And then there in the sunshine, the grin suddenly faded altogether as he stilled, staring at her—catching her gaze, catching her breath.
She wasn’t lost in a vision; she wasn’t plunging into a healing. It was just Katie and Maks, in a quiet sun-dappled parking lot, the trees rising up behind them. That she wanted so badly for him to close the distance between them...it couldn’t be blamed on anything or anyone else but her.
Oh, little deer. Watch your step with this one.
Because being with Maks—being near Maks—would awaken things she’d never wanted to know about herself.
Chapter 9
“Maks Altán,” Akins said, as if it was some sort of triumph.
Eduard didn’t respond right away, his fingers curled lightly around the tiny espresso cup and a sticky, heavily iced bear claw teasing his nose with its sweet scent. Maks Altán. Of course. He’d survived. That had been him, taking point at the raid of Gausto’s desert mansion not so long ago.
Not that there were so many Siberian shifters around to choose from. Plenty of wolves, variations on medium to large cats, a smattering of less usual predators, even fewer omnivores and grazers...
Fewer yet of the world’s biggest cat. And who else would the Sentinels send into this area if they suspected trouble?
“I said—”
“Yes,” Eduard interrupted. “It doesn’t change anything, does it? Knowing his name?”
“You wanted to know.” Akins’s mouth grew sullen. As before, he straddled the back of his chair, but today his bravado looked a little thin. “They said he’s there to clear a firebreak for her, but that’s crap, right? I think they’re doing some vertical jogging, you know?”
Now, that was interesting, just from a scientific point of view. His little water deer and the great tiger?
“Besides,” Akins added with a smug and cocky look, “I did what you wanted. I messed with her head. By the time I’m done with her, she won’t know if she’s coming or going.”
“And Altán?”
There. The smug, cocky look disappeared. “What, did you expect me to start a brawl right there in the farm store? I have to live in this place, you know.”
Eduard hid his amusement. “I gather you had a confrontation.” That was worth a precise, fork-cut piece of the bear claw. “And that you walked away.”
Akins scowled. “I prodded him a little. I figured you’d want to know his mettle.”
“His mettle,” Eduard said, “is a given.”
Akins shrugged it off, reverting to arrogance. “Doesn’t matter. The Maddox bitch was upset, that was plain enough. And I got another dig at her reputation. You swear by the time this is over, she’ll be screwed?”
“You’ll get what you need,” Eduard told him. You just won’t live to enjoy it.
Just as Maks Altán would have to be handled before Katie could be taken, Akins would die shortly after Katie disappeared. Very shortly after. A car accident, perhaps. After which—with help from a few well-placed words—people would blame Akins for Katie’s disappearance.
After all, Akins himself was so conveniently laying the groundwork for their enmity.
“Hey,” Akins said, slapping the table, a sharp sound that made several other café patrons startle and glare. “You hear about that creature?”
Ah. The creature.
“In fact,” Eduard told him, folding his paper napkin in half and creasing it firmly, “I’ve seen it.”
“No shit? I’d like to have me a piece of that. Maybe go hunting sometime.”
Maybe not a car accident for Akins.
“If you finish this work for me,” Eduard said, and nodded, “I think that can be arranged.”
And then everyone would feel a guilty relief that this obvious danger to the community was gone, and the event would make the news. No one would wonder what had happened; no one would come looking for Eduard.
They’d probably look for Katie Maddox. But they wouldn’t find her.
* * *
Maks flexed his arm and didn’t bother pretending it didn’t stretch and burn the healing flesh.
“Be careful.” The sun shone on Katie’s work-flushed face, and her hair threatened to tumble free from its ponytail.
“Katie Rae Maddox,” he said, his words unguarded at the sight of her, “I surely will.”
She narrowed her eyes as if she suspected they might be talking about two different things. Her hand rested on the sharp-toothed fire rake she used to clear a thick section of juniper seedlings; she wore a light long-sleeved shirt of baby-blue striping open over a stretchy coral tank top, and heavy jeans over clunky work boots. With her hands protected by pink-and-white pigskin work gloves, she looked just perfect.
