Sentinels: Lion Heart Read online

  She nodded, all business. “Then we’ll check it out. As well as the hotels. I’ll need to generate a list.”

  “Tourism is serious business in this town,” Joe pointed out. “I think the yellow pages will give you what you need.”

  “Me?” she said, casting him a quick look as she slowed for the turn that would lead to his isolated back road. “Am I in this alone, then?”

  He snorted. “I’d really appreciate it if you would decide if I’m part of this team or just your target. Because you’re heading for that point where you can’t have it both ways…and you’re doing it at a pretty high rate of speed.”

  She grimaced, a mere watermark of an expression on a face otherwise engrossed with following the unfamiliar and winding road. After a moment, she said, “I know.” And then she said, “I stuffed my map in the glove box so you could sit there. Is this our turn?” And then, when he laughed out loud, she scowled. “It’s not funny. Just because I can follow any trace on foot doesn’t mean I instantly memorize a driven route. Two entirely different skills.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Get over it,” she muttered, but she sounded embarrassed. “Is this it or not?”

  “This is it.” He braced himself against the door as she whipped around the corner just a little bit faster than necessary, and laughed again.

  But not very loud, not once she snatched a moment to glare at him, true frustration showing through in the set of her mouth. Ah, that’s the way it was, then. It bothered her, this slight imperfection. He held his hands up in surrender, but didn’t have the chance to respond, not with the house coming up on the right—his neighbor, distant though she was from him, and the yellow scarf tied around her mailbox. “Stop here,” he said, straightening in the seat, his hand already reaching for the door handle.

  “What—?”

  He turned for a quick glare, his voice dropping into a register he rarely used—had never used in her presence. “Stop the car.”

  Baffled, she did as he asked—there, in the middle of the road. And though he opened his mouth to explain—the driveway—in the end he simply flipped the lock and unfolded himself from the car, figuring she’d figure it out faster than he could explain it. He took the gravel driveway at a jog, bounding up the three porch steps in one effort and foregoing the doorbell for a sharp series of raps on the door itself.

  Unseen behind the door but evident enough, the severely self-important bundle of hair that called itself a dog rushed up to the door on the inside, barking fiercely; by then Lyn had pulled up into the driveway’s turnaround area. Joe knocked again. “Mrs. Rosado?” he called above the dog’s barking. “It’s Joe. Are you all right?”

  Lyn emerged from the car and trotted over, moving like the ocelot—not as rangy as his cougar, but graceful and self-contained. “What’s going on?”

  “The scarf,” he said. “It’s a signal we—Here she is.”

  In fact, it took another minute before the door swung open to reveal Mrs. Rosado, the dog now ensconced comfortably in the crook of her arm and a warm smile on her lined face. “Joe, I’m so glad to see you.” She glanced at Lyn in surprise; Lyn made no attempt to hide her bafflement. No doubt there had been no mention of Mrs. Rosado in his file. “And you have a friend!”

  “Imagine that,” Joe said, but his dryness did not mask his affection for the woman. “You all right?”

  Her expression fell, as though he’d reminded her of troubles. “My phone is out. Is yours? Two days now. I had hoped if it was more than just me, they might fix it on their own….”

  “You’ve been two days without a phone?” He let sternness enter his voice. “Mrs. Rosado, you know I’d be happy to add you to my cell phone plan. You could have an emergency phone.”

  “Oh,” she said, and didn’t meet his gaze. “Gadgets. My Leandro always managed the gadgets.” Her voice softened on her deceased husband’s name, and Joe flicked a glance at Lyn—and saw, then, that she abruptly understood, and that her expression softened in response.

  “I’ll call the phone company,” he said, relieved it hadn’t been more serious. Normally he made an effort to check on her daily, even if just to ease past the house in twilight, leaving cougar tracks behind—but this past week had gotten away from him. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by. It’s been an odd week.”

