Chapter One

Gianna shifted on the cold, rocky ground, flexing stiff fingers on her binoculars.  She and Cal were lying on top of a hill in Montana’s Helena National Forest, their glasses trained on the StillWell compound.  Surrounded by a high fence topped with thick coils of razor wire, fourteen buildings were visible.  Two were long, three-story buildings with regular windows — bunkhouses, she guessed.

There were two office buildings — through the windows, she saw men in cubicles, sitting at desks.  No women.

Four long, low buildings without windows might have been labs or factories — it was hard to tell.  Maybe Cal could teleport there tonight and take a look.

On the periphery of the compound stood six smaller buildings of varying sizes.

They’d arrived this morning, but up until now, hadn’t seen a single person on the grounds.  Only wisps of smoke trailing upward from the buildings and the men occupying the cubicles indicated they were occupied.

Shivering, Gianna shifted again, trying to squirm away from a stone digging into her hip.  “It’s September, for God’s sake,” she muttered.  “Sundress weather.  Instead, it’s cold as hell up here.”

“Didn’t take you for a sundress kind of woman, Fallon,” Cal said without lowering his own binoculars.  “I’d pay good money to see you in one of those.”

Heat spread through her veins at Cal’s words.  Why did it have to be cocky, arrogant Callan Doyle who rang every chime in her body?  The world must be laughing its ass off at her.

In spite of the low thrum of arousal, Gianna managed to snort.  “In your dreams, Surfer Boy.”  She refused to ask him what kind of woman he thought she was.

As if she’d spoken out loud, he said, “Skinny jeans and kick ass boots with an attitude to match.  A leather jacket.  That’s you, Fallon.”  He looked away from his binoculars, one side of his mouth curling up.  “You don’t take shit from anyone, do you?”

“Including you, Doyle,” she managed to throw back at him.  The heat flowing through her got thicker.  Warmer.  As her hands shifted on the binoculars, tiny sparks flew from her fingertips.

Damn it!  She pressed her fingers hard into the rough plastic of the binoculars.  She barely knew Cal — they’d met just a few weeks earlier after the Spaulding Building incident — but he’d seen her.  Knew her better than the guys she worked with.

While she shifted again on the uneven ground, Cal continued to lie still as a statue, attention laser-focused on the compound below them.  As far as Gianna could tell, he didn’t even notice the cold seeping into his bones.  “You wearing heated underwear or something?” she groused.

Still unmoving, he said, “I had no idea you were interested in my underwear.”

That damned heat crept up her neck to her face.  Letting the binoculars rest on the ground, she curled her fingers into her palms.  Felt the jolt of the sparks against her skin.  “Either it’s heated, or you’re some kind of mutant unaffected by the cold.”

He stilled.  Glanced at her, his eyes as cold as the rocky ground.  “We’ve already established that I’m a mutant.”

She barely resisted rolling her eyes.  “Oh, for God’s sake.  I’m speaking as one mutant to another, Doyle.  Or have you forgotten?”

His expression hardened.  “You were born this way.  I was created.  In a damn lab.”

“Right.  You’re Frankenstein.  That had slipped my mind.”  She shook her head.  “Don’t be an idiot, Doyle.  Whatever was in Jack’s blood wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference if you didn’t already have some power.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  But Frankenstein didn’t have a choice, and neither did I.”

She turned toward him on the hard ground.  “Doesn’t matter.  The villagers with torches will come for both of us, Doyle.”

His mouth tightened, but he didn’t answer.  Didn’t even glance at her.

After a long moment, trying to change what was clearly a sore point, she asked, “How are you not freezing?”

“It’s my heated underwear,” he said.

“The SEAL has a sense of humor,” Gianna said.  “I had no idea that was standard issue for you guys.”

“I warned you it would be cold,” he said, still studying the compound below them.

“Cold in September is fifty degrees,” Gianna retorted.  “It’s fricking nineteen.”  Another shiver shook her hands on the binoculars.  With a muttered curse, she swiveled around to fumble in her backpack for the survival blanket that doubled as a heat-reflecting ground sheet beneath her sleeping bag at night.

Her fingers closed around the crinkly material that resembled aluminum foil.  When she tried to pull it out of her backpack, it stuck on something.

She tugged harder, and it came flying out, snapping open in midair and clipping the back of Cal’s head.

“Sorry,” she said cheerfully, biting back a grin.  “Pulled too hard.”

