Page 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
L indsay didn’t have a chance to ask Xav why he’d suddenly appeared, because Diego hustled them all out the door, and she got directed into a different vehicle from him.
The three DX Security men Lindsay rode with were good guys—she’d met their wives and kids—but Lindsay really wanted to be side-by-side with Xav. She wouldn’t be able to interrogate him in front of the others, but she could at least enjoy his closeness.
She made herself acknowledge that Xav hadn’t come for her sake. He’d probably decided to help Diego, doing his job. Even so, Lindsay kept her gaze longingly on the SUV ahead of her, wishing she could be in it and near Xav, even if he didn’t speak to her.
Traffic thinned as the convoy drove through less densely inhabited areas, until finally the SUV’s headed into empty darkness. The shooting range AC referred to was a few miles past the outskirts of town, closed now under the wintery night sky.
The lead SUV that Diego drove continued past the range a few hundred yards then turned onto a dirt road that led into the desert. Not long later, Diego pulled to the edge of this road and halted.
The other vehicles eased in behind them. Lindsay hopped out once they stopped, glad she’d worn thick boots and a jacket. The fine day had become a cold night, the wind sharp.
She tried not to look at Xav as she joined the others. Xav studiously avoided glancing at Lindsay as well, but she knew he was aware of her exact whereabouts.
Neal closed in next to Lindsay, while Diego’s men surrounded the still-bound AC.
Once AC indicated the direction they were to go, Diego signaled for them to start off. Lindsay marched behind a contingent of security men, with Neal and Xav bringing up the rear. She knew this placed her protectively in the middle of the pack, but she let them do so, for now.
They followed a faint trail that headed toward a low mountain range to the east of the road. Lindsay’s boots ground on fine gravel of the desert floor, and she pulled her jacket closer as the wind strengthened.
She began to scent the presence of humans as they went on. By Neal’s quiet growls, he could as well.
The scent was old, though. No one was out here but their little group and a few coyotes, puzzled by the nocturnal intrusion.
“Here.” AC halted when they reached the foothills of a craggy mountain and gestured at a depression in the ground.
Mountains in this range were knifelike ridges that rose more or less straight from the desert floor. Rocky folds hugged their base—they stood in one of those folds now—and from there, the mountain soared upward. It would be a steep scramble to the top even for those who enjoyed rock climbing.
Neither Xav nor Diego would allow any of their guys to dive into a hole in the ground, though it appeared to be a natural cave, not a mine shaft. Lindsay recalled what Xav had warned her about AC tossing her inside to see if it was dangerous, and she shivered.
If the hole truly was part of a mine, it could drop a long way. People had sunk shafts in myriad places across this area in days gone by, seeking silver, gold, copper, and other minerals that might turn a profit. Most mines had been abandoned but few had been filled in or even boarded over.
Diego ordered his men to lower lanterns on ropes into the cave, and Xav, in charge of gadgets as usual, sent in a surveillance camera.
Lindsay dared move close enough to peer over Xav’s shoulder at his tablet’s screen. The images from the camera showed jagged walls that glittered with granite and quartz, but no sign of human presence—no discarded cans or bottles, tent stakes or cables. No critters, either, which was odd. Rabbits, gophers, or snakes might like this hidden space to hole up in. But maybe they didn’t like the lingering smell of humans either.
Xav glanced at Lindsay as she leaned closer, and her body instantly heated. “I need to know what I’m getting into,” she said to explain why she was at his elbow.
“She doesn’t have to go all the way inside,” AC stated. “I just need her to find my brother’s scent.”
“Why did they bring him here?” Xav asked him. “Why drag your brother all this way only to disappear with him again?”
“Hell if I know,” AC snapped. “This was the intel I had, but when I checked it out, the place was already empty. That’s why I wanted her .”
Lindsay examined the image on Xav’s screen, memorizing the layout of the cave. “I’m on it. Give me a sec.”
She turned away to look for a big rock to hide behind, feeling the night grow even more cold the moment she left Xav’s side.
Neal followed her for a few yards, then stopped and turned to face the others. He planted himself between the men and Lindsay, his sword glinting in warning.
Grateful, Lindsay ducked behind a boulder and quickly undressed, stuffing her clothes into the small bag she’d brought along. The cold was brutal against her bare skin, encouraging her to shift more quickly.
At least, she wanted to shift more quickly. Her wildcat had other ideas.
Lindsay stifled a yowl as her body slowly and painfully changed form, but finally she landed on four paws and shook out her fur.
The chill instantly receded, becoming nothing but a minor annoyance. Lindsay shoved her bag behind a rock with one paw and trotted out to rejoin the others.
AC stared in mild shock as she approached, as though he’d never seen a Shifter in animal form before. It was unnerving. Lindsay resisted the temptation to sit down and wash her whiskers, to see how he’d react.
