style="font-size:15px;"> No. Pondering her suspicions that Nick Carter now silently ran Southwest brevis regional was not the thing to do right now. He had an uncanny knack for plucking unspoken thoughts from her—and everyone else’s—head.
So for a long moment, while the cell phone warmed in her hand, Lyn thought of what she’d learned on the mountain that day. The confirmed presence of Fabron Gausto—no doubt completely bypassing the will of his septs prince. And he still had his sept posse, loyal in spite of his spectacular failure in Tucson. Didn’t have any choice at this point, Lyn imagined—no other Core sept would take them in.
She’d found more there, while Joe Ryan sat on the top of the world and absorbed the power flows. She’d found the disgusting trace of discharged amulets—powerful amulets, and a number of them. And Ryan, once they’d gone human again, had allowed that there was a ripple in the power flowing through that area, but couldn’t suggest its cause or meaning.
Unlike Ryan, she reported as expected. And that meant flipping the cell phone open and hitting the autodial that went straight to Nick Carter’s direct line.
“Carter,” he said, with noises in the background that made her believe he was at home—baying and carrying on, most boisterous.
“Is blood being shed?” she asked, amused, before stopping to think.
“Lyn,” he said, after a pause in which he’d obviously sorted out her voice. “Hounds and their toys…” Then his voice changed, hitting a businesslike note. “You’re in place?”
“I’m in his guest cabin.”
“He invited you?” Surprise there, enough to make Lyn wonder. “Does he know—?”
“That I’m not exactly his advocate? He picked up on that right away.” A flush of regret took her by surprise. Even full of suspicions and deep-seated determination to clear out the dark Sentinels, she’d seen a hint of something other than jaded resignation on Ryan’s face. Something that might have even been hurt, quickly covered.
So he’s wounded to be under suspicion again. Doesn’t mean he’s innocent.
“Lyn,” Nick said, and she could hear the hesitation in his voice and envision it in his pale green eyes. He was a wild one, that Nick Carter, a wolf wrapped in civility and manners, hoarfrost hair neatly trimmed, a lean, coiled power in his movements. Lyn suspected that his constrained manner was the only way he kept himself from startling people with his quickness, with the glimpse of the untamed showing through.
She’d never had a problem with keeping the ocelot tucked away—keeping that aspect of herself well behaved, covered with a tidy veneer of what society expected. She didn’t lean on her Sentinel nature, as did some; she didn’t need to. She was tenacious; she clung to lessons learned young. And she damned well knew what that hesitation of Nick’s meant. “You knew who I was when you sent me here,” she said. “I’ll get the job done, Nick.”
“I’m not concerned about your dedication,” he said dryly. He must have gone through a door; the noise of the dogs abruptly diminished. “Nor your ability. So don’t even go there.”
“What then? I’ve hardly had a chance to get started.”
“Your focus,” he said bluntly. “We need answers—whether or not they fit your personal mission.”
“You’re the one who thought he’d gone dark in the first place!” she blurted out, too surprised to be circumspect.
“And I still do. But even so, I need someone who can look for what’s actually there, and not for what you want to be there.”
For a long breath, she couldn’t say anything. She walked up to the casita’s large window, looking through the darkness at the house beside her, and the drop of the mountain beyond that. No blinding nighttime lighting for this property—nothing to interfere with the rich scatter of stars overhead. Only the most muted of lights from the second-floor loft area to indicate Ryan was still in there at all.
If he was. She didn’t think for a moment that her presence would stop him from ranging out. She should be keeping track of him, not losing herself in this conversation, familiar dismay lumping in the pit of her stomach. “You went digging,” she said. “That part of my background is supposed to be off the record.”
“Your brother—”
“Has nothing to do with this!” Except—“No, I take it back. He opened my eyes. He taught me important lessons. And do you really want this phone call to be about me? Because I don’t.”
“Do you have news already?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” Her turn to be dry. “We went to the top of the world today, as it happens.” And she summarized their ascent and discovery of the trace. “But it could have been a throwaway.” A gift to make her think he was cooperating. “If so, he lost nothing of real value by revealing that spot…I couldn’t track them from there. Something about what they’d done with the amulets obliterated all but those first traces.”
But even as Nick absorbed her words, she realized the things she’d left out—the way Ryan had reacted to her flawed shielding technique, the way he’d reacted to the power surges…how in some odd way, they seemed to hurt and not help him. Things she’d usually report and wasn’t quite certain why she hadn’t.
Because I’m not sure yet. Not sure what she was seeing, or if she’d really even seen those things at all. She needed more time…
But Nick, knowing none of it, was still thinking of the words she had said. “So the Core is there. Then it’s not likely Ryan is doing this on his own. Too much coincidence, for them to show up along with the power surges, even with Ryan’s trace clinging to them.”
“He was surprised about that, by the way,” she observed. “It struck me as completely genuine. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t involved—only that he didn’t know his trace would show up, and didn’t recognize it when it did.” But that wasn’t the only thing that had surprised him this day, and she had to add, “He said he hadn’t heard from brevis regional regarding the Core’s suspected presence here.”
“Not quite the same as claiming he didn’t know they were there.” His voice was dark and certain.
She wouldn’t, she realized, want this man on her trail. “He also says he never got a message asking him to expedite that late report.”
They both sat on a beat of silence, and then she said, “I think you need to follow up on it, Nick.”
Surprise, there. “You believe him?”
“I think,” she said carefully, “that we should be ready to counter that claim if it isn’t 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.
