Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

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?”