Chains of Ice (12 page)

A guy so crazy he dressed in skins and avoided human contact.

A guy who promised to fulfill her dream, make her a hero to her group, and show her a female lynx and her two kittens.

Genny was a living, breathing, traitorous creep.

Which just made her cry harder.

When was the last time she’d cried? Had it been when she’d been forced to give up her pets? When her mother left?

No. She knew exactly the last time she’d cried: when she had given up on living her own life, given in to her father’s wishes and applied to business school.

After that, nothing was worth crying about.

Except now, when for three months she could make a difference in the world. For that, she’d given up everything . . . including her integrity. Especially her integrity, crumpled and compromised as it was.

“Jes . . . geeze.” John’s voice rumbled in his chest. Under her ear. “Nothing is this bad.”

“Y-you’re ri-right.” She huddled into his arms, trying hard not to sob and failing miserably.

He waited, stock-still and stiff, like a rock on which her stormy emotions broke. “You’re reacting to the shock of your fall.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“Soldiers do that. Take a fit after they face off with death.”

She peeked up at him. He wasn’t drooling or twitching. He didn’t look so much mad as just . . . weird. Gifted. Traumatized, maybe, by something in his past.

She half laughed in the midst of her crying. “Imagine that.”

“Soldiers babble about what they almost missed. About the dreams they didn’t follow. About the loves they left behind.”

“At least I have no loves to regret.” Remembering the guys in business school, and how carefully she had ignored them in the pursuit of grades and success, she had to bite her tongue to avoid whimpering.

“You’re lucky,” John said.

He spoke so stoically, she knew he had suffered a love lost. She wanted to ask, but if he told her a sad story, she’d probably puddle up again. And not for his pain, either. She’d cry because if she
had
taken that fall and her life flashed before her eyes, it wouldn’t have occupied the whole trip down to the ground. She’d have to ask for a rerun. She’d been seriously dedicated to studying and nothing else.

She had no life. Oh, a few friends, some casual dates, but nothing that occupied her mind and her heart. When she returned to New York City, she was facing more
no life
.

She’d been the fool her father called her.

“You were a soldier?” She felt her anguish easing, used another tissue, and waited for his answer.

“Yes. In the wars in Afghanistan.”

And in the war between the Chosen Ones and the Others?

He didn’t mention that, though, and nothing about him encouraged her to think he would.

Her tears dried on her cheeks.

This mission she’d taken on . . . how could she accomplish it without hurting someone? Without hurting him, a soul already so wounded he avoided human company?

“Are you better?” He didn’t wait for her answer, just took his arm from around her shoulders and stood. “If you want to see Mama Cat and her babies, we’d better go.”

“Yes. Thank you.” She stood, dusted off her rear, and dusted off her enthusiasm. “Yes, let’s go.” After all, she hadn’t really done anything to harm him. And didn’t intend to. The people in New York only wanted to talk to him. She was merely going to steer him their way. There was no harm in that. If he didn’t want to leave his ways as a hermit, they couldn’t force him, but perhaps they could entice him to return to a life filled with good people and good deeds.

And if the legend was to be believed, good deeds were what the Gypsy Travel Agency was all about.

“Come on.” He started down the path that paralleled the river, continuing around a bend away from the cliff and the observation platform.

She hurried after him.

The river curved away from the bank, leaving a broad swath of sand below.

He jumped, then offered his hand to her.

She leaped, too, and landed on him, making him stagger. “Sorry!”

“We have to cross the river, but it’s shallow. Mama Cat is on the other side.” He indicated the stones scattered across the surface of the cold, green water. “Can you make your way across?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s go.” He leaped the rocks to the opposite bank, then called, “Are you coming?”

Like a goat, she sprang over the stones and followed him to the line where the sand ended and the forest began.

With a hand on her arm, he stopped her. “Wait,” he said softly. Then in the lilting tone of a lover, he called, “Mama Cat, we’ve come to admire your kittens.”

Morning had fully blossomed. Sunshine dappled the water. Genny had been assured time and again that the Ural lynx was a nocturnal animal, yet the cat responded to his voice, poking her head out of a narrow grotto in the pile of stones set five feet above the river.

The cat looked at him, then at Genny.

They were almost at eye level, she and the cat, and mere feet apart.

Genny shed her backpack and coat and sank to her knees in the sun-warmed sand. She marveled at the creature’s sleek coat, its neat mouth with its handsome side whiskers, its golden brown eyes that weighed her so intelligently.

She marveled more that John Powell, a man with a reputation for being violent, insane, and a killer, could charm a wild cat out of her den in broad daylight.

Every moment of this encounter made her wonder if the legend was true. If the real world she had occupied all her life was the only world, or if special gifts and superpowers existed side by side with flow charts and stock reports.

