For that instant, his breath stopped.
She found him watching her.
“I—” she said, and nothing else, because while she had plenty to say, she had no words to say it. How did one talk about this feeling, a sudden raging howl within her? How it stammered through her chest and wrapped around her heart, or how looking at him, human body with wolf’s soul, made her want to laugh and cry all at once?
He still struggled with himself, his skin twitching beneath her touch, his gaze ever so faintly confused.
“I—” she said, and ran out of words all over again, even if her hand still reached.
Nick’s hand shot out to capture her wrist. “Jet,” he said, from between gritted teeth.
But oh, she wanted. She searched his gaze, looking for understanding—looking for the clues to this world, to the way things should be. And she knew what she saw there. Also wanting. “You, too,” she told him, in case he hadn’t known it. She drew the back of her knuckles lightly across the hot skin of his cheek, ever watching his eye. “Still, you are not well.”
He grasped her wrist again, more gently this time. He bit gently at the knuckles that had touched him, and then simply held her hand against his chest, trapped and still and as gentle as he might hold a living bird.
“Jet,” he said, full of wonderment. “Who are you?”
How could she explain such a thing? How could she truly explain what she’d done for Gausto—done to Nick? She tried to tug away; that gentle grip turned insistent. She tipped her head ever so slightly, exposing her neck. “He said you would not be hurt,” she told him, unable to hide the anger. “He told me he wanted to talk to you.”
Nick snorted. “The talking is long, long over.”
“I didn’t know,” she said, felt her ears flatten…or so they would have. “So many things. How he lied. How he planned.”
“He’ll go to those lengths for anything in his sights.” He gave her a sharp look—or one that was meant to be sharp, and didn’t quite make it. “He’s not going to let you go that easily, either.”
“I’m not,” Jet said, although she hadn’t realized it until that moment. “Going. He has taken too much. I want it back.” Her people. Her life.
And Gausto’s people didn’t truly know what she was. They had seen her only when she’d been fresh and bewildered and frightened, and after she’d come to believe that she worked to gain her pack’s release.
They had never seen her free to follow her own nature.
“I need to go back,” she told him. Head north to Ojo Valley. Secure the bike and her clothes, and live as wolf while she watched and chose her time and whittled Gausto’s men away. “They’ll figure out it’s me, eventually, ” she told him, forgetting he hadn’t been in on her thoughts—it was something she did, something that drove Gausto to quick fury. Gausto could not abide the sense of being left out, left behind…left out of control. But Nick just looked at her with alarm as she added, “It will be too late for them.”
He barely let her finish, half rising from the lounge with the emphatic nature of his words. “You can’t. He’ll tear you apart. He’ll literally tear you apart.” That he fell back to the lounge, breathing hard, seemed to surprise him.
“He talked about cutting you off from your people,” she said, using the word people when her mouth and heart wanted to say pack. “You need help. Can you call them?”
He closed his eyes; it seemed to her that he gathered strength just to finish the conversation. “There’s a wireless phone just inside the door. Spare keys are in the dog igloo.”
“Dog igloo,” she said blankly.
“Dog house.” He didn’t yet open his eyes. “Den. But watch out for Baroo.”
She looked at him blankly. Perhaps he felt that puzzled regard. He tried again. “If he’s in the igloo, he’ll bite anyone but me.”
So the dog igloo would be the pale, rounded little fake den with the white-blazed nose peeping out of the shadows to regard her with concern. “I can get the keys.”
“Bites,” he muttered, somewhat nonsensically.
“Not me,” she said, already halfway to the little den in the shade. Incongruous to see those soft-faced Beagle lips lift in a snarl; doubly so when the snarl was all she could see, the rest of his face hidden in the shadow of the den’s overhanging entrance. He didn’t even lift his head—at least, not at first. Not until it became evident that the snarl wasn’t working.
