LITMIR.BIZ

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at the old wooden chair, trying to decide if he’d been deliberately evasive or simply offered the best truth he had. He sat, unaccountably awkward for a moment, and rested his elbow on the table to offer her access to the arm.

      “Right,” she said. “But, you know...why ever?”

      He sat silent for a moment, while she smoothed the cloth over the dried blood, dribbling water over the deep gouge in his biceps to soften the clotted areas. Finally, he shrugged. “It suits me.”

      Yes. Yes, it suits you very well indeed.

      He eyed her, absorbing the curiosity she couldn’t hide, ignoring the press of washcloth over raw flesh to soften dried blood. “You have questions.”

      “I definitely have questions.” She pulled the cloth away, and this time he winced. “Ugh,” she said, looking at the ugliness of the wound.

      “I heal quickly,” he told her again, but she saw a certain tension in his jaw, and she moved more quickly— flushing the wound, disinfecting it...slathering it with antibiotic ointment.

      Rather than wrap an absurd amount of tape over the gauze pads she pressed over the ointment, she produced a faded red bandanna and snugged it around his arm, tying off the corners in a tight and tiny knot. “There,” she said, sitting down opposite him, and didn’t think she imagined his relief.

      He might feel differently once she’d fired off her questions.

      And she had plenty. “Who were those men? How did you know them? What did Marat mean when he talked about your family? Where is your family? Where do you live? What do you do?”

      The gauze packaging sat between them, crumpled and crisp. He rolled the pieces in his fingers, tumbled them onto the table like dice, and flicked them absently from one hand to the other and back again. “I thought,” he said, glancing up at her and then back to the packaging, “you might ask why I kissed you like that.”

      She flushed, an instant reaction—not flustered, not regret, but pure visceral reaction. It put a certain amount of self-aware humor into her words. “I’m pretty sure I know why you kissed me like that.” She put a hand over his, stopping the motion—surprising him, as if he hadn’t quite realized he’d been playing with the crackling paper in the first place. “I’ll go so far as to say that if we keep running into each other, it’s probably going to happen again.”

      The look he gave her then—all his attention, all his intensity—pretty much melted her to the chair. She managed to say, “But that doesn’t answer any of my questions.”

      He held her gaze just as captive as she still held his hand. “I don’t know those men. I do know what they were doing. I live nearby. I don’t do—I am. But people hire me to guide them. Hikers and sometimes hunters. Bow hunters.”

      Regan jerked her hand away and sat back, crossing her arms. “That’s the biggest bunch of nonanswers I’ve ever heard.”

      It didn’t seem to ruffle him. “Why have you come back?” he asked. “Where has your father gone? What do you do? What happened to your family years ago, and what drove you away from this place? Who are you talking to when you hold your head just so and look far away in your eyes?”

      Bull’s-eye. The questions hit harder than she expected they could—maybe because of her instant impulse to respond to this complete stranger with whom she’d fought, who she’d kissed, and whose bloody arm she’d just tended. I left because my mother went mad here and I thought it was happening to me. And now that I’m back, I’m pretty sure that it is.

      Wisdom overrode impulse. She huffed out a breath, and chose the only easy answer. “I paint,” she said. “I draw. I illustrate regional wildlife guides and publications.” She looked at her hands and abruptly stood to scoop up the detritus of her first-aid work, including the scraps with which he’d been playing. “Okay, I get it. Sometimes the big picture is too big. But those men...” She shook her head, rinsing the washcloth at the sink and watching the red tint of the water swirl down the drain. “I guess I’ll call the cops. Or the rangers. Or both.”

      He stood with a scrape of chair, coming up behind her at the sink. For an instant she held her breath, waiting to feel his hands on her waist or shoulders. And then tried to squash her disappointment when it didn’t happen— because really, what was she thinking?

      This man was dangerous in all ways. It struck her anew, clear in her mind’s eye—how he’d moved, how he’d fought—not just capable, but entirely amazing, using his body with a stunning effectiveness. Moving like she hadn’t known any man—any human—could. Not in real life.

      Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he responded to her intent to report the men with a simple, “I wish you wouldn’t.” Not when he’d already declined help for a wound that would have sent her mewling to the closest urgent care center.

      She realized the water still trickled over her hands and twisted the faucet with annoyed force—one did not waste water here. “Those men are dangerous,” she said sharply. “They threatened me, and they meant it. And they shot at you! Over a little bit of trash!”

      “They shot at me because they fear me,” Kai said, and added in a low afterthought, “As they should.” Then, as she took a breath to argue, his hand finally settled on her shoulder. “The police will find nothing in that spot. They will find nothing of those men anywhere.” His hand squeezed gently. She supposed it was reassurance.

      She didn’t feel reassurance.

      Or if she did, it was entirely tangled up in other things.

      Fear. Disbelief. Response. And somewhere, a whisper deep in her mind—one that came from without, and purred with possession and pride.

      The whisper believed in this man.

      Regan had no idea if that was a good thing.

      Kai said, “They will not return to that spot. And they will not come here.”

      She turned to him. She should have known he wouldn’t step away—that he still stood just that close to her, although his hand trailed down her arm to catch her hand. “And how, exactly, can you be so sure of that?”

      He toyed briefly with her fingers, tracing them, running his thumb across her knuckles—touching her, until she suddenly realized he played with them just as he’d played with the crumpled paper—naturally and utterly without awareness. Her bemusement at it left her completely unprepared for his words.

      “Because,” he said, “now they will come for me.”

      Chapter 5

      Regan hadn’t been convinced.

      Kai knew as much, moving along the mountain on broad paws—pausing to inspect the dry pool, his head reeling with the intensity of the energies that had been released there, corrupting the ground, the air...the very essence of the land.

      He knew she was right, too, about calling the police. From her point of view, it was the only response to dangerous and inexplicable behavior; he could still hear the impact of her incredulous words. They shot at you!

      They had. But worse, they’d gone for her, too. Rather than quietly disengaging and returning to do their work another day, the men had defied the one single principle shared by both Sentinels and Core—that above all, they would bring no outside attention to themselves.

      Not that he truly called himself Sentinel. He had not lied to them about that. He might have the blood, but he had no affiliation. No connections. No way even to get in touch.

      The voice of the land stirred uneasily in his mind, as aware of the incursion as he, in its way.

      Now they will come for me.

      And they would. But they still didn’t truly know what he was—that they couldn’t hide from him, no matter how quietly they moved. That the merest whisper of a Core working would reverberate through his senses, alerting

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