.

Dahlia took a deep breath as she stepped outside, closing the door behind her. The rain had lessened in strength, falling in a light drizzle. The moment she was alone, she sagged against the wall of the cabin and pressed her hand to her mouth, afraid she might choke. She’d never been so off balance in her life. The man had risked his life to save hers. He’d hauled her through the swamp and provided clothes and food for her. She couldn’t very well run off like a rabbit because she didn’t know how to be in the company of people.

Maybe it was his company she was afraid of. She’d never had such a reaction to anyone before. She wanted to put it down to extreme circumstances, but Dahlia knew herself far better than that. She’d lived most of her life under difficult conditions, and she’d never had such an awareness of a man before.

Determined to get through the rest of the night without making a fool of herself, Dahlia went back inside quickly. Nicolas was the type of man who would come looking, and she didn’t want that. There was dignity in returning on her own, unafraid, or at least giving the illusion of being unafraid.

Dahlia went directly to the mattress. She wasn’t going to be a baby about sharing the only place he could stretch out in either. That, too, was beneath her dignity.

“You want the wall or the outside?” He didn’t look at her, giving her space.

Her first inclination was to take the outside, but he was far better with weapons, and she was smaller. She could easily crawl off the mattress without disturbing him, whereas he didn’t have a hope of doing the same. “I’ll take the wall.” She hoped she didn’t suddenly develop claustrophobia.

Nicolas waited until she was lying on the thin mattress. He knew what it took for her to allow him to have the outside. It was more practical, but she had spent her life away from people, living a solitary existence, talking only to a couple of older women and Jesse Calhoun. Nicolas wanted a long talk with Calhoun. The man had to have been working for the same people who had used Dahlia as an operative. Just what had they been using her for?

Nicolas felt Dahlia shrink away from his body when he settled his weight beside her, stretching out fully. “Are you going to be able to do this, Dahlia?”

She closed her eyes, wishing he hadn’t asked her. Wishing his tone wasn’t so gentle, almost tender. Wishing the warmth of his body didn’t envelope her and drive away the shivering she hadn’t been able to stop since she’d found Milly and Bernadette dead. Murdered, execution style. “What did you bring in the pillowcase?”

“The pillowcase?”

“From my room. I saw you had a pillowcase from off of my bed.”

“I picked up as many things that looked like they might be of sentimental value to you and shoved them in it. A few books, a sweater, a stuffed animal. I didn’t have much time.”

Dahlia turned her head to look at him. “That was very considerate. I doubt if too many people would have thought of it under the circumstances.”

Her drowsy voice conjured up images of satin sheets. He’d never laid on a satin sheet in his life, but he suddenly had visions of her looking up at him, naked, her dark hair spread out on the pillow, candlelight playing lovingly over her body. He didn’t trust himself to answer. And he didn’t trust his body to behave, even as uncomfortable and as tired as he was.

He turned away from her, on his side, giving her as much room as he could and took command of his breathing, slowing it down so he could fall asleep. Once he touched the rifle that lay beside him and the Beretta that was next to his hand. He could feel the outline of his knife, sheathed, but unhooked in case of quick need. He was ready should her enemies find them.