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What his ego was currently telling him was that he was a dumbshit for leaving the twelve-gauge three meters away.

Matt was facing northeast, James southwest. He could feel Matt drawing breath when someone started yelling.

“Well Jesus Christ on a bicycle! What in all hell is that racket? What you boys got set up out here? Goddamn, ’s gettin’ so a man can’t ’sociate with another man without setting off some kinda goddamn alarms. Now turn it off! We ain’t gonna hurt ya none.” James could hear and feel someone come out of the brush facing Matt.

“Who’s we?” Matt demanded. “Everybody where I can see ’em or I’ll just start shooting.” His voice was perfectly calm, clipped.

“Jus’ me and my boy. Now stop pointin’ that goddamn thing at me and turn this damn alarm off.”

James could hear the smile in Matt’s voice. “Once I see your son, I’ll stop pointing this goddamn thing at you.”

The man grumbled under his breath, then called out, “Norris, come on out or this asshole’s liable to shoot me!” More rustling bushes came behind James. Matt had them covered.

“No one else?” Matt asked. He turned the alarm off remotely.

“Nope.” Norris answered this time.

“Who’s in the tree back here?” James asked. He could feel the guy more than see him. There was a long silence.

“Oh, that’s my other son, Nate. Forgot about him.” Forgetting your son. Could happen to anyone.

James rolled his eyes. “C’mon down, Nate, or I’ll tell my cousin here to start slicing off limbs.” It was hard to do with that kind of pistol, but James was figuring these guys weren’t familiar with the weaponry. “Want me to check it out?” He subvocalized to Matt while waiting for Nate.

“Perimeter alarms at about four meters.” When Nate joined the fam, James grabbed the shotgun and walked the perimeter, listening to the negotiations between Matt and the intruders.

“Now what in the hell are you doin’ campin’ out here with some kind alarm on your site? People’ll think yer downright unfriendly. Or ya got something to hide. I could be the landowner, fer all you know, and I coulda shot first and asked questions later.”

“You the landowner?” Matt’s tone was dry.

There was a little hemming and hawing, some throat clearing. “Well, no, but I coulda been.”

“How do you know I’m the not the landowner? Or my cousin?”

Puzzled silence. “Well, why ’n hell would you be out here campin’?” His tone was incredulous.

James could almost hear Matt’s shrug. “Like camping.”

“Ya must,” one of the sons chimed in. “Ya got some damned expensive equipment to be the kinda guys that need to be campin’.” These guys clearly did need to camp, for economic reasons.

“’S a hobby. How come you guys didn’t stay at that shelter outside Emmett tonight?”

“Headin’ southeast, didn’t make it afore dark.”

“How come you didn’t stop at the shelter at Tom’s Cabin?” James asked as he stepped back into the little clearing.

“Full.” The old man gave a strangled little cough.

James knew as well as Matt these guys were full of it, even without the brain voodoo. They were armed—typical in Idaho—and were wearing standard military-issue camo all-weathers. Not that unusual, just suspicious. They couldn’t be RIA militia, but they could be with any number of municipal militias. Or a poorly funded private militia.

He also knew what was going to happen. James didn’t want these guys here, but he really didn’t want to send them packing and not know where they were.

Matt opened his mental dam and confirmed what James was thinking. Looked like they had guests for the night.

Chapter 7

M
ATT
took first watch. Instead of telling James, he let his intentions to do so flow out of his head. James glanced at him and gave him a little nod.

This was fucking freaky. Partly the idea that James could understand his intentions, but even more freaky was how easy it was to control what he wanted to “tell” James.

He had completely untapped reserves of talent, looked like.

He watched James roll up in his bag and settle in. Matt turned off the solar-battery light and leaned against a tree, alert but relaxed. Either their “guests” were faking some very convincing snores, or they were asleep. He’d reset the perimeter alarms, in case of more bipedal, nocturnal visitors. James had his shotgun within easy reach this time. Typical SOUF. Except for that leaving-the-shotgun-with-his-sleeping-bag thing earlier. Matt smirked a little.

James started to snore. Oh well—at least it was somewhat entertaining. And he wasn’t as attractive when he snored.

Matt glanced over at James. His forearms were bare even with the temperature dropping rapidly. He only wore a tight old-style T-shirt, and his broad shoulder was impressive even hunched over his chest in sleep.

And dammit, his hair was still sexy. Matt didn’t recall ever finding any other guy’s hair sexy. He didn’t even like curly hair. Except on James. His Basque ancestry gave him a golden skin tone, and his hair was a few shades darker, sort of brownish golden. Even his eyes were dark brownish gold, heavy on the gold. He should appear monochromatic and blah, but instead he gave the appearance of a lion. He was… tawny. Especially with the hair. It was sort of like a short mane. James even moved a little like a lion. Slow and smooth. Negligently graceful.

Matt’s mind started to wander into areas better left alone. Like, what would it be like to be run down and caught by that lion, the back of your neck gripped in his jaws while he shoved his cock in you?

“Fuck,” Matt muttered, rubbing his hand over his face. He was half hard and having bestiality fantasies about the guy who not only persecuted him in high school, but could crack his mind like an egg and make him do stuff he didn’t want to do. Or did want to do, but knew was a very bad idea.

“You are a sick fuck,” he told himself under his breath. He glanced back over at James. His eyes were open, watching Matt. Matt looked away after a second. Had he been projecting to him? “Fuck,” he muttered one more time.

When he looked over again, James’s eyes were closed. The snores started up again.

About four hours later, Matt was watching James again when he came awake suddenly, flailing a little and coughing, like he’d choked on something. “Bug,” James muttered hoarsely, running a hand through his hair and blinking rapidly. Then he ran both hands over and down his face and sat up to face Matt. “Swallowed a bug in my sleep.”

