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CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

ASHER

T he knock at Asher’s cabin door was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

He’d been bored when he had to watch Tourmaline teach everyone yoga. He’d been bored when he had to watch everyone sitting around high on DX8.

But this morning might have been even worse.

He’d finished the final pages of Hunt for the Skinwalker, and there were no schizophrenic DX8 breakdowns to distract him in his cabin.

He’d settled for calling his brothers and his father in turn, though somehow, all of them were apparently too busy to shoot the breeze for very long in the middle of a weekday morning.

He was also dying to see Karlin.

Especially after the way he’d made her blush so hard this morning.

Grinning at the memory, he jumped off his bed and opened the door, only to find Ned standing where Karlin should have been.

“Oh, hi,” Asher stammered. “Uh, wanna come in?”

Ned shook his head, looking as awkward as Asher’s stammering words sounded. “I’m actually heading home for the day, but I found this cross necklace in the dining hall. I thought maybe it was yours.”

Asher instinctively raised a hand to his chest. Sure enough, the cross necklace he usually wore was gone.

He reached out and retrieved it from Ned’s outstretched hand, trying to meet the man’s eyes. “Uh yeah. It’s mine. Thank you. I appreciate you bringing it.”

“Of course, Mr. Bishop,” Ned said, offering something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’ll be taking off now. Good luck tonight.”

With that, the man turned and was gone, and Asher found himself thoroughly creeped out. The man’s vibes were seriously weird. Was Ned checking up on him? Then again, if he was, it wasn’t like he would have been able to yank Asher’s cross off his neck to use it as an excuse.

In any case, the morning of torture-boredom suddenly felt a little more worth it.

Had Karlin not ordered him to stay in here, he probably would have been snooping around, and Ned probably would have caught him doing it.

To his relief, after only about another fifteen minutes staring at a tiny imperfection in the ceiling paint, there was another knock.

This time, Karlin was the one standing on his front step, the sun at her back making her look like a redheaded angel, complete with a halo.

“Ready?” she asked by way of greeting.

“To pick up where we left off? Way back in the Jeep?” he joked.

She was blushing again, and it was all he could do not to pull her into his cabin and start kissing her right then and there, which would be an insanely stupid idea.

Instead, he forced himself to step out into the warm afternoon, pulling the cabin door shut behind him.

He decided not to tell Karlin that he now had his handgun secured in a concealed ankle holster, just in case. He doubted they would need it, and there was no need to freak her out.

“How is John, by the way?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him before answering. “Nothing to report. He left a message on my voicemail that he was fine and that he’d try to call me later today or tomorrow. Anyway, we need to get moving if we want enough time to search the Senera offices.”

A smile had snuck its way onto her face, and he could barely contain his own excitement. “Sick! Good work, Karlin,” he said, pumping his fist at the sky. “Finally some good, old-fashioned, reading-piles-of-irrelevant-documents investigating!”

“Oh, there’s more,” she teased, raising her hand to reveal a small ring with several silver keys and a plastic ID card attached to it. “Bajwa actually left everything aside from his Jeep keys behind. Apparently, he didn’t want to risk losing them in the canyon.”

Asher widened his mouth in mock horror. “You stole his keys? I can’t believe my eyes!”

“Technically, I’m borrowing them. For very legitimate purposes,” she argued. “Or maybe you’re just a really bad influence.”

He reached out his hand and brushed a few strands of hair out of her face, catching her gaze with his own.

“Definitely. I’m definitely a bad influence.”

KARLIN

Karlin watched the passing desert out of the pickup truck’s window, glad that Axel had volunteered to drive the maintenance vehicle they’d borrowed. Her hands were shaking way too much.

It wasn’t very far between the retreat site and the main Senera compound, but the road twisted back and forth, went up and down steep, sandy hills, and was covered with an unreasonable amount of potholes.

The view was pretty, though she definitely preferred the softer light of sunset.

Or sunrise.

Not that she was going to start thinking about sunrises right now.

“So, what did I miss?” Axel said after a while, glancing over at her as he expertly navigated around a trapped tumbleweed.

“Well, I learned some stuff about Cora,” she offered. “When I was talking to her and Lily this morning, she kept going on about some old Indian tribe that apparently went missing. She seems to think they might have been abducted by aliens or sent through another dimension.”

Axel laughed. “I mean, that’s totally weird, but I don’t think it means she’s secretly a spy on Senera’s payroll.”

She rolled her eyes. “Obviously not. But I do think it means she was never really here for mental health purposes. She’s a conspiracy nut looking for an intense high. It’s probably not important, but that’s about all of the new information I’ve dug up.”