Xav scowled at him, impatient to get on with it.
“I need the hat,” AC said.
Lindsay blinked, wondering what the statement meant, but one of the DX guys pulled a baseball hat out of his pocket and handed it to AC, who took it awkwardly, his hands still bound.
AC showed it to Lindsay. “This is Dean’s. I found it in his apartment. I hope his scent hasn’t worn off since these guys confiscated it.”
Diego’s men would have searched AC, removing everything he had on him. Even a hat could become a weapon, or at least a distraction.
Lindsay rested on her haunches and gazed at AC impassively.
“I brought it so you could get a scent from it.” AC spoke slowly and loudly, as though Lindsay had suddenly lost the ability to understand him. “You can track Dean from this, can’t you?”
Lindsay intensified her stare. She had no intention of taking a nose-full of someone’s stinky hat. She could smell the unwashed hair from here.
“She doesn’t need to,” Neal said. “All she needs is your scent.”
AC looked puzzled. “Why?”
“Humans who share DNA have a similar scent,” Neal explained. “You wouldn’t notice, but we do. She can find Dean based on you.”
AC frowned but tentatively stepped forward, offering his arm for a sniff. Lindsay backed off, wrinkling her nose. She could already smell him fine.
While AC growled, Lindsay moved a few steps into the depression in the ground and tested the air.
All these people around weren’t helping. She picked up a lot of scents, Xav’s most distracting of all.
His was smoky and dark, sexy and inviting. Lindsay wished they were alone, somewhere they could be themselves, without anger and frustration between them.
But a man might be in danger, and Lindsay couldn’t in good conscience leave him to suffer when she could help.
The brother, Dean, had been here, that was certain. He and whoever had taken him had entered the cave for a bit, maybe to get out of the winter rain that had pounded the area a few days ago, but they hadn’t stayed long. They’d climbed out again, leaving the strongest scents outside the cave, which was a relief. Lindsay wouldn’t need to descend all the way into it.
Dean had been with five human men, though none had scents Lindsay recognized.
It would have been nice to pinpoint exactly who’d taken Dean and so have some lead on where they might have gone with him, but life rarely worked out so neatly.
Lindsay delicately sniffed the air again, separating scents, tucking them into precise compartments in her mind. The men and Dean had lingered here outside the cave—why, she couldn’t say—and then they’d walked away.
Her nose told her they’d headed back to flatter ground. Lindsay followed the scent trail around the group of men who watched her and into the open, heading north. She knew that a small campground lay outside a wildlife refuge at the foot of the mountains in that direction. Worth checking out.
Xav and the others followed Lindsay cautiously as she proceeded, trying to ignore the sounds of them tramping after her.
Dean’s group had moved toward the base of the mountain range from which Gass Peak poked six thousand and more feet into the sky. Good hiking, Lindsay had always heard, though she’d never been up there herself.
Lindsay wondered why they’d chosen to take Dean straight across the desert floor. The nearby highway offered a much easier to navigate route to the campground, while hiking across country brought many perils.
All kinds of hidden washes and sinkholes under thin-crusted soil could trap the unwary, or at the very least break an ankle. Getting stranded out here for any length of time could be deadly.
Maybe that’s what Dean’s captors had meant for him. To leave him or his body here for the coyotes and buzzards to pick over.
Lindsay smelled no death on the air, however. She’d have noticed that right away.
She kept moving, easily avoiding the hazards that would trip humans, her paws cushioned against the sharp pebbles on the ground.
Xav caught up to her while the others trailed behind. He moved with near-Shifter agility, avoiding cracks in the earth or stray rocks that could induce a fall. He’d told Lindsay he’d been hiking this wilderness since he’d been a kid, and he’d know this world even better than she did.
Lindsay and her folks had lived in a Shiftertown in Nebraska after they’d been rounded up from their home in the northern Canada until about ten years ago. Then their Shiftertown had closed and consolidated, Shifter Bureau thinking nothing of breaking up friendships and ties between Shifters to relocate them.
The move to the Las Vegas Shiftertown had been hard on Lindsay. If it hadn’t been for Cassidy and her family, she’d have despaired.
Now she had Xav on her mind, all day every day, to stir her mating frenzy. Inconvenient, because he’d just broken up with her.
Lindsay blinked moisture from her eyes—stupid dust—and continued.
The scent trail led her to the campground, remote, dark, and empty. No one had bothered to pitch a tent on this freezing cold winter night.
The group she tracked had been here. Lindsay easily picked up Dean’s scent, stronger this time, meaning their stay here had been more recent. And he’d been worried.
Lindsay turned to Neal, trying to explain in body language what she’d found. He was Lupine, she Feline, and cross-species communication was difficult, but Neal got the gist.
