dismissing him. Knowing there was a Sentinel somewhere in the area, just as she knew the park was clear of anyone else, and not figuring it had anything to do with her. She swiped a hand over her forehead—she bled there—and over a lip now glistening with blood instead of lip gloss, and she cursed again. And then she quite suddenly took her cheetah, buff and black-spotted gold, dropping down, lithe and leggy, bounding out across the grass and into the darkness.
Away. A failure. A hunter losing not to wits or strength or speed, but to confidence skewed. Gut instinct ignored.
You’ll see it, Nick Carter had told him.
And Mark had.
Doing something about it…
That was something else altogether.
Chapter 2
Tayla swept hair from her eyes, settling it back into place as she tucked her bike helmet under her elbow and strode for the Sentinel brevis regional office stairs. Miles of predawn biking hadn’t done her a bit of good. Hadn’t erased the previous night’s debacle from her mind, and hadn’t provided her with an explanation that would slide past Nick Carter’s radar.
The man was consul adjutant for a reason. Hardly anyone saw the consul himself, an aging man who personally administered only his pet projects. But Carter…he was everywhere. Knew everything.
He probably already knew this. Why else the first-thing meeting, requested by page while she was miles out on her ride with no time to hit home first? All right, he knew. So she’d just walk right into his Phoenix satellite office—waved in by his admin, who assessed Tayla’s appearance and then looked away with obvious restraint—and say what she had to. Footfalls silent on thick padded carpet, corner office windows overlooking the vast sprawling humanity filling the Phoenix desert valley, office itself full of greenery and growing things, nothing of trendy faux reality but all combining to fill the office with a heady connection to the earth that the rest of the city often forgot. Carter bent over his desk, shuffling papers.
Yes, she’d just walk right into his office and—“I screwed up, that’s what,” she said.
“Tayla.” Carter looked up. Not a man ever to be caught by surprise—no vulnerability there, only hard efficiency, a certain hint of omniscience. And yet Tayla could have sworn she saw a glimmer of a start.
Maybe she imagined it. But she didn’t imagine the way Carter’s gaze cut quickly to the side—to the other person in the room.
She fumbled her helmet. She grasped the hem of her cap-sleeved jersey, fighting the need to tug it down over her hips and the revealing Lycra knickers that surely, after all, she could have found time to change.
Mark Burton. Someone had to be kidding. Mark Burton.
The same Mark who’d gone to her Mesa high school, who’d run through secretive Sentinel brevis training a group ahead of her, whose personal trace she would have detected in an instant had she not been closed off to the overload of the brevis regional main office.
Mark Burton. She’d made it through her teenage years, somehow—years during which her feelings for him had hovered around her in a veritable aura of schoolgirl crush. Humiliating. Freshman girl, senior guy…the one gawky and struggling to put the pieces of herself together, the other finishing that first growth to manhood, oozing easy confidence, a trail of beautiful, clueless non-shifting cheerleaders following behind him. Never even looking her way.
Just as well.
Distance. It had worked on her then, and it had been working on him now—since her run of luck had ended and so had years of working the field in the same huge city without crossing paths. Since they’d been working the same sectors but not the same teams.
It looked as though that was about to end, too.
So Tayla did what she knew, what had worked. She gave him the briefest of nods, and then she pretended. You’re not here. You don’t matter. I got the message years ago, don’t you worry.
Carter offered her a mild look, not so much as hesitating at her biking outfit, and nodded at the second chair flanking his desk. “Yeah, you screwed up,” he said, pale green eyes cool beneath hoar-frosted black hair that reflected his wolf. “Have a seat.”
She didn’t look at Mark Burton. Didn’t need to. He stood taller than most, of a height with her when many men weren’t. His parents, if they hadn’t passed along the powerful lion, had given him their tawny hair—which was growing more sable by the year, just as the African lion mane darkened with maturity—and a lazy kind of power. Didn’t have to move sharp to move fast; didn’t have to move brute to move strong. Medium brown eyes that shone whiskey gold in the right light…
No, Tayla had no need to look at him. She met Carter’s gaze instead. “What’s going on?”
“New assignment,” Carter said. Generally, Tayla kept to her foundation assignment—rotating between the city’s extensive parks to troll for human predators. But sometimes Carter pulled her in for the short, hard hunts to which she was so well-suited; she either worked solo, or as part of a team large enough to let her blend, one in which she could drift away to fulfill her own role.
Cheetahs. Not known for being team players.
At least, that’s what she liked to tell herself. Excuse enough.
Carter handed her a folder. She couldn’t help a glance at Mark; she found him with a folder already in hand. The realization caught her by surprise, and she missed Carter’s next several words. “…calling it a summit. But you can think of it as a major informant download—and you’ve only got a couple days to secure the site.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “If you want us to keep the Core from shredding this guy—” literally “—we need more time than—”
Carter cut him short. “The escalated timing is his call.” End of discussion, that. “You two will be working the site.” As if already hearing the words rising in Tayla’s throat, he lifted his head to stop them with nothing more than that hard gaze. “You’re both right. We need more time. But we don’t have it. So you’ll go in low and quiet, a small, specialized team. You’ll know every crack in the sidewalk before our informant arrives—”
“Scottsdale,” Mark said. His voice was still what she remembered—an amazing velvet that made her bones vibrate. Vibrate and crave more. “No cracks on those sidewalks.” High-end area on the west side of Phoenix, extra buff and gloss and cost to match.
“Maybe not,” Carter admitted. “Contact will be made at Eldorado Park—or Vista del Camino a block south. Our man will be staying in the Fronds Hotel, but he’s playing it cagey about the meet.”
“And us?” Tayla asked. She stuttered over the very thought of a hotel room. Quiet torture. Cruel, quiet torture.
“Empty condos next to Vista del Camino, at least until we get a handle on the meet. But that won’t be your responsibility. You’ll cover before and after. Keeping the area clear of surprises.”
“But…” Tayla said, searching for words—trying to maintain her strong, aloof self and floundering around somewhere in awkward teenager-speak instead. “But…”
Mark spared her a glance, if not much of one. “If you’re worried about last night—”
Last what? But she saw the faint wince around Nick Carter’s eyes and she suddenly knew, and awkward made way for horrified indignation. “You were there?” She stood, not even realizing it, the ventilated bike helmet clutched before her. “You were the one? You saw—” And over to Carter. “You told…?” Because of course that’s how Mark had known of her bobble. Her hesitation, the self-doubt that had allowed her quarry to escape.
But she caught the tightness in her throat, and the strain in her thinning voice, and she caught the knuckles