Jet made a face, full of disdain. “They needed the right pack leader over both of them.”
Nick laughed—short, bereft of humor. “Maybe they did at that. And now the battle waxes and wanes—and the rest of the world has no idea any of us exist.” He gave her a sharp look, setting aside his glass. “The same needs to apply to you, Jet.”
“He said so.” Jet fished out a small ice cube and slid it into her mouth, reveling in the cold smoothness of the ice cube before she crunched it down. “You, I thought safe. You have your own wolf.”
Nick laughed. He outright laughed. “Safe,” he repeated. “No one’s ever said that before.”
“No one’s ever been wolf before,” Jet told him, giving him a hard and sudden look from beneath lowered brow.
It froze him there, leaning against the counter. Just for a moment. And then he took a deep, long, and obvious breath, and he shook his head—but he never looked away from her. He never broke the connection she’d forged. “No,” he said, his voice rusty. “There’s never been anyone like you.”
Out in the hallway, Lyn Maines sneezed again, interrupting the muttered conversation there. Marlee rolled her eyes at the sound—alone in the IT area, she was safe enough to express her frustration. She’d about had enough, between Gausto’s Instant Messages and the various field Sentinels—still hoping for Nick’s return, starting to get pushy and nosy and acting as if they ran things…which might be the case in the field but most definitely wasn’t the situation here.
Remember that, she told herself, over and over. This is your space. And they were definitely not the boss of her.
Then again…where was Nick Carter? They were right, all of them. He should have been back by now. And his empty car at the dog show, but no sign of him? No one who’d seen him since early morning, with the crowds growing thin and Best in Show underway? Nasty trace scattered around the edges of the grounds?
But alone in the room, she didn’t even flinch when Gausto IM’d her again. Acprince. Of course.
Stand fast, he told her, another command to leave the communication blockages in place.
Too long already, she typed back, fingers flying. He’d asked for an afternoon; she’d given it to him. But with Carter still gone, the situation had gone beyond inconvenience. Brevis needed clear communications.
Stand fast, he repeated.
And because she was IM’ing, and because sometimes her fingers thought faster than her brain, she tapped out a quick, blunt, What have you DONE?
Stand fast, he said, and then more ominous words, or you’ll be the one to take the blame for it all.
Marlee froze at the keyboard. She tapped a reflexive letter, then pulled her hands away from the keyboard—putting them deliberately, stiffly in her lap, where they clenched into tight fists in spite of her best efforts.
What has he done?
And then Lyn Maines sneezed, and it was closer yet, and Marlee quickly shut down the IM window and pulled up the diagnostics she was running on a server. Only to freeze again, almost immediately, astonished to hear the voice then joining the unintelligible conversation. A male voice, rough as a file with age and impatience.
Holy crap-pile. Was it really—?
Silently, she pushed her chair back; silently, she moved to the arched doorway—reminding herself to act as any of the IT drones would, startled and curious and even a little bit awed.
The brevis consul didn’t often come to this floor. He didn’t often leave his office, if he came into the building at all. More often, he commanded from home, telecommuting and working through his personal assistant.
And there, in the small group of people she found gathered outside the elevator, that very same altogether too-smug assistant lifted his head from a dutiful nod at Berger’s words and glanced down the hall—and at the sight of Marlee in the doorway, nodded.
One more time, Marlee froze, her stomach clenching cold and her skin hot. That had been more than a nod of greeting. That had been acknowledgment.
She wasn’t the only one here doing Gausto’s bidding.
She forced a breath. She tried to think. She didn’t even consider moving out of the doorway as the group came down the hall—not when they were obviously heading for the IT room. All of the pushiest field Sentinels—all of those who had been here earlier. Ryan and Lyn Maines, Treviño and Meghan Lawrence, Maks the quiet tiger and even Shea the coyote, who from the looks of him should still be in the crisp, superbly equipped underground medical and healing section.
Ryan said something she couldn’t completely hear, but she got the important part “—It’s got to be a virus—” and she realized with a sudden flush of relief that they were coming for help.
“That’s not good enough,” Berger said, making no attempt to lower his voice. He wasn’t as tall as most of them, not as predatorial. A beefy man of thick muscle and thick waist, he moved with purpose but no grace; strength but no speed. His hair was a bristly gray—the same gray it had always been, to judge by the photos in the brevis common area—and his square jaw jutted ever so slightly in an underbite. All handsome enough, with hard, neat features to go along with it, even if his eyes were a little small and it wasn’t hard to imagine the tusks that would appear with his shifting. “Why the hell didn’t you either call me earlier or wait until you had something more definite? Now it’s too late to act swiftly, and too early to know what’s going on.”
Marlee could hear Treviño’s snort from where he stood apart from the others at the back of the group, Meghan looking worried beside him—no doubt concerned that he might say enough to get himself thrown into a Sentinel Justice hearing. And Ryan, too—all too familiar with Sentinel Justice.
Oddly, the thought had Marlee relaxing. These field agents might be shifters; they might be strong and capable. But in this office, they were known as trouble-makers and Marlee was known as the one everyone could count on.