She walked up to the dog igloo—right up to the entrance of it. “This is my place now,” she told him. And stood there, crowding his space. Owning it. The snarling crescendoed from within the dog igloo—a structure large enough for half this pack, and probably at some point they filled it to overflowing, snuggling against the cold nights this desert had to offer. Horrible sounds, those snarls…and all for show. She waited until they faded in intensity, and finally died away, and then she stepped slightly to the side. Not giving up ownership, but leaving him retreat.
He took the opportunity to scoot to freedom, shooting out into the middle of the yard with the milling dogs there. “As a child,” she murmured, and groped within the dog igloo to find the keys—shoving aside the floor pad, feeling beneath it. As her fingers closed on cold metal, an even colder nose touched the back of her arm. “Ah,” she said, twisting around to see. “Yes?”
The muzzle looked familiar, except that it wasn’t snarling. Big worried eyes, ears hanging long, wrinkles of concern on the forehead, body seated at absolute attention.
“Baroo,” she said.
He shifted from one front foot to the other, and looked at the dog igloo. Looked hard.
“Come to me,” she told him, “and you may have it back.”
For she knew dogs. Gausto had kept her with dogs, after that first change.
She didn’t like to think of it, that first time. Or the second. Or any, until she had made the process her own. But those days—thick and hazy physical misery, language being crammed into her head with Core workings, a deep confusion between the two states of existence—were indelibly stamped into her memory. And they included time with dogs, simply because Gausto continued his experiments with them.
The dogs died, mainly. But now she knew them. She knew from this one’s reaction that it understood her basic imperative, if not the promise she was making. “Come to me,” she told him again, “and you may have it back.”
Simple, these dogs, but they gave their trust in a way she never had…and she never would. This Baroo of Nick’s gave a tentative wag and came to her. She touched his head and indicated the dog igloo, and his sturdy brush of a tail beat faster, his thoughts completely transparent. Mine again, he told himself.
Jet felt the pleasure of her own small smile—if only for the briefest of moments. It fell away again as she stood, keys in hand, and went for the back door.
The screen opened easily and silently, well-oiled. The main door lock turned over with a solid snick, the feel of it somehow reassuring in her hand. Artificially cool air washed over her, and the house greeted her with pleasant visual warmth—desert tones throughout, rusts and turquoise in the accent pieces with tile corner pieces near the ceiling and set in adobe walls; obscure wall art made her feel like closing her eyes and lifting her wolfish nose to the wind. Skylights flooded this back entry with light, an open area from which the rest of the house spread away. The kitchen, this way. A larger public area, over there. Across from the kitchen, an open room with huge windows facing north, filled with a neat row of dog crates, a table piled with food bowls, various jars and bottles and things medicinal, and a pile of crate pads. Leashes hung from the walls, as well as a few framed pictures featuring posed dogs and people and ribbons.
She almost let herself be drawn in there. If she was to get any additional sense of this man—this Sentinel so hated by Gausto and his kind—then this room held what she needed to know. How he treated his dogs.
But beyond the room of crates was another. Even with her human nose, she coul
d perceive the scent of him there. This was his place…his bedroom. His private den.
She took a step in that direction, without even realizing it. One step, and another…
A dog barked outside. A single bark, taking note of something. Jet stiffened. But none of the other dogs rose to it, and she slowly relaxed—but she didn’t lose herself again. She turned around, found the phone, and left the cool air behind to return to so many different kinds of heat she couldn’t name them all.
Chapter 6
Marlee eavesdropped. Unabashedly, and all too easily. No one had yet realized that Nick Carter’s incoming calls…weren’t. But his admin had twigged to his wonky computer, and that meant Marlee to the rescue.
Theoretically.
In reality, she made herself look busy, she planned out her announcement of the virus and the need to isolate the machine and the need to research at her cubicle…and she listened. No one else paid attention, all closed away in their cubicles, focused on their small little worlds—but Marlee always paid attention.
“His car is there.” Distress colored Meghan’s tone. “It’s locked and hasn’t been touched—ward view is clear. I found someone who saw him early this morning, but no one since.”
