Rubin remained silent, listening to the sounds of the night. There was peace there, just like in the swamp. He often went into the swamp just to hear the sounds of the insects and night creatures, so he could feel this same kind of solace. “Often, even when surrounded by others, one can be intensely lonely, Jonquille.”
Her feathery lashes lifted quickly, her gaze colliding with his. “How could someone like you possibly be lonely, Rubin?”
He found another flat rock a few feet from her. “Diego and I were lucky when we hit Detroit. Ezekiel Fortunes found us. He was a kid a little older than we were, and he knew the streets. He had two younger brothers he took care of. He made us go to school, and we all worked together to stay safe and eat. We pooled money and eventually joined the Air Force. We just followed Zeke wherever he went. He believed in education and insisted we keep learning, so we did. He has a way of persuading you.” He sent her a little grin.
“I take that to mean if you don’t agree he finds a way to make certain you do.”
“He’s handy with his fists. On the other hand, that man would die for you. None of us really went against him. We followed him into every program he went into, including the GhostWalker program. Fortunately, all of us had some small psychic talent that allowed us in.”
He looked down at his hands. “I love the swamp—everything about it—and eventually, I’d like to make my permanent home there, but I want a partner. A woman of my own. It’s difficult for someone like me to envision who that would be. The others know what they’re looking for. Me, I think about this.” He gestured toward the woods and stream. “How to encompass the old with the new. My interests and my gifts. The things I know I need with the balance I think a woman might need.”
She didn’t respond. She just kept looking at him with those blue eyes of hers. The energy in her body seemed to have dissipated. He knew his body had drawn it from hers. She had to be aware of it, but he doubted if she’d guessed what that meant yet.
“Our team is close-knit. Each of them has a distinctly different personality, but I like them all. Wyatt is one of my team members, and his grandmother, Nonny, owns the property where most of us stayed in the beginning. Now several have bought up the properties around hers, Diego and I included. But Nonny simply accepted all of us as if we were family. It didn’t matter what kind of animal or insect or reptile DNA we had, she just accepted us. We eat together. We laugh and talk like one big family. Still, I’m ashamed to admit, I feel lonely.”
There was something about the steadiness of her gaze that made Rubin just a little uncomfortable, as if she had laser vision and could see inside him to where the weight of his talent sometimes crushed him.
“It’s more than that.”
The way she said it, so completely confident that she knew—knew—what he meant, had his head jerking up. Had him staring at her speculatively. If Whitney had paired them, at least on Rubin’s side, given him an attraction for her, then her blood type would be the same as his. That way, if either were wounded, they could save the other. But more than that, their enhancements complemented each other. He was positive his ability to control electrical energy would be able to aid in the control of her talent. Her DNA most likely matched closely with his.
Whitney had known, from the original testing, that Rubin had psychic gifts that could be used for healing. He had enhanced those gifts. He had no idea what those results had been, only that Rubin was very good with the wounded soldiers his team rescued in combat situations. He was a gifted doctor, a surgeon, and he seemed to perform miracles in the hottest war zones. Whitney was satisfied with his work, probably proud. He had no idea of his true gift or he’d be moving heaven and hell to reacquire him.
If Rubin had the ability to heal, what about the woman Whitney would select to partner with him? For all his failings, Whitney had a way of choosing a woman that worked for a pairing. Rubin had seen it happen over and over. Not only were the man and woman attracted physically, but they actually fell in love. They bonded emotionally and became a strong, unbreakable family unit. That unit fit perfectly into the team. Whitney had a lot of faults, but his psychic ability seemed to be choosing the correct pair whether he wanted it that way or not.
“Jonquille, I don’t just have one psychic talent. None of us seems to be that way. I don’t know if it was the way Whitney enhanced us, or we had them all along, but I certainly have more than one. Some are stronger than others. When I filled out the questionnaire asking me about what kinds of ‘instincts’ I had, I put down healing, or taking care of injuries in other people or even animals. Do you have any ability along those same lines?”
Jonquille dipped her fingers in the stream again, letting the water run around them, making pathways as if each were a mini dam. She stared down at the silvery sheen of running water moving so fast, spinning and dancing in the bed of rocks. She seemed fascinated, but she sighed softly, and he knew she was considering whether to give him an answer.
“I have some ability, yes. Mostly, I’ve used it on animals. I don’t have a lot of contact with humans. When I was in Whitney’s laboratory, I did use it on the other girls there, after he did his horrible experiments. Sometimes I used it on the soldiers, though never when he was around or in sight of his cameras. I was careful that no one really knew it was me helping them. I didn’t want him to know.”
Even as a child, she’d recognized the danger of allowing Whitney to have too much information on her. Other children had made the mistake of thinking if they cooperated, they would incur his favor. He only experimented more.
A dread began to build in Rubin. His talent—psychic surgeon—the one that as far as he was aware only one other person possessed, was kept entirely secret by his team. He was guarded everywhere he went, and he despised that. He didn’t like that other team members and his own brother would put his life before their own. Especially Diego. He couldn’t take the thought of losing his last family member. He didn’t want Jonquille to have the same burden.
“You were given training as a medic, Jonquille?” Again, he tried to be casual, as if they were just conversing and his heart weren’t pounding and his mouth hadn’t gone dry.
He was always calm in every situation. He had survived that way. That was how he and Diego had managed to do all the things they had done as young children and teens. They never panicked. They were calm and worked the problem. But the thought of Jonquille alone in the wilderness, a vulnerable target with the weight of a talent so heavy as being a psychic surgeon, was abhorrent and a little terrifying to him.
“Yes. I was given training first as an EMT, then as a doctor. I retain what I read very easily, and we had small private classes for the most part. I interned at small hospitals where he could control the environment. I never found the work difficult, only trying to balance the electrical energy so many people in emergency situations gave off with my body being a magnet for it. I wore certain clothing that helped. Eventually, I couldn’t handle it and couldn’t go to the hospital to work. I had to do simulated situations. That was much harder because Whitney was annoyed beyond description. He called me his greatest failure every chance he got. I think he was truly embarrassed that he had to pull me out of the program. The backlash kept getting worse. That’s when he began to set up the field training in lightning management all over again.”