that area is at the root of this problem.” He shrugged, and added almost against his will, “Because I want you to see the view. To see what this place really is.”
That stopped her. She hesitated, a moment in which he couldn’t read her at all. Even that whisper of silken power faded. And then she seemed to shake it off, and she moved in as he pulled the first mug from the brewer and pushed it across the polished charcoal granite counter. “I’d planned to do some tracking today.”
“So do I.” Different kinds, no doubt—she was a trace sniffer, someone who could find and follow specific individuals. It wasn’t even a guess. Only someone with those skills could have found him on the trail today. Joe himself felt the deeper power, could nudge it around to a point, detour it on occasion, follow it if the flow was sustained. Officially, anyway.
He was perfectly willing to take advantage of her complimentary skills while he was at it.
Chapter 3
Agassiz Peak. Lyn squinted upward into a bright sky; the rising mountain filled half of it. It didn’t look like all that much from here.
Ryan gave her a look. “You haven’t really seen it yet.”
Had she said that out loud? She couldn’t be certain. Standing here at the modest ski lodge and gift shop, the tortuously winding drive up Schultz Pass behind them and nothing but pines and bare volcanic cinder slopes up ahead, she’d let something of herself get lost in the thrumming of the mountain. No wonder the Atrum Core wanted this place. No wonder Ryan wanted it.
Although, as she left the solid-plank porch of the lower lodge and stepped out onto sparse native grasses, it occurred to her that he already had it, just by living here.
No. Wrong thinking. He was what he was; she couldn’t forget it. If he’d once made his trade-offs for his sister’s life, now he made them simply for power. For that desperate attempt to balance his life. It wasn’t as though he had anything to lose.
After all, he’d already lost his sister even after he’d paid her bills with blood money.
He came up behind her. His solidity made her feel weightless, as though she stayed grounded only because he stood behind her. Over her shoulder, he gestured toward an open space and its ski lift—the barely green grass of a natural meadow, sloping sharply upward and lined by woods. “Hart Prairie,” he said. “We can access a number of trails right here. But there are too many people for shifting, and you’re not dressed for hiking.”
At least she was dry, her wet clothes barely more than a memory in the resurging heat. As was he, in a basic T-shirt and jeans, a black leather vest completing the look in a way that should have been pathetically poser but instead looked perfectly natural. He looked up the slope, and even then she could have sworn he was drinking in the view. Drinking in the feel of the power, too—although it felt stable to her limited perception, and reassuring…like being held in the palm of some giant being.
He gave the slightest of nods as two hikers emerged from the trees. “We’ll take the Skyride. Half an hour and we’re there.”
She didn’t mind following his lead. Following blind…that was another thing. “And then?”
He grinned. “Then we see what we can see. And hope it doesn’t brew up another storm.” He offered his jacket—a lined canvas work jacket, strictly nonkosher when it came to shifting. “It’ll be a lot colder up there.”
“No, thanks,” she said. The last thing she needed—to be surrounded by the scent of him.
He opened his mouth as though to say something—some argument, no doubt—and closed it again, offering a shrug instead. In this light, his hazel eyes looked distinctly green, and the short black edging at his nape and temple stood out sharply from tawny hair.
Nothing about his demeanor made her think of someone who could kill his boyhood friend and Sentinel partner. Nothing about his stance. A big guy, a strong guy, an exceptionally charismatic guy…but not edgy. Not that gritty.
He turned abruptly away from the prairie ski area bunny slopes and headed across the parking lot with assured strides. She caught up in short order, and soon enough caught a glimpse of another ski lift—this one moving steadily, chairs filled with people pointing out the sights to one another.
“From the top, you can see the Grand Canyon.”
“I’m not here to see the Grand Canyon.”
He gave her a sharp look. “I think maybe you are.” He veered toward the upper of the two lodges, bought them both lift tickets, and returned with the conversation still on his tongue. “Thing is, you have to look. You have to see.”
“I’ve already seen more than you want me to,” she said, a deliberate and sharp reminder of her twofold purpose here.
He caught her gaze with a flash of green and held it. Quietly, he said, “If you think I’ve forgotten, you’d be very much mistaken.” And then he left her behind, heading directly for the mechanical clank of the lift.
They’d almost reached it when his long stride faltered. An instant later, she felt it—felt the surge of him and the turbulent rapids of power that followed, saw him stumble—and then they both froze at a shriek of fear from the ski lift.
They hadn’t been the only ones to feel the disruption—to react to it. A teenaged girl in skimpy shorts dangled from the lift behind a half-engaged safety bar, crop top riding high with her entanglement. Even as they watched, one of her flip-flops fell to the rocky grass below.
The lift wrangler was already on it, easing the cable to a stop—but so was Ryan. From easygoing to distinctly feral, from stumbling to smooth, poetic movement. He sprinted past the gasping crowd, past the lift wrangler and his incoherent yell of protest, and up the hill with no slack in his powerful sprint.
There’s no way. That chair had to be twice his height. Had to be—
That’s when she realized she was running, too, right behind him, scooping up the jacket he’d dropped and ready to…
What? Even drawing on an ocelot’s strength, she couldn’t reach that lift…
And then she stuttered to a halt in amazement as Ryan sprang from the ground, every bit of big-cat strength in play, latching on to the footrest while the car swung in reaction. There he hung a distinct moment while he spoke to the terrified girl.
Lyn wouldn’t have thought he could do it, not so smoothly—not without jarring the girl from her precarious perch. But he did. He swiftly pulled himself up, swung a leg up to hook around the seat, and slithered into a position from which he could haul the girl into the chair, flailing in fear until the moment she flung her arms around him.
He jerked the safety bar down; the wild edges of her sobs trickled unevenly down to Lyn, to the crowd. The silence exploded into relief and wonder and excited conversation. Did you see—? How did he—?
Lyn whirled around to jump into the next chair. The lift wrangler cried a knee-jerk protest and then he gave up and nudged the cable back up to speed, reaching for the radio at his side.
Lyn engaged her own safety bar, and then—already aware of the rising breeze and dropping
