the traffic around Norfolk before they found this place. This man.
She exhaled slowly, wil ing herself to focus on the climber.
He certainly looked like an angel, hanging in the rigging against the bold blue sky, his bronze hair tipped with gold like a halo.
“I think so.” She bit her lip. She should
“He’s too old,” Gideon said.
Lara swal owed her own misgivings. She was the designated Seeker on this mission. Gideon was along merely to support and defend. She wanted her instincts to be right, wanted to justify their masters’ faith in her. “Late twenties,” she said. “Not much older than you.”
“He should have been found before this.”
“Maybe he wasn’t meant to be found before.” Her heartbeat quickened. Maybe she was the one meant to find him.
“Then he should be dead,” Gideon said.
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.”
F o r g o t t e n s e a 5
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 actual y see him, the hum in her blood had become a buzz.
But it was al vibration, like listening to a vacuum cleaner in the dark, without shape or color. Not only human, not whol y elemental . . .
“What else could he be?” she asked.
“He could be possessed.”
“No.”
She would know, she would feel that. She was attracted, not repel ed, 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 smal , decisive nod. “If I have to.”
She opened her door. Gideon opened his.
“No,” she said again. She needed to assert herself.
6
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
Gideon was five years older, in the cohort ahead of hers, but she was technical y 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 al ,
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.
