Sentinels: Lion Heart

by Doranna Durgin

  For a startling moment, she thought he was going to stride into the room, pull her up out of that chair and kiss her senseless. In the next moment she saw nothing but a tired Sentinel leaning at the door, and she blushed hotly at herself. She said, “I won’t.”

  He took a deep breath, nodded at the contented cat behind her. “You acquired a supervisor. And did you find anything condemning?”

  She couldn’t help it. She said, “You have to ask?”

  His expression shuttered; he looked away again, over her shoulder to his tremendous windows and the violence of the storm beating against the glass. Lightning flashed, right on cue; he didn’t even flinch—nor at the almost instantaneous crash thunder that made Lyn stiffen in the chair and brought the cat’s claws out against her back. As the thunder grumbled away and the rain picked up tempo, he raised his voice above the increasing din of it and said, “You’d think not. But I’ve learned the hard way—that’s not the way it works.”

  And he left her there in the dim space of the office, with thunder ramping up to grumble in her ears and regret humming in her heart.

  Chapter 11

  T he storm passed quickly enough—they always did in monsoon season. Joe retreated to his loft under the skylights and sprawled diagonally over the mattress and springs sitting directly on the floor—uncaring that he still wore damp clothes, that it was only midafternoon, that the storm would pass and the long desert evening would brighten the sky again, bringing back daytime from this faux twilight.

  Completely uncaring. As the four cats joined him, taking up their accustomed spots on the bed, he twisted to the rhythm of the mountain, half-real dreams of power pushing him around, buffeting him…calling to him. But not the real mountain…instead, the distorted results of what came from trying to claim it. Not the kind of power that he wanted to absorb, or even to ride. He groaned in frustration and in remembered pain, debridement from the inside out. And eventually, hand fisted in covers and face stuffed into a disarrayed pillow, he actually relaxed toward sleep.

  He should have felt better when he woke. He should have opened his eyes to invigoration and determination and raring to go.

  He opened them to movement, there at the top of the stairs leading to this big private space of his, space that held bookshelves and the bed in the corner, enough open floor for stretching and yoga and even for the sprawl of a cougar. Laundry dumped in the corner, enough pillows on the bed to make it work from just about any direction, a single Ansel Adams print on the wall where the sun never hit it and the light rarely left it.

  Disgruntled, the brown tabby grumbled away, slinking into some corner so dark even Sentinel eyes couldn’t see. Joe blinked at the intrusion and put a hand over his eyes. A growl escaped.

  “Not a morning person?” She leaned against the loft railing, no fear for the full-story drop below.

  “Morning,” he grunted, and flailed around for his alarm clock, hitting covers and pillows and scattering cats before he realized how skewed he was on the bed and gave up. “What time is it?” Nighttime, obviously, in spite of her dry allusion to his slow wakefulness.

  “It’s going on eleven,” she said, and concern laced her voice. “How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, licking at irritability. “I’m just tired.”

  She let that statement stand on its own, and after a moment added, “I thought we’d do some hotel drive-bys. I’ve mapped them all—we can hit half of them with a couple of passes. They sure do like their hotel clusters in this tourist town of yours.”

  He couldn’t argue that. At either end of Route 66, down by the Butler exit for I40…that would easily encompass half of the local options. Everything else would be a tedious one-by-one process. “You think you’ll be able to detect Core presence from a drive-by?”

  “I think there’s a good chance.”

  “And if you find them?” What do you think, boy-o? The Sentinel team would swoop in, corner them and grill them about Joe’s involvement.

  But she said, “If we can track them to wherever their base of activity is, we will. If we don’t get anywhere with that, we’ll bring in the whole team. They’ll be in on it before the end in any event. This is too big for me.”

  He grunted. “Too big for any single one of us. Or two of us, for that matter—even if you actually trusted me.”

  There she was, again saying nothing for a moment. She fiddled with the flashlight, and finally stuck it in the side pocket of the cropped cargo pants, the ones that made her legs look long and her hips refined and her ass tight. The whole effect just begged a man to use one of those many pockets to pull her close, to run his hands over the shape of her to define it for himself.

  He sat up and scrubbed a hand through his hair, pushing wayward strands from his face. “I’ll be right down. We can take my car.”

  “I didn’t mean—” she started, and stopped as though she didn’t quite know how to finish, her voice full of regret.

  “It is what it is,” he told her. He took a deep breath. “Don’t worry, I get it.”

  She pushed away from the railing. “I’m not really sure you do,” she said, and headed down the stairs. And murmured, distinctly enough for his ears, “I’m not really sure I do, either.”

  He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. He didn’t know before he brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face, he didn’t know as he patted his face dry and scowled at himself in the mirror, and he didn’t know as he ambled down the stairs, pulling on a fresh shirt.

  She waited in the kitchen, frowning at the Senseo brewer as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to try it. She started slightly as she realized he was there, briefly transferred the frown to his unbuttoned shirt, and said, “It’s not the coffeemaker that gets me. It’s the pod things. Don’t you keep any around that are premade?”

  He let his disdainful expression answer that question. “You want decaf, or the full whammy?”

