Читать книгу Sentinels: Lion Heart - Doranna Durgin - Страница 8

Dark Sentinel

Lyn Maines stared at the image of Joe Ryan, big as life—much bigger than life—as it splashed across the high-definition plasma screen of the sleek Sentinel conference room in Tucson, Arizona. Both Joe Ryans, actually—the man and his beast. On the left, tawny mountain lion, heavy masculine head with black tracings and jaw dropped in a snarl as the animal stalked the camera, clearly aware of and annoyed by the photographer’s presence. On the right, Joe Ryan the man, caught unaware, leaning over a railing before an enormous high desert panoramic vista of pines and sere ocher plains, head turned three-quarters to the camera, wind lifting his tawny hair with its dark tracings at the nape of his neck and temple, features clean and strong.

Not always did the human form reflect the Sentinel form. Her own didn’t, aside from a certain something around the eyes. But there in Joe Ryan, the mountain lion lurked out loud—the sinuous authority, the simmering power. All of it.

Too bad that striking exterior covered a corrupt interior.

Joe Ryan was as dirty as they came—a dark Sentinel. He’d killed his partner for cold hard cash, and he’d done it cleverly enough so that the Sentinel’s brevis region consul and his echelon hadn’t been able to pin him down. Cleverly enough so that Ryan had gone on to a new assignment, a new home at the base of Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks, to start a brand-new scheme—acquiring power on top of his money. Still on the Sentinel payroll, still roaming free in his powerful form. Still playing with power itself. And Lyn…

Lyn would prove it.

We think the Atrum Core drozhar might have fled there after the battle near Sonoita, the consul’s grim adjutant had said moments earlier, a warning. He’ll know you if he makes contact with you. He’ll target you.

Then she simply wouldn’t let herself be seen. “Send me there,” she said, flexing her fingers slightly as if she could feel her sharp claws while in this form. Ocelot, small and quick, with a knack for following power traces that had served her well against the Atrum Core this past spring—well enough so that the consul owed her one, if any such thing could ever be said. “I can be on his trail by nightfall.”

Yes. Lyn was the one who would finally prove it.