The brutal truth made her shiver despite the heat. Survival depended on banding together under the Rule. She was only nine when they brought her to Rockhaven, but she remembered being alone. Hunted. If Simon Axton had not found her . . .
She pushed the memories away to study her subject. He must be forty feet above the gleaming white deck. Snagging a rope at the top of the mast, he fed it to the two men waiting below, one old, one young, both wearing faded navy polo shirts. Some kind of uniform?
“He’s been at sea,” she murmured. “The water could have protected him.”
It could do that, couldn’t it? Protect against fire. Even if the water wasn’t blessed.
“I don’t like it,” Gideon said bluntly. “You’re sure he’s one of us?”
She had felt him more with every mile, a tug on her attention, a prickle in her fingertips. Now that she could actually see him, the hum in her blood had become a buzz. But it was all vibration, like listening to a vacuum cleaner in the dark, without shape or color. Not only human, not wholly elemental . . .
“What else could he be?” she asked.
“He could be possessed.”
“No.”
She would know, she would feel that. She was attracted, not repelled, by his energy. And yet . . . Uncertainty ate at her. She had not been a Seeker very long. The gift was rough and raw inside her, despite Miriam’s careful teaching. What if she was wrong? What if he wasn’t one of them? At best she and Gideon would have a wasted trip and she’d look like a fool. At worst, she could betray them to their enemy.
She watched the man begin his descent, his long limbs fluid in the sun, sheened with sweat and sunlight.
And if she was right, his life depended on her.
She shook her head in frustration. “We’re too far away. If I could touch him . . .”
“What are you going to do?” Gideon asked dryly. “Walk up and ask to feel his muscles?”
There was an idea. She gave a small, decisive nod. “If I have to.”
She opened her door. Gideon opened his.
“No,” she said again. She needed to assert herself. Gideon was five years older, in the cohort ahead of hers, but she was technically in charge. “I can get closer if you’re not standing next to me.”
A frown formed between his straight blond brows. “It could be dangerous.”
She had chosen their watch post. They both had scanned the area. It was safe. For now. “There’s no taint.”
“That’s not the kind of danger I’m talking about,” Gideon muttered.
She disregarded him. For thirteen years, she had trained to handle herself. She could handle this.
She swung out of the car, lowering her sunglasses onto her nose like a knight adjusting his helm, considering her strategy. Her usual approach was unlikely to work here. This subject was no confused and frightened child or even a dazed, distrustful adolescent.
After a moment’s thought, she undid another button on her blouse. Ignoring Gideon’s scowl—after all,
he
was not the one responsible for the success of their mission—she crossed the street to the marina.
It was a long, uneven walk along sun-bleached boards to the end of the dock.
The man descending the mast had stopped halfway down, balanced on some sort of narrow crossbeam, staring out at the open sea on the other side of the boat.
She tipped back her head. Her nerves jittered. Surely he wasn’t going to . . .
He jumped. Dived, rather, a blinding arc of grace and danger, sending up a plume of white water and a shout from the younger man on deck.
She must have cried out, too. The two men on the boat turned to look at her, the young one with a nudge and the old one with a nod.
The one in the water surfaced with an explosion of breath, tossing his wet hair back from his face.
Cooling off? Or showing off?
It didn’t matter.
He stroked cleanly through the water, making for the swimming platform at the back of the boat.
Show time, she thought.
Pasting a smile on her face, she walked to the edge of the dock. “Eight point six.”
He angled his head, meeting her gaze. She felt the jolt clear to her stomach, threatening her detachment. His eyes were the same hammered gold as the water, with shadows beneath the surface.
“Ten.”
She pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “I deducted a point for recklessness. You shouldn’t dive this close to the dock.”
He grinned and grabbed the ladder. “I wasn’t talking about my dive.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. No one under the Rule would speak to her that way. But that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? For him to respond to her while she figured out what to do with him.
