The program the general was responsible for was one Patterson believed in. The GhostWalkers were men and women trained in every type of warfare possible, in every terrain, in water, in air, in every type of weather. They were the elite of the elite. He thought of them as “his” team. He should have been a GhostWalker. He would have made a great leader, and working for Ranier allowed him to play a very large part. He knew he was a great asset to the GhostWalker program.

He drove a showy little silver Jaguar, racing through the streets toward his meeting with Sheila Benet. She seemed so cool, but she flashed fire when they came together. She liked the uniform and the power he wielded, and he liked melting all that cold ice. He stroked the black leather seats almost lovingly. Yeah, he had the good life. Just because he didn’t show psychic ability didn’t mean he wasn’t a true GhostWalker. Whitney had recognized his abilities and just how useful he was to the program.

Ranier had turned on Whitney, believing he’d gone too far when his experiments on young orphaned girls came to light, but the general hadn’t looked with an open mind. Patterson had tried hard to convince him of the truth-those girls were throwaways. No one wanted them in any of the countries where Whitney had found them. Had he not taken them, they would have ended up on the streets as prostitutes. At least they served a greater purpose. Whitney gave the girls clean beds and food. Most were grown now, and Patterson had seen the facilities once where they were housed, and the conditions were very nice.

The women were all educated and spoke multiple languages, had all been trained as soldiers and shaped into useful members of society. The general loved his GhostWalker program and fought for it with every breath in his body, but he blamed Whitney for tainting its reputation. No one wanted the experiments to come to light, but they’d been necessary and Patterson believed in what Whitney was doing 100 percent.