If anything, her scowl grew. “You’re grinning.”
He didn’t respond, because what could he say? He was grinning. Just at the sight of her, and at the feel of the sun on the top of his head and the stretch of active muscle. If his arm burned and throbbed, at least it healed.
“I should work on that arm again,” she told him, and she didn’t have to say she was thinking about more than the injury, but also about the thing that neither of them would put into words just now. The fugue. And that which had happened two nights before, the astonishing connection they’d shared...not to mention the pain that had struck so unexpectedly.
Not that he’d talked about that. Not that he intended to.
He had to figure it out first.
Maks struck at the base of a small tree with a sharpened mattock, slicing it through at ground level. “Does it usually happen like that? Is that why you didn’t stay to work healing in brevis?”
“You’re chatty all of a sudden,” she grumbled. She looked away, up into the rising slope of the national forest beyond her property; her hand tightened around the rake handle. “I think it was...” She took a deep breath. He stopped to watch her and she muttered, “Dammit,” and aimed a few quick, savage strokes of the rake. The little juniper colony didn’t stand a chance.
She stopped just as abruptly, and then marched straight up to him. He didn’t try to contain his surprise—or his wariness. “You,” she said, and poked him in the shoulder. “I think it’s you.”
“Me?” he echoed with raised brows—but just that fast, his surprise turned to thoughtful satisfaction.
She didn’t flinch from him. She’d poked him. She even seemed bent on pushing back at him, making him prove he was safe.
If she kept it up, she’d learn he wasn’t safe at all.
“I don’t see things this deeply,” she said, stuck in her own frustration. “I don’t get carried away by them. I don’t lose my sense of self and I sure as hell don’t—don’t...”
She sputtered to a stop, the dismay on her face combined with a flush that had nothing to do with the sun or the work.
He reached out to her, his hand cupping the side of her jaw and ear, his fingers curling behind her neck. “It is,” he told her. “Is there reason to fight it?”
She pushed his hand away. “Yes,” she said flatly. “If it’s being done to me. If it’s not coming from me.” She looked at him in frustration—a frank look, traveling the length of his body. “You’re beautiful, Maks. Dammit, you’re—” She surprised him by poking him again, harder, as if this was all his fault. “You’re damned near irresistible! But this isn’t the way I am—and I can’t just accept it. I have to understand.”
He hardly dared to move. The tiger stirred within him, provoked by her prodding just as he was provoked all over again by her proximity. “Maybe,” he said, “this is you with me.”
She snorted, a soft sound. “Trust a man to say something like that.”
He spread his arms in confession.
But in his heart, he knew she was right—that there was something else.
He dropped his arms to his sides. The injured arm suddenly ached, deeper than the mere pain of use. The failure to heal. He turned his head away from her—like Katie, losing himself in t
he sight and scent of the pine woods marching up the ridge.
“Maks,” she said, regret in that single word. She took a deep breath. “Whatever’s going on, I’m afraid it’s just not that simple.”
He shot a quick glance at her, then bent to retrieve the mattock, far too aware of the quick, shallow beat of his heart, the blood loss...the weakness he’d again pushed to its limit. “No,” he said. “It’s not.” Another glance, sharper this time; he saw her take a quick breath at the impact of all the things left unspoken.
It’s not. But it could be.
* * *
By tacit accord, they gathered the tools. Katie murmured something about sandwiches and a light healing session, but her reticence—and her stubborn adherence to her own truths—had brought Maks back on task. He’d allowed their work in the yard to seduce him—for those moments, he’d forgotten they were merely building his improvised cover, and he’d allowed himself to absorb this place as home again. To relax here, with Katie.
She’d been right to refocus him.
But when the utilitarian little truck pulled up in Katie’s driveway, she took one look at the driver and fled.
