LITMIR.BIZ

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subterranean structure he called home. More than a bunker, less than a house, it backed up to a tight cave system into which he rarely ventured. Once it had housed his family; now it was his alone—a strange dwelling of pioneer ways and modern innovations, of human needs and lynx habits.

      So he walked barefoot past the scuffed hollow near the entrance where he napped when a lynx, and onto the barely raised wood-plank floor, grabbing a pair of clean jeans from a molded, military-grade footlocker and a plain dark blue T-shirt to layer over them. He stuffed socks into a pair of lightweight Merrell hiking boots and snagged a thin khaki jacket with a slim fit and an urban look to layer over the T-shirt.

      Camouflage for a lynx in the human world.

      After dressing, he walked still barefoot to the road, satchel over his shoulder, and struck out along the narrow shoulder until Greg Harris pulled his old pickup over to offer a ride.

      It hadn’t always been like that. He’d walked the full distance to town many a time—but they’d grown used to him here and trusted him; they’d understood him to be safe if strange. Whether they saw him as a rugged individual or a crazy hermit, he wasn’t sure.... He suspected a little of both. And if they’d made a game of trying to figure out exactly where he lived, it was a gentle game that meant no harm. He was far from the only recluse in this area.

      Greg Harris made small talk about his sheep and his orchards, offered the obligatory comments about the weather, the upcoming Apple Blossom Festival and the likelihood of a good season after the winter’s snowpack, then dropped Kai off in the center of Cloudview. With tourist season around the corner and a beautiful spring day of bright sky and brisk air, the entire town seemed to be out putting a shine on windows, trimming back brush and fixing the little things that always gave way before winter ended.

      Kai had come into Cloudview for the library, another half mile and one steep hill away. But if he didn’t stop by the general store—an eclectic collection of goods housed inside an old barn—then they’d give him affectionate grief the next time he did.

      “Kai!” said the stout woman behind the cash register, all gray frizzy curls and stumpy features in a padded face. “Hey, you guys! Kai crawled out of the woods today!”

      “How’s business?” he asked her, having learned the safest ways not to talk about himself.

      She snorted, waving a pudgy hand in a broad gesture. “What you’d expect this time of year. We should get ’em in soon, though. The valleys are already heating up. Hey, we just got in a big batch of that dried fruit you like.”

      He held out his satchel in query. Mary Wells knew his ways—and she knew the question.

      She nodded. “Fill it up then, Mr. Granola. We’ll get your tab started.”

      He grinned at her. “The hunters kept me busy. I’ll pay my way.”

      She narrowed her eyes at him. “You just be sure to keep some set aside. You can’t live day-to-day forever.”

      Mary’s husband, Bill, made a throat-grumbling noise from where he and his wheelchair currently occupied the back corner of the store, a lap desk spread with papers and a calculator. “Don’t mother the man to death!”

      “Someone needs to,” she said with sharp asperity. “Especially if he’s going to go around bleeding through his jacket like that.”

      But for the cant of his numb legs beneath the desk, Bill looked the part of a hale mountain man—more so than Kai ever had. Grizzled hair, grizzled beard in need of shaping, grizzled voice and hardworking hands. He gave Kai his own sharp look, then relaxed. “Long way from the heart,” he said. “Ain’t that the truth, son?”

      Kai twisted his arm for a look, surprised. As he’d told Regan, Sentinels healed quickly as a matter of course—far too quickly to pass off as normal. He’d accepted her bandaging in part so he could leave it in place, obscuring the fact that he no longer needed it at all. Now, looking at the spreading stain, he admitted, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

      “Pull that jacket off,” Mary said. “Leave it with me while you’re in town and I’ll get it clean. Otherwise you’ll be too long getting around to it, and a perfectly good jacket will go to ruin.”

      Kai hesitated, glancing out into the sunshine of the crisp day.

      “Better do as she says, son,” Bill advised him. “That sun will keep you warm until you’re ready to go back to your woods. And you are going to the library, I take it?”

      Kai set the satchel on worn floorboards and shrugged out of the jacket, handing it over with an obedience that, to judge by Bill’s sly look, fooled no one.

      Mary eyed the red bandanna. “Someone did a nice job for you.”

      “Regan,” Kai said, and Mary’s eyebrows shot up. Kai added, “Regan Adler.”

      “That’s right,” Bill said, snapping his fingers a few times as if scaring up memory. “Frank headed into Texas for some big therapy work on his back—he’s staying with his brother. He said something about his daughter coming back.... I’d forgotten all about it. Surprised she’d have anything to do with the place.”

      Kai quit frowning at the stained bandanna. “Why?”

      Bill opened his mouth to reply, but Mary cut him off with a brisk cluck of her tongue. “That’s Regan’s business, you old busybody. She’ll tell him if she feels like it.” She aimed admonishment toward Kai. “And you—you have her look at that arm again, won’t you?”

      “I guess I’d better,” he admitted. The gauze had been all cotton; the bandanna had been all cotton. That meant both had been preserved during the change to lynx and back—just as with the buckskin leggings and breechclout, and just exactly why he wore them. But the wound should have stopped bleeding long ago. Maybe he’d done something to it while he was in his lynx form.

      The lynx tended to get caught up in other things while on the move.

      “Oh!” Mary said, apparently satisfied on that score. “We got a letter for you!”

      “A what?” Kai said, unable to help himself.

      “Sure, a couple of weeks ago.” She glanced up from her rummaging under the counter and gave him a pointed look. “You should come in more often, Kai.”

      “That’s right,” Bill grunted, making a notation on his papers. “Whether you need to or not. Just so Mary knows you’re all right.”

      Quick as that, Mary turned and gave him a faux slap. “Wasn’t me that was asking after him a couple days ago,” she said, and Bill met Kai’s gaze and shrugged, a “What’re you gonna do?” expression behind Mary’s back as she bent to look deeper on the shelves. “Here we go,” she said, and straightened with a business-size envelope in hand. “Probably one of your happy hunters, don’t you think?”

      The hunters usually came to him through Martin Sperry—who handled the finances, checked the permits and vetted the hunters—but sometimes they did try to bypass Martin in hopes of lower rates.

      Kai reached for the letter and stiffened.

      He knew those stark block letters. He’d always know those stark block letters.

      His father.

      After fifteen long years? After making it so clear that they could never—would never—connect again?

      Not after the Core had found Aeron Faulkes those years earlier—not when he’d barely been able to shake them before returning home to gather up his wife, Lily, and his young daughter, and to say goodbye to his son—a day they’d all known was coming. “Kai?” Mary gestured with the letter, concern on her face.

      He shook off his reaction and took the envelope. “You’re probably right,” he said, unconvincing even to his own ears. “A hunter.” He scooped up his satchel and tucked it over his shoulder. “I’ll look for the dried fruit. Thank you.”

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