“Why would you risk your life to save mine?”

“What difference does it make? I don’t make casual conversation. Let’s do this and get out of here.”

“I didn’t realize the conversation was casual. It isn’t to me.”

He wanted to swear—and he wasn’t a swearing man. She stared up at him with her dark, enormous eyes and her exotic, Asian beauty and somehow slipped past his guard and got under his skin. There was something about her he couldn’t quite grasp, something important, elusive, something that floated in his mind but refused to be caught. It had to do with feelings, and the one thing Nicolas wasn’t good at was dealing with emotion.

He let his breath out, determined not to let her get to him. He had to keep them alive and that was all that mattered. “Focus away from us. Think of the energy like a charge. Something you’re detonating. Direct it to a specific area.”

She shook her head. Her heartrate might be following his, but her lungs were starved for air, the energy choking her with wanting to get out. “I can’t.”

“Focus out there.” He indicated the bog several hundred yards away from them. “Think of it as an arrow. You’re sending it right there. Picture a target and get as close to the center of the bull’s-eye as you can and send the energy there.”

“It will burn everything.”

“There isn’t much to burn.” His gaze shifted restlessly, examining the areas around them. Instinctively he was crouching now, pulling her down with him so that the trees and bushes gave them more cover. “Send it.” This time, deliberately, there was hard authority in his tone. They were out of time. He didn’t mention that he had seen shadows move in the bog.

Dahlia sent up a silent prayer that it would work. She stared out into the night, wishing the moon didn’t keep going behind clouds so she could actually see an image. She felt the force of the energy moving within her. And she felt something more. Nicolas Trevane. His strength, his determination. His focus.

The energy poured out of her, dark and terrible, raging and churning as it leapt toward the bog. The night exploded into flame, everything turning red and orange and burning blue-black. Screams erupted, horrible, agonizing. Gunfire burst through the night, like angry red bees streaking out of the heavy swamp.

Nicolas heard a distinct thump. “Incoming.” He knew the sound of a M203 when he heard one. They were in for trouble.

Dahlia was backing away from him, a horrified expression on her face. He simply caught her smaller body and slammed her down into the muck, his body covering hers as the grenade hit somewhere behind them, spreading destruction in all directions. The force of the blast rushed over them. Nicolas was up, dragging her with him, hurrying now, heading away from the water back toward the interior.

“Head west,” Dahlia said. She kept her head down while hell erupted around them. “The ground is firmer and we can move faster.” Her stomach was churning, but her mind was blessedly numb. The backwash of energy was already racing to find her, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She worked at keeping her brain from functioning past survival. If she allowed the energy to find her too quickly, she had no hope, and perhaps Nicolas would die as well.

“We’re going to have to go into the water, Dahlia.” He wanted to prepare her. Alligators and snakes called the bayou home. He had to know if she was going to balk. Again he heard the distinctive thump of a grenade fired and pressed her to the earth. She made no protest and didn’t fight him. It was the most he could hope for under the circumstances. The blast landed to their left, a distance away.

Nicolas never questioned himself. He made decisions fast, under life and death conditions and didn’t believe in second-guessing himself. It was a useless and detrimental trap, yet he found himself regretting using her abilities against their enemies. He glanced at her as they ran again. She was impossibly pale, her eyes enormous. Her body trembled beneath his and she winced, shrinking from the contact each time he took them to the ground to avoid the blast from the scattered grenade shells.

He tried to tell himself it was the shock of losing her home and the people she loved, but he knew it was more. He knew the repercussions of harming their attackers had somehow turned back on her. She was game enough, forcing her body to move, to keep from slowing him down, but she was in trouble and he was responsible. It was the one problem the GhostWalkers faced and would continue to face. They were living in untried territory. The backlash of using psychic talents was enormous, and they often had no idea what could happen until the aftermath of the results reared up to bite them.

Dahlia was a GhostWalker with all the extraordinary gifts and, unfortunately, the terrible penalties that often occurred with the use of those gifts. She was dangerous, perhaps even more so than any of them had considered, but not by her nature. The danger came from the energy that raced to her and crammed inside of her as if her body were an empty vessel waiting to be filled. The leftover energy she couldn’t take inside of her surrounded her so that she had no peace. It was no wonder she lived as solitary a life as possible.

Nicolas steered them first toward the interior, staying to the west and higher ground as she’d indicated, but eventually began to work toward the outer edge of the island. They had to get off. They could play hide-and-seek for a short while, but if they remained on the island, they would be found. He was certain the perimeters would be more heavily guarded, but the team had to be spread thin and they’d lost a few men.

“Dahlia, can you hang on until we’re off the island?” he asked, more to get her to stay focused on him than for any other reason.

She stopped running abruptly, going down on one knee to be violently sick. Her skin beaded with sweat that had nothing to do with the heat. She looked up at him and nodded as she wiped her mouth. “I can make it.”

He had an insane desire to pull her close and wrap her safely in his arms. She was gutsy and he was certain he could count on her in the water. “Stay close. Hopefully if I’m close to you, it will help keep the energy at bay.”