Maks knew the man on sight, if not by acquaintance. And, like Katie, he knew what he saw—the graceful movement as the man stretched his arms out, rotating his shoulders, the sense of prowl and power.
Maks had asked Nick for help; he’d gotten it.
Even knowing that didn’t stop the brief flare of territorial annoyance at the Sentinel’s intrusion. Another big cat.
Maks was, he knew, not quite tame at heart. They’d told him long ago that he probably never would be...that wild moments like this would strike him unaware, and that he’d have to accept them and move through them.
So he did, and he went to meet the man, tools in hand and body language casual.
“Ian,” the man introduced himself. Not as solid as Maks, not as tall, his hair a mussed style of premature gray with lingering streaks of black. “Ian Scott. We met at brevis—not sure if you remember.” He didn’t let his gaze settle on Maks for too long. Instead he took in the layout of the place—the land, the access, the house in the middle of it. “Nick says you’ve got some trouble here.”
“Some,” Maks told him, remembering the man just fine—the amulet specialist who had worked so hard to understand the nature of the Flagstaff ambush—the man who blamed himself for being unable to provide brevis medical with answers. AmSpec.
All the same, he wasn’t willing to cede the man any ground—putting Katie’s interests before the Sentinels. Maks would make that decision—even if he wasn’t supposed to. Even if he’d never so much as blinked at following brevis’s lead before. A foot soldier—without nuance, without doubts. Dedicated, effective—lethally effective when necessary. A follower of orders.
But now, Maks had doubts. Because now, whether he should or not, Maks had a stake in what happened here.
In the wake of Maks’s silence, Ian merely shifted in a way that evoked a twitching tail. “You want to cough up the amulet?”
Maks indicated the back of the house with a jerk of his head, then led Ian to the overturned flowerpot and its contents. The yellow cat appeared from some secret basking place, its sides warm against Maks’s legs as it briefly blessed him with its presence and then ambled off.
Ian gave the flowerpot a look, offering Maks a sideways glance. “The cat,” Maks said, understanding the question. “She cares about it.”
Katie strode around the side of the porch—her face washed of work grime, her hair brushed into order and secured in a flipped ponytail to waterfall against her neck, her determination renewed. “Yes,” Katie said, “she cares about the cat. We didn’t know if the flowerpot would be any real protection, but at least it kept him from playing with the amulet.”
“Not if you don’t care about the pot,” Ian agreed. “Katie Maddox? I’m Ian Scott. Brevis sent me to see about this thing.”
“And take back some sort of report, I’m sure.”
Ian’s eyes gleamed with subtle humor. “You weren’t supposed to suss that out. He said you weren’t a field Sentinel.”
“I’m not,” Katie said shortly. “But I’ve had my share of exposure.”
“He said that, too.” Ian snagged a pair of ordinary barbecue tongs from the tactical bag and offered them a moment of concentration. A subtle surge of energy told Maks he’d shielded them—barriers as fine as silk and just as strong. Maks shouldn’t have been able to assess them at all. He stepped back, uneasy at the dissonance murmuring down his spine. Ian raised his brows with a side glance. “I was told you weren’t a sensitive.”
“I’m not.” His own shields were serviceable and without finesse or any particular flexibility, and he tended to use them as an afterthought. He was tiger at heart—a physical being, doing a physical job.
“Huh,” Ian said, in clear if casual disbelief. But he kept his attention on his work, neatly flipping the flowerpot over and crouching to examine the amulet from beneath. “These silent amulets are a bitch. No point in taking chances.”
“Silent,” Katie said, moving closer to Maks. “That means it isn’t just any amulet. Not something the average Core operative would have on hand.”
“Not something the average Core anyone would have on hand,” Ian agreed, using the tongs to flatten a tuft of grass and reveal the thing. Oily and black, just as before. Lurking, with an ugly kind of promise. “It’s probably harmless at the moment. It doesn’t feel activated, although it’s hard to tell with these things.”
“What’s it supposed to do?” Katie didn’t sound certain she wanted to know.
