acreage. And if she didn’t know where those lines ran, then she needed to find out—especially if the word had gotten out to real estate agents that her father might sell.
After all, she needed to know just where she could kick them off the land. At least until she confirmed what Matt Arshun had said—and so far, all she’d found was a business card identical to the one he’d given her, tucked away in her father’s desk.
Arshun was, she thought, overstating his case.
She poked the walking stick in between some downhill roots and used it to steady her descent, heading for the first boundary tree. A rare dew soaked her high-top riding sneakers, adding to the chill of the morning.
Rae...
“You must be kidding,” she muttered, more incredulous than she liked. Ten years away from the cabin, illustrating Southwest specialty guidebooks and selling fanciful little paintings on the side, and she’d lived in blessed silence. But less than a week after her return, that silence had broken. And not with the little nudges and intuitions she’d denied having as a child—denied hard, in the wake of her mother’s breakdown—but with actual whispers.
Less than a week after her return. But even then, she’d had silence until the previous day.
Until Kai.
As if that made any sense at all. She steadied herself on the rugged bark of a ponderosa, scraping through the prickly, hollylike leaves of a scrub oak. Kai. A man who knew the land—better than she did at this point. A man who dressed the part—who surely had resources nearby, to have come out bare-chested and without a canteen. Barefooted.
Primal.
And she’d first heard those whispers only moments before her horse dumped her—I bailed, dammit!—and then he’d appeared, full of apology.
Since when did the savvy little mustang spook at a man in the woods?
Too many questions.
Rae...
God, was that her mother’s voice, using her childhood pet name? Whispering into her head? Or had this place simply stolen so much from her mother that now it sounded like her?
“You can’t have my life,” she told it, a snarl of defiance—and didn’t know if she was talking to the land, or to herself. To whatever had started inside her that would slowly erode her sense of self until she didn’t know where she started or where she ended.
Beware...
Regan stopped, cocking her head to the sudden change. That had certainly not come from within—that sense of alarm and foreboding. It hadn’t been part of her morning so far at all, no matter the unsettled nature of her ruminations.
She turned from it, just as she had turned from the affectionate greeting—she did what she’d always done in these unsettled moments, reaching out to the artist within herself. Her practiced eye found the beauty in the stark lines of a fallen tree, the sharp shadows of the morning and the contrast of the orange-brown pine bark against the ferns splashed across the rugged slope. She picked out shape and detail, and her hand twitched, reflexively reaching for watercolors, for oils...for a smear of pastel in a wild, expressive movement.
By the time she saw the boundary tree, she’d almost forgotten why she’d come out here in the first place.
But as she pulled the flutter of stretchy, orange tape from her pocket, ready to take another wrap around the tree, the warning sensation hit her again. Stronger.
BEWARE...
She didn’t snap back at it this time, or wonder at it or even resent it. She simply reeled in it, alarm twisting the pit of her stomach, and her fingers tightening over the tape.
It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her alarm. It was still real. And it felt like...
A cry for help.
* * *
Beware...
The whisper of warning slapped within Kai, reverberating...and bounced back out to the land. With it came a twist of pain, and a still unfamiliar but unmistakable taint.
The Atrum Core.
After a moment there came a faint echo of awareness—one that would have been imminently welcome had it not been for the Core presence. Regan Adler, not far away.
Kai moved out as lynx, broad paws stepping through dew, a luxury in the desert. Ration your lynx, his family had often told him. Keep your balance.
But that had been long years earlier, before his family had left him here to survive with a home carved out of the mountains, a bank account rarely touched and the weepy enjoinder that neither the Core nor the Sentinels could ever know what he could do. What he was.
If the Sentinels knew, the Core would know. And if the Core knew, they would stop at nothing to kill him.
That didn’t mean Kai would let them slink in here to poison the land. He moved through the shadows of the morning, staying on the cool north slope where the vegetation ran thicker, the dew lingered longer and the ground sank beneath his feet. The sickening vapor of Core workings swirled around them all, skimming the ground like a living fog. Kai lifted his lips in a silent snarl, flattening whiskers—cursing, as he could while lynx. The ugly energy held no structure, no directive, and Kai could discern no purpose behind it.
But by the time he’d circled along the slope and curved into the sparser cover of the southeast exposure, he had a good idea where it came from. He planned his steps accordingly—and his temper rose with each.
They weren’t quite over the boundary and onto Adler land. But they were close. They’d found the spot where the dry creek spilled out near the dirt Forest Service access road; like many before them, they’d followed that rocky path uphill to the spot where it spread wide—where rainwater and snowmelt sometimes pooled and where Kai himself often slaked his thirst as both human and lynx.
Kai had been patrolling that spot for years. Careful hikers—those who packed out what they brought in—he left alone. Careless hikers...
One way or another they didn’t stay.
Kai didn’t plan for the Core to stay.
He found them arrayed around the dry pool, the ground scuffed around them and rocks carelessly overturned. There were three of them—the first of the Core he’d ever seen. He watched them for some moments, paws spread wide over the ground, short tail restless—lashing as it could.
It surprised him that they were so recognizable. Big, beefy men, one of them in a suit with an expensive sheen and fall of cloth, the other two in serviceable black slacks and dark gray short-sleeved shirts under identical black jackets. They all bore silver at their ears, silver on their wrists and fingers, and dark olive skin tones that owed nothing to the sun. The suited man had his dark hair pulled back in a short club at his nape; the other two wore utilitarian styles, long enough to lick at their ears and collars.
And while the suited man watched, the others were hard at work. Two large metal cases lay by the side of the dry pool, open to reveal padded, sectioned interiors. One case still held its original contents—gleaming piles of dark metal, glinting dully
