They were not only elite, they were also different from every other human on earth. Some couldn’t be in society without an anchor – another GhostWalker who could draw psychic energy away from them. The four teams had formed into a single unit looking out for one another. They trusted no one else and depended on one another. When one soldier found the woman he was paired with, she was protected by all of them – after all, Whitney had performed the same experiments on the women.

Each of the women was combat-trained and enhanced both psychically and physically. Some of them had been used for cancer research. Others had been forced into his “breeding” program. Wyatt had three daughters, little triplets, all of whom had snake DNA and were venomous. Trap had come to the bayou to help him find a way to keep them from hurting anyone if they accidentally bit while they were frightened or teething.

“How long have you known?” Wyatt asked. He wasn’t going to argue. Trap wasn’t a man given to fantasies, and the last thing he would welcome into his life was a woman – especially one he was paired with. One he couldn’t ignore and set aside after he’d had her body.

“She bothered me on a level she shouldn’t have from the moment I laid eyes on her. I thought – I hoped – it was because she was an experiment gone wrong and they issued a termination order on her. Maybe I could figure out what went wrong and I could fix her. My brain was already trying to assess her the moment I saw her and heard her voice, analyzing what her psychic abilities were and what DNA she might have been enhanced with.”

“That makes sense.” Wyatt wanted to pounce on that. Trap was holding himself together, but the rage deep inside was close – too close. He didn’t dare set Trap off with so many innocents around. He felt the other members of their team moving into positions closer to them. Just in case. That meant they noticed the tension mounting as well. No one really knew Trap’s full abilities, but it was generally considered that along with Ezekiel and Gino he was one of the most lethal men on the team – when it came to psychic enhancements.

Wyatt didn’t want the building to shake apart and come down on half the men with families living there around the swamp and bayou.

“I tried to make it that, Wyatt,” Trap said. “But she didn’t let go. I think about her when I’m in the lab working on how to come up with a vaccine that will stay in the system for snakebite. Not once, in my entire life, have I ever been distracted from my work. I dream of her at night, and I have always commanded my own dreams. Not just any dreams, erotic fantasies, and I’m not prone to those, not even when I’ve gone a while without a woman. When I consider finding another woman to get relief, the idea is not only repugnant, but it’s absolutely abhorrent.”

“Fuck.” Wyatt almost spat the word. “I see why you’re putting yourself in this position now. It didn’t make sense. You’re the last person in the world to go to a bar every night. We’ve come here now for the last five nights. I thought maybe you wanted to get in better with the locals.”

A faint gleam of humor moved through the ice in Trap’s startling blue eyes. “Hardly. I did take your advice and hire a few of them to help with the renovations once escrow closed and the land and building became mine, but hanging out with them in a bar is going beyond the call of duty.”

“How are the renovations coming?”

The humor deepened. “We’re about finished. I know she’s living there. No one has seen her, but things go missing, and all of a sudden the men are leery of working there, especially after dark. The workers think the place is haunted. Word leaked out that Wilson Plastics might have been a front for government experiments. I didn’t let anyone go down into the lower region where the cells and the crematoria were until we’d gotten rid of all the evidence. Now, it’s a beautiful apartment I designed for her. Still, word got out, and the men who really need or want the work show up, but they work in pairs and they won’t stay late at all. I think she started the rumors and is sitting back laughing her pretty little ass off. Seriously, I only have a few odds and ends left anyway.”

“Did you try to find her there? You hate coming here, that might be a better alternative.”

“It’s not going to happen. She’s got her webs everywhere. The moment I come near there, she’s gone. I don’t want to risk driving her away.”

Wyatt wished he’d had more than a glimpse of the woman Trap had rescued from those cells. Wilson Plastics had been a cover for a dangerous experimental laboratory and termination center for the experiments deemed gone wrong. His three little girls and the woman Trap was certain he had been paired with had been down in those cells, waiting to be killed and then cremated, their ashes taken out to sea so no one could ever know of their existence.

Prior to being Wilson Plastics, the land had been owned by Dr. Whitney. The huge building had been a sanitarium. Whitney had conducted his experiments on the orphans he “rescued” from around the world. The sanitarium had burned to the ground. Whitney’s company had sold it, and Wilson Plastics bought the land. Wyatt’s GhostWalker team had exposed the company for what it really was, and when the land came up for sale, Trap bought it.

Their pararescue team had decided to make a fortress together right there in the swamp. Wyatt’s little girls and his wife couldn’t possibly leave the swamp, not until Wyatt and Trap came up with the vaccine that would stay in the system without daily injections. They also had to either remove the venom sacs or find a way to keep the girls from accidentally biting while they grew up. In any case, Whitney was trying to reacquire them, and that meant they needed protection at all times.

“So you think your girl is a squatter, living on your property.”

Trap nodded slowly, the humor still in his eyes. “Yeah. She’s there. And she’s the reason we hear rumors about drunk men being robbed on their way home.”

“Those men aren’t the best of the bayou, Trap,” Wyatt pointed out. “If she’s the one doin’ the robbin’ she’s pickin’ the men who are particularly nasty to rob.”

Trap shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not okay, and she knows it.”

“She’s got to eat.”

The humor faded from Trap’s eyes. “Seriously, Wyatt, if I’m feeling this way, can you tell me she isn’t? She could come to me. If not me, then you. She knows we’re GhostWalkers, the same as she is. She could come to us. She doesn’t need to rob anyone and put herself in danger like that.”