.

now.

      Jet started the bike, and her hands on the clutch and throttle felt like someone else’s—so fundamentally wrong, neat fingers and trimmed nails folding gracefully around the clutch lever on one side, the throttle and brake lever on the other.

      And, as though they were someone else’s, they throttled the bike up and forward, feathered the clutch to a release point, and sent her off down the road.

       Chapter 5

      Marlee knew better than to carry the viral thumbnail drive around with her. Even flush from success, with Nick Carter’s machine simmering in viral malfunction and his phone redirected to the prepaid cell currently in her pocket, she wouldn’t be an overconfident fool. She jammed a screwdriver through the thing and dumped it down the incinerator shaft, and then she got an iced tea from the vending machine on her way back to her own floor and her own cubicle. In her mind she practiced just the right disdainful tone to use with Gausto when she let him know it was done.

      Of course, she’d wipe the virus and reverse the phone forwarding after today—it was all the time she would have given Gausto even if he’d wanted more, and he hadn’t. Just one afternoon…a distraction. Big deal. Phoenix APS could cause them more trouble than that with a slow response to a service outage.

      Besides, it very much suited her. After everyone else failed, Marlee Cerrosa would be the one to restore Carter’s computer. The hero. And if all went according to plan, no one would even catch on to what she’d done with the phone.

      In fact, as she jogged down the stairs to her floor, her cell phone trilled the special ring she’d assigned to the forwarded calls—bypassing Carter’s admin, who could still call out but might well go hours before even wondering why there hadn’t been incoming calls, especially with Carter out of the building.

      She tucked herself off to the side, turning toward the wall to keep her voice from echoing up the stairwell—even if it was carpeted to keep echoing noise from hammering against sensitive Sentinel ears. “Nick Carter’s office.”

      Just that easy. Marlee breezily told the caller that her boss was out of the office, and then she took a message.

      She was grinning when she exited out into the stairwell. So she wasn’t as strong as these Sentinels, and she didn’t have the special skills and senses they shared. She was still strong enough. Skilled enough. Human enough.

      The grin faded right off her face when she rounded the corner and found a whole little pack of them in the hallway. Lyn Maines and Joe Ryan, from earlier in the day, nodding a greeting without breaking off their conversation. And oh, crap, was that Treviño? The last Sentinel she wanted to see, this hard man who took the jaguar. He hadn’t softened a bit since Meghan Lawrence had snared him—she who had been raised without Sentinel training and had her own very human ways of dealing with things.

      There’d been talk, of course. And Marlee made no apologies for listening. She’d known, long before she hit true Sentinel training, that these thickly blooded shapeshifters needed to be watched.

      She just hadn’t realized she didn’t have to be alone in it.

      So she knew of Dolan’s history, his grudge against the Sentinels, his barely tolerated independence in the southern-most Southwest territory. He’d also not been to brevis for years…until recently. Marlee had to stop herself from scowling at him. Why now?

      Meghan stood beside him—pure lean cowgirl in worn, hard-worked jeans and boots and a rolled-sleeved flannel shirt over a snug tank top—her features a bit sharp and her eyes faintly tipped up at the outside, coyote eyes in shape if not in color. No one, Marlee thought, should be that comfortable standing next to Dolan Treviño.

      And there was Annorah, come out of her communications shell. Annorah, Marlee could admire. Envy, even, for her vast skill, uncoupled with physical prowess as it was. But not trust. Not when she’d worked with the others so closely, even if she was still atoning for her misjudgment in her first and last field assignment.

      The final member of their little group, she’d been watching. Maks, who took the tiger. He was big; he was quiet. He’d been badly hurt in Flagstaff, and he hadn’t quite been released from care. Why he didn’t bear a grudge against Joe Ryan, Marlee couldn’t figure.

      With Marlee hesitating on the edge of them, Meghan said, “It won’t be long, Maks. You look so much better than the last time.”

      Treviño snorted. “You mean back when his eyes were still crossed?”

      Maks muttered something Marlee couldn’t hear, but it was short and sweet and emphatic, and it made Ryan snort in laughter.

      “A happy ending is nice when you can get it,” Lyn pointed out, not nearly as relaxed as the rest of them—as if she ever was. “Even Michael is recovering, and I honestly thought Shea was dead. But Nick—”

      Meghan ran a hand over the wall beside her. Never just a simple gesture, with Meghan Lawrence—she was always reading the wards around her, soaking them in and sorting them out. “Do you really think…?”

      Ryan shook his head. “He’s been out of contact for a couple of hours, that’s all.”

      Completely? That startled Marlee; she wondered what Gausto had done to Carter’s cell phone. And why hadn’t Annorah been able to reach him?

      Ryan added, “But it’s time to find him.”

      Treviño shifted, impatience on his face. “Dane doesn’t need to get wind of this.”

      The consul. Not a man many people saw; not a man considered at the top of his game. Not anymore. Ryan agreed, apparently. He snorted, no amusement at all this time. “Not Dane, not his people.”

      “I think it’s already beyond that,” said Annorah, a plump woman who moved with strength and assurance. “I don’t think you’re getting it. I haven’t been able to reach him at all. There’s only two ways that happens—one is if he’s been closed off somehow. The other is if he’s…” She hesitated, looked uncomfortable, and said it anyway. “Dead.”

      Meghan frowned. “What if he’s sleeping?”

      “Then I still get a sense of him. He can shield me out, too—not many can, but he’s got the way of it. But I can still sense him.”

      Marlee said, without really planning on it, “I bet he’s just caught up in that dog show.”

      As one, they turned to her. Oh, crap. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…well, I need to get through, and I got caught up in your conversation.”

      “No problem,” Ryan said, so laid back that she floundered a little. Had she been wrong—? Then again, he had that reputation: laid back, easy to take lightly…until it was too late. That new scar…a cogent reminder. Now he added, “You’re not worried?”

      She found a smile, offered it up. “The thought that Nick Carter can’t take care of himself at a dog show…” She shrugged. “Nick is good at what he does. It’s not convenient, having him out of touch like this, but he’ll be back soon and we’ll figure it out.”

      Meghan shared her smile. “It’s hard to imagine things going wrong on quick check into disappearing dogs.”

      “He thought the disappearances might be tied to bigger things,” Annorah said, a bit sharply—defensively. Had a crush on her boss, did she?

      It was then that Marlee realized she was reveling in the moment. Tense at the prospect of being caught, yes. Anxious to make sure she walked the line she’d set for herself without crossing it, yes. But she also knew more than they did—if not the exact nature of Carter’s disrupted communications, she at least knew who was behind them. She knew that there were parts of it they hadn’t even discovered yet, and weren’t likely to discover. And she knew it would be over when she removed the virus—half a day of disruption.

      She