"Forget you?"
She nodded, willing him to just walk away and pretend he'd never seen her.
A prickle of awareness slid down his spine, and he reacted instantly, an automatic reflex, diving for her, driving her off of the log, backward, his hands pulling her smaller body into his to protect her as he took them over the small ledge to roll down the slope. He registered the crack of the bullet shattering the tree behind his head where he'd been sitting, followed by the boom of the rifle. She went with him, keeping her body tight against his so they rolled smoothly. The rocks and brush had to hurt as she went over t
hem, but she kept silent.
Coming to a halt, he signaled her to stay low and to scoot back into the heavier timber and brush behind them. She didn't ask questions, but stayed on her belly, easing her body backward, searching with her toes for a purchase in the dirt to help drag her into concealment. Kadan backed up with her, sliding into the brush as if he were born there, drawing a gun from his boot and slipping it into her hand in one smooth motion.
Do you know how to use this?
She blinked at him, but she shouldn't have been shocked. The moment he felt the danger, he had connected with her, so that she felt it too. His entry into her mind had been as smooth as him drawing the gun and putting it into her hand. She nodded her reassurance. They were both telepathic, and somehow that made her feel less alone--less apart from everyone. She'd never actually met another human being with psychic powers.
Stay to cover. I'm going hunting.
She didn't want Kadan to leave her. He seemed solid and safe, and exuded absolute confidence. I'm guessing that's not some random hunter poaching.
Not with that rifle. You stay to cover.
He was already moving away from her, and it took every ounce of self-control she had to keep from reaching out and holding on to him.
You'll be safe, Kadan reassured her with implacable confidence. He had no other choice but to succeed. That was a sniper, and he'd tracked Kadan to this place, which meant someone very high up didn't want Kadan to succeed in solving the murders. Not that he was all that surprised; someone had wanted the GhostWalkers program gone and everyone involved dead from the beginning--and that someone worked at the White House. The GhostWalkers had been unable to pin down just whom the threat was coming from, so there was no chance to eliminate him, but if Kadan got out of this alive, they'd be one step closer to solving the puzzle. Not too many people knew he'd been sent out.
He circled around Tansy's camp, keeping his distance, and keeping his head down. Movement attracted the eye, and he wanted no part of his body showing to a sniper, or even to give away his position. Whoever they'd sent after him would be good.
He allowed himself grim amusement. But they wouldn't be good enough, because in a world of kill or be killed, there were few men like him. He was wearing clothing that reflected the images around him, making him nearly invisible. He cloaked himself, changing his skin color like a chameleon to blend in with his surroundings. And then he began to move with the stealth of a wolf.
He went up, going to high ground, continuing to circle so he could come up behind his stalker. There'd been only one bullet, and the sniper would have moved immediately, but once Kadan found the trail, he would be able to follow it.
He was taking a chance leaving Tansy. Not that the sniper could get to her; Tansy was too clever to give herself away. But she'd be making up her mind to run, and she knew the mountain. She'd been living up in the Sierras for months. She'd have confidence in herself and she was too smart to go back to camp. He sighed. He'd have to track her down again after disposing of their enemy.
He stayed low to the ground, making his way through the forest until it eventually gave way to the great granite boulders and jutting cliffs. There wasn't as much foliage, but he blended in with the rock and moved at a steady pace, not too fast to draw the eye, but fast enough to get around behind the sniper. The man would be moving toward Tansy's camp, taking the shortest route, with as much cover as possible. He would want to get the job done as quickly as he could, and that meant he had to be on the move.
Kadan skirted several jagged boulders, looking for a way up so he would have a better view of the area surrounding Tansy's camp. A giant boulder rose over the top of several granite slabs, one sitting precariously on top of the other, some leaning and a few shooting through the middle like great towers. He reached up with his fingertips and found an indentation. That was all he needed for the climb. He went up slowly, like a spider, clinging to the rock face, careful not to disturb the loose dirt and rock on his way to the top.
He had microscopic setae on the pads of his fingers and at the end of each individual seta were one thousand tinier spatulae, or tips, which were so thin as to render them under the wavelength of visible light. Not even his fellow GhostWalkers knew why he could cling to any surface, including the ceiling, but a single seta could lift nearly fifty pounds of weight. He could support his entire body weight with just one hand. It had taken him a great deal of time to learn to use his ability to "walk" over any surface, even hanging upside down, but the weeks of training had been well worth it. He could stick and unstick himself at least ten times a second as he ran up walls.
