Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

Chapter 2

Hollender Lerche hated adobe.

He hated flat roofs and stucco and chunky viga pine columns and pretentious entry arches, and he hated a high altitude climate that thought it could be desert and yet still had far too much snow in the winter.

Still, he should be grateful. Many from Tucson had died during the illicit attack on the Sentinels; others had acted too publicly and paid the price at the hands of the worldwide septs prince.

In the wake of that attack, Lerche had merely been assigned to this small city—an annoyingly artsy place that had persistently remained the region’s capital city. He didn’t have to be told that his future rested on his quiet success. The septs prince would turn a blind eye to certain events as long as they brought results—but not for an instant if they brought more embarrassment.

For now, results meant taking out Ian Scott.

A man who had so conveniently ambled into Lerche’s new territory, leading him straight to the quaint little retreat property—and to opportunity.

Lerche looked out onto the rolling piñon and juniper foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and narrowed his eyes as if that spearing glare could blast the high grasslands into something more palatable. When someone rapped politely on the sliding glass door behind him, he ignored them. This second-story patio was his Do Not Disturb zone.

But eventually he left the squintingly bright sunshine of the morning and returned to the oppressive gloom of thick textured walls. The man inside greeted him with an unusual combination of resentment and defiance.

“Mr. Budian,” Lerche said, which meant many things at once—a greeting, a demand for a report...a demand for explanation.

David Budian stood before him not in the neat suit of an active posse member or the dark slacks and shirt also allowed those working strenuous field positions. Nor was he the usual stature of such field agents—the classic deep olive skin and black hair, set off by silver studs and rings. Budian was a man of middling complexion, middling height, middling features.

None of that came as a surprise—the man’s appearance was why Lerche assigned him to particular activities with particular anonymity. Even Ana, as naive as she was, would spot a man of brawn and classic full-blooded complexion.

But it surprised him to see Budian in torn clothes and bruises.

Lerche said, “Have you compromised us, Mr. Budian?”

Budian looked as alarmed as he should. “Drozhar—”

“Don’t suck up.” Drozhar was a term held by regional princes, as well as the world septs Prince. Not a posse leader. Not even when the posse was as large as the one Lerche now commanded here in Santa Fe. “I want to know what’s happened!”

“I observed Ana as ordered. She was dawdling, so I provided an opportunity for her.” Budian’s self-satisfaction made it to his face in a way he likely didn’t realize. “You know how those Sentinels are, sir. If they see a chance to meddle, they’ll take it.”

Lerche sat at his massive desk, relaxing into the padded chair. He brushed his hand across the black gleam of the surface, displacing invisible dust motes. “True enough. Did you achieve results?”

“I gave him a chance to play the hero and he took it. If that little dirt-bred bitch can’t make something of it, then she’s as hopeless as I think she is.”

“Mind your tongue, Mr. Budian.” Lerche’s words held no heat; it went against everyone’s instincts to use a woman in an important field operation. But Ana was everything they needed—petite, beautiful with an elegant delicacy and utterly determined to prove her worth to them...without the faintest idea that she never could. “She knows nothing of that thin Sentinel heritage, and I want it to stay that way.”

“Until it’s too late, you mean,” Budian suggested.

Lerche smiled. “Exactly so, Mr. Budian.” And then he would be free of her. “Just exactly so.”

* * *

Ana found herself sitting in cool Santa Fe comfort—saltillo floors and kitchen counters, hand-painted Talavera tiles set in the walls around the light switches and along the counter backsplash, gauzy curtains under shaded windows. The air was redolent of spices and oils and the scent of something baking. Something good.

Ian had introduced himself, and Fernie—Fernanda—and had handed her a damp washcloth, disappearing with “Be right back.”

Ana waited on a spindle-backed stool at the breakfast bar and patted the cool cloth against the road rash beneath her elbow, near to dizzy with the conflicting experiences of being in such a homey welcoming atmosphere while within the grasp of the enemy.

Especially an enemy who kept her on edge in every way.

Ian—the enemy—returned to the kitchen in a billow of what seemed to be his usual energy, dropping a tub of salve on the counter. “This stuff will speed the healing.”

Fernie put a hot tray of muffins on the sideboard and sent Ian a disapproving frown. “A gentleman would help her take care of such awkward injuries.”

“Oh,” Ana protested. “You can hardly call them injuries. A few scrapes and bruises—fewer than that cyclist had, I’m sure.”

Ian stepped back. “A gentleman respects the boundaries a lady sets.” But his gaze met hers with amusement, as if they were somehow in this together.

