Free Ghostwalker 01- Shadow Game by authors_sort Page B

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.
    Her head was pounding, little white dots floating around in a black void that was pain.
    The aftermath of using telepathy. She wondered about Ryland. Did he still suffer the painful repercussions of prolonged use? He certainly had in earlier