Lynx Destiny (31 page)

“Probably not,” Miss Laura said, apparently keener of ear than most. She glanced around the thinning crowd. The music still played, the lights still bloomed over the artist’s canopies, but Cloudview was never a late-night town and this family-oriented festival was no exception. “I’m getting worried. This doesn’t make any sense.”

No. It didn’t. Not unless the Core had decided to push the boundaries of the conditions of détente between the Core and the Sentinels in the quest to recover their weapon—unless they’d again broken cover to reach Phillip.

In which case, the last thing he needed was the help of a kind woman who knew nothing of this world outside her own. Because he, too, knew not nearly enough—only what his family had taught him, and nothing of how a Core posse truly behaved in the field.

“Maybe the sheriff is here,” he suggested to her.

“I’ll just bet he is—or not far away. And, oh—” her expression brightened with determination “—I bet the band would make an announcement!”

Kai nodded, already crouching to eye the ground around the wheelchair—hints of his blued night vision overlaying the shadows, a lifetime of living and hunting in the forest at his fingertips as he brushed them over a gouge in the tough, flat native grass.

“Kai,” she said, and he stiffened under the tentative hand she pressed to his shoulder. “Are you all right? Those men were right—you don’t look well. And...we’ve been worried.” She smiled wryly at his surprised look. “All of us. About you and Regan both. Things just haven’t seemed right over this past week.”

“Things aren’t right,” he told her. “But I’m about to do something about it.”

This night, the lynx was on the hunt.

* * *

The far edge of the park petered out into darkness, a cluster of bear-proof garbage bins, a concrete well house and mature pines making the transition into private property forest.

There should have been a light over the bins; there wasn’t.

Kai did little more than establish a brief pattern of sign toward the bins before he quit tracking and started stalking. Not a true stalk, slinking and gliding and freezing in place, but a steady pace with intent behind it and his night vision kicking in to show the way. Up to the cluster of bins within the trees, past them to the well house—hearing nothing, seeing nothing...

The land silent around him.

“Kai, get out!” The truncated shout came from close by, muffled into a grunt of frustration.
Bill’s voice. Mary’s cry of dismay.

But he had no time to step back and assess the danger. Light flooded the area, blinding him. He snarled in protest and warning, backing a few quick steps until he thumped up against the tree he’d just passed, one arm in front of his eyes and the other up as a ward.

Someone came on anyway, slamming reinforced knuckles into his shoulder and a quick patter of blows to his torso when he snarled and twisted away from that sudden renewed agony.

But the man had made a mistake, standing in that single spot to mete out punishment, arrogant with Kai’s blindness. Kai blocked one blow, then another—and then, cornered too close to his attacker to launch a decent offensive, he sprang up for what would have been a resounding snap-kick to the head and instead used his knee—more agile, more limber than ever expected. The man went down hard from a blow to the temple, and Kai landed on his feet, crouched for action and blinking hard into the light.

“Kai!” Mary gasped, sounding more like admonishment than relief—and when his vision cleared, he saw it was just as much astonishment as anything else. Saw the same on Bill’s face, along with the unvoiced curse lingering on his lips.

But Phillip sat on the ground with the wryest of smiles on his battered face, his arm clasped around his ribs and pride evident above all. “Kai,” he said with an out-of-place calm that said Kai had only just confirmed what Phillip had suspected all along.

And the man sprawled at Kai’s feet said nothing, but he didn’t have to. He was Core, and he wasn’t alone.

Chapter 29

R
egan drove back into Cloudview against a stream of departing cars, and through the family and friend clusters still heading to their scattered parking spots. She quite rudely pulled right onto the winter-brown grass, helping herself to a parking spot that didn’t exist. She yanked the gun from the center console to slip it into her jacket pocket where it barely fit.

The lights still blazed over the park, but the musicians were packing up and only a few vendors lingered. She ran to one of the food vendors, panting up with enough purpose that the man behind the window shook his head ruefully before she even got there. “Sorry, we’re closed—we’ve got nothing on the grill.”

“How about leftovers?” she asked him, too desperate to pay heed to his hiking brow. “Anything in aluminum foil?”