  “Decaf,” she said without hesitation. “I’m plenty awake on my own…and I want to be plenty asleep when the time comes.” But she made no comment when he pulled down the Tarrazu French roast for himself. He wasn’t surprised. He had, after all, seen his face in that mirror.

  Power surges weren’t supposed to do that…weren’t supposed to drain him. Power surges should have been invigorating, there to be ridden, each one the perfect wave.

  The Core had a lot to answer for.

  It was a thought that stuck with him as he pulled on a hoodie jacket and offered Lyn one of the same. It stuck with him as they drove out onto Fort Valley Road and into town, picking up 89 to head for Butler, the back way around Flagstaff and the fastest route to the first cluster of hotels. And Lyn, who’d hunched herself inside his jacket and leaned against the door of his hybrid SUV as though to get as far away as possible, gave him a frown and asked, “What put that look on your face?”

  He was tempted to respond that it was playing chauffeur for a woman who could touch him from the inside out one moment and who wanted to take him down the next. He wanted to say that she never should have come here, staring at him with her smoky eyes and being so damned true to herself that she’d already captured him and she hadn’t noticed.

  But he didn’t think either of those things would go down very well, so he told her the truth. “Thinking about the Core. What they’ve done to this place.” And then he braced himself for some reminder that he’d probably helped them.

  It didn’t come.

  In fact, as they navigated past the always baffling Enterprise and Butler exchange of too many lanes in too many directions at once and he flipped onto a side road shortcut that clearly startled her, he pondered her silence and realized aloud, “You haven’t found anything.”

  “Not yet,” she said, crossing her arms only long enough to realize she was wrinkling her map. “But we’re really not even there yet.” Indeed, the road curved around the backsides of the hotel lineup.

  Joe eased the car to a crawl in
the nonexistent traffic, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. “On me,” he said. “You haven’t found anything on me. None of the dirt you thought would be there. The big obvious Atrum Core fingerprints all over me.”

  She sighed. She looked away. “No,” she said. “But I still have some queries out.”

  He couldn’t quite understand what he heard in her voice. Reluctance to admit failure? To admit he might be clear? “I don’t get it,” he said, and he didn’t bother to hide his confusion…or maybe that was even hurt. “You sound as though you want to find those fingerprints. I was right, wasn’t I? You came here with your mind made up. You want dirt…and maybe it’s not even about me. Who’s it about, Lyn?”

  “You’re off base,” she told him shortly.

  He stopped the car. Oh, nominally he pulled it off the road first, but that really meant straddling a curb and part of a sidewalk. “Screw off base,” he said. “This is my life. There’s no way I’m going to hold myself up as a target so you can act out some inner need.”

  She turned them away from him, looking out the window into the darkness along the back of this group of hotels; she crossed her arms and probably had no idea she’d only drawn the jacket tight over those modest and perfect breasts. Ah well, boy-o. At least the car sat in darkness.

  “You don’t need to know anything about me,” she said tightly. “Your job is to track down the power surges and to back me up. The end.”

  Two could play the anger game. “Says you.” He snorted. “Last time, I played by those rules and I lost everything. Now I’ve got things to lose again. I’m finding new things that mean something to me.” You, he meant. He looked at her, sitting in those shadows, obviously enough that she turned to him in surprise, caught in his gaze, suddenly vulnerable. He said, “And I don’t intend to lose them without a fight.”

  She struggled; her open expression showed the impact of his words, of his gaze—and revealed far more than she’d probably intended. The anguish in those big smoky eyes when she squelched her response to him—the effort it took to turn away. She took a deep breath. “I need to concentrate if I’m going to find them. I need…I can’t—” She pushed herself against the door. “Just let me work!”

  It came out as a cry of frustration. And not, he thought, at him.

  At herself.

  A complicated woman, Lyn Maines.

  Joe sat back and let her work, watching over her. He stretched his senses to search the night for anyone who might cause trouble, for those well meaning who might interfere. He cracked the window to add his ears to his eyes, to let the rain-damp scents of the area trickle in. And if he also slid a glance over to study her profile in the darkness—lashes sweeping her cheeks as she closed them in that concentration she had, nose short and straight, her lips full and curved—then no one knew any better. Her hair still curled with the storm’s humidity, free of its ponytail and—inadvertently, he was sure—left in a mildly mussed bed-head sort of state that made his fingers twitch.

  But he not only kept his fingers to himself, he kept them where she couldn’t see them twitch. Just let me work, she’d said. He could do that. He could do any number of things he’d rather not do.

  Even if sitting here in the car with her—with her silence, her breathing, her scent—only made it quite clear to him just exactly what he’d prefer to be doing instead.

  Give it up, boy-o. He could all but hear Dean’s voice in his ear. Just because we called ourselves Make It Happen doesn’t mean we can take ourselves seriously. Some things are beyond what a man can do.

  So he sat. And probably not for nearly as long as it seemed before she let out a sigh and shook her head. “Not here.”

  “Next stop, then.” He started the vehicle, pulling it out into the nonexistent traffic flow—but only for a block or so, until they reached the next alley between hotels. This time it took only a few moments before she shook her head.