“They teach you that super-covert wake-up technique at Fort Lewis?”

James growled. “Time’s it?”

“0123. Oh that’s weird.”

“Huh?”

“It’s zero, one, two, three.”

James stared at him. “I’m going to take a leak. Then you need to hit your bag. You’re getting loopy.”

Matt kind of agreed. “Go toward the road. One of our ‘guests’ went down toward the river a minute ago.”

When James disappeared into the bushes to the south, “guest” number two reappeared from the opposite side of the campground. Matt watched unblinkingly while he rolled himself back into his worn Mylar cocoon. He seemed strangely meek. No defiant or sullen looks. Huh. No balls without Daddy to back him up.

J
AMES
woke Matt up at 0600 with a pouch of instant-hot coffee. “God, I could get used to that.”

“Having someone bring you coffee in bed?”

That too.
“Uh-huh. Nice, thanks.”

“Thought you’d wanna be outta here soon.” James gave him an intent look.

James wanted the match on that retinal scan as badly as Matt. More. They had to get away from their nighttime visitors before he could check in at 0730.

“Let’s get to it, then.”

By the time Matt was pulling up the perimeter alarm, their visitors were coming to. James had put the coffee away already, and Matt tried to work up a shred of guilt for having nothing to offer the intruders—oops, he meant
guests
—but he just wasn’t up to the job. Matt and James left with barely a word to them.

James hadn’t asked for any details about their exact route. When Matt started looking for a good spot to check in from at 0715, James said, “It’ll be nice to be myself again.”

He either wasn’t totally convinced that Matt believed he was James Jeremiah (ha!) Ayala, or he wasn’t comfortable with everyone at QESA not believing. The people who could scrub this mission and strand him here. Not that they would.

Well, Anais might.

They weren’t in the best spot for checking in. They’d entered the small town of Emmett, but it had been pretty much unavoidable. Matt’s experience was that towns like this were often half abandoned, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find someplace covert.

But the problem with this damn town was that it was too prosperous, and didn’t have a lot of abandoned buildings or hidey-holes. Shit, this usually wasn’t an issue. It must be one of those communities that had banded together and avoided selling their water rights and/or land to foreign agribusiness for a quick buck decades ago. Asia owned more land in Idaho than the locals did.

Matt was working toward a park he’d seen from the hill coming into town. There’d be something there.

“Here,” James said quietly from behind him. Matt looked to where James indicated with his chin. There was a shipping container in that little ravine to the east of them.

“’S’exposed; can’t get in without anyone seeing.”

“D’you see it when we walked beside the ravine thirty seconds ago?”

“No.” Matt scowled. Jerk just had to be observant.

James gave a little snort. Matt was starting to understand some of them. He was pretty sure that snort meant “you’re being immature,” aka “quit sulking, whiner.”

“If we go in under that little bridge over there, I can keep an eye out. Pretty sure your lines of sight are obscured.”

The ravine was an ag canal, but this time of year it was just a sun-baked gully with willow brush growing up its banks. Matt sat inside the somewhat rusted-out container with various somewhat creepy fauna and disassembled himself. This was annoying. Did other half-assed secret agents have to remove their faux calf muscle to phone home?

Fucking military doctors.

“Matt.” Andry greeted him with an overly formal nod.

“Andry.” Matt rolled his eyes. “Where’s Grampa?”

Before he could finish the question, Lance was kicking Andry off the vid-datascreen and greeting Matt.

“You still with Ayala?”

“What would I have done with him?”

“Thrown him in a river?” Lance looked cranky as all hell.

“He can swim. Okay, lay it on me, old man. Stop being grouchy and just spit it out.” Matt knew it couldn’t be good.

“His retina scan didn’t match the ones on file.”

Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-fuck. “How old are they?”

“From when they accepted him into Psi-force.”

“Nothing after that?”

“They don’t change much, Matt.”

Matt was thinking fast, about possibilities he hadn’t even entertained. “Can you overlay the scan I sent you on the ones from his—Ayala’s—record?”

Lance was obviously only just suppressing an eye roll. He turned to the other datascreen. Matt could see just enough of his face to see that his expression changed, but not to what. “Weird,” he muttered. “Hang on a sec,” he told Matt. He brought up more screens.

“All right. I’m transmitting the image of the overlay to you, and another overlay. We have to end this transmission; everyone’s on short com. Look at these and reconnect in three hours with a plausible explanation for me.”

Before Matt could acknowledge the unusual orders, Lance cut the vid feed. Matt’s hookup chimed softly, indicating new mail. He opened the images from QESA.

And sucked in a breath. He’d thought this was a possibility, but wasn’t really prepared for it. James’s file retina print was laid over the scan Matt had sent, and showed an exact matchup. All the vessels in the original print matched the scan he’d taken, but in the scan there were extra vessels. Almost twice as many. Way more than a regular retina should have. And there was something about them….

Matt opened the second image. This time, the scan he’d sent had been split and each eye overlaid the other. The original vessel print had been removed. Only the new blood vessels were shown. They were a perfect match. It had to be intentional. Someone had to have implanted those blood vessels.

Or circuitry?

“Matt,” a voice called almost silently from behind him. Matt whirled and reached for his pistol. James was looking at him from a rusted-out hole in the back side of the container. “We gotta go. Our nocturnal visitors are heading this way.”

“Those guys again?” he asked, duck-walking for the back. That hole might be big enough to get through. “Which direction?”

“Same way we came in.” The back door exit was preferable.

“Can you help me open this thing up a little?”

“Use your weapon? Can you recharge it?”

“Doesn’t really have cutting capabilities. And I might have forgotten to recharge the solar charge-pack,” Matt admitted. “It’ll take a few hours to recharge.”

James sighed a little. “Let’s look for other options.”