It didn’t quite make enough sense; he only frowned at her.

“I don’t care if the food is still good,” she said, hands wrapped around the blunt lip of the little sill. “I just need the foil!”

“I can’t sell you old food!” But he took another look at her face and reached for a shelf just barely within sight of the window. “For Pete’s sake...have you some tin foil.” He tore off a sheet and shoved it through the payment slot.

She snatched it up, not caring so much about his doubtful expression. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“It’s just foil,” he muttered, barely audible as she ran back for the car and then nearly ran into a woman she instantly recognized as Miss Laura, there on the edge of a pool of light.

“Regan!” Laura sounded as desperate as Regan felt. “Have you seen Kai? He was just
here—
and Bill and Mary and Phillip
aren’t.
”

Regan supposed she should have pretended not to understand that fractured statement.

The problem was, she did. She understood completely.

She dropped to her knees, tugging the gun from her pocket and ignoring Laura’s gasp. “Where did you last see him?”

“My God, Regan, what are you doing?”

“I have very little idea.” Regan didn’t hide the grim note in her voice as she fumbled with the gun, finally ejecting the magazine.
“Where?”

“Just outside the vendor area—Phillip’s wheelchair is there, and I don’t know if you’ve seen him, but the man can barely walk—” Laura interrupted herself, straightening. “Regan Adler, what’s going on?”

Regan glanced up, pushing bullets from the magazine and onto the foil. She still couldn’t feel whatever had affected Kai, but she supposed that’s what made these little missile-size amulets so dangerous—no one but Kai could.

No wonder his family had hidden him. No wonder the Core wanted him dead, now that they’d found him—now that he’d given himself away, coming to the defense of the land. Regan had felt the land cry out, that first day at the dry pool. But Kai had felt the silent amulets.

“Miss Laura,” Regan said, deliberately giving her the respectful address she’d used as a child, “that voice worked on me once. Not so much now.”

“Damn,” Laura said. She pressed her lips together in pure exasperation—and in worry. “It was worth a try.”

Regan balled the foil up around the cartridges, making sure it was plenty crumpled to create baffles of insulation. Such as they were. “Look,” she said. “It’s a long, long story, and it doesn’t have an ending yet.” She replaced the magazine into the pistol, fumbling a little with it until she heard it click into place. One cartridge in the gun now, sitting right in the chamber.

Not for long.

She stood, jamming the gun back into her pocket. “If I don’t find them
right now,
the ending we get isn’t going to be a happy one.”
Hide it in earth, in metal, in concrete...
She had metal, more or less. She glanced around the park.
Concrete.

Sure, under the pavilion. But she could hardly pry it up and—

There. The permanent park garbage can, set in its formed concrete container. Surely the two of them...

“Help me,” she told Laura, no part of it a request.

“But what
—
?”

She turned on the woman, letting her new
fierce
come out. “Just do it! If I can ever explain, I will—but this is for Kai! For Bill and Mary and Phillip!”

And for all of Cloudview, even if they never knew it.

She ran for the garbage receptacle, and Laura did follow—if not at a run, then briskly enough.

“Push,” Regan said. “I just need to tip it up a little—”

For a moment, as Laura awkwardly crouched to join her, she thought they wouldn’t do it—that they couldn’t. And then it slid a few inches, caught on the lip of the uneven ground, and started to tip.

Hastily, she jammed the crumpled foil beneath it, up into the crack between the concrete base and the trash can it held. She jerked her fingers away. “I’m clear!”

The receptacle thumped down into place, and Laura backed away, brushing at her salmon-colored blazer.

Regan couldn’t help but do the same, brusquely slapping at her jacket. “Thank you. I swear, if I can ever explain—”

Laura frowned at her. “I don’t know if it’s bad luck that Jaime Nez is off dealing with some guys who couldn’t hold their beer or if you’re better off.”

“Neither do I,” Regan said, more frank than she’d meant to be. How could she hide what was happening from a town still awake from a festival—or from this woman who was already searching for their missing friends?

She couldn’t, that’s how. And she wouldn’t waste time trying. She had to find...