She understood why. Fernie obviously ruled this house—a so-called corporate retreat—with an iron pot holder. Of medium stature, with a plump figure and shining strands of gray in her black hair, Fernie’s Latina and Native heritage came through in both her features and the gentle roll of her words. Given Fernie’s position here in the house, Ana guessed that she wasn’t a full-blooded field Sentinel—one of those with roots deep enough to reach to their lurking other within.

Looking at Ian, Ana would never doubt it of him. Even if she hadn’t actually seen his snow leopard the week before.

But field Sentinel or not, Fernie was obviously formidable and just as obviously possessed of an uncanny ability to read beneath the emotional surface of those around her. She cleared her throat at Ian as she tapped the previous tray of muffins loose from the cups.

Ana pressed her lips together in a smile. “Well,” she said, and offered Ian the washcloth, “maybe under the circumstances...”

“All right, then.” He stopped tapping to whatever rhythm ran in his head to take the cloth. The same hands that had taken down the cyclist became surprisingly gentle as he turned her arm to see the scrape.

“Don’t you ever sit still?” she asked, not truly having meant to say it.

Fernie laughed, placing a selection of muffins on a plate and sliding it within reach along with butter, a knife and napkins. “Not that anyone’s observed so far. What brings you to Santa Fe, Ana?”

Oh, nothing of importance. Just spying on you.

“A quiet vacation,” she said, in spite of the fact that she’d lived here for months now, along with the rest of Lerche’s posse. They’d had no idea the retreat existed until Lerche had tracked Ian to it. “The Georgia O’Keeffe museum, the plaza, the pueblos, the Indian Market... I meant to come with a friend, but family issues cropped up.” She shrugged, comfortable with the amiable cover story Lerche had given her. “It’s a little strange to be here without a travel companion, I admit.”

Fernie sent Ian a pointed glance. “You see? You could be doing something other than fretting. See the sights with this woman!”

Ian glared at Fernie, not Ana. “I do not fret,” he said, even as he dabbed her arm. “And I don’t need mothering.”

Fernie ran a trickle of water into the sink, briskly rinsing dishes before stashing them in the dishwasher. Ana only got a glimpse, but she was pretty sure the other woman smiled behind her noncommittal noise of response. And Ian, with his mix of annoyance and affection...

He wasn’t what she’d expected. Even beyond what she’d seen and what she’d read.

She knew he’d been badly hurt in early spring but had healed well and quickly, as Sentinels did. She knew he’d had several skirmishes with the Core before that. She knew, most of all, that the Sentinels counted on him to solve the mystery of the silent amulets, and the Core therefore needed to find out everything they could about his progress—here, away from protected Southwest Brevis headquarters.

That was her job. To plant the spy amulet—to connect with him and absorb what she could of him in person.

“You’re staring,” he said, keeping his voice low—although Fernie had left to clatter around in the dining room, laying out silverware and dishes. He held her arm as he dipped into the herbal unguent and spread it lightly over her skin.

She shivered at the touch, bemused at her own sensitivity—at her sudden extreme awareness of his fingers against her skin. “I was thinking,” she said—but stopped, caught by his eyes—the contrast of those pale irises with the dark rims, the dark lashes and glinting silver hair, mussed with the casual authority of a bad boy model even though she doubted he paid much attention to it at all. “Your eyes—”

His brows shot up; she looked away, profoundly embarrassed. She wasn’t cut out for deception. The Core should have known better.

She’d never understood why they’d chosen her for this—she knew only that she was desperate for acceptance and that this had seemed like her chance. She decided on the truth, after all. For the moment. “They’re striking,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Or me. Maybe I hit that wall harder than I thought.”

“Maybe,” he said, applying a transparent film bandage of a size that few households would carry as a matter of course. “Or maybe it would just be nice to see this city with a companion.” He smoothed the bandage into place, stroking her arm with a confident touch.

Maybe I should run.

She was in so far over her head.

She should plant the amulet under the counter edge, make her excuses and run. She should tell Lerche that Ian was so much more than she’d expected—much more than she could handle, a Sentinel force of nature. They expected her to fail; they’d always expected her to fail. It would come as no surprise to them if she did. She’d simply be sent back to the personal assistant work she found so very stifling.

But she hesitated there at the breakfast bar with his hand still closed over her arm, full of warmth and a very personal touch—and she noticed, to her surprise, that he stood perfectly still. He didn’t vibrate; he didn’t shift his weight or bump his knuckles against the granite counter.

He only watched her.

And she didn’t want to run from that.

He grinned, an unrepentant expression on an irrepressible face. “Georgia O’Keeffe. Tomorrow, if you’d like. Now. How about we go figure out where you’re staying?”

Ana smiled back at him. And when he turned away to toss the bandage wrappings and rinse the washcloth, she pressed the tiny silent spy amulet into place, activated it with the faintest twist of will, and told herself she was only doing what she had to do.