Ian shrugged. “That’s even harder to tell. I’ll need to get it to a safe area where I’ve got assistants working shield layers.” He glanced at Maks from where he crouched. “You know why, better than anyone.”
Maks made a sound in his chest. He knew why, all right.
“Well, we’ll set up some wards here before I go—with three of us in the working, they’ll be good and solid.” Wards, once set, would self-maintain—unlike shields, which were a constant draw but were also more flexible. “Anything like this tries to get through again, it’ll backfire on whoever’s holding it. Sound good? It might mess with your seeings, though.” He rested one knee on the gritty soil, his forearm propped across the other, the tongs dangling. Casual, with the amulet only inches away.
Maks grunted assent; Katie overrode it with her emphatic response. “Yes, please,” she said. “I can go somewhere else to hunt visions if I have to.”
Maks turned to look at her, and she shook her head. “Seriously,” she said. “I’d rather feel safe in my own home.”
“I’m here,” he reminded her.
“But he,” she pointed to Ian, “won’t be. Oh, Maks, don’t look like that. You would fight an army to keep me safe—I can see that. But you aren’t supposed to have to face this. It—or something like it—almost killed you once already.”
“Tell you what,” Ian said, the perpetual dry note in his voice replaced by something carefully neutral. “If I ever need protection for one of my own, you’re the guy I’ll call. But this silent amulet situation...” He shook his head. “There are very few of us who can get a ping from one of these, even knowing they’re right there.”
“You can,” Katie said—an obvious guess, but one with confidence behind it.
“I can,” Ian said, and gestured at the oily gleam in the bunchgrass. “Either someone’s gone to a great deal of trouble to acquire this on your account, or you’ve caught the attention of someone powerful who can come up with it on his own.”
His gaze drew inward, and Maks knew what he was doing the moment before he felt it—strengthening and refining his personal shields. Maks took a single step back, taking Katie with him—throwing up his own utilitarian shields for good measure.
Instantly, the fugue bit at him. Not phasing in, a sly invasion, but smacking him hard—if not so deep that he did more than stagger. It still
sent him an extra step back into Katie. She made a sound of dismay—but she must have understood, for a trickle of her healing energy immediately washed up against him, tight and private and cautious.
He should have been prepared for the heat that also rose between them; his toes tried to grip the ground right through his sturdy shoes. Katie Katie Katie and sweet deer eyes and her body against his and—
Unexpected sparks of pain took him by surprise; one knee wobbled. He stiffened the leg, clinging to stability through pulsing, fractured colors and rising static. The pain turned into a throb, always that sensation of reaching...reaching...
Katie pinched him.
Dammit, she pinched him. Right in the tender skin on his side. His inner snarl pushed him through the worst of it, leaving him with the pulsing pound of fading pain. She withdrew her healing touch but kept her trembling hands at his back, as if she expected he might go down on her at any moment.
And yet she said nothing to Ian—leaving that up to Maks.
Ian seemed oblivious—or more likely, lost in the concentration that his task demanded. He dropped the amulet into his bucket, letting the thin braided leather lanyard drape over the side. “This’ll tell me as much as anything, once I have it stretched out,” he said, running the tongs along the length of the lanyard. “The knots they use—the type and placement—identify the amulets as clearly as any printed label. Give me a moment, and I’ll have a rough draft of what they meant for this thing to do.”
And then he looked directly at Maks, rising to his feet and with a big cat’s sinuous grace. “I think we need to get someone else to take over up here so you can see the brevis medics.”
Maks glared through the pain and dissonance. Behind him, Katie stiffened—but she was a healer, so she said bluntly, “He’s probably right.”
Maks thought nothing of right or of brevis at all. He thought of Katie. “Would you feel safe then?”
“That’s not the point, Maks. You need to be well.”
The glare turned to a snarl—silent, but just as potent. “They had their chance with me. And they sent me here for a reason.”
Tiger Bound Page 10