“No, this is good,” Axel said. “We now have at least two patients that never should have made it into Senera’s patient pool, and that’s information we can use against them. Investigative work rarely involves a smoking gun. Usually, it’s just the slow process of building a case.”

“You know, you’re kind of a nerd. At least when you talk about your work.”

Axel looked genuinely horrified. “No! No. Gabe is the nerd. You’re the nerd. I’m the one who can parkour between two rooftops, guns blazing, and take down the bad guy without even making a big deal about it.”

“There’s no way.”

“Well, maybe not literally, but you know what I mean.”

She laughed. Despite his utterly ridiculous example, she did know what he meant.

“Okay, Jason Bourne,” she teased. “Point taken.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed suddenly, smacking his palms against the steering wheel. “I did learn something useful from the biggest nerd in my entire family.”

Her playful smile quickly turned into a frown as he shared the truth about Bajwa’s background.

He’d hidden his secrets well, and she couldn’t help but feel a sting of betrayal.

He wasn’t a good boss, and he wasn’t an ethical researcher. He was obnoxious half the time, and he spent the other half of the time dragging her into his questionable decisions.

But she’d also seen the way he’d inspired her–and many other people they worked with–in the past. He’d encouraged her to learn and to discover.

He had seemed genuinely fascinated by psychedelic research, and it hurt to know how much of his passion was probably based in nothing more honorable than his own pride.

“He’s such a scumbag,” she spat, allowing her anger to block out her hurt. “We need to take him down.”

“Hold up, sheriff,” Axel said, lifting both hands from the steering wheel in surrender just as they shuddered over a pothole.

“Just because he’s a liar and probably a professional scammer doesn’t mean we need to lose our focus,” Axel said.

“Senera itself has the most to gain here, and we need to tie in as many people as possible.”

“Building the case, right?”

“Kinda,” Axel said, a playful grin teasing his lips. “I was thinking more like that scene in The Dark Knight where Two-Face and Commissioner Gordon talk about tying all the Gotham crime lords to a single crime.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Hello? Batman? One of the most popular and cool movies of all time?”

Karlin shook her head. “I told you. Nerd. Total nerd.”

Axel looked like he was about to argue, but they had just crested a hill and could now see the Senera compound stretching out below.

“Okay, let’s do this,” she said, her voice clipped.

No more teasing. It was time to focus.

A few minutes later, they’d parked in one of the staff spaces and climbed out of the truck. There were a few other vehicles peppering the lot, but this was as quiet as it was ever going to get.

“See that door?”

Axel followed her gaze and nodded.

“If you stay along this wall here, you’ll be out of view of the cameras. Go to the door and wait for me. I’m going to go in the normal way and come let you in.”

She moved to walk to the front entrance, but he grabbed her arm, easily stopping her where she stood. She was about to shake herself free of his grip, but the look in his eyes quieted her in an instant.

He took one step closer, then two, and all of a sudden he was very, very close.

She could smell the light mint scent of his breath, and now she realized that his cologne carried a faint note of leather.

Still holding on to her, as though she might bolt, he reached up with his free hand and stroked her cheek.

“I really did love watching the sunrise with you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

It could have been a silly thing to say, but there was no hint of a joke in it.

He was so painfully sincere, so honest about wanting to be with her.

Why was it so difficult for her to believe in the obvious evidence, right in front of her eyes?

She wanted to say something in return, but no words would form. She was too busy thinking of what it would be like to kiss him, to feel his lips pressing into hers. She was surprised she could still think at all with so little distance between them.

Without any further comment, he let her go and pointed at the door. “I’ll see you in there.”

“Uh, okay,” she stammered. He gave her another delicious smile before turning away and striding over to the wall, just as she’d directed.

She stood there for several seconds too long before remembering that they seriously did need to hurry it up. There was no way to know for sure exactly how long Bajwa and the others would take to return, and she didn’t want to take any chances.

She headed for the main entrance, but just as she was about to unlock the door, she was sure that she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye.

She whirled around, glancing behind her and along the edge of the parking lot, but found nothing aside from well-manicured flowers and a few bushes.

She turned the key, drawing a few breaths to settle her nerves. It was probably a mouse, or a bird, or even just a gust of wind. Axel’s flirting had clearly put her on edge, but there was no more time for distractions. She had to focus on getting this done.

Hope rose in her chest as she walked quickly down the halls of Senera, listening to nothing but the hum of idle office equipment.

This could all be over soon if they found the evidence they needed.

This could all be over today.