“And then there’s that strip of woods.” Treviño’s voice came grim, and the startled silence afterward told Marlee that Meghan was taken unaware.
“Out past the far fields, you mean?” Lyn said. She sat with the rest of them, out in the admin’s office—the poor man had fled, ostensibly meeting a detective to deflect questions about an ongoing op, and looking markedly relieved to be facing such an inquisition rather than sitting in the middle of the rising tension and concern in his own office. “I know that area. I can’t think what Nick would have been doing there.”
“Well, he was.” An aside, obviously to Meghan. “I found trace, while you were talking to people.”
“Ah,” she said, understanding.
“You booted Dolan away while you were asking questions at the grounds,” Lyn said, amusement behind a neutral tone.
“Damned right. He scares them. He scares their dogs. Dolan, what was it?”
“I have no fu—” Right. Treviño and his mouth. But Lyn must have given him a look—Meghan didn’t seem to care—and the words, cut off, continued more blandly if with a darkness in them. “I don’t know. Untangling that is Lyn’s turf—but I’m not sure it’s even possible. All dark holes and hellish intensity…pain and nothingness.”
“You should have—” Meghan started.
He cut her off. “No way in hell. There weren’t any wards to deal with. You didn’t need to feel that.”
“Or know about it, apparently,” she muttered.
“You know now.” Perfect example, Treviño taking his own way no matter what anyone else thought. Marlee made a disdainful little face, there in the inner sanctum of the missing brevis adjutant—and felt it turn to a startled little open mouth when Treviño added, something entirely new in his voice, “I couldn’t, Meghan. Not to you.”
Lyn cleared her throat. “He’s no longer just absent, then. He’s missing. Taken.”
“I think so,” Treviño said, startling Marlee all over again. Taken. What the hell was going on? Who took the brevis adjutant? Who could?
No. That’s not what this was about. She wouldn’t believe. That’s not—
Their sudden silence brought her back to what she was doing—or what she was supposed to be doing. It made her realize she hadn’t keyed anything into the computer for a while, as she ought to have been had she truly been struggling with a recalcitrant system.
Maybe they wouldn’t notice. They certainly had other things to think about.
And so did she.
He’d fallen asleep. Or passed out.
Either way, Nick woke to find the phone tucked on one side of his body and Jet tucked up against the other, and the shadows growing long in the yard. Her shirt still sat on his chest, nearly dry now; she wore nothing more on her upper body than a stretchy one-piece bra, cradling those beautiful breasts. See-through.
Heat and lingering fever warred within him, bringing out a shiver. It didn’t help that although she had one hand curled up under her chin, the other rested low on his belly. A proprietary hand.
That romp in the desert had meant something to her after all, it seemed.
As it had to him. So much more than he’d thought it would.
But where she’d come from…why her change to wolf had felt so different…
Jet dozed, her hand twitching, her lip quirking. A dream, Nick thought. But heat spread from his low belly from the movement of her hand and he sucked in a slow breath, reminding himself of so many things. All those questions unanswered. Gausto. The reason he was in this condition in the first place.
Not to mention the need to get some brevis help out here—a Sentinel healer, for starters, to flush these lingering poisons from his system. And someone to go after that amulet…figure out a ward against it.
And then, maybe, just maybe, it would be time to go after Gausto. If the Septs Prince wouldn’t rid himself of this problematic drozhar, then it was time for the Sentinels to handle it.
For Nick to handle it. This was his brevis region, now, far more than Dane Berger’s—although Dane’s official status suited Nick just fine; it left him more freedom. It gave him the room to circle in on the brevis leak that he’d at first only suspected, but now…
Too many things had gone wrong at just the right time for Gausto. Too many messages gone astray, too many field agents left vulnerable, too many operations inexplicably failed.