“May we see your babies?” John crooned to the lynx. “I promise we’ll treat them like the treasures they are.”

The great cat gazed at him, then pulled its head in.

John knelt beside Genny. “Now we wait and see what she decides.”

Genny couldn’t stop smiling, at the den where the cats resided and at him. “No matter what, I’ll never forget being so close to such a beautiful beast.”

His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile back—and she thought that if only she could see more of his face, he might be a handsome man. Certainly in this moment, his eyes no longer were the chill ice of a glacier. Instead, they reflected the blue of the river and the sky.

He looked back at the den as a bundle of fur tumbled out and fell down the rocks to the sandy riverbed. Another followed, propelled by Mama Cat’s nose.

Genny barely contained a gasp of delight.

The two kittens blinked in the sunshine, and mewed piteously. Mama Cat slipped out of the den and followed them, nosed them, licked them, nudged them to let them know she was nearby. They were the size of small house cats, fluffy and soft; their coloring blurred and pale, an indistinct brown and gold.

“How old are they?” Genny whispered.

“They’re seven, almost eight weeks old, a boy and a girl.”

Genny trembled with the desire to touch, but she knew better. Mama Cat was wild with forty pounds of muscle and a predator’s instinct. These were her offspring, and if Genny made the mistake of alarming her, she would attack with tooth and claw—and they were very impressive teeth and even more impressive claws.

But if Mama Cat had doubts, the kittens did not. They had met John before, felt his touch, and when he made a deep, rumbling sound in his chest, they scampered to him and into his lap.

Mama Cat seated herself and watched, on guard but at ease.

Genny watched as he picked up first one, then the other, and lifted them to his face. They sniffed noses, the three of them, and something about that gesture of trust made her heart catch.

Was she supposed to be scared of this guy? Really? The guy who rescued her, who showed her the great cats, who held her when she cried?

No. She couldn’t do it. Like the kittens, she wanted to touch her nose to his, her lips to his, her body to his. Like the kittens, she trusted him.

Slowly, she sat up straight, forcing her mind back to reality.

She’d heard way too much about John Powell and his sexual prowess, and dreamed far too often, and now her mind had skipped merrily along to daytime fantasies. Great.

Greetings over, he placed them back in his lap. There they bit at his fingers and scratched at his leg, and when Genny chuckled, they turned their attention to her.

Mama Cat sat straighter, at attention, her eyes narrowed as if to warn Genny that she, like Lubochka, did not want any trouble.

But the kittens saw in Genny a potential new playmate, and pounced. One kitten grabbed her hand and gnawed.

“That is the boy,” John said.

One kitten dashed up the bank and down again, skidded to a halt at the edge of the river, then ran back to John. She jumped into his lap, and he absentmindedly gathered her close to his chest.

Genny carefully did not smile.

“This is the girl,” he said. “She frequently imagines she’s missed an important appointment and races to keep it.”

“They’re so alive.” Genny marveled as her fingers sank into the kitten’s soft fur and felt his wiry muscles contract and stretch. “You should name them.”

“No. They’re wild cats. They’re not my pets.”

Rebuffed, Genny sat back on her heels.
Yes, John Powell, if you name them and some harm comes to them, you can’t pretend you don’t care.
But so small a distancing wouldn’t protect the man who now cuddled a kitten under his chin.

He sounded deliberately casual as he said, “Tell me about Brandon.”

“Brandon.” What had she said to him about Brandon? “Why?”

“I deserve to know about some guy who is calling me a yeti.”

“Ohh.” Now she remembered. “Brandon is this little creep on the team. One of those guys who has to pick on somebody, and I’m the one.” She shrugged. “It’s not important.”

“What does he do?”

“Not a whole lot. Lubochka is exasperated. She suspects he’s going out into the woods to sleep rather than looking for signs left by the lynx.” Genny thought Lubochka was right.

In a patient tone, John said, “No. I mean—what does he do to you?”

“Oh. That. It really isn’t important. He makes fun of me. Blames me for the lack of lynx sightings.” She smiled at her lap full of kitten. “No one pays attention to him, and I feel sorry for him. He’s such a loser.”

“He’s in love with you.”

She chortled. “Hardly.”

“Some men never grow up. When they like a girl, they pinch her. This Brandon is still on the play-ground.” John sounded sure of himself.

And his talk of Brandon reminded her of what she should do next. “I’ll tell you what.” She grabbed her camera. “This will fix Brandon. I can take him down a few notches tonight with the pictures I take of these cats!” She pointed the camera toward John, toward the kitten sleeping against his chest.

He moved so swiftly, she saw only a blur.

Catching her wrist in a strong grip, he turned the camera away. His voice sounded low, rough, like the warning a lynx would give before it attacked. “Genesis . . . do not betray me.”