Lynx Destiny (14 page)

Kai had been looking for that understanding in the weeks after his family had left. Phillip had accepted his unusual fighting style, a thing of early discipline and instinct; Kai had readily absorbed what Phillip had to teach.

But only Phillip ever sparred with him, then and now. Phillip’s rules, to protect Kai from an endless round of challenges and to protect overconfident challengers from Kai’s lethal grace.

Kai bowed briefly and held out the bag with its mended
dobok.
“Mary says to settle with her later.”

“Something to do with repairs to the boardwalk, if I guess right.” But Phillip took the bag with a pleased expression. “I expected to see you sooner than this—I had the impression after that last bout that you were looking for a rematch.” He tipped his head, eyeing Kai. “Been under the weather?”

“Obligations,” Kai said, a shorthand that Phillip would understand in concept, if not in detail. He didn’t say, “I was shot” or “The land is unhappy” or “Regan Adler is here and I want her.” He still wore the bandanna—it spoke to him of her—but he didn’t expect Phillip to ask about that, either.

He tugged his satchel around from where it had rested on his back. “I have a favor to ask. Something to keep safe.”

Phillip offered a wry expression. “Since when can I hold something more safely than you?”

Kai was supposed to shrug amusement, he knew that. To respond in kind. But he found himself too caught up in the events of the past days. “This can’t be with me,” he said. “It can’t be in the forest.” He hesitated, torn between the need to keep secrets and the need for Phillip to understand. “It needs a neutral place, behind concrete and metal.”

Phillip’s brow raised. He might not understand the things gone unspoken, but he understood that they were there. Still, when Kai reached into the satchel and brought out the gun, Phillip made a sound of surprise.

But he took the gun—holding it as Kai had, as an object and not a weapon.

“It’s not safe,” Kai warned him.

“Kai,” Phillip said, true humor warming his voice, “it’s a
gun.
”

“It’s more than that,” Kai said, coming down hard on those words—a hint of his nature coming through in the ferocity, the protective imperative.

Phillip regarded him as a man who’d heard those things—as a man with a long habit of thoughtful response. “Where did you get it?”

“From the one who tried to kill me with it,” Kai said and shook his head. “The important thing is to keep it neutral...and that, I can’t truly explain. I just need it believed.”

“The sheriff—”

Kai interrupted him, a rarity of broken etiquette here in Phillip’s dojang. “Would he believe?”

Phillip’s wry grimace came with understanding. “He’d ask a lot more questions than I am. No doubt that’s because he’s a smarter man than I.” He slipped the gun inside the bag with the
dobok,
but his expression said he had his own questions, and that he hovered on asking them.

He just might have, had Kai not caught a hint of distress from the land and lifted his head to it, eyes narrowed.

Phillip had never seen him go on the hunt...but he recognized it well enough. By the time the two men appeared in the open doorway—big, muscled, clad in dark shirts, loose, light pants and silver studs at their ears—Phillip had turned to meet them.

Aeli and Hantz.
And still well adorned with fading bruises from their previous encounter with Kai.

“Sentinel,” Aeli said, the sneer of a single word. Kai lifted a lip at him—a warning that Phillip was an outsider, and not to be drawn into the truth of their worlds. But the lynx pushed hard against him from within, recognizing the danger—the enmity.
The men who had threatened Regan.

Hantz gave his partner a meaningful glare, and Phillip intervened with polite courtesy.

“How can I help you?” he asked, as congenial as ever—but he stood balanced and ready, and the Core minions were fools if they saw Phillip as he seemed, a small innocuous man with a bag in hand.

Hantz said, “Just looking for a good place to work out while we’re here.” But his attention wasn’t quite all there, and his thumb rubbed over a unique metal coin—the active amulet Kai had felt.
A seeking amulet.

Maybe hunting Kai and what taint remained from the bullet. Maybe hunting the gun itself. Though it didn’t quite make sense that it mattered so much. Surely the Core had other guns, other bullets?

Unless they were trying something new.

Unless they’d lost something truly important—or something they really didn’t want him to have.

Or even to know about.

