At the Merest Glance

by M. L. Buchman

  At the Merest Glance

  a paranormal romantic suspense

  M. L. Buchman

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  About This Book

  Army helicopter pilot Anton Bowman could always see more than everyone else. Even as a kid, he could send his vision out to look around in places his body hadn’t actually gone.

  Katie Whitfield embraces her lonely status as an outsider. Her livelihood as a wildlife tracker across the English countryside keeps her content and well clear of her uncaring family.

  Both their lives change when the gifted members of the Shadow Force: Psi team travel to England as part of a security test. A test that uncovers unexpected dangers to both the UK’s network of undersea cables and to their hearts.

  Chapter 1

  Seven steps.

  Six.

  Five.

  Anton felt as if he was climbing to the gallows.

  At the head of the stairs, he cracked his forehead on the doorframe to his room. As Ma used to say, “Probably knocked more sense outta ya than inta ya.”

  “Sure thing, Ma.”

  And he’d remembered to duck for this one. It was just that doors in a five-hundred-year-old Cornish inn were even lower than most. Old houses, like his parent’s North Carolina farmhouse, were a real problem for a guy who was six-five. He’d cracked his head on the back kitchen door so many times that Pa had nailed a doubled strip of old blanket on both sides because he never seemed to learn.

  Anton collapsed kitty-corner onto the bed and groaned.

  Despite all his years flying for the Army, jet lag always kicked his ass, and this trip had been no different. Besides, when he was flying a helo, he wasn’t jaunting through six time zones in a single day. But good old San Antonio, Texas, now lay a quarter of the world away.

  On top of that, dudes his size were not designed to be folded up into airplanes for twelve hours.

  Just to continue his losing streak, he’d lost the front-seat toss for the five-hour drive from London to Cornwall. Of course, that was kind of a given, as Jesse’s wife Hannah was the best driver the team had, so the cowboy always claimed the navigator seat. Watching the crazed English drivers race by on the wrong side of roads so narrow that they barely deserved the name, Anton had almost been glad to be in the back with the rest of the team.

  It wasn’t even coming up dusk yet, but he didn’t care. They’d eaten something he didn’t remember in the inn’s pub, and now he could just stretch out and pray that his body recovered sometime this decade.

  Seven p.m. local meant it was only one in the afternoon in San Antonio, so his mind was wide awake. Or was it one in the morning?

  Didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  With nothing left to do but ache, Anton decided it was time to put himself back on the winning side of the coin. And, at that moment, that meant the best place to be was anywhere else, so he went “lookabout.”

  His semi-sister always called it “going walkabout” like in that Australian movie she’d watched when they were kids. But it was his vision, so it was “lookabout” no matter what she said.

  He closed his eyes and let his personal, private magic trick slip out of the room—his out-of-body vision went sightseeing while his body lay there unkinking.

  Anton mentally strolled his vision through the closed door, down the stairs, and peeked in on the rest of the Shadow Force: Psi team. Yep, they were still downstairs in the pub. They’d claimed they were going exploring through the town, and the April evening was nice enough for it, but not a one had moved so much as a muscle. Lame-os.

  He hadn’t been in the mood to really notice earlier, but the pub looked majorly cozy, old-style Cornwall.

  He had to laugh; his semi-sister Michelle was leaning half asleep against Ricardo. It was still weird thinking of them as a couple, but since they’d married last month and he’d stood as best man, he’d better get used to it. It had given him the oh-so-sweet opportunity to threaten Ricardo with utter mayhem if he made Michelle unhappy. Of course, based on growing up with her and being Ricardo’s best man and all, he’d gotten to threaten Michelle with the same. Two for the price of one, which totally made it worth the price of admission.

  The other three team members looked equally hammered. Easy bet he’d crashed only minutes before they would. Sure enough, Jesse and Hannah made excuses that Anton couldn’t hear. He often wished that his hearing would go for a stroll with his vision, but it never did. Instead his ears were still back in the room listening to the occasional pop from his abused vertebrae.

  The way they were holding hands as they headed for the stairs, without seeing him, told him that they had other ideas about how to cure their jetlag. Must be nice.

  One more flip to the wrong side of the coin; he hadn’t found a lady to do the horizontal tango with in far too long.

  He looked away to give them their privacy, because it so wasn’t envy. Really not.

  Only Isobel found her feet and headed out on a walk. She had on her winter jacket. Spring here in Cornwall was in the fifties, still colder than a San Antonio winter. Of course, April was already kicking out dailies over ninety back in Texas, so it was kind of a relief.

  Anton followed her for a bit. The place had a harbor about the size of five Dixie cups. The town wrapped around it in a broad crescent, and a big granite seawall curled in from either side like a dragon’s jaw. Cute as hell.

  He lost Isobel in the evening light when he wasn’t paying attention. How he did that with one of the most beautiful movie stars anywhere in a town as small as Mousehole, Cornwall, was a mystery, but he did.