  “Summer colds can be so difficult,” she agreed, her words soft on the edges, still influenced by the language into which she’d been born. Even aging—and she’d told him once she was in her mid-sixties, but he wasn’t sure she wasn’t guessing—her features retained their distinct Hispanic stamp, strong bones in a square face, her hair still more black than gray. She wore a pair of conservative slacks and a brightly flowered shirt with a button-down collar. “And before that, there were those business associates of yours.”

  That stopped him short. “Those what?”

  “Those men, more than a week ago?” She held up one finger, shifted the dog in her grip and turned away to the small table just inside the door. After a moment of shuffling noises, she turned back and triumphantly displayed a business card.

  It took all of Joe’s self-restraint to take it so casually, holding it by the very edges…and giving it to Lyn the same way. “Take a look,” he said. He’d already seen enough to know that they’d matched his old business cards perfectly, albeit with different personal names imprinted. Make It Happen.

  They’d done that, all right—he and Dean had. Ten years of making it happen, once they’d decided that bunking together on the field stipend just wasn’t enough—from naive young men thinking small in a new business to seasoned men who thought big. Big enough that one of them was eventually killed for a client.

  At first Joe hadn’t been surprised that brevis had no apparent awareness of the work being done by Make It Happen. After all, it wasn’t Sentinel business. But later…when consul never seemed to get it, when no one at regional ever seemed to get it—that the business had grown, that it was more than just facilitating unusual requests and last wishes and oddball events—

  He blamed them now.

  He caught Lyn looking at him, hand extended…waiting patiently, those big eyes watching him far too closely. She accepted the card by the edges and she eased down her shields and she quite suddenly sneezed. She turned to Mrs. Rosado. “Do you mind if we take this?”

  “It’s for Joe anyway. They were hoping to catch up with him.”

  Joe doubted that. They’d probably given that card away only to convince this savvy old woman to talk to them. “What did they say?”

  He’d tried to keep his voice interested, without bite…but to judge by her expression, he hadn’t quite succeeded. “They wanted to be sure they were on the right road.” Mrs. Rosado’s fingers tangled in the mop-dog’s hair while it chanced a sly lift of its lip at Joe, giving a tiny soprano growl so low that only a Sentinel would have heard it at all. Some dogs could deal with him, some couldn’t; the mop had never adjusted. “It was all right to send them to your place, wasn’t it?”

  The house couldn’t be seen from here…but Joe was the only one out at the end of this road, where the asphalt crumbled into a short span of dirt and gravel and the loop of his driveway.

  “They had the card,” she said, a little anxiously now.

  Joe shook himself out of his thoughts. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s too bad we missed each other, that’s all.”

  “They said they wanted to surprise you,” she told him, watching his reaction; concern deepened the wrinkles between her brows. “That didn’t sound like something you would like. So I told them I wouldn’t hide their visit from you, but that I probably wouldn’t see you for a while.” And that, no doubt, had likely saved her life.

  “Thank you,” he said, and gave her a smile so her concern might fade. “I’m sure we’ll catch up with one another. Soon, even.”

  “But you know…” Lyn glanced at him, proceeding cautiously, respecting his relationship with his neighbor, he realiz
ed, “…probably best to avoid them if you see them again. If you can. They’re…” she glanced at the card, bit her lip “…pranksters.”

  Joe snorted. “That’s a good way to put it,” he said, and meant it. Mrs. Rosado was now warned—but not unduly alarmed. Not made to feel vulnerable. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Is it just the phone? You made it out for groceries this week, didn’t you?”

  She tsked at him. “I’m not a helpless old lady,” she told him. “I drove in to Basha’s. They had chicken pieces on sale, you know. And polenta, too. But I am having this leak under my sink—”

  Joe grinned. She always slipped such requests into the middle of otherwise innocuous conversation, as if it was the only way she could bring herself to ask a favor at all. He’d long ago learned to ask about the weather, or her small raised garden, or her recent errands, if he wanted to pry out the things she needed. “Well, let’s have a look at that.”