* * *

Ian paced the yard perimeter, rubbing a restless thumb across the sample amulet in his hand—a simple thing of rough making, and a thing with which he was already deeply familiar, even if he hadn’t cracked the secrets of its silence.

That breakthrough wasn’t likely to happen now, with his thoughts so scattered. Ana might have left the retreat the day before, but she’d definitely lingered in his thoughts.

Soft skin beneath his fingers, the gleam of honey beneath the brown of her eyes when she’d been caught staring, the faintest of blushes over cheek and neck when she’d realized it. The way she’d owned up to it, seeming surprised at herself while she was at it.

There was something about her matter-of-fact acceptance of her injuries that bothered him; he hadn’t quite put his finger on it. They weren’t serious, but they must have stung like the dickens. A little ow! wouldn’t have been out of place.

Ian glanced down the road and decided he wasn’t quite as bad as a kid with a schoolyard crush, no matter what Fernie had said. He’d dressed in the best of the casual clothes he’d brought, been glad for the lightweight hiking boots, and wandered out to the yard thirty minutes early for his meeting with Ana.

He’d figured it would take that long to settle his mind over the working he thought he’d detected that morning. Now he knew himself to have been optimistic, and he paced the yard perimeter with impatience.

Just as well that he wasn’t one of those Sentinels who could reach out to mind-tap Annorah, their brevis-wide communication hub. Or to anyone, for that matter, though he could hear well enough if someone else initiated a tap on his shoulder. No doubt he’d be driving her just as crazy as he was driving himself, checking in to see how things were going with his AmTech assistants—if they had what they needed, if they’d stumbled over any faint clue he might build on...

No doubt she’d be ignoring him by now.

The working on this crude amulet was innocuous enough—easily identified as such by the lanyard. Simple identifying knots, rough leather...nothing worth the silence that had been stamped on it. But this particular amulet had been recovered at Fabron Gausto’s evil little hideout in Tucson, where Nick Carter had almost died in the attempt to stop Core D’oíche.

The thing’s value lay not in its function but in its silent nature. Only the rare Sentinel tracker had any chance of perceiving this one.

Ian couldn’t. In spite of his expertise, his ability to find and identify amulets at a distance, it was nothing but a disk of crudely inscribed bronze. No matter how tightly he focused his attention, nor how finely he sliced the bands of his perception.

He prowled back over into the shade. This morning in the house he’d thought he’d felt something from this amulet, but he wasn’t the only one in occupancy, and that meant interruptions and noise. He shared the retreat and its half-dozen cozy little rooms with a light-blood couple from Kachina Valley, Arizona, a strong-blood courier from Senoita who quite obviously took the cheetah, a tech of some sort from Tucson Brevis and a mid-teen youth who couldn’t more obviously be in retreat from the mundane world while he grew accustomed to his burgeoning Sentinel gifts.

The accumulated effect left him far, far from the buffered and isolated conditions of his lab. Trying to pin down the subtleties of what he’d felt had only served to trigger a headache, driving him outside to wait while he ignored Fernie’s reminder that the whole point of his presence here was to take a break from such things.

The faintest sound of a footfall on sandy grit lifted his head from those inner thoughts. When Ana appeared over the wall some moments later, he was waiting, his mood lifted by an anticipation he hadn’t expected. She caught sight of him and turned to rest her elbows on the wall. “Surely I’m not that late?”

“Not late at all,” he told her, resolutely stuffing the amulet away. “But I’m not much good at sitting still.”

“I got that impression.” Her smile softened those dry words, lighting features that had seemed just a little too somber before she’d seen him. A delicately angular jaw, a sweet curve of a mouth, dark eyes that dominated her face...they lent her an air of mystery, the impression of strength and vulnerability that wasn’t the least offset by the way the breeze teased her hair—short enough to reveal the peek of earlobe and the graceful sweep of her neck, long enough to tousle and beguile.

But he’d looked too long, for the smile faltered. Not so much uncertain as just a little too serious. “You know, I never asked. I thought at first this place was your home, and Fernie your housekeeper. But as I was leaving yesterday—”

“Jack came out.” Lured by Fernie’s muffins, no doubt, given how much the kid could eat.

“And I heard laughter from the lower level, so I gather you’re not alone. Family?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Ian told her the truth easily enough, if not the entirety of it. “This place is a retreat. Sometimes it’s a think tank, and sometimes it’s just a place our people come when they want the same thing you’re here for—a quiet vacation.”

She looked at the house a moment longer, a faint furrow between her brows. “Your people?”

“The group I work for.” It was close enough. He laced his fingers between hers over the top of the wall and his thoughts stumbled, his equilibrium lost. For an instant he knew the stunning peace of having one focus and one focus only. Ana.