  Maw-zel he reminded himself. That’s how the locals pronounced it, which was too bad. Mousehole was a good name and he’d have fought to fix that…if he was a local and not here on a secret mission. At its core, the town was pretty much three streets deep and ten very narrow blocks wide. It snugged up against a small harbor and a looming curved breakwater of neat-laid massive stone block.

  But he didn’t want to explore the town. If everything went according to plan, they’d be here for a week with plenty of time to poke around.

  No, what he wanted to do was get a jump on Ricardo. If a guy couldn’t get back at a guy for marrying his semi-sister, the least he could do was out-sneak him.

  So, while Ricardo was probably escorting Michelle upstairs for a quick nap, or a slow tumble (which shit Anton definitely didn’t want to be thinking about), he caught a ride out of town.

  He couldn’t move his out-of-body vision any faster than he could move his own body—which was a pain in the butt, except his butt was still back in a nice soft bed at the Ship Inn. With enough details, and if it wasn’t too far away, he could jump to a place…with help. Photos didn’t work; someone had to be describing it who was actually there. Once he’d been there, he could get back and pick up at that point, but only for a few hours. If he missed that window, he had to start all over again.

  Lookabouts had been a very slow process until he’d figured out how to hitch a ride.

  Anton found a car headed west out of town and slipped “aboard.” It was faster than walking, mostly.

  Everything was so damn green. San Antone was already cooking its way over to a soft tan, April just a prelude to the midsummer brown. Here it was like somebody’d dumped the entire US Army’s supply of camo greens over the countryside. Everywhere he looked, something else was in bloom or growing up between other things. It reminded him of his parent’s farm along the North Caroli
na shore. He missed that green sometimes. Didn’t miss the farming much, but missed that look and smell of honeysuckle blooming on the night air.

  After a while, the road offered tantalizing views of the sunset sea—in microscopically brief flashes. Mostly it wove over rolling hills as a single lane pinched between towering hedges. Not that the traffic was one-way. These English drivers could actually pass each other with only a little hesitation, but that was because most of the cars were VWs or MINI Coopers.

  The frequent Range Rovers caused some trouble.

  But when a truck or bus came by, there simply wasn’t enough room. Everyone slowed to a crawl, pushing into the hedges to get by.

  For once he was glad that his hearing didn’t come along for his travels. It was easy to imagine the sharp scree of hard-pressed branches scrubbing against paint. It explained why the entire passenger side of the rental SUV had been so scuffed up. In fact, most cars and trucks in Cornwall seemed to be messed up along the left side and now he knew why.

  It took a couple of hops, but he made it the fifteen kilometers west to Sennen Cove in under an hour. He could have run it almost as fast, but it was strangely taxing to “run” his vision. He preferred to walk or ride.

  He hopped off near the Land’s End Airport. England ended just a kilometer or so down the road. Next stop, other than the Isles of Scilly, was the Bahamas. Wouldn’t that be sweet. Stretched out on the beach with a long lady, their dark skin a sharp contrast to the white sand and turquoise water. But no. They were in the cool damp of an April evening in Cornwall. He could even feel it invading his room at the inn because he’d left the window open to the sea salt air.

  From the airport where he hopped “off” the car, his destination of Sennen Cove was a couple hundred meters across the countryside, but he didn’t mind the walk at all. So different from wide prairie lands around San Antonio where the team was sort-of based. Once away from the hedged roads, the softly rolling land here had a comfortable openness with a surprising lushness.

  After he’d “walked” across the middle of the runway, he was in Cornish farmland. Small fields with piled stone walls spread in every direction except for a little bunch of trees that looked so perfect that they might have been planted. England was even more tame than his parents’ farm outside of Shallotte. Close by the sea and South Carolina, it felt closer to Cornwall than San Antonio.

  After a decade of flying helos for the Army’s 10th Mountain, and whatever strangeness the last year in San Antonio with Shadow Force: Psi had been, home was still the family farm. Especially at times like this. He missed it like a hole in his heart.

  It was a beautiful night traveling through the Cornish countryside, but he could almost be walking the thick, warm nights back into the Green Swamp Preserve with Pa. Pa wasn’t much of a talker, but their after-dinner strolls had been a fixture of his youth.

  He shook his head to clear it, and almost lost the connection to himself. He was still stretched out at the Ship Inn along Mousehole’s waterfront, but he’d rather be here.

  Especially because he could pre-scout the mission before the others. That way he’d know more about what was what than Ricardo.

  He was going to bypass the cluster of trees when he spotted the heat signature of a pair of footsteps across the field. Much like his helicopter’s night-vision gear, his lookabout vision expanded into the infrared.

  The two sets of footprints sure weren’t walking side-by-side like a couple of teenagers looking for privacy. In fact, they were single file, almost as if one was being driven unwillingly.

  He thought of how he and his team had saved Ricardo’s ass eighteen months ago—tied up and being tortured in a Honduran drug camp.

  Yeah, definite detour time.

  He shifted to a jog and followed the footsteps toward the trees.

  Waiting is.