So did Xav, surprisingly.
“He was here,” Xav announced before Neal could speak. “Linds, do you know how many were with him?”
AC watched Lindsay intently, as though he expected her to pound out the number with her paw, like a trained horse.
Lindsay smothered a sigh, extended a claw, and traced out the number 5 in the loose dirt.
“Fuck.” AC muttered. “I don’t want to fight off five guys on my own.” He switched his hard gaze to Xav.
Xav shook his head. “You hired us—no, you hired Lindsay—to track down your brother. If you want us to help you fight to free him, that’s extra.”
AC glared. “You really are a bastard, aren’t you? I knew that when you and your brother hauled me off to jail before. No mercy.”
“Oh, we have mercy.” Xav sent him the smile that made villains wonder if he was truly a good guy or not. “But we’re not sacrificing ourselves for you. We’re helping you search because we feel sorry for your brother. No other reason.”
Lindsay edged closer to Xav, signifying she agreed with him. Plus, she’d take any excuse to be next to him.
She reminded herself that he’d left her today. Implied it was over—whatever this was.
So why had he showed up tonight? To protect her? That’s what Neal and Diego were for, not to mention the other security men. Xav had no real reason to come along.
The idea that Xav had wanted to make sure Diego and their employees didn’t fail Lindsay brought a warm glow to her heart. She tried to banish the cozy feeling, but in her lynx form, complicated human emotions tended to fade, and straightforward ones took over.
Her Shifter self acknowledged that Xav was hot and that he cared about her safety. It was enough. All the words just got in the way.
AC scanned the darkness. “So, where are they now?”
Lindsay made herself leave Xav’s side and continue her circuit of the campsite. Dean and his captors had lingered here longer than they had at the cave, maybe even sleeping here, but why and where they’d gone after that was fuzzy.
She wandered past the campground, trying to ignore the lantern flashlights everyone but Neal carried, which impaired her night vision. She found more traces of scent, very faint, and followed them.
Lindsay again wondered why Dean’s captors had come to this remote area. To meet someone? To pick up something left for them? To hand off Dean to another crew? They hadn’t dumped him, or she’d have found him already.
She didn’t smell anyone other than Dean and his captors in or beyond the campsite. No one had used this place since the weather had turned raw, so there were no confusing overlaying smells. From what she could tell, only Dean and the other men had been here recently.
She also couldn’t pinpoint a scent trail that led away from here. She did smell oil and diesel, and concluded that a truck or some other vehicle had awaited the group and taken them away.
Lindsay trotted back to the circle of men and gazed up at Neal, hoping he understood her.
“Trail ends here,” Neal announced. He too tested the wind. “I think they drove back to the highway.”
AC balled his hands in frustration. “You think ?” He switched his gaze to Lindsay. “Where did they go? Where are they, you useless bitch?”
He lunged at Lindsay and found himself staring down both a broadsword and a blunt, black taser. Neal and Xav had put themselves between Lindsay and AC. She contented herself with a warning growl.
“She’s got to keep looking,” AC all but shouted. “Make her go back out there. They must have taken my brother somewhere .”
“We’ll continue the search at the DX offices,” Diego said calmly from somewhere behind Lindsay. “We can find out what kind of vehicles came to the campground in the last week or so, and which way they went.”
“How?” AC demanded. “Damn you, my brother could already be dead.”
He wasn’t, Lindsay knew. At least he hadn’t been when he’d left here.
“She says he’s probably alive,” Neal translated. “Shifters can’t follow the scent of someone who’s been taken away in a rapidly moving vehicle. Then we can only smell truck, and that smells like every other truck.”
Most Shifters couldn’t, Lindsay amended to herself. One Shifter, called Tiger, could distinguish between various vehicles and even track them. But then, he had uncanny abilities that no other Shifter did. Diego could always ask if Tiger was available to help, though Tiger would come only if he wanted to.
“You mean that’s it?” AC was demanding. “They brought my brother to this campground in the middle of nowhere, but who the hell knows where he is now?” He pointed a blunt finger at Lindsay. “I’m not paying you for a whole lotta nothing.”
Lindsay lost her temper. She sprang at AC before she could stop herself, but Xav got in her way.
Lindsay pulled the leap, not wanting to hurt Xav, and ended up landing hard. Dust puffed around her and made her want to cough.
“Not worth it, Linds,” Xav said in a firm voice.
Lindsay had to do something . Her adrenaline was high, she was annoyed she’d lost Dean’s trail, and she was enraged at AC for being such a shit. His poor brother was probably in trouble, and she could do nothing about it.
Her wildcat refused to stand still and calmly wait for Diego to give orders. Fighting frenzy was taking over.
She let out a yowling growl, vaulted past Xav, and ran into the desert darkness.