"Roger, the tech I make so nervous he wants the guards in here with their guns." There was the merest whip of contempt in his voice. "As if that would help him in time."

"What does Roger have to do with anything?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

Are you completely crazy? I'm trying to help you. There's a major conspiracy going on and a murderer running around loose. Roger is completely beside the point.

"Dr. Whitney?" The voice floated over the intercom. "Do you need assistance?"

"If she needed assistance, pal, it would be apparent," Ryland snapped, glaring up at the camera, daring the unseen observer to reveal himself. Roger is the point. He was drooling over you.

"I don't require assistance, thank you." Lily smiled for the camera as she yanked her hand away from Ryland. I think being in that cage has finally gotten to you. Will you focus on what's important here?

This is important to me.

"Ryland." Couldn't he see the chemistry between them had to be artificial? Enhanced in some way, the way his psychic abilities had been enhanced? He could tune in with much more clarity around her. She was obviously an amplifier.

I'm sorry, I know I'm distressing you, but it's getting worse. I feel like some caveman, wanting to drag you off by your hair or something. Honest to God, Lily, I hurt like hell. Just answer the damn question and give me a little reassurance.

Lily studied his face. He had suffered. He was suffering. "Why doesn't any of this make sense to me?" She asked it softly, afraid of the answer. Her world had always been balanced, necessarily so. Her father was a man who'd protected her from the outside world, yet at the same time, gave her every opportunity to expand her mind and gather knowledge. He'd opened so many doors for her. He'd been kind and considerate and loving.

She knew that Ryland Miller believed her father had betrayed him and his men. Her father had conducted an experiment on human beings and something had gone terribly wrong. She had to find out exactly what it was and how it had been done. The attraction between Ryland and her was threatening good sense on both sides. She was a practical person, logical and serious. She easily put aside emotion when it was called for.

"It doesn't make sense to me either." God damn it, Lily, I'm being eaten alive with jealousy. It's ugly and uncomfortable and I don't like myself very much.

Roger is a good man, a friend, but I've never laid eyes on him outside this building. Nor do I intend to do so.

Ryland pressed his forehead against the bars of the cage, taking in a deep breath to steady his roiling gut. There were tiny beads of sweat on his skin. "What the hell is happening to me? Do you know?"

Lily shook her head, her fingers itching to stray to the unruly spirals falling across his forehead. "I'll find out, Ryland. This has never happened to you or to any of the men?"

He lifted his head and looked at her and there was a mixture of turbulence, anger, and despair. "Kaden is able to draw the angriest and most violent emotions away from the rest of us so we can cope better. I think he's like you in some way. When we're out in the field together and he's with us, things run smoothly and all the signals come in clearer. We have more power to project. At least three others are like him in varying degrees. We try to keep one of them with the others at all times in the field when we're working."

"And the man who died recently in training?"

Ryland shook his head. "He was alone and he ran into the wrong people. By the time we got to him it was too late, his mind was gone. He couldn't handle the overload of noise. We can't turn it off, Lily." Can you turn it off?

She knew he wasn't asking for himself. She knew his concern was for his men and she admired him for it. She could feel the weight of his heavy responsibility nearly crushing him. I've learned over the years to build up barriers. I live in an environment that is very controlled. It allows me to rest my brain and prepare for the bombardment the next day. I believe you and the others can be taught to build barriers.

Who taught you?

Lily shrugged. She couldn't remember a time when she didn't have to protect herself. She had learned at an early age. I think because I was born with it, my mind began to find ways to cope. You haven't had it that long. Your brain is exposed to too much too fast. It can't catch up and give you the barriers you need.

"Unless the barriers are gone for good." He said it grimly, uncaring of the cameras. He had a sudden desire to tear down the bars, rip something apart. He had to find a way to save his men. They were good men, every one of them, dedicated and loyal, men who had sacrificed for their country. Men who had trusted and followed him. "Damn it, Lily."

Raw sorrow shimmered through the storm in his eyes and nearly broke her heart. "I'm viewing the training tapes tonight. I'll figure this out, Ryland," she assured him. "I'll find the information we need to help the others. You just have to give me a little time."

"I don't honestly know how much time my men have, Lily. Any of them could break down. If I lose any of them… Don't you see? They believed in me and they followed me. They put their faith and trust in me and I led them into a trap."

She could feel the shards of glass now, cutting and grinding in her head. He was a man of action and they had locked him up in a cage. His frustration and sorrow were wearing him down.

"Ryland, look at me." She touched him, slipping her hand through the bars to curl her fingers around his. "I'll find the answers. Trust me. No matter what, I'll find a way to help you and your men."

For one brief moment he stared into her eyes, searching, reading her mind, knowing what it cost her to open herself up even more to him. He nodded, believing her. "Thank you, Lily."

Four

THE murmur of voices went on and on, an invasion buzzing in her head, driving her mad. Each time she drifted into sleep, the voices were there, filling her mind, yet she couldn't catch the words. She knew there was more than one voice, more than one person, and yet she had no idea what was being said, only that it was the whisper of conspiracy. Only that there was great danger and an edge of violence in those voices.

Lily lay in her huge bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of her own heartbeat. The soft music she normally played to help mask sounds she couldn't quite block out had been turned off long ago in frustration. She wasn't going to be able to sleep again. She didn't even want to sleep. It wasn't safe. The voices claimed her, soft and persuasive, voices whispering of danger and tactics.

She sat up amid the thick pillows scattered along the intricately carved headboard of her bed. Where had that come from? Tactics implied training, perhaps even military. Was she hearing Ryland and his men as they used their telepathic abilities to plot an escape? Was it possible? They were miles from her home, deep beneath the earth, with glass barriers guarding their cages. Her walls were thick. Were they so connected that she was in some way tuned to their frequency? Like a radio wave, a band of sound, the exact one? "What did you do, Dad?" she asked aloud.

She could only sit there in the comfort of her familiar bedroom while her mind played back the facts of the training tapes she had viewed and the confidential reports she had read. How her father had gotten away with writing reports with such incomplete descriptions of what he had done was beyond her. Why in the world had he gone to all the trouble of filling his data bank in the computers at Donovans Corporation with utter gibberish? The file was marked confidential and only his password and security codes supposedly could access such a thing, yet Higgens had obviously done so.