Lyn pulled a suede ribbon from her pocket and tied back her hair, feeling it gone curly with the humidity of the building storm. “Apparently the Atrum Core isn’t the only one with a reason to go after that power. Or didn’t you think we’d notice your trace on the power fluctuations?”
He stopped short, one hand on the huge granite rock beside their path. “No,” he said, just as surprised as she’d meant him to be. Full of reaction, a swell of power she felt against her skin as if it were heat added to the storm. “It’s not—they’re twisting—”
And then, as if he realized he’d said too much even in those incomplete thoughts, he shut down, his jaw working, the defined nature of his lower lip going hard for a moment.
For it was the same excuse he’d used in Las Vegas over the body of his dead partner. They’re framing me. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.
Except it had been.
The Sentinels had enough proof to believe it…and not enough to pronounce judgment. Not through Sentinel Justice, not through the mundane justice system which had released him. So the Sentinels—wary of him, yet unwilling to waste his remarkable ability to monitor and manipulate subtle power flows—had sent him here, where the brooding power of the Peaks kept things stable.
Or used to.
“Storm’s coming in,” he said shortly, turning away from her. “I’m going cougar to beat it home—the strikes come down thick around here.” Everything about his body language suggested that she could stay human and get soaked if she wanted. The scathing look he threw over his shoulder confirmed it. Scathing and…something else. Something dark and powerful and warning. She blinked as the impact hit home, sending her a literal step backward.
“If you’re going to walk,” he informed her, his voice gone flat, “then be prepared to duck the lightning.”
Whoa. Way too late for that.
Chapter 2
T hey ran through the rugged terrain, four legs and fur, easing downslope. He loped along with rangy strides that made Lyn hunt vertical shortcuts. Lightning flickered above them in regular strokes; thunder shook the pines.
A sudden sweep of wind roared through the trees; Lyn flattened her ears, crouching against it. He tipped his head in a gesture she interpreted as encouragement and she squirted forward in an unhappy slink of a run, already ducking against anticipated rain and the next crash of thunder. Thin, dry soil beneath her paws, thick pine-needle patches, abrasive cinders…this was rugged terrain, with rough, unpredictable rocky outcrops that changed the nature of the ground with little warning.
The cougar hesitated at the lip of one of these, looking down over a shallow swale of land. On the slope opposite them sat the back of a log house with a second-story porch cradled in the center and a variety of roof levels. With her ocelot’s washed-out color vision, Lyn spotted his small SUV beside the house and her green rental car behind it.
Just in time. Intense, double-pronged lightning stabbed the sky not far from them, teamed with an instantaneous explosion of thunder. The cougar sprang into motion. Lyn followed at top speed, hyperaware of the large raindrops splatting off her head and back. Another strobing flash of lightning, another explosion of thunder so loud it rattled her body, and then the rain swept in for real and she was running blind, depending on her surefooted nature and the flickering black tail tip before her.
Together they crashed into the space beneath the porch, brushing through wards and giving Lyn a brief glimpse of yard tools and a wheelbarrow before the world lit up again and blinded her; she lost her bearings, paws slipping on the flagstone, and slammed into warm, musky wet fur.
The cougar shook off, short and sharp, and water flew. Lyn, following suit in a tidier fashion, caught the panting laughter in his expression. He loves this. The dash through the weather, the exhilaration of the run…right there in those dancing eyes, as if he’d forgotten who she was and why she was there, as if they were no more than two companions who’d outraced a storm.
She saw it the moment he remembered. His eyes shuttered; he shifted his weight away from her. And she saw in his posture the moment he decided to change; she scooted back, her long, full tail sweeping between them.
That’s when she felt it. As inevitable as the storm itself, as intertwined with the moment and the place. The deep, thrumming power of the mountain, a basso so profound that it put the rolling thunder to shame.
And dammit, woven in it all was the distinct trace of the very Sentinel who crouched before her—a smooth and corduroy-edged baritone trace, a beguiling brush of sensation even as he entered the change: a quick shake from shoulders up, a flicking twitch of skin down along his back, that elegant rise to his feet—
Except he faltered, and he fell. He crumpled down to his knees and elbows as the storm raged around them and the bass surge of the mountain’s power made Lyn’s bones hum, and his expression held astonishment and betrayal and pain.
Lyn flicked herself out of the ocelot. She went to him, crouching. “What is it?” She reached out, trying to find something identifiable other than Ryan’s trace, other than the wards around this space and those protecting the house.
Dead end.
She looked into his face and saw a dead end there, too. Hazel eyes gone into shadow, body language gone stiff and wary. He sat back on his heels, some part of his expression still lingering on surprise. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Got something in my eye.”
“That’s the most—” pathetic lie I ever heard. It made her wonder if it wasn’t an act, if Vegas had actually broken him, leaving him scrabbling in this last desperate bid for power without the chops to bring it off.
Or maybe he thought she was just that gullible.
Let him think it. No point in giving away the least advantage, even if he wasn’t all he’d been made out to be.
What the hell was that?
