HE FELT CHARLOTTE STIR BESIDE HIM. HE OPENED HIS eyes and his senses to the night and watched her sit up on the blanket. She reached for her panties and jeans. Her hair had come free. In the otherworldly glow of the meadow she looked magical, mysterious, and incredibly sexy. He could have looked at her for the rest of the night, the rest of his life.
Something twisted deep inside him. How much longer would he be able to see her like this, with all of his senses? Whatever happened, he would never forget this night. He wondered if she would remember him in the years ahead.
He pushed the dark thoughts aside. He had made his decision and he was content. He would not destroy what was left of the night with questions that had no answer.
He levered himself up on one elbow. “Hey there, gorgeous.”
She paused in the act of wriggling into the jeans and looked at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were still gently luminous.
“Hey there, yourself, handsome,” she said.
Her voice had a sexy, throaty quality that stirred the embers all over again. He tried to come up with something clever in the way of postcoital conversation but nothing occurred to him. He did not want to chat. He wanted to drag her back down onto the blanket and make love to her again and again before he lost his talent forever.
But for all its heat-retention and waterproof capabilities, the sheet of high-tech plastic did nothing to soften the ground underneath it.
He watched her shimmy partway into her jeans. Then she got to her knees in order to pull the pants up over her hips.
“It’s getting late,” she said. She stood and adjusted her top and the jacket. “We both have to go to work in the morning.”
He sat up reluctantly. The plastic crinkled under him.
Charlotte watched him close his jeans.
“I’d like to hear the story,” she said.
“What story?” He leaned down to pick up the blanket. It dawned on him that he felt incredibly relaxed, better than he had in months. Maybe better than he ever had in his entire life.
“Earlier you said that some doctors at a clinic had slapped you with the ‘delicate’ label. I asked you why. You said it was a long story. We have a long walk out of here. I thought it would be a good time to tell me the tale.”
“Damn. Should have seen this coming.” Talking about his problems was the last thing he wanted to do.
Charlotte stiffened. “Don’t ask.” Her voice had gone very cool.
He concentrated on folding the blanket into a small square. “Don’t ask what?”
“Why women always want to chat after sex. Speaking personally, I don’t. Not usually. In my experience it invariably leads to a bad outcome. But, then, all my dates end badly.”
“At least you’re consistent.”
“True. But I think I need to know why you wound up here on Rainshadow.”
He thought about it while he crammed the blanket back into the pouch.
“What the hell,” he said finally. “It’s not like it’s not in both my Bureau file and the Arcane clinic files.”
“My goodness,” she said. “What on earth happened?”
He was saved from an immediate answer by a familiar chortle. Rex fluttered across the glowing meadow. When he reached them he bounded up to Slade’s shoulder. He was still holding the small purse.
“Well, well, well, where have you been, Big Guy?” Charlotte said. She reached up to pat Rex. “I’ll bet you went hunting, didn’t you? I don’t even want to think about what you dined on this evening.”
Slade knew he was probably anthropomorphizing, but judging by Rex’s jaunty attitude, he had a hunch the dust bunny had gotten lucky. Probably hadn’t had to have a complicated, mood-shattering postcoital chat afterward, either.
He slung one strap of the small pack over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They tromped across the sparkling meadow, past the obsidian pond and into the trees. Slade gathered his thoughts, searching for an entry point into a nightmare he relived every night.
“It happened on my last assignment,” he said finally. “It was supposed to be a straightforward investigate- and-take-down-if-necessary job. A researcher from a low-profile government lab died in a diving accident on an island in the Harmonic Sea. Seemed routine, but any time a government lab employee goes missing or dies unexpectedly, the Bureau looks into the situation.”
“So you went to check out the accidental death and concluded that it was murder?”
“No, I concluded that there had been no death at all,” he said. “Well, there was a dead guy and he had been murdered while diving but he was not the missing researcher. He had, however, been killed by paranormal means in an attempt to make it look like a heart attack. The missing lab tech’s ID was on the body.”
“So you investigated further,” Charlotte said.
“That’s the job. Turned out the lab tech was very much alive and working for a drug lord named Masterson, who had a walled compound, more like a fortress, on one of the other nearby islands.”
“What on earth would a drug thug want with a government researcher?”
“You may be surprised to learn that the drug trade is highly competitive,” Slade said.
“Gee. Who would have thought so?”
“For obvious reasons a successful drug lord needs to stay one step ahead of the competition. It just so happened that the lab tech’s expertise was in pharmaceuticals. Masterson wanted him to produce a new designer drug for the gray market.”
“A club drug,” she said. “One that’s not quite illegal because the chemical composition has been tweaked just enough to keep it off the list of banned pharmaceuticals.”
“Law enforcement is always one step behind the chemists in the drug trade.”
“So this drug lord abducted the researcher with the goal of forcing him to make a new drug?” she asked.
“As far as I could tell, there was no strong-arm work involved,” he said. “Masterson used a more traditional business approach. He paid the lab tech a hell of a lot of money up front and offered to cut him in for a share of future profits.”
“You interrupted the plan, I assume?”
“I went into the fortress one night with the intention of searching the lab. I was about to crack a mag-steel vault when things got complicated.”
“How?” she asked.
“What I didn’t know until then was that Masterson had rounded up a few end-of-the-line alcoholics and junkies to use as subjects in the drug experiments. The poor bastards were locked up in a lower level of the basement. I went down to get them out.”
“Of course you did,” she said, sounding very certain. “It’s what you do. What happened?”
“I got the prisoners out of the basement but when I went back in to open the safe, Masterson, the lab tech, and a couple of Masterson’s enforcers were waiting for me. I took down Masterson first. Evidently they had not expected me to be able to do that.”
“Because of his talent?”
“He was some kind of hunter. I never did discover the exact nature of his ability.”
“So, how did you manage to take him out?”
“The old-fashioned way. Mag-rez pistol.”
“Oh. Right. That would work.”
“It does if you’re faster than the other guy. The enforcers fled. With their boss dead there was no reason for them to stick around. But they laid down a lot of covering fire on the way out. One or more of the shots struck a gas canister in the corner of the room. There was an explosion. It killed the renegade lab tech instantly because he was standing so close to the canister. Next thing I knew the whole lab was going up in flames and a lot of dark smoke.”
“How did you survive the explosion?” she asked.
