Though there was amusement in his voice, there was an odd gleam in his eyes that spoke of . . . not distrust, not even disbelief. Just . . . uncertainty. As if he wanted to trust me, but wasn’t entirely sure he could.
That distrust was new. I’d had no sense of it yesterday, so what had happened between then and now? Surely it couldn’t have been anything I’d said, because I hadn’t really said all that much.
Had he been checking up on me? He wouldn’t have discovered anything if he had. No one in Central knew me, and, unless he had spies in Chaos, he wouldn’t have gathered much intelligence there, either.
“Have you ever tried to steal a haunch of beef?” I said, with an ease that belied the turmoil inside. “It’s not exactly something that fits under your shirt.”
“True.”
The woman paused and glanced back at us, an eyebrow raised in query. I forced my feet forward again and added, “And hunting isn’t exactly easy these days, not unless you go deep into the mountains.”
“Again, true.” He paused. “Have you ever been to the Broken Mountains?”
“No.” Not since the war, at any rate. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I’ve heard the ruins of the old base have been infested by vampires.”
It was an interesting statement given my recent discovery of a vampire-infested base. But did that mean he was involved in whatever was going on? I wanted to believe not, wanted to believe his question was nothing more than coincidence.
But I just couldn’t.
“Why would vampires infest the abandoned ruins of an old military base?” I feigned confusion. “There’s nothing there for them to hunt.”
His gaze searched mine for several seconds, and then he shrugged. “Just curious. I thought you might have had some experience up there. You were stationed up there once, were you not?”
“I’d hardly call it ‘stationed,’ given I was only there for a few days while I was waiting for reassignment. But I doubt . . .” I paused as the scent teased my nostrils, sharper than before. I glanced left, my gaze roaming across the half shadows. There were s
everal tables nearby, all of them filled with couples, but again, the scent disappeared before I could pin it down.
“Doubt what?” Sal prompted.
“Doubt the shifters would allow such an infestation to survive if they have made it up there.” I drew in a deeper breath, but once more there was nothing.
But I wasn’t imagining it—and that was scary. Because while it was an undisputed truth that a person’s base scent didn’t change, it was simply impossible for two people to have the exact same scent. There were always differences, no matter how slight. Even identical twins smelled different—I knew that for a fact.
Yet Sal’s natural scent had changed, however subtly, and now there was someone here in this room who shared the same smell.
What the hell was going on? Was this really Sal, or had someone, somewhere, taken over his identity? But that didn’t make sense, either, if only because he knew me, and knew about our past. Body shifters might be able to attain someone else’s image, but they couldn’t take their memories. Even I couldn’t do that, and I’d been bred to not only take over the identity of female shifters to infiltrate the various camps but also—at least for a short period—their lives.
Besides, an identity snatch didn’t explain why there was someone else in this room who smelled exactly the same as Sal. Granted, some lures—like me—could change their scents to match their identities, but Sal wasn’t one of those. None of the grays had been given that skill, because it wasn’t really an ability assassins needed. If they did their job well enough, they were in and out before anyone could scent them, let alone see them.
So, did we have yet another lure survivor on our hands, or was something else—something weirder—going on?
I swept my gaze across the room again as the woman stopped at a table set for three. There was no one even remotely resembling Sal here, so that cut out the possibility of a clone. Though why Sal would want a clone given his Salamander blood enabled him to regenerate to the point of limb regrowth was beyond me.
Sal pulled out my chair, seating me, then moved around to the chair directly opposite. The woman handed me a menu, but my smile of thanks was somewhat absent. My neck prickled with awareness. I was being watched, and it was all I could do to resist the temptation to turn around and meet my watcher’s gaze.
“Ah,” Sal said, the sharp sound of his voice making me jump slightly. “And here’s Nadel, right on time.”
I glanced around as a tall man with receding blond hair approached the table. He shook Sal’s hand, his manner more formal than usual for friends, then glanced at me.
“And you would be the young woman who is interested in the security position at Winter Halo?”
His scent swirled around me, an interesting mix of old paper, vanilla, and something furred. Not Sal’s scent. Not the scent of the unseen man who watched from afar. I rose and offered my hand. “Ti Zindela, at your service, sir.”
His grip was warm and soft. It wasn’t the grip of a man who’d ever worked hard for a living—and it certainly wasn’t the grip of a soldier. Though why I’d thought it might be was a mystery.
He looked me up and down, then said, “And have you had any experience in the security industry?”