Laura said, “I’ve been all around this place looking for them, and they’re not at the store or answering their phones. We even made an announcement.”

Then Regan would start with Kai—and Kai would find the others.

If he hadn’t already done it.

And if the Core hadn’t found
him.

* * *

Arshun. Arshun and three of his men—two replacement musclemen and Marat. Waiting for Kai...
counting
on him.

Arshun nudged his minion with a pointy-toed shoe. “Get up,” he said. “I’d dock you for that sad display, but I think everyone here knew it was inevitable.” He bestowed a condescending smile on Mary and Bill, who tightly held one another’s hand. “Well, perhaps not quite everyone.”

Kai put his back against the tree, his ribs aching and his shoulder full of shards of pain; he couldn’t quite stand up straight. “I’m here. Isn’t that what you wanted? Let them go.”

“It’s not quite what I wanted,” Arshun told him as the downed man struggled to his feet and stood without any assurance in himself. His partner loomed in lurking mode, while Marat stood behind Bill, a small man looming with menace. “But don’t worry. If I complete my business here, I’ll release them. After all, you’ve already seen what I can do with memory—they’re no threat.”

“I’ve seen you’re not as good as you think you are,” Kai told him. “You couldn’t control Regan for long.”

“I
knew
it!” Mary burst out. “I knew there was something wrong with that girl!”

Arshun lifted one shoulder. “She was more than she first seemed,” he said. “I would have handled that differently if I’d known.”

“You shouldn’t have
handled
her at all.” Something inside Kai went darker, just a little less controlled. “You shouldn’t have touched anyone in this town.”

“Town,”
Arshun scoffed. “It’s barely an ugly spot on the map.”

“Funny,” Phillip said. “I definitely feel the same way about you, whoever you are.”

“You’ll never have the chance to figure it out.” Arshun’s words came a little less casually.

“Tell him, then,” Kai said, finally managing to straighten himself, pressing his shoulders against the tree—remembering how the land had lent him strength and warmth in those hours he would have died without it, and narrowing his eyes at the reminder of its loss. The sensation of darkness still threaded through him—leaving him to bleed, leaving him blind. “Tell him,” Kai repeated, “how you’ve come looking for a safe place to hide your evil, and that you don’t care how you get it.”

“Evil.” Arshun regarded him with annoyance. “That’s just rude.”

“Tell them all,” Kai said, “that you want the Adler land, and when you didn’t get it, you arranged for Frank’s injury—and then you went after Regan. Tell them how this situation has grown so big in your hands, and the trouble you’re in from it.”

“Certainly,” Arshun said. “Shall I also tell them how you’ve managed to stop me so far? Or that your little Regan takes after her mother, seeing and hearing things that should get her committed? If she is, do you suppose she’ll last any longer than her mother did, once the doctors did their worst?” He made a
tsk
ing noise. “Doctors just don’t understand your kind very well, do they?”

“Kai,” Mary said, her voice trembling, “what is he talking about? What are
you
talking about?”

“You see?” Arshun indicated the three hostages. “Now you’ve upset them.”

Never facile with words, Kai found himself without them now. He growled deeply, leaving no doubt about that threat.

“Actually,” Arshun said, looking satisfied, “
no one
truly understands your kind. Including you, apparently. Do you think we don’t know you’re up here alone?”

Kai saw her the instant before he heard her.
Regan.
Arshun had no warning at all.

She stepped out from behind the brick well house and into the light, the gun clasped in an inexpert hand, her posture defiant. “You’re wrong,” she said, determination in her voice and stance and definitely in her eye. “He’s not alone. And you have no idea what we can do together.”

“Regan...” Kai couldn’t hide his dismay.
Regan and the gun both.
Why had she come here into danger? Why had she brought the gun straight to the Core?

She didn’t need a translation—or even a connection to him—to understand his reaction. “I had to,” she told him. “I—I heard the warning.” She lifted her head, encompassing Mary and Bill and Phillip...and Kai himself. Her expression held determination; her uncertain voice revealed her fear. “I couldn’t just leave this to happen.”