He moved slowly now, but ordinarily he could climb the face of rock in minutes. Sticking was easy enough. Unsticking was a bit more of a problem, but he'd learned the technique over time, until he could move with incredible speed when necessary. Unfortunately, he often wore a thin pair of gloves to cover the fact that the pads of his fingers were different. The microscopic hairs were bristles, unseen but felt. He knew what Tansy felt like always having to cover her differences. He'd learned to live with the strange pads and embrace the things he could do with them, after the first wave of anger at discovering he was genetically altered as well as psychically. If the GhostWalkers' enemy in the White House knew that all the men and women in the program had been genetically as well as psychically enhanced, Kadan was certain the order would have already gone out to destroy them all. Or maybe he knew and thought of them as abominations and that's why he was so determined to rid the government of their services. Kadan had heard the term applied to them before.
Once above the forest, he lay flat and took a cautious look around the area below him. He studied each section. Tansy would have slipped deeper into the woods below. It would take a few minutes for the shock to wear off, and then she'd seize the opportunity to make a run for it. He sighed, knowing he was going to have to track her again for sure.
Kadan picked out the route that would be the sniper's best choice and spent a patient ten minutes watching the brush for movement. The wind picked up in strength as the night wore on, and the needles in the trees and the leaves on the bushes began to gently sway. Everything in him tightened. The sniper would move with the wind.
Motion just south of Tansy's camp caught his eye and he focused there, catching sight of a blur of darkness moving behind the trees before disappearing. He let out his breath. He had the man now, and he quickly plotted a course to intercept. Just as he began to move, he caught a glimpse of something sticking out from behind a fairly large tree trunk. He studied the shape carefully, wishing he hadn't shrugged out of his pack. He could have used his field glasses, because he suspected that strange shape was something commonly known as "tree cancer," a body part protruding from behind the trunk that indicated that a sniper had set up shop there and was waiting for his spotter to mark a distance.
His heart contracted painfully. What the hell were they setting up? Or whom?
Tansy, where are you? No bullshit. There's two of them. I need to know your position to know that you're safe.
Telepathy over long distance was always shaky, especially connecting with the same wavelength of someone he wasn't very familiar with. Oftentimes there could be a few seconds--or even minutes--of delay. He counted every heartbeat, wondering if she was being stubborn or hiding from him. Wondering if she knew that the more they communicated, the easier the intimacy of mind contact would become. She wouldn't want that. She wouldn't want him running around in her head. She already had too many strangers there.
Then she was there, flooding his mind with her. His body reacted to her close proximity, the sweetness of her, the feminine rush of heat and silk. The taste of cinnamon bursting in his mouth. There was fear, determination, even courage, although she didn't recognize herself as courageous. Mostly she was filled with concern--not for him, certainly not for herself--but for the cougar.
He groaned aloud. That damned cat. She'd flung herself in front of a gun for the animal. He sh
ould have known she'd be unwavering in her resolution to keep the animal safe.
I'm making my way up to the cougar's den.
Are you heading south from your camp? He knew the answer before her words formed in his mind. The spotter was edging toward the southernmost point of Tansy's camp. Maybe he saw her earlier tracks, or maybe something she'd done had tipped the man off to her presence in the brush, but the spotter was tracking her.
Yes, I'm in the rougher terrain, and circling around to make my way up into the granite to get closer to her den. I have a blind up there, and I can urge her to go to safety if they come close. They won't see the blind.
Her voice still had the little lag time that often accompanied a new connection, but already he felt more familiar with her, his mind adjusting so they rode the same wave with precision. Few were as skilled as he was, and he'd never met anyone untrained who was able to use telepathy as smoothly as he could, but although she sent out her thoughts in a slightly different way from him, she was definitely adept.
I don't want you to move. Stay right where you are, even if they come close. I'm going to draw their attention away from you . . .
No!
She sent an instant and adamant rejection of his idea, and he immediately caught the image of a cop pushing her away and going down, blood on his chest. He'd read the reports, so many of them, dating back to her teenage years, and that particular case had been vicious and bloody and took its toll on everyone. They'd lost the cop and she had been so broken up over it, and that had been in the early years of her tracking career.
He took a breath, let it out, breathing for both of them. Listen to me, Tansy. I have skills no one else has. I'm a GhostWalker. The things I can do, psychically as well as physically, give me a huge edge. And I've had more training than most men know what to do with. He was already on the move, soothing her as he used the granite cliff to shortcut his way to the sniper.