“I’m flattered.” This close, she could feel his energy pulsing inside him like a second heart. She tried again to identify it, but her probing thought slid off him like a finger on wet glass. He was remarkably well shielded. Well, he would have to be, to survive this long on his own.
She cast about for a subject. “Nice boat.”
He shot her a measuring glance, hauled himself out of the sea, water streaming from his arms and chest. “Yeah, she is.”
She tried not to goggle at the way his wet shorts drooped on his hips, clung to his thighs. “How long have you had her?”
“She’s not mine. Four of us crewed her up from the Caribbean for her owners.”
“So you’re staying here? In town.”
He shook his head. “As soon as she’s serviced, I’m on to the next one.”
Apprehension gripped her. She arched her brows. “You’re still referring to the boat, I hope.”
He flashed another grin, quick and crooked as lightning. “Just making it clear. Once I line up another berth, another job, I’m gone.”
“Then we don’t have much time,” she said with more truth than he knew.
He stood there, shirtless, dripping, regarding her with glinting golden eyes. “How much time do you need?”
Her heart beat in her throat. Her mouth was dry. He thought her interest was sexual. Of course he did. That’s what she had led him to think.
“Why don’t we start with coffee,” she suggested, “and see what happens.”
He glanced at his companions, bundling sails on deck. “Drinks, and you’ve got yourself a date.”
Lara swallowed. She had hoped to be back in Rockhaven by nightfall. But a few hours wouldn’t make that much difference to their safety. She wanted desperately to succeed in their mission, to prove herself to the school council. She rubbed her tingling fingertips together. If only she could touch him . . . But they were separated by more than four feet of water. “Five o’clock?”
“Seven. Where?”
She scrambled to cull a name from their frustrating foray along the waterfront earlier in the day. Someplace close, she thought. Someplace dark. “The Galaxy?”
His eyes narrowed before he nodded. “I’ll be there.”
Relief rushed through her. “I’ll be waiting.”
JUSTIN WATCHED HER walk away, slim legs, trim waist, snug skirt, nice ass, a shining fall of dark hair to the middle of her back. Definitely a ten.
“Hot.” Rick Scott, the captain, offered his opinion.
“Very,” Justin agreed.
Her face was as glossy and perfect as a picture in a magazine, her eyes large and gray beneath dark winged brows, her nose straight, her mouth full-lipped. Unsmiling.
Why a woman like that would choose a dive like the Galaxy was beyond him. Unless she was slumming. He picked his way through the collapsed sails and coiled ropes on deck. Which explained her interest in him even after she’d learned he wasn’t a rich yacht owner.
The stink of mineral spirits competed with the scent of brine and the smells of the bay, fish and fuel and mudflats.
“The hot chicks always go for Justin,” Ted said. “Lucky bastard.”
Rick spat with precision over the side. He was tidy that way, an ex-military man with close-cropped graying hair and squinting blue eyes. “Next time you send the halyard up the mast, you can climb after it. Maybe some girl will hit on you.”
A red stain crept under the younger crewman’s tan. “It was an accident.”
Justin felt a flash of sympathy. He remembered—didn’t he?—when he was that young. That dumb. That eager to please. “Could have happened to anybody.”
He’d made enough mistakes himself his first few months and years at sea. Worse mistakes than tugging on an unsecured line.
He wondered if the girl would be another one.
Dredging the disassembled winch out of the bucket of mineral spirits, he laid out the gears to dry. He was working his way north again like a migrating seabird, following the coast and an instinct he did not try to understand. The last thing he needed was to get tangled up on shore.
“
I’ll be waiting
,” she’d said in that smooth, low voice.
He reached for the can of marine grease. Maybe she could slake the ache inside him, provide a few hours of distraction, a few minutes of release.
Mistake or not, he would be there.
THIS BAR WAS a mistake, Lara thought.
The Galaxy was four blocks from the waterfront, off the tourist path, in a rundown neighborhood of shaded windows, sagging porches, and chain fences.
She perched in one of the dingy booths, trying to watch the room without making eye contact with the sailors and construction types straddling the stools at the bar.
