Sentinels: Lion Heart. Doranna Durgin

true.”

      He made a noise she couldn’t quite interpret. “You know,” he said, startling her with the same words she’d only just thought about him, “I wouldn’t want you on my trail.” But she heard the grin in his voice, and he added, “I’ll look into it. And you—be careful. I can have a full team out there within two hours, day or night—it’s not your job to confront the Core, or even to corner Ryan. Just get us close enough so we can get the drop on them.”

      Right. That had been the point all along—coming in with a team too soon would tip off the Core, and spook Ryan into dropping whatever he was up to.

      Supposing he still could. Lyn couldn’t help but wonder if he even had control any longer—if he’d choose to continue with a process that was affecting him as this one obviously did.

      On the other hand, maybe he’d been telling the truth. Maybe he had gotten a bug, and it was messing with his Sentinel skills. It happened.

      “Anything else going on?” Nick asked her, interrupting what she suddenly realized had become a long silence.

      “No,” she said. “Sorry. Just thinking through it all. Same team, do you think?”

      “You make the progression sound like a foregone conclusion.” His voice still held amusement. “Some of the same people, if it comes to that. I doubt I can tear Dolan away from Encontrados and Megan…she might be a natural with those wards, but she’s not ready for the field.”

      Lyn wouldn’t expect it; it hadn’t been long enough since Dolan, the Southwest’s rogue Sentinel, had found Megan, bringing her back to the Sentinel fold after so many erroneous years of neglect. “And Dolan?” she asked. “Did he ever come in?”

      “You mean did you talk him out of his grudges long enough to see that we need him?” Nick let out a breath. “He came in. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s thinking about it. Not for too long, I hope. I need Sentinels I can count on.”

      Lyn heard what those words really meant. I need Sentinels who will stand with me when things get rough around here.

      “I’ll be there,” she reminded him. For as much as she hunted those gone dark, she could well recognize a man leading the way for those who didn’t.

      “I know,” he said. “But we’ll need…”

      “More,” she finished for him, and couldn’t help a fleeting acknowledgment that Ryan’s strength, his solidity—his depth, even—could have made him valuable to Nick. Could have.

      “And Lyn,” Nick said, his voice hitting a warning note, “keep in mind that there’s a third possibility when it comes to the things Ryan said he never heard from us. Because he could be telling the truth, and still be dark. There’s more than one tangle in play here.”

      “Got it covered,” she told him. “Untangling trails is what I do.”

       Chapter 6

      Joe prowled in from the early morning sunshine on the roof, stretching hugely. He flicked his ears, resigning himself to the end of solitude.

      Not that he’d found much solace in the night. Not with the echoes of the faintly twisted power from the top of the world still churning through his body…not with everything he’d learned the day before still tumbling through his mind. For it was clear now—while he’d been thick and slow with that cold, his territory had been invaded.

      And the people who should have had his back now blamed him. This woman—the tightly wound tracker with precision in her movement and precision in her features—she blamed him, too. Had come to find proof, but made up her mind before she even got here.

      The feel of what she’d done to him—unwittingly, unknowingly—out there on the mountain…it, too, had followed him through the night, tingling along awakened nerves to leave him restless and wakeful. Even the solace of the roof had not lured him into better-late-than-never sleep.

      But it meant he was awake when Lyn Maines left the casita for an early-morning walk around the house, stretching her legs and yawning, her hair tumbled loose around her face and her neat travel outfit from the day before replaced by crop cargo pants and some sort of shirred top that had made him want to lean closer for a better look.

      He hadn’t done it. He knew better than to provide any movement for her eye to latch on to. Only after she returned to the casita did he pad down from the roof, hopping lightly to the second-story porch and through the warded sliding-glass door…from there, straight to unclothed human form and then straight to the shower, the casual habits of a man who lived alone in a wild spot of land.

      When he finally emerged onto the front porch, jeans and a loose-weave pullover blotting up the leftover dampness, he found her sitting on the porch bench seat, her hair now drawn back into a tidy clip. She looked up at him with a wary expectation, and he said, “Breakfast?”

      And that was how she ended up cooking in his kitchen. Not because he couldn’t—he’d already started the coffee and gathered bacon, eggs and appropriate pans—but because she seemed so uncomfortable just sitting there that he asked if she’d rather. And that left him free to deal with the paws batting at the lower cabinets, where the little black shorthair waited.

      “Because I haven’t fed you in a week, maybe two,” he murmured, hitting the pantry up for cat kibble. They were indoor cats, other than the escape artist of a brown tabby; special wards contained them when he left the upstairs door open a crack so the cougar could return. But this little black shorthair still managed to find trouble. This morning, rather than eating, she fussed and shook her front paw with a frantic need.

      Lyn looked up from the bacon as she repositioned it in the pan. “Is she okay?”

      As if this little scene was truly a domestically cozy moment, with two companionable people sharing a good-morning breakfast, the paper turned to the comics section and the scent of frying cholesterol in the air. Right.

      He scooped the little cat up and murmured sweet nothings in her ear until she purred and barely noticed as he deftly rolled a particularly nasty goat’s head sticker out from between the pads. “She’s fine,” he said, rubbing lightly at that spot just between her eyes. “It must have come in on my shoe.”

      “I hate those things,” Lyn said, vehemently enough to take him by surprise—to amuse him. She’d actually let something of herself peek out that time. And though she withdrew almost immediately, her eyes lingered on his fingers as they stroked the sleek black head and crumpled back delicate shell-pink ears to make the black cat purr.

      “As it happens,” Joe said, a murmur to fool the cat into thinking he was talking to her, and indeed she purred more loudly in response, “I actually like my bacon a little burned.”

      Lyn’s eyes widened; her nostrils flared slightly, taking in the same sharp odor he’d already noticed. Her lips formed a silent curse, and she whirled to tend to the fry pan.

      Joe smiled at the cat, bringing that purring creature up so they could briefly butt faces. Distractable, Lyn was—focused in, and therefore not aware of the larger world. He’d already seen some of that up on the mountain, and could well understand why she didn’t work without a partner.

      It did surprise him that brevis would have sent her without one. They trusted him to some extent, then—albeit probably only to maintain his supposed cover. And whatever they thought of him, he wouldn’t let her down. Not this dark-eyed ocelot with her fierce drive to clean up the Sentinels, not even if she didn’t realize they were on the same side.

      Damned if he was going to let the Core get away with messing with this mountain.

      The cat made an abrupt decision to be done with purring and face-butting, possibly inspired by the clatter of eggs being dished out. Lyn moved assertively in the unfamiliar kitchen, looking right at home as she finished up the meal.

      “Juice?”