Good God, he’d almost lost control of the shifting, right in front of her. That hadn’t happened since…
Since puberty, when it happened to them all. Joe lingered there, sitting on his heels, knowing she was thinking about it, too—seeing the wariness hovering around her.
As if it mattered. She’d had her mind made up long before she’d met him. She had an intensity about her, a burn…Before this was over, he’d find out what had lit that fire. It might be focused on him, but it hadn’t started with him. Way too much momentum there. Alluring, shimmering intensity…
He lifted his face to the fine spray of water reflecting off the edge of the porch, let it mist over skin that felt hot. “If you’re so sure it’s me,” he said, “why not trail me instead of coming to me?”
She snorted, but the question did what he’d wanted—took her mind off his shifting stutter. She sat, bringing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “I couldn’t trail you here without your knowledge, and you know it.”
Ah. In this, at least, she was sensible enough. She’d hidden her power from him at first, but no one could keep that up for long. Perceiving power shifts was what he did.
“Besides,” she said, still sensible, “whether you’re innocent or guilty, you want to prove me wrong, right? The best way to do that is by helping me. Or pretending to help me.”
Joe laughed. “So you’re betting you’re smarter than I am.”
“Yes,” she said, and shivered. The cleverly layered open weave of her shirt wasn’t much for keeping in the heat. Nor for obscuring the tightening of cold nipples, when it came to that. “It’s just a matter of which of us plays the game better.”
She shivered again. The storm—already moving eastward over the Peaks—had dropped the temperature by a good twenty degrees. Typical. Joe climbed to his feet. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go get warmed up.”
In response, he received a skeptical look. Eloquently skeptical, with one winged brow arching upward.
He shook his head. “I don’t care about your games. I just want to keep this mountain safe.” If they’d decided he was guilty of something, he’d be cons
idered guilty whether they could prove it or not. If anyone knew the meaning of inevitable, it was Joe Ryan. No point in turning himself inside out over it.
“Keep the mountain safe,” she repeated flatly. And then she nodded, rising gracefully to her feet in spite of her shivers. “Okay. We’ll play it that way. Especially if it means coffee.”
Joe gave her coffee. He offered her a down-filled lap quilt, which she pulled over her shoulders, and he stopped short of offering her dry clothes. He’d long since dispersed of his sister’s clothing. No point in hanging on to it, now that she was gone. And thank God she had passed before they’d used her illness to ruin his life; thank God she’d never known.
Not that he’d much cared at the time. Too busy grieving and all that. By the time he started thinking straight again, the Sentinels had tried him in absentia, declared him not guilty but not innocent, and packed him off to this mountain where the deep, stable power was supposed to be big enough to keep him busy—taking advantage of his ability to influence slow swells of deep power—yet too big for him to mess with.
Apparently they’d changed their minds on that last part. He supposed he should feel flattered.
Instead he made coffee for a woman he didn’t know but who was already his enemy. Damn shame, that. Those eyes—
Don’t go there, boy-o.
Besides, he’d be in real trouble if they found out just how wrong they were when it came to his limits.
“We just have time to make it to Snowbowl,” he said, words she didn’t quite seem to absorb as she wandered the most public parts of the house—the entryway with its skylights, the soaring space of the great room with its cathedral ceiling and the wood stove set neatly in the corner. She’d spooked three of his four cats into brief appearance and now she drifted back to the kitchen, an area defined by half walls and countertops and otherwise completely open to the great room. “I can’t believe you have cats.”
“I don’t have them. They just live here.” He shrugged. “It amuses them.” In fact, cat number four, a little black shorthair, wound between his ankles as he pulled coffee mugs from the cupboard, her tail high and quivering. They’d all chosen him…followed him home, refused to go away, and now lived under his protection, indoors and safe from the predators of the area. “But four,” he admitted, “is the absolute limit.”
“Four,” she repeated, looking bemused. And then, finally registering his words, “Why Snowbowl?”
Coffee gurgled in the background, his sleek little one-cup coffeemaker valiantly churning out a dark French blend, the very aroma of which ought to be enough to warm her right on the spot. “Because the Skyride is the fastest way to the top. Because one way or the other, that area is at the root of this problem.” He shrugged, and added almost against his will, “Because I want you to see the view. To see what this place really is.”
That stopped her. She hesitated, a moment in which he couldn’t read her at all. Even that whisper of silken power faded. And then she seemed to shake it off, and she moved in as he pulled the first mug from the brewer and pushed it across the polished charcoal granite counter. “I’d planned to do some tracking today.”
“So do I.” Different kinds, no doubt—she was a trace sniffer, someone who could find and follow specific individuals. It wasn’t even a guess. Only someone with those skills could have found him on the trail today. Joe himself felt the deeper power, could nudge it around to a point, detour it on occasion, follow it if the flow was sustained. Officially, anyway.
He was perfectly willing to take advantage of her complimentary skills while he was at it.
Chapter 3
A gassiz Peak. Lyn squinted upward into a bright sky; the rising mountain filled half of it. It didn’t look like all that much from here.
Ryan gave her a look. “You haven’t really seen it yet.”