Or maybe not.
At least in these seedy surroundings, no one would question if she and Gideon helped one slurring, stumbling patron out to their car later that night.
Over the bottles, a TV flickered, competing with the glow of the neon signs. MILLER. BUD. PABST BLUE RIBBON. The air stank of bodies and beer, a trace of heavy cologne, a whiff from the men’s room down the hall. She folded her hands in her lap, her untouched Diet Coke leaving another ring on the cloudy table.
“Is it hot in here, or is it you?”
She looked up to find two sailors flanking her table. “Excuse me?”
The larger sailor shifted closer, trapping her into the booth. “You’re too pretty to be sitting here alone. Mind if we join you?”
She wasn’t alone. Gideon watched from an ill-lit corner, his attention divided between her and the door.
She straightened on the sticky vinyl seat. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“I don’t see anybody.” The sailor—hovering drunkenly between cheerful and offensive—nudged his companion. “You see anybody, T.J.?”
T.J.’s blurred gaze remained focused on Lara’s breasts. “Nope.”
“Let me buy you a drink,” the first guy said.
“No, thanks,” Lara said firmly.
“There you are.” A male voice, deep and smooth, broke through the noise of the bar and the wail of the jukebox. Somehow the sailors shifted, and there
he
was, tall and lean and attractively unshaven, looking perfectly at ease among the Galaxy’s rough clientele.
It was him. Her quarry from the boat.
Her heart, her breath, her whole body reacted. Her fingertips tingled. Well, they would. She was attuned to him, to his energy.
He grinned at her. “Miss me?”
“You’re late,” she said.
Twelve minutes. Not enough to abandon her mission, but enough to pinch her ego.
“Come on, baby, don’t be mad. You know I had to work.” The newcomer’s eyes danced, and she realized abruptly he was acting, playing a part for the sailors who still hemmed her into the booth. He lowered his voice confidingly. “Thanks for keeping an eye on her. She gets . . . restless if I leave her alone too long. If you know what I mean.”
Lara kept her mouth shut with an effort. The shorter sailor guffawed. His companion shifted his weight like a bull, hunching his shoulders.
“I should pay you back,” the newcomer continued easily. Man-to-man, she thought, making them like him, make them side with him, diffusing the tension. He moved again, angling his body so smoothly she almost didn’t see him slide his wallet from his front pocket.
Feet shuffled. Something passed hands. The sailors nodded to her and then ambled back to the bar.
Lara narrowed her eyes. “Did you just give them money?”
“I bought them a round.” His grin flashed. “Why not?”
“You
paid
them to go away,” she said, torn between outrage and admiration. She couldn’t imagine Gideon—or Zayin or any of the Guardians—dispatching an opponent by buying him a drink.
“Think of it as supporting our troops.” He met her gaze, his own wickedly amused. “Unless you’d rather we pound each other for the privilege of plying you with alcohol.”
“Of course not. Anyway, I already have a drink, thank you.”
He eyed her glass and shook his head. “Place like this, you order beer. In a bottle. Unless you want to wake up with something a hell of a lot worse than a headache.”
He turned to signal the waitress.
Lara appreciated his concern. But his caution would make her task more difficult. Her fingers curled around the handle of her bag on the seat beside her. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to drug his drink, she thought. Explanations were out of the question. He wouldn’t believe her, and they might be overheard. But surely she could rouse something in him, a response, a spark, a memory.
Assuming he was one of them.
Perhaps she should offer to feel his muscles after all.
The thought made her flush. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Justin.” No last name.
“Lara. Lara Rho.”
She started to extend her hand, but at that moment he caught the waitress’s eye and the opportunity to touch him was lost.
Lara swallowed her disappointment.
The waitress, a hard-edged, hard-eyed blonde who looked like she’d rather be somewhere else, left the knot of locals absorbed by the game on TV. “What can I get you?”
“Two Buds,” Justin said.
The waitress looked at Lara. “ID?”