Jet sighed deeply and opened her eyes. Amazing whiskey gold with dark brown rims and black lashes. She had the goth look down cold, except…it wasn’t a look at all. It was simply Jet. She flexed her fingers and slipped her hand over his skin, splayed fingers taking possession of the slight hollow in front of his hip and the gap it left in his waistband. She had to stretch only a little to nuzzle his neck, and Nick stiffened with startled pleasure as she nipped and then licked tender skin. “Jet—” he said, strangled sounding at that. Conflict reverberated through his body—the need to distance himself back into brevis adjutant versus the instant response to her, above and beyond all other instinct.
Maybe he was lucky, then, that the vast blue sky pulled a sudden dip and whirl overhead.
She sensed the change in him. “Amulet,” she growled—an alto growl, so perfectly suited to her. “Gausto. Lying son-of-a-human.”
He grinned at that, if through clenched teeth. “Exactly so.”
She nudged him—her cheek against the spot she’d just left tingling with teeth and tongue. “Call your people.”
He lifted the phone, thumbed the autodial. The familiar number tones of Sentinel brevis played out, and then…nothing. Frowning, he hit the flash button, hunting a dial tone.
Nothing. With a single, precisely uttered curse, he set the phone aside.
Jet sat, retrieving her shirt and pulling it over her head. “No?”
“Line’s dead,” he told her. “Probably this entire switchbox. Well-planned.” Not even Gausto would dare to intrude into Nick’s private home. Such forbidden action would open a veritable floodgate of retribution upon the Core, and the Core wasn’t ready for that. “Give me a moment. I’ll try for Annorah.”
Expression dark at the thought of Gausto, she pushed off the lounge to pace the yard, the dogs swarming around her with tails waving—cheerful, utterly clueless about things Core. Probably thinking about dinner. So might Jet be, for all of that. So. He’d feed her.
But not until he reached for Annorah. It hadn’t worked with the amulet in place, but if he was lucky…if removing it was enough to let him through…
Mental feedback static blasted back at him, jerking through his body and very nearly emptying his stomach. He swallowed hard; he breathed shallowly, eyes closed, as the moment passed.
“No?” she asked again, and somehow she was right there, crouching
beside him.
“We should be all right.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “Gausto isn’t going to bring this fight here.”
“Why not?” Jet asked. “A challenge should be done to face.”
He found wild intensity glimmering in her eyes. Not hard to imagine that she was thinking of doing just that.
But any Sentinel knew exactly why Gausto would stay away from Nick’s home—that the two organizations maintained a cold war pretense of distance and strained civility, a detente with certain unbreakable rules—and that the very foundation on which they both operated demanded a low profile. It had kept the Core in check all these years, even if it on occasion proved an impediment to Sentinel operations as well.
And any born Sentinel would know it. Sentinels trained from infancy, with age-appropriate immersion into the hidden life of talent and shifters. Any Sentinel child would have known why Gausto didn’t dare come after Nick here at home or anywhere near it.
Any born Sentinel.
If she was Sentinel and she didn’t know, she was an even greater risk to them all than he’d ever thought. And if she wasn’t Sentinel at all…
No such creature. Not and shift so beautifully from woman to rangy black wolf and back again.
But if she wasn’t…
“Why not?” His voice went hard as he repeated her question. “Any of us would know why not. But not you. Who are you, Jet? What are you?”
She froze; she knew alpha. And she resisted, eyes narrowing and head tilted in such a way as to invoke an inner vision of wolf with slant-back ears and defiant posture, giving nothing and ready to spring away from his reach. Had he reached for her, she would have snarled. That same warning sounded in her voice as she said, “Not of yours.”
He rolled off the lounge, so focused on her that he barely felt one knee almost give way. She scrambled backward; the dogs wuffed with alarm. Another step or two and she was up against the house and now she was snarling—eyes narrowed, a little curl of her lip, a low alto sound in her throat. He grabbed her upper arms; his fingers tightened heedlessly. “Jet,” he said. “Whose are you? What are you?”
Sentinels: Wolf Hunt Page 6