Had she said that out loud? She couldn’t be certain. Standing here at the modest ski lodge and gift shop, the tortuously winding drive up Schultz Pass behind them and nothing but pines and bare volcanic cinder slopes up ahead, she’d let something of herself get lost in the thrumming of the mountain. No wonder the Atrum Core wanted this place. No wonder Ryan wanted it.
Although, as she left the solid-plank porch of the lower lodge and stepped out onto sparse native grasses, it occurred to her that he already had it, just by living here.
No. Wrong thinking. He was what he was; she couldn’t forget it. If he’d once made his trade-offs for his sister’s life, now he made them simply for power. For that desperate attempt to balance his life. It wasn’t as though he had anything to lose.
After all, he’d already lost his sister even after he’d paid her bills with blood money.
He came up behind her. His solidity made her feel weightless, as though she stayed grounded only because he stood behind her. Over her shoulder, he gestured toward an open space and its ski lift—the barely green grass of a natural meadow, sloping sharply upward and lined by woods. “Hart Prairie,” he said. “We can access a number of trails right here. But there are too many people for shifting, and you’re not dressed for hiking.”
At least she was dry, her wet clothes barely more than a memory in the resurging heat. As was he, in a basic T-shirt and jeans, a black leather vest completing the look in a way that should have been pathetically poser but instead looked perfectly natural. He looked up the slope, and even then she could have sworn he was drinking in the view. Drinking in the feel of the power, too—although it felt stable to her limited perception, and reassuring…like being held in the palm of some giant being.
He gave the slightest of nods as two hikers emerged from the trees. “We’ll take the Skyride. Half an hour and we’re there.”
She didn’t mind following his lead. Following blind…that was another thing. “And then?”
He grinned. “Then we see what we can see. And hope it doesn’t brew up another storm.” He offered his jacket—a lined canvas work jacket, strictly nonkosher when it came to shifting. “It’ll be a lot colder up there.”
“No, thanks,” she said. The last thing she needed—to be surrounded by the scent of him.
He opened his mouth as though to say something—some argument, no doubt—and closed it again, offering a shrug instead. In this light, his hazel eyes looked distinctly green, and the short black edging at his nape and temple stood out sharply from tawny hair.
Nothing about his demeanor made her think of someone who could kill his boyhood friend and Sentinel partner. Nothing about his stance. A big guy, a strong guy, an exceptionally charismatic guy…but not edgy. Not that gritty.
He turned abruptly away from the prairie ski area bunny slopes and headed across the parking lot with assured strides. She caught up in short order, and soon enough caught a glimpse of another ski lift—this one moving steadily, chairs filled with people pointing out the sights to one another.
“From the top, you can see the Grand Canyon.”
“I’m not here to see the Grand Canyon.”
He gave her a sharp look. “I think maybe you are.” He veered toward the upper of the two lodges, bought them both lift tickets, and returned with the conversation still on his tongue. “Thing is, you have to look. You have to see.”
“I’ve already seen more than you want me to,” she said, a deliberate and sharp reminder of her twofold purpose here.
He caught her gaze with a flash of green and held it. Quietly, he said, “If you think I’ve forgotten, you’d be very much mistaken.” And then he left her behind, heading directly for the mechanical clank of the lift.
They’d almost reached it when his long stride faltered. An instant later, she felt it—felt the surge of him and the turbulent rapids of power that followed, saw him stumble—and then they both froze at a shriek of fear from the ski lift.
They hadn’t been the only ones to feel the disruption—to react to it. A teenaged girl in skimpy shorts dangled from the lift behind a half-engaged safety bar, crop top riding high with he
r entanglement. Even as they watched, one of her flip-flops fell to the rocky grass below.
The lift wrangler was already on it, easing the cable to a stop—but so was Ryan. From easygoing to distinctly feral, from stumbling to smooth, poetic movement. He sprinted past the gasping crowd, past the lift wrangler and his incoherent yell of protest, and up the hill with no slack in his powerful sprint.
There’s no way. That chair had to be twice his height. Had to be—
That’s when she realized she was running, too, right behind him, scooping up the jacket he’d dropped and ready to…
What? Even drawing on an ocelot’s strength, she couldn’t reach that lift….
And then she stuttered to a halt in amazement as Ryan sprang from the ground, every bit of big-cat strength in play, latching on to the footrest while the car swung in reaction. There he hung a distinct moment while he spoke to the terrified girl.
Lyn wouldn’t have thought he could do it, not so smoothly—not without jarring the girl from her precarious perch. But he did. He swiftly pulled himself up, swung a leg up to hook around the seat, and slithered into a position from which he could haul the girl into the chair, flailing in fear until the moment she flung her arms around him.
He jerked the safety bar down; the wild edges of her sobs trickled unevenly down to Lyn, to the crowd. The silence exploded into relief and wonder and excited conversation. Did you see—? How did he—?
Lyn whirled around to jump into the next chair. The lift wrangler cried a knee-jerk protest and then he gave up and nudged the cable back up to speed, reaching for the radio at his side.
Lyn engaged her own safety bar, and then—already aware of the rising breeze and dropping temperatures as the lift swooped her up over the trees—tucked Ryan’s jacket around her shoulders.
Sentinels: Lion Heart Page 2