A bad move, then, to have shot him with it and failed to kill him.

“You’re looking for a place to work out,” Phillip said, eyeing them. “I’m sorry to say I doubt this small establishment can meet your needs. You might try Alamogordo.”

“Alamogordo,” Aeli repeated, staring flatly at Kai.

“Down the hill,” Phillip said helpfully, and pointed.

“If we wanted—” Aeli started.

Hantz interrupted, pocketing his coin-size amulet. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll look into the options.” He eyed Kai, an expression of dark promise—an acknowledgment that they couldn’t pursue this in Phillip’s presence in spite of undiminished intent. Then he caught Aeli’s gaze and jerked his head at the open door. “Then maybe we’ll be back.”

Phillip watched them go and—most tellingly—he closed the door behind them. He turned back to Kai and raised a brow, casting an obvious scrutiny for bruises and injury. “You left your mark on those two, I see.” He frowned then, a faint thing of true and rare censure. “Stand down, Kai. Or you can follow them out.”

Kai took a startled breath, feeling the lynx so close to the surface—closer than he’d realized. Feeling in himself the ferocity of protectiveness toward Regan, toward the land. He took another breath, deliberately pushing the lynx away. Another, and felt again the weariness that had dogged him through the most recent days.

He was only man, trying to fulfill an inborn imperative. A single Sentinel in the middle of a Core incursion, and not truly a Sentinel at all.

Phillip nodded at the door. “Better. You still look like crap, though, which is a blunter way to say what I politely implied when you arrived. Now, you going to tell me about them?”

Kai hesitated. “When I figure out how. Will you still keep the gun safe?”

“From them,” Phillip said, and it wasn’t a guess. “They following you?”

He could answer that one readily enough. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

Phillip hefted the bag. “I’ll keep it safe,” he said. “Under the condition that you don’t lie to me—not ever, but specifically not about this.
Not answering,
that’s one thing. But don’t give me crap.”

“I haven’t,” Kai said. “I won’t.”

“Okay, then.” Phillip gave him a companionable clout on the arm. Kai’s lynx snarled up inside, overreactive...still wanting to strike out. And Phillip nodded, as if that’s what he’d been waiting to see.

But he didn’t judge it. He simply noted it. “I’ll put this away and go check in with Mary. I think you’d best do forms today on your own.”

This, Kai realized, was no more than truth—although it chagrined him. He couldn’t recall when he’d been unable to tame the lynx...and he couldn’t recall when Phillip had ever looked at him this way.

Or when, in spite of all his understanding, he’d ever turned back to use just this tone in his voice when he said, “I can keep
this
safe, Kai. You’d better think about what will do the same for you.”

* * *

Regan parked in Cloudview’s upper lot and pulled the keys from the ignition, musing on her day so far.

No matter how far out in the woods the cabin, no matter how close it was to being completely off the grid and self-contained...it wasn’t quite there yet. And real life still happened. The septic still needed to be pumped, the well water tested, the plumbing fixed.

And in desert country, if the kitchen sink started to drip it didn’t matter if the land was poking away at your mind or if your body wouldn’t stop thinking about the man who frightened you on one level and inexorably drew you to him on another. Down the winding narrow road you went, five thousand feet below to Alamogordo and the nearest significant hardware store. Because if Regan left this place—
when
she left this place—she would leave the cabin in good shape.

She’d found the faucet cartridge and then done the grocery shopping—because the other thing one didn’t do was waste a trip down the mountain. Or leave home without a big cooler in the back of the car.

It was easier to hit the Cloudview post office than the one down below, so once Regan had wound her way through the switchbacks to the top again, she headed up to park here at the boardwalk.

When she emerged from the car, she held a bundled accumulation of her father’s mail. It was a quick jog to the post office just below, and a quick jog back to the car—where she looked to the main street below and considered the virtues of ice cream versus a nice, sinful doughnut.

Because unless something had changed, today was doughnut day at the general store.

