and disappeared around the end of the vendor row. And though his vision was full of pop-up shade shelters and colorful wares, people lingering in the wide aisle with a variety of dogs ranging idly along beside, the desert’s seasonal wind gusting and lifting swirls of fine desert grit until it was all one big dance of color and motion—
In truth, in that moment, he saw only one lean woman: swift, bordering on rangy, dressed in black beneath an early winter desert sun. Black fitted vest with no shirt beneath, black crop pants, black leather shoes, tight to her feet. Black hair, short and artfully mussed. Pure bed head. Pure feral grace in her movement, taking her so quickly out of his sight.
He saw it all in that instant—a stranger, on his turf. A shifter, so obvious and yet unknown.
Forget about the troubles within brevis regional, forget about the increasingly problematical stealth amulets being employed by the local Core. Hell, forget about the very concerns that had brought him out here, signs that Fabron Gausto had returned to run amok once again.
Pure feral grace…
Not here. Not without his permission.
He followed her. Around the end of the vendor row, past the main building with its reserved grooming stations, show superintendent’s table, and show committee setup. Past the tall wire exercise pens teeming with packs of small breed dogs, all of whom invariably crouched or cowered or rolled over as Nick passed by—and now all of who still lingered that way from the woman’s recent passage.
At least he knew he was on the right trail.
Another glimpse of her, nothing more than a blackshod heel, a toned calf—but still his shoulders and nape tightened. It was her, all right.
It wasn’t a trespass he could allow to stand. Not with the entire Southwest regional office compromised from within, the aging consul a man who hadn’t taken his javelina boar in years, Nick’s own handpicked Sentinel echelon team wounded and recovering, and dammit, every sign that they were all still defenseless against the recently employed stealth amulets.
And as incongruous as it seemed, not with the recent incidents at dog shows in the area—dogs stolen, dogs missing. While the local law had chalked up such problems to animal rights activists, Nick had the feeling it was more ominous than that; it smacked of the Core’s endless experiments to harvest power that didn’t belong to them. With the Core, ominous was never simple, never moral.
And someone always died.
She’s only a woman, he tried to tell himself, as a twinge of the absurd touched him—chasing after that lean form here on the busy dog show grounds when he should have been interviewing the breeders he’d come to see. Except…
Not “only a woman” at all. He could recognize the wolf in another as easily as he could see it in a mirror, in his own hoarfrost hair and pale green eyes—but mostly in his manner, as though at any moment the civilization might simply fall away, leaving gleaming teeth and laughing eyes and blood-spattered fur.
And he knew it because of how very often he’d been counseled against it. Blend in, he’d been told in training. We will always know you, but no one else should. And so he’d cultivated the expensive haircuts and the expensive suits and the other trappings of civilization that somehow never seemed to fool anyone.
This woman wouldn’t fool anyone, either. She wasn’t quite tame—no matter how she might try, whoever she was. And that was the most important point. Whoever she was. Because here in Brevis Southwest, Nick should know her. Field Sentinels—those who could take another form—were not thick on the ground in any region, and if Nick hadn’t actually worked with each of the Sentinels in his region, he nonetheless knew their dossiers.
Not this woman’s.
Nor had anyone reported anything unusual from other regions—Sentinels gone missing, Sentinels gone traveling, Sentinels following a trail across borders. She was a complete unknown, an anomaly during restless and uneasy times when Nick could not afford anomalies.
So through the outdoor show rings he followed her, giving wide berth to the obedience rings and the utility dogs who performed exacting feats of scent discrimination and directed retrieving. Farther yet, where the agility dogs barked excitement through their courses, the teeter slamming to the ground and handlers shouting top-speed course corrections with the panicked note that meant oops, too late.
Here, Nick was at home—the very reason he’d come here today, hunting interviews with handlers and owners. Of the brevis Sentinels, he was the one with a pack of retired show dogs. He was the one with coowned dogs on the circuit, a common arrangement in the world of showing and breeding.
He was the one to whom the affected handlers would speak freely.
To judge by the startled expressions the woman left in her wake, the number of people doing double takes over their shoulders…she not only didn’t fit into this world, she hadn’t ever learned to glide through it, either.
Just past the agility grounds, he stopped—with nothing beyond but groomed, remote fields bordered by a man-made tangle of trees and brush. Past that, a midland desert choked thickly with its own native growth—creosote and brittlebush and wild, gorgeous bird-of-paradise, all scattered about with a variety of cactus. But right up close, a field of nothing but informally parked cars, people going to and fro…but none of them startled, all of them chatting happily as they juggled gear and tugged along rolling carrier wheels, their conversation lost in the flapping of the shade canopy setups behind him.
An elusive scent played hide-and-seek on the gusty breeze; Nick whirled.
There she was.
Waiting for him.
Everything that first glimpse had promised—rangy athletic grace even in stillness, only a few feet away and tucked up against the back side of the agility scorekeeper’s tent. Her features came as no surprise at all, they so suited the rest of her—short, mussed hair a glossy black, wide-set eyes a deep whiskey gold and tipped up at the corners over the world’s most amazing cheekbones, and a wide, serious mouth that wouldn’t have to say a word if she only ever let those eyes speak for her.
Only a foot away now, and an unexpectedly swift step brought her closer. She found his gaze, direct and unflinching. “You’re following me.”
“You meant me to.” He said it without thinking, while his mind caught on her voice—lower than he’d expected, smoothly musical, the edges of the words softened by the slightest of unfamiliar burrs, the faintest softening of consonants.
“Did I?” She cocked her head slightly as she examined his words, his demeanor—everything about him.
“You don’t belong here,” he said, but he kept accusation from his voice. For now. “Were you looking for me?” And on second thought, more warily, “You didn’t come here about the missing dogs.”
At that she smiled again. Slowly. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not about the missing dogs.” She glanced over to the agility rings, where an overwrought Border Collie flung itself around its own made-up course as the judge signaled fault after fault and the handler laughed helplessly. “They are but infants.”
It startled him, as much as he hid it. So a wolf would think, indeed—for compared to a wolf pack’s complex social structure and interaction, the domesticated dog led a simplified and limited