But Lyn was the one who put words to Treviño’s rude noise. She looked the assistant squarely in the eye and told Berger, “We were informed that you were unavailable.”
“Eh?” Berger said, and made a strange little throatclearing noise—a gestural tic of sorts, and it wasn’t hard to imagine it coming from the boar he was rumored not to have taken for several years now. He glanced at his assistant.
“A misunderstanding, I’m sure,” the man said—slender and aesthetic, dishwater blond hair, eyes of some color or another and hidden behind glasses. Marlee had never liked him—had found him too happy with little displays of pointless power. The thought that he might consider them to be working together…
Her stomach tightened up all over again. Her stomach, her nerves…and the small little voice in her head wondering what she’d gotten herself into. If it wasn’t all just a little more significant than she’d ever thought, these favors she’d been doing for Gausto.
His last message had been on the computer, but she quite suddenly could hear his voice in her head.
…take the blame for it all.
Somehow she thought he meant more than the virus.
After that intense, silent moment in the kitchen, everything changed. Nick went out to the backyard—locking up the gate, speaking to the dogs…settling them in for the night.
He returned pulled into himself, but Jet saw something else there—a sadness, layered over the poisonfever and the flush and fatigue. She wanted to ask him—she opened her mouth to ask him—but he must have seen it coming, for he spoke first. “There’s nothing else to be done tonight,” he said. “The phones are out, the cable’s down—we can’t reach my people. We can’t save yours. Tomorrow, we’ll get through.”
“Will Gausto try to keep us here?” Jet felt herself bristle at the thought.
Nick shrugged. “He might try. But you can bet my teams already know there’s something wrong, so it won’t happen.”
She pushed the ice cream away. “He is up to taking you. Hurting you. It’s the reason I am.”
“Then he fail
ed,” Nick said simply. “We’re safe tonight. Tomorrow, he’ll learn what failure means.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow,” Nick said, his voice bottoming out.
She saw it, then. The way he stood with one hand casually on the arch of the entry. The way his feet were spread, his legs slightly braced. Whatever Gausto’s amulet had done to him, he’d made a remarkable recovery—but he’d run out of that spurt of energy some time ago.
And still, because she was who she was, she said steadily, “And if you reach your people, will they help mine? Or will they want me for their own, because I am what I am? Because I have been Gausto’s?”
His reaction was what might have come from a man too tired to be startled. “That’s not—” But he shook his head. “Yes,” he said. “Probably. But—”
“I won’t let that happen.” She caught his gaze in a direct stare, her shoulders back and her head lifted. “You know that.”
He met that gaze, but his words came reluctant. “It’s complicated.”
“Do I leave now? The desert is safe for me. Are you?” No matter what stood between them, strong and deep and wanting more. No matter what two wolves had forged together in the Pima Valley sands.
His fingers tightened on the archway. “Jet,” he grated.
“Are you?” she asked him again. Safe for me?
He released a long breath; a struggle. And if she felt for him, she could nonetheless not let it go. He said, “I don’t know about safe, come tomorrow. But I can be honest, always. Please. Stay.”
Tonight, then. She nodded.
He scrubbed a hand over his face—dark stubble against pale skin, relief in his eyes. He held himself tightly upright as he led her to the sleeping side of the house, where he showed her a bathroom and an unused room where the air hadn’t been stirred for a while but the bedding was unused.
And then he went to the back corner of the house, where his scent came strongly to Jet’s nose. Water ran, briefly—Jet had not brought herself to move as it shut off. Nick reappeared, minus the shirt she’d ruined. “Okay?” he asked her briefly.
“I—” She stopped, sensitive ears catching the low noise from outside. It grew to a mellow woo-ooo of a howl, a solo singer. A second dog yipped and a third joined in, and then the chorus swelled, filling the desert night with melodious song. Jet’s throat tightened with the ache of longing—of wanting to sing not with these dogs, but with her own pack. She found Nick looking at her—looking through her, understanding her as Gausto could never hope to try—and she said brokenly, “But…why? They are already home. Already together.”
Nick shrugged, the merest lift of one bare shoulder. “Sometimes they hear something, but sometimes…I think it’s just in their hearts.” A flicker of pain crossed his features, jaw gone tight.
And that, she saw, was a pain not of Gausto’s doing.
It was the pain of a wolf looking for his own pack.
Chapter 8
Jet lay awake. Down the hall, Nick had fallen immediately into sleep—deep and uneasy and sometimes still sounding pained, that last expression of his lingering between them in this darkness.
It didn’t take Jet long to slide from the bed, the sheets smooth against bare skin, and pad down the hallway. She slipped inside his room, standing just inside the doorway where she’d be the hardest to see. He didn’t wake, and that told her something.
That told her a lot.
She’d put him in this position. She’d done what Gausto had told her; she’d believed what Gausto had told her.
This morning suddenly seemed like such a long time ago. Years of experience and maturity, packed into one day. Until now, she had not liked Gausto. She had resented his training, his hold on her. She had wanted freedom from him. She had thought him vain and indulgent. But she had, in fact, believed him.