  Lyn made a startled noise, no doubt ready to get back on her trails. And though her urgency was far from misplaced, he nonetheless glanced at her, his message clear enough. The few minutes they’d take here would mean the world to Mrs. Rosado, even if he didn’t get the leak fixed, simply because she wouldn’t feel quite so alone.

  And Joe knew what it was like to feel alone.

  Chapter 10

  L yn still tasted iced tea at the back of her throat as she navigated the rental car into Joe Ryan’s driveway…and she still tasted surprise at the back of her mind.

  “You don’t know him very well yet, do you, dear?” Mrs. Rosado had said, stroking her Shih Tzu’s ears as she settled back in the old overstuffed chair bearing a Mrs. Rosado–sized imprint. She glanced into the kitchen, a bright and airy place with plenty of light to showcase Ryan’s sprawl—his legs looking longer than she’d realized as they stuck out from under the sink in those worn jeans and, as he braced himself to apply torque on a pipe, his butt looking quite suddenly stupendous.

  As well it should, given how often he ran these mountains in his Sentinel form. Stole from them, she reminded herself, and then, uneasy at such thoughts while her shields still stretched between them, she let them dissipate—and ignored the way those sprawling legs momentarily stiffened at the loss of the connection. He returned to work without comment.

  Lyn cleared her throat as the little dog jumped down from the chair to come sniffing around her feet, and returned her own thoughts to Mrs. Rosado’s surprising comment. “What makes you say so?”

  Mrs. Rosado had only smiled. “Because you were surprised he would delay to check my sink. Don’t worry, child, it’s a very small leak. It could have waited, if you must know. But then he would have worried that I was letting things go undone.”

  He would? she almost said. But she clamped her lips closed and bent down—cautiously—to let the dog sniff her fingers. She’d already seen its reaction to Ryan.

  “Don’t worry,” Mrs. Rosado told her, breaking a butter cookie in half on the little plate beside her tall tumbler. “It’s only Joe who makes him growl that way.”

  Right. Which only meant the dog had never encountered another Sentinel. But even as the short-legged little thing swept its nose across her fingers and followed with a small pink tongue, its crooked tail swept over its back in a wag.

  “You see?” Mrs. Rosado said. “It’s a boy thing between the two of them, I do believe. And you, my dear, have the most unusual eyes.”

  “I—Thank you. Have you known Ry—Joe—long?” Smooth. Very smooth. But she hadn’t expected to find herself faux-interrogating a genteel neighbor.

  “Since he moved in,” the older woman said promptly, her dark eyes bright beneath wrinkled lids. “He came over and introduced himself on that very day. My Leandro was still here then, and of course he warned Joe that I was taken. Such a gentleman, that Joe—he pretended great disappointment, you know. And he still brought me things—special fruits from the natural foods store, those hard candies I like—but he always asked Leandro if he might give them to me. He’s a special one.”

  From beneath the sink, Ryan’s leg twitched. But those who took the change were used to concealing acute senses and reflexes and strength, so Ryan reacted with nothing more than that twitch while Lyn felt a clamp of alarm as she looked into Mrs. Rosado’s protective, affectionate expression as she spoke of Ryan’s special nature and wondered just how much she knew.

  It had turned out there was no need to ask. The older woman had leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice. “There aren’t many like him,” she said. “Who care the way he does. He feels things deeply, child. You keep that in mind. And he’s been hurt. I wouldn’t want you to add to that.” And she settled back, leaving Lyn speechless.

  They’d talked of other things for the remaining twenty minutes or so it had taken Ryan to finish up, from the little dog’s place in Mrs. Rosado’s life to Ryan’s former business, about which Mrs. Rosado knew much more than Lyn’s file had indicated.

  And thus she sat here in the car with the taste of surprise in her thoughts, because she’d thought Make It Happen had only ever done contracting work. Someone with money wanted a fancy kid’s party with sparkly hooved, black ponies, clown cars and a birthday cake in the shape of a ninja turtle? Ryan’s company put the pieces together. Someone else wanted the environmentally-greenest-possible house, with no idea where to start looking for contractors and resources? Ryan’s company would sort it all out, from finding the location to riding the builders until the work was done. They were the ultimate contractors, whatever the need.