“Are you all right?” She let him keep her hand, but not without concern. “You look...distracted. Something’s wrong?”

“The opposite,” he told her, and captured that hand, too—did it without second thought, as though he had every right. Even the headache had lifted. “You ready to take in some Georgia O’Keeffe? It’s a twenty-minute walk from here.”

She didn’t hide her bemusement. “Something tells me you’ll enjoy that twenty minutes of motion more than the museum itself.”

“I’ll enjoy the company,” he said, surprising himself by just how much he meant it. And she surprised him back, squeezing his hands in an unspoken response.

She might just have surprised herself, to judge by the look on her face—a little bit uncertain, a little bit amused. She glanced down the greenway path. “Would you like to just...walk?”

“I’ve got a better idea.” He looked east toward the mountains—not thinking of the trail where he’d encountered the mountain lion, but a little south of it, where the scenic byway wound upward to Vista Grande through splashes of aspen gold. “If you don’t mind a motorcycle, that is.”

Her eyes widened faintly, pleasure behind them. Ian grinned at her, for the moment, not thinking of the silent amulets at all.

“I’ve never been on one,” she warned him.

“It’s a touring bike,” he assured her, and then laughed when she only looked blankly in response. “It’s comfortable. You’ll feel secure. Though the retreat has a car—we can take that, if you’d prefer.”

She lifted a brow. “What kind of car?”

He nodded at the side of the house, where the bright blue Smart car just barely peeked out. She eyed it and then leaned over the wall to also ostentatiously eye the length of his leg. “Maybe not.”

Ian laughed. “Maybe not,” he agreed. “Come on around. We’ve got a jacket you can use. It’ll be cool up on the mountain.”

The retreat had plenty of such little extras, and if the leather jacket was a little big on her, the sleeves shoved back well enough—and the biking gloves fit perfectly. He showed her how to secure the motorcycle helmet, threading the double-D rings and snapping the trailing strap, then stowed her purse in the saddlebags. A quick primer on mounting, the foot pegs, the muffler placement and how to be a neutral passenger, and they were ready to go.

By then Fernie had emerged from the kitchen, an unusual flush to her features and her smile looking a bit determined. She proffered a packed lunch, and while Ian tucked it away and grabbed his own jacket, all black leather and zippers and snaps, Fernie leaned close to Ana as if Ian didn’t have the ears of a Sentinel to hear every word. “You hang on tight, now.”

Ana laughed—a faint uncertainty to it, but a low musical note, too, and one that tickled his ears.

Only once, after he’d mounted the bike and held it steady for her to settle in behind him, did she hesitate—and then, only just for a moment. Long enough to touch the pocket of her dark slacks, and he guessed she had her phone there—although reception on the mountain road would be touch and go at best. Then she climbed on, placing herself precisely on the seat and her feet on the passenger pegs, her legs barely brushing the outside of his hips and her hands resting loosely just above them.

“The trick is not to think too hard about it,” he told her, briefly resting a hand on the side of her lower leg. “And just nudge my shoulder if you need anything. I’ll pull over.”

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded.

He laughed and started the bike—and if she clutched tightly at him on the first turn and made him fight to keep the bike on line at the second turn, by the time they eased out of town and through the expensive foothills real estate, she’d started to relax. By the time they’d climbed through the piñon-juniper to the ponderosa, swooping gently through the curves and ever climbing upward, her hands rested around his waist as though they’d always been there, her knees snug at his hips without tension.

She shifted only slightly, never interfering with their balance, as he pointed out the things he spotted along the ride—the ferruginous hawk perched off the side of the road, the amazing tower of an ancient pine. He slowed down for the scatter of elk in the trees, giving her a good look and grinning when her hands tightened in the thrill of spotting them.

And along the way, he found himself just as relaxed as she was—just as willing to go along with the moment, without the constant nag of activity in his mind.

Huh.

Sixteen miles later he pulled over at the Vista Grande overlook, bracing the bike while she dismounted, her hands suddenly self-conscious as she steadied herself on his shoulder. He felt the distance like a cold chill, the descent of cares and the weighty awareness of...

Everything.

She fumbled at the helmet strap but managed it, pulling the helmet off to fluff up her hair. Then she got a good look at the view and faltered, her eyes widening.

“The Jemez Mountains,” he said, hooking his helmet over a handlebar as he dismounted and moving up behind her to point out the distant range, his arm over her shoulder where it felt like it belonged. “The Rio Grande Valley. Albuquerque, if you squint.” Not to mention the swatches of golden aspen against the dark green of the predominant ponderosa pines, Sangre de Cristo fall drama in all its glory.