No more of that.
Now she had run with Nick Carter as wolf. She had, with her invitation, created something unexpected and deep and forever between them.
Now she knew what it was to touch a man—to be touched. Now this man who had once been her prey was teaching her how to be both wolf and human, simply by being who he was himself. Showing her what her body could feel; showing her what her heart could feel. Showing her that humans, too, had loyalty to drive them.
Gausto had made her. He had trained her, coercion and punishment and intimidation. He had set her on Nick Carter…
And now he would reap the results.
Unexpected energies twitched Nick awake. A moment of disorientation—sheets twisted around him, moonlight from the unclosed blinds casting unfamiliar shadows in his blue-tinged Sentinel’s night vision. The scent of something equally unfamiliar bathing his senses—tang of sage, a hint of fur and desert dust.
He oriented. Found the door, the closet, the dark lumps of his furniture. The pool of black at the bottom of his bed.
The pool of black at the bottom of his bed.
Jet. Jet as wolf, blacker than the shadows, staking her claim. She opened her eyes, a golden gleam in the darkness.
He found his mouth tugging on the hint of a smile. “Yes,” he murmured, not even sure what yes entailed. But it was good enough; the whiskey-gold eyes shuttered again, and Nick fell back into sleep with that smile still tugging at his mouth.
Marlee Cerosa gasped herself awake.
Another nightmare.
Because while she’d removed the virus from Carter’s computer and unblocked his phones—staying late to do what no one else could get done, and walking out of brevis with overly strong claps of appreciation still stinging her back and shoulders—she couldn’t stop thinking about…
Everything.
Whether they’d figure out she’d been behind the problems in the first place.
Whether they’d figure out that she’d been behind any number of problems in the past.
Whether Berger’s admin, growing bold, would give them both away.
And just how much Gausto had been using her all along.
For it was clear that she’d bought into his pretty song of paranoia and keeping balance and no one gets hurt. It was clear Nick Carter was in trouble. Gone from the fairgrounds, leaving a wash of anguished trace. Not answering his home phone. Not answering his cell. Not answering Annorah or his e-mail.
Marlee had grown up bullied and intimidated; she’d learned things with her early forays into computer hacking that no one ever knew. She knew in her heart, in her soul, that the Sentinels needed to be kept in line.
But she wouldn’t work with Gausto any longer. She’d find her own ways. She’d work for herself.
For today she had let Gausto push her past what gut instinct said was right…and now Nick Carter was missing.
Marlee Cerosa stared at the ceiling, and sleep would not come.
Chapter 9
Jet whimpered in her sleep, paws twitching, spirit quailing before memory and nightmare…a helicopter on the hunt, the phut! phut! of tranquilizers taking down her packmates…the sting of a dart in her flank. How quickly her feet had grown heavy and slow…
The weapon stabbed deeply into her flesh, as much quarrel as simple dart, spiking hot pain in strobing slashes. She yipped and jerked and—
Woke up.
Here, curled up on Nick’s bed in the wolf, rolling wildly until she fell off and over and landed hard, human and naked and sprawling.
With caution, she peered back up over the bed.
He slept.
He slept hard.
He had his own dreams, she thought.
But the pain hadn’t faded with her sleep; she caught her breath on it, pressing down on the spot beside her spine, above her hip—there, where in wolf, the dart had struck her.
If she’d known what it had meant, she’d have fought harder. Or she liked to believe she would have.
He still didn’t move.
So much better than he’d been when she’d brought him home…and yet he’d looked ragged when he’d left her in the guest
room, as if he’d been standing there on the memory of strength.
I didn’t know. I’m sorry.
My fault. Mine to fix.
She’d call his pack. She’d shift back to the wolf and run the desert road until she found the nearest phone. The gas station out by the throughway exit, if that’s what it took.
The spot she’d been darted twitched in pain, shooting from her back to her belly; she bit her lip on a whimper, folding over it. Never had it done this before, not during all the time she’d spent with Gausto.
“Bring me this man,” he’d told her, “and you may go home. Bring me this man, and your pack may go with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’ll make it right.”
Except as she crept from the room, dismay sitting cold and hard in her stomach, she couldn’t be sure it was safe to call help for him.
Gausto had people there. In Brevis Southwest.
He’d bragged about it to her once; he’d gloated. He had people there who made his work easier. People who would make her job easier, too.
But she didn’t know who they were. How could she tell any of brevis, not knowing who was safe?
She hesitated in the hallway…wanted nothing more than to crawl into that bed with him, curling up with every part of her body touching his. She touched it, this body—ran light fingers across one collarbone and down her torso, trailing off over the crest of her hip.
No. More than body. Her hand returned to her chest, flattening over her heart. She had known longing as a wolf; she had known randy flirtatious first heat. But she had never known loyalty and longing and sweet deep embers, all the gift of one man who had been willing to reveal to her his innermost wolf, romping through the desert.
She could not repay him by doing the wrong thing.
She could find his phone, and find the phone numbers of his brevis regional connections. Any of his people would surely leap to help him.
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