  Katie Whitfield had to remind herself of that, especially with clients like this one. When she was on her own, it was never a problem. Waiting was a wilderness tracker’s natural state. Even when the wilderness was the tame Cornish countryside.

  Be still.

  Observe.

  Then be still some more.

  Accept that the mind was the very slowest of all the senses.

  Eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch all offered immediate information. But even a mind trained to the task took time to process that information and find the thread that didn’t fit.

  Tonight, the thread that didn’t fit at all was the man lying on his stomach among the bluebells to her right and a pace behind. It was terribly distracting.

  The quest was easy because she’d long since tracked their quarry to this copse of trees below the airport.

  Badgers naturally paired with beech trees and bluebells. They all three liked dry, chalky soil. And badgers also liked steep banks that faced southwest.

  What made this particular colony special was the presence in the clan of an erythristic badger with his rare rust-red coloring.

  Chas Thorstad was the third wildlife photographer she’d led to the site in the last six months. The Guardian, BBC, and now this twit. Even the chap from The Guardian had more of a clue about how to handle his gear than Thorstad.

  He moved quietly enough, unlike the first two photographers she’d led here, with all the woods-sense of a pair of humpback whales. But his gear far outclassed him. She liked the Sony a7S II and wouldn’t mind having one if she had a couple thousand pounds lying around looking for something to do. However, his monster lens, which probably cost ten times more than the camera body, would be better suited for photographing small planets than badgers at close range.

  Maybe it was spite, but she actually led him right to the edge of where, even a meter closer, they’d be disturbing the badgers. At this distance his lens would let him photograph their teeth or maybe just one tooth at a time.

  He didn’t complain. Or change lenses.

  There was something off about him. But he hadn’t quibbled over her fee—which had doubled as soon as she saw his equipment.

  She eased out her night monocular, which had set her back a whole hundred pounds. It gave her a beautiful view of the badgers’ sett—their home was clear beneath the low-hanging beech trees despite the late evening light. Seven thirty-centimeter holes had been dug back into the hillside. This was a good-sized clan of at least ten individuals, and their tunnels would penetrate as deep as eighty meters into the hillside.

  A black-and-white triangular head popped up from a hole, glanced in their direction for a long moment, then went about its business. The evening hours in April were a busy time for badgers. It was nearing the peak of their mating season, which meant a lot of grooming, play, and sex. It was also when the cubs would first venture to the entrances. She made a mental note to come back next month when they began exploring beyond the tunnels under their parents’ watchful eyes.

  What was so special about this site was that the biggest boar…

  “There,” she whispered to Chas.

  Weighing at least fifteen kilos, despite it only being spring, made him exceptionally large by badger standards. His face was red-and-white rather than black-and-white. His body was rusty rather than the normal gray.

  He glared down at their position.

  Perhaps she’d pushed them a little too close. The size of a small pit bull, a roused badger could be far more dangerous. Not only did it have a vicious bite, but its long claws could easily slice through clothes and flesh.

  She held her breath for a long thirty seconds before he huffed at them, then turned left to greet one of the females. A pair of cubs plowed awkwardly into his side. He briefly played with them, then returned his attention to the female.

  “Tell me you got that,” she whispered to Chas.

  “Uh, yeah,” he spoke too loudly and the badgers scattered back into the sett’s holes, herding the cubs ahead of them.

  The big erythristic male glared at her one last time, perhaps debating between ducking out of sight versus
coming down the slope to shred them up a bit. If it came after them, she would make bloody certain she outran Chas Thorstad. She had no problem throwing him to the wolves, or rather to the badgers, to secure her own escape.

  The boar chose to duck out of sight.

  Katie suspected that if she came here again, he’d pick up her scent and chase her off right away.

  She should have tripled her bloody fee.

  “Well, they won’t be back for a while,” she pushed up to her knees and turned.

  “Doesn’t matter. I have what I need.” Again, he was holding his camera oddly, as if he’d been taking pictures of something else entirely.

  “Good, then let’s go.” The sooner she was done with Chas Thorstad the happier she’d be. Halfway to her feet, she hesitated and looked around.

  Something, like a guy staring at you across a pub, prickled over her skin.

  Darkness.

  She raised her night-vision monocular and scanned again.

  Nothing.

  There were only the two of them.

  They started tramping back to her aging MINI Cooper parked by the beach at Sennen Cove.

  But she couldn’t get over the feeling that someone was watching her.

  Ten meters down the trail, she hesitated. It felt as if someone was waiting—right in front of her.

  Bracing herself, she walked forward and…the feeling was gone.

  Chapter 2

  The pounding on his door snapped Anton’s mind back into his room at Ship Inn.

  “What!”

  He hadn’t wanted to lose that vision.

  Whoever she was made looking a real joy. But there was something more. The way she’d acted. Almost as if—

  “Get your ass up, you lazy dog. If you fall asleep now, you’ll be toast tomorrow.” Michelle blew into the room like the whirlwind his semi-sister was. He was impressed that she’d knocked at all.