  “Hang on,” he told her, and pulled through the alley, popping out a curving pathway later to turn back onto Butler, this time crossing beneath the thruway to hang a right at one of the fancier hotels of the area—his own personal target for the evening. Somewhere, the Core had to be handling what they’d stirred up—doing whatever they’d intended when they disrupted things in the first place. But it wouldn’t be wherever they’d chosen to stay. Not with that kind of power. Not unless they were a whole lot dumber than Joe had ever suspected.

  “They’ve got to be harnessing the power in amulets,” he mused, at the same time Lyn’s eyes sprang open; one hand clutched the door handle and the other landed on his arm.

  “They’re here!”

  Pride flushed through him, surprising him. “Yeah? You found ’em?”

  “Not precisely.” She bit her lower lip. “They’re shielding pretty well. They’re here, but just where…?”

  Her dissatisfaction let him finish her unspoken thought. “And you want to be able to tell the brevis team which room.”

  The look she shot him was a challenge. “Don’t you?”

  For once, it wasn’t a challenge of his guilt or innocence. More as if testing to see if he’d be happy with a job half-done. Not a chance. “You want to drive a circuit? Or walk it?”

  “Walk it.” She spoke decisively. “The drive curves too far from the hotel in spots—all that landscaping. And there’s a virtual forest of trees around this place.” She shook her head, looking at it all.

  “You should see them at Christmas,” Joe said, somehow forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t likely to welcome such casual chatter. “People come into town just to see the light show.”

  But instead of cutting him off, she merely looked at him a long moment, her expression unreadable even to his excellent night vision…unless that was wistfulness he saw. But she spoke matter-of-factly. “I think we’ll have a better chance if we walk. But Gausto knows me, and they’d be fools if they didn’t know what you look like. I don’t suppose you could put that hood up—”

  Joe did just that, flipping the jacket’s sweatshirt-like hood up over his head to regard her with a deadpan expression.

  “Oh,” she said, understanding immediately—and not without a little smile. “Right. Too gangster.”

  “We’ll manage.” He twisted to rummage in the backseat, coming up with a battered straw cowboy hat, one he’d shaped to death at the front so the sides curled up as it dipped down over his forehead. “Bet I can find a cap back here….”

  “I can handle it,” she said hastily, and she dropped her head, scrubbing her hair with her fingers. I’ll do that, Joe wanted to say but of course didn’t; she flipped her head back up and finger-combed the front strands forward, and suddenly had a serious case of big hair.

  “Whoa,” he said. “That’s…scary.”

  “Humidity is my friend,” she said. “For the moment.” And then she unzipped the borrowed jacket halfway, tugged her shirt off her shoulder and stretched the neckline down.

  Joe got out of the SUV. Quickly. He jammed the hat on his head, looked off at distant headlights and took a deep breath. By then she was beside him, assessing the effect of the cowboy hat and nodding. “You’ll do,” she said. “Unless you wear it around town where they might have gotten photos.”

  “We’re good,” he said. “This one’s for when I help neighbors with their fencing.”

  “And that comes up often?” she asked, taking another look at the battered thing.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Neighbors do for one another.”

  She made a vague noise of agreement, something that still managed to convey her skepticism. And not, he understood suddenly, that neighbors should do for one another. But that she’d seen through him, and realized he’d not truly been able to leave his Make It Happen work behind him. She left it alone, though. “Let’s go walk the hotel. If we’re really lucky, once I get a strong hit, I’ll be able to back-trace toward wherever they’re doing their work. Because I think you’re right—it won’t be here.”
<
br />   Right. So just a matter of finding the source before it was too late.

  “No pressure,” he said, a little too cheerfully. He set the hat more firmly on his head. “Let’s get started.”

  Chapter 12

  T hey headed around the hotel perimeter together—a relaxed and easy walk, a couple headed out for a late-evening stroll. Absorbed in defining trace, she lifted her head, kept her eyes mostly closed. Joe placed a gentle hand at the small of her back, a subtle guidance as they followed the irregular path.

  She didn’t protest; she didn’t seem to notice. And Joe, for once shielded, kept his senses fully engaged—fully Sentinel. The slightly blue-washed depth and detail of the night around them came through clearly: pine branches reaching from above; a late coyote prowling boldly along the mile trail behind the hotel, thinking itself unseen. The storm brought out the distinct scent of thick fallen pine needles and the loamier scent of dirt; the wet ground muted the sound of a vole scurrying around for insects, if not the owl who hunted it. All to be expected, those rich sights and scents and sounds, along with the cool night breeze on his face. High desert darkness after the best of storms, refreshing a dry land.

  He walked Lyn around the back end of the long hotel, enjoying her scent as it mingled with the night. He let her choose the pace, easing along past hotel windows.

  And then she froze. She took several faltering steps, her head tipped in a listening attitude, her body tensed—and then took a sudden startling handful of quick steps directly for a room door, hard on the trail. Rather than stop her and risk her startled response, he put himself into high gear, scooping an arm around her waist to bring her along in his wake and completely bypassing the door in question. And though a very distinct part of him reveled in his fingers curving around her tight waist, the greater part focused on hustling her away from that door before she blurted protest.