  But she hadn’t realized the rest of it. The pro bono work, the entire families connected with networks of helping volunteers, the constant cycle of donated goods and services for needy individuals—the services they’d secured when the volunteers weren’t to hand. Legal and medical and practical.

  Just the sort of help Ryan’s sister could have used, had she come to him in time. Talk about irony.

  “Hey,” Ryan said. He’d exited the car and now bent to look in the open door. “You coming? The Internet? E-mail from brevis? Remember? Gotta check up on me, right?”

  She scowled at the windshield, yanking the key from the ignition with a twist. “I’ll get my things.”

  Suddenly she didn’t want to check up on his finances, didn’t want to find out that he was every bit as guilty as she’d always thought he was.

  And boy, did that make her mad. Mad enough that she didn’t try to hide it as she slammed the car door closed behind her and stalked to the casita to grab her laptop and padfolio and her favorite pen. When she returned it was to find him waiting, bemused, by the car. But as he led the way to the door, he turned back to her and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t scare the cats.”

  Her firm stride faltered; she ran headlong into abashed chagrin. She never would have meant to…and she should have realized. But no. He was the one to think of it. The man she suspected of pillaging this mountain of its power, of leaving it open and vulnerable to the Core. Making sure the cats weren’t spooked by anger they didn’t deserve.

  Yeah, and Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld had his white Persian.

  Didn’t mean a thing.

  But she moderated her steps and she pushed her annoyance to the background. Because, really, when it came right down to it, she wasn’t mad at anything or anyone but herself.

  Because boy, did she know better.

  He showed her to a cluster of small rooms off the hallway behind the kitchen. She felt like the invader she was, pulling her laptop and padfolio closer to her chest as he pushed open a door at the end of the hall to reveal a room of stunning full-length windows, some of which were open to screens. Pines filtered light into green shadow; their sharp, dry scent filled the air. “I could hook you up in the great room,” he said, already dropping by the desk to root around in a cluster of cables. “But I figured you’d prefer some privacy.”

  When he came up for air, he had an Ethernet cable in hand, and he offered it to her, moving on
to clear one wing of a wraparound desk—stacks of papers, a phone book—and then to clear the chair of its resident cat. “All yours,” he said. “Plus a phone if you need it.” He turned away—she thought to leave, but after she set her things down and glanced back, she found him standing before the windows and she faltered, drawn by the sight. This was the look, she realized. Eyes half-closed, head slightly tipped, the light bringing out the short black tracings in his tawny hair, the crisp defined nature of it in contrast with the way the rest fell longer and sometimes lifted in the wind. And the way he stood—tall, upright, shoulders somehow both relaxed and expectant…as though a small thrum of tension ran through him. Expectation.

  He spoke to her of potential. Of power listening.

  And she thought back to what he’d done at the gas station and she realized that was exactly it. Power listening. Not currently in use, but poised within reach. Closely within reach at that.

  The very reason she had to know he was clean, that power. What he’d done with it. What he could do with it. Did brevis even suspect?

  She would have turned on her laptop then had he not taken a sudden sharp breath and opened his eyes, very like a man just waking up. He turned just enough to catch her gaze, and there she stood, caught and not even trying to break away, breathing in that moment of contact as though she’d possibly even craved it.

  He was the one to turn away, a quiet smile at the corner of his mouth as he looked back to the window. “Still restless out there.”

  “Really?” She hadn’t felt a thing.

  “Ripples.” He glanced at her. “If you could feel them, then you would be doing this job, and not—” He gestured at the laptop.

  Ah. Right. Checking up on him. “About the gas station…”

  He returned her a steady look. “You already said it. Whatever’s been triggered, it’s volatile. More incidents like that, and people will notice…they’ll start to ask questions. We’ll be fighting more than the Core if that happens.”