Dahlia winced at the sound of grenade fire, ducking as he pushed her toward the ground. She took a cautious look around. “It seems like the entire world is on fire. Do you really think we can get out of this?” Her vision was blurred and her head pounded until she wanted to scream, but she was determined to keep going until she couldn’t walk any longer. The closer she stayed to Nicolas the easier it was to bear the burden of the energy rushing at her from the grenades.

Nicolas handed her his canteen, urging her to drink the water. “We’ll get out,” he assured. “This island is crawling with men though.” He took the canteen back and dragged a shirt from his pack. “Put this on. The sleeves will cover your arms and you’ll blend better. I want to darken your face as well. It’s going to take a little skill to get past them.”

Dahlia sank down into the marsh. The island was mostly spongy surface. Even hunters and trappers knew to avoid it. The center had been raised by bringing in soil to build up an area for the sanitarium. Dahlia had never questioned why, but she’d heard Milly and Bernadette talking about the flooding during heavy rains and how ridiculous it was to build on the island when there was enough money to go anywhere and worse, not using stilts. One of the biggest dangers was falling through the thin layer of ground to the waters below. Sinkholes were abundant on the island and the only truly safe places were the narrow path leading to and the actual grounds surrounding her home. She realized that it had been built that way for a specific purpose.

“Did they plan all along on killing me?” She was soaked, but she put his shirt on over her own clothes. It was far too big and she tied the tails around her hips.

“My guess is yes, once you were discovered or you’d outlived your usefulness to them,” he replied honestly. He wasn’t looking at her, but out into the night, his rifle rock steady in his hands.

“It occurred to me a couple of years ago when I started asking Jesse too many questions, and he didn’t want to answer or didn’t know the answers, that maybe I was in trouble.” She tried to hold still and not wince away from Nicolas as he blackened her face with some tube he carried in his pack. She looked up at him with solemn eyes. “Who are they? Why do they want me dead?”

“These men are military-trained, but I think they’re mercenaries. No combat unit would do this. Which agency do you work for?”

Before she could answer, he clapped his hand over her mouth, pressing her body into the trunk of a tree and crouching lower to stay in the shadow of the trunk. He looked directly into her eyes, slowly removed his hand, and held up three fingers. She nodded to indicate she understood, turning her head as slowly as she could in the direction his rifle was aimed. She noted his hands were steady and his eyes like ice. Dahlia was unable to prevent the continual shivering that shook her body. Nicolas was pressed tight against her, dwarfing her, caging her between his hard frame and the tree. She hated that he was so stone cold calm and she was shaking like a leaf.

The vegetation all around them was on fire, red and orange flames reaching to the sky. The fire lit up the areas closest to it and cast macabre shadows over the rest of the shrubbery and trees. The leaping flames were reflected in Nicolas’s eyes. Her heart leapt. She was trusting him, yet she knew nothing about him. She had never met anyone that gave off such a low energy reading and yet was capable of such extreme violence. There seemed to be an endless arc of electricity that leapt from his skin to hers. She could feel a strange tingling in her bloodstream. The heat between them was tremendous . . . and frightening.

Nicolas brought his hand up and pressed her face against his chest, stroking her hair with his palm in an effort to comfort her. If she shook any harder, he feared she might break her little bird bones. He bent his head over hers, holding her there while the world burned and their enemy slipped by. He put his mouth against her ear. “Are you ready for this?”

Dahlia nodded, not certain she was, but knowing she had no other choice if she wanted to live. He put a finger to his lips, indicating the need for silence, and then walked his fingers in the air. Dahlia took a deep breath as he stepped away from her. The respite from the violent energy assaulting her had been so complete, the force of the wave hitting her nearly drove her to her knees. She steadied herself by reaching out to him, the first time she’d ever voluntarily touched him. The moment her fingers touched him, rested on him, the force battering at her lessened.

Nicolas put his hand over hers. He bent his head to hers again. “I can carry you if you think it will help.” Dahlia almost smiled. For the briefest of moments the terrible sorrow weighing her down lifted, and he caught sight of a mischievous Dahlia, but she was gone almost immediately.

“Hold my hand if you can while we make our way out of here.” It cost her to ask him, but she had no choice. “I can take your pack.”

Nicolas didn’t bother to respond. His fingers linked with hers and he took her with him, moving away from the direction the three men had taken, around the wall of fire, weaving their way closer to the reed-choked channel. Nicolas didn’t hesitate at the edge of a stagnant pool, but waded in, pulling Dahlia in after him. Insects, birds, snakes, lizards, and frogs were making a mass exodus into the water right along with them, trying desperately to escape the fire. He kept a wary eye out for alligators.

Somewhere behind them, guns went off.

“AKs,” he identified. “They aren’t close, so they aren’t shooting at us. They’re either spooked or ran into alligators.”

“There are alligators all around this island,” Dahlia confirmed.

The moon crept back behind the clouds. Nicolas suddenly stopped, his head up alertly. Dahlia remained silent, waiting. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that he knew what he was doing. She was far safer with him than without him. When he abruptly froze, not moving a muscle, she followed his lead. Dahlia found herself holding her breath, her fingers clinging to his. The water soaked into the jeans she was wearing and something live bumped against her leg, but she stood, just waiting, trying to see into the darker shadows of the bayou.