In that moment, she got a glimpse of herself—preteen, laughing as she crossed the road with her mother, each trying to top the other’s description of the world’s most indulgent doughnut. A stupid little thing—

But if it brought the sudden sting of tears to her eyes, it also brought a little smile to the corner of her mouth. She left the car and headed downhill—past the garage, past the gas station—

Matt Arshun stood gassing up his fancy car.

His presence punctured Regan’s bubble of connection to her past. Suddenly, she was more aware of her strides, of the impact of asphalt against the soles of her lightweight hikers. Suddenly, she was aware of the chilling breeze against her bare arms and the way it cut through her thin shirt—the way it tightened her skin.

Arshun glanced at her breasts, and she knew she should have pulled her jacket on before leaving the car. But her stride faltered at the additional two men who emerged from the store, coffees in hand. One each, and...an extra.

Aeli. Hantz.
The men from the woods, if not the man who had commanded them—although that extra coffee suggested he might be close.

If only Arshun hadn’t glanced aside in response to Regan’s reaction, and moved his head in the merest fraction of a negative—and if the men hadn’t eased to a stop because of it, trying to look casual as they sipped their coffee and made their small talk, that one leftover coffee speaking volumes.

If only they hadn’t had such similar styles. It didn’t matter that Arshun was in a suit and the men in their snappy but more casual outfits, or that Arshun had a sleek club of gathered hair while the men sported tighter styles. They had the same cast of skin, cast of feature...the same dark eyes and dark hair. The same spark of silver in their rings and watches and tiny stub earrings.

“Regan,” Arshun said, pulling the nozzle from his gas tank and hooking it back into place on the dispenser, as if she wasn’t smart enough to realize he was now with two of the men who had attacked Kai that week earlier with Marat. “I’d like to talk with you about that land.”

“Please don’t waste your time,” she said stiffly. And then, in case that wasn’t clear, she added, “Or mine.”

He only smiled.

She made it across the street without being hit only because the road was characteristically empty, and only when the general store bell jingled the door closed behind her and everyone turned to look did she realize she’d come inside with a rush. “Doughnuts!” she said brightly, and headed for the bakery display.

“Regan Adler,” Mary said. “What wind got up your butt?”

Regan stood in front of the bakery glass and tried to think about sprinkles versus chocolate, but could only see the knowing look on Arshun’s face—one that wouldn’t have spooked her nearly as much if she hadn’t seen those men in the woods, armed and coming for her, or if she hadn’t seen Kai’s blood, or if she hadn’t so recently taken flight up a mountain road on a bolting mustang.

“Regan?” Bill’s voice was quieter and came from waist level; his wheelchair hummed to a stop beside her.

“Chocolate,” she said, determination in her voice, and Mary moved from behind one counter to the other to pluck up a pastry paper and acquire the selected doughnut.

“Regan,” she said. “No one looks that shade of pale from a doughnut craving.”

She felt a sudden flash of irritation, remembering this, too, about living here—the difficulty of keeping secrets, of even keeping one’s thoughts to oneself. It was a wonder her mother’s ailment hadn’t been known to all before Kathleen’s indiscretion.

With a jolt of realization, she tore her gaze from the pastries to find Mary’s rounded face—to understand that the concern there came from more than today’s fluster.

To realize for the first time that others
had
known all along. That they’d cared. Her mother’s secrets...never really secret at all.

It choked her for a moment, making swallowing impossible. And then, because it was suddenly important that Mary know this
wasn’t
about her mother, she said, “A couple of men startled me, that’s all.”

She frowned, and looked out the storefront window. “They
bother
you?”

Because this, too, was the kind of town this was. Regan relaxed, if only a little. “No, no...I was thinking deep thoughts, that’s all. You know, whether I’m going to mess up the faucet when I replace the parts I just bought. Didn’t see them, so they startled me.”

“Big men,” said one of the other customers, inviting himself into the conversation. Regan found him with a hammer in hand, a short and wiry man of middle age who looked as though he could have ridden a horse to the wire in the derby—except something in his movement reminded her of Kai, and something in his eyes told her not to make assumptions. “Dressed dark.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

The man exchanged a look with Mary and Bill. “The men who seem to know Kai.”

“At your place just now?” Mary asked, though she anticipated the answer with a slight nod.