“I thought we agreed we’d only use our powers for good,” he said, rubbing the back of his head.

“Keeping warm is my definition of good,” Gianna retorted.  She unfolded the mat and slid onto it.

In a few minutes, it actually warmed beneath the sun and her body heat.  Her shivering stopped.  She was able to hold her binoculars steady enough to identify the man in fatigues who’d just walked out of one of the long, windowless buildings.

“There’s Mase,” she said.

“Got him.”

They watched in silence as a group of men dressed in identical uniforms trailed out of the building after Mase.  He led them to a large ring of tamped-down grass, where they formed a circle around Mase, who was clearly in charge.

“Looks like a class,” Gianna whispered, although they were far enough away that their voices wouldn’t carry.

“Yeah.”

They lay side by side, not speaking, watching Mase.  Finally he motioned to one of the men surrounding him, using the blond kid to demonstrate a hold.  Mase did it twice.  Then the men paired off and practiced the hold on each other.

Mase progressed to more holds and a few defensive maneuvers.  After watching for fifteen minutes, Cal murmured, “Son of a bitch.”

“What?” Gianna said, glancing at him.

“He’s teaching these guys moves we learned as SEALs, but he’s leaving out a step.  Or changing it.  It works while they’re practicing on each other, but if these guys came up against someone who knew the correct moves, they’d be flattened in thirty seconds.”

“Pretty slick,” Gianna said, studying the now-sparring men more carefully.

“Mase was always too smart for his own good.”  Cal squirmed closer to the edge of the cliff, as if that would make it easier to see.  “If they figure it out, he’s gonna get himself killed.”  Cal’s hands tightened on the binoculars.  “I’m going to kick his ass.  Tonight.”

“That’s assuming anyone at StillWell can figure out what he’s doing,” Gianna pointed out.

Cal shifted to stare at her.  “You want to take that chance with one of your friends?  What would you do if Sloan was being a dumbass?  Or Rowan?”

“I’d call them on it,” she admitted.  “But you have to admit it is pretty clever.”

“Now you’re a big fan of Mase?”  Cal scowled at her.  “A week ago, you thought he was the scum of the earth.  Working with StillWell.”

“I didn’t know him, and he was working with the men who killed three people and terrorized thirty more,” Gianna said coolly.  “Then he proved he wasn’t.  He helped save Rowan and Jack at the hospital.  Gave us all the information we needed about the compound and the surrounding area.”

“He’s an idiot,” Cal muttered.

“I could say the same about you and Murphy,” Gianna retorted.

Cal speared her with a glance.  “You’re defending him pretty hard.  You got a thing going with Mase?”

“Hell, no,” she said immediately.  She was more on Cal’s wavelength.  But, remembering the sparks that had flown out of her fingers earlier, she knew she wouldn’t be going there.

She didn’t do ‘relationships’.  As soon as her emotions got involved, she lost control of her power over fire.

And bad things happened.

They watched Mase with the group of men for another hour, then a whistle blew in the compound.  Everyone below stopped and hurried toward one of the long buildings.  A few moments later, Gianna sensed the aroma of cooking burgers.

“Lunch time,” she said.  “Burgers.”

“How do you know?” Cal demanded.

“I can smell them.”  She focused her binoculars on a stream of men coming out of one of the office-like buildings.

“All the way up here?”

Gianna shrugged one shoulder as she watched the men file into the dining hall.  “You’re surprised by this?  Jack can become invisible.  Mase reads people’s thoughts.  And you teleport, for God’s sake.  But super smell is weird?”

“No,” Cal muttered.  “I just didn’t know you could do it.”

She lifted one shoulder.  “Sloan enhanced my… gifts before we left.  Said she wanted to make sure I was prepared for anything.”  She shifted on the hard ground, feeling as if she was hiding something from Cal.  He was her partner in this.  He needed to know.

“The smell thing is new,” she admitted.  “I’ve always had a good sense of smell, but being able to smell the burgers cooking from this far away?  Never could to that before.”

“Good to know,” Cal said, resuming his study of the compound below them.  “In case I need you to identify what flavor of soup they’re serving today.”

“Bite me,” Gianna said, her eye caught by movement in the compound.  Two men in suits were hurrying toward the mess hall.  “You have those guys?” she said, lowering her voice.  As if they could hear her.

One of them lifted his head.  It felt as if he stared directly at her.  Without speaking, she and Cal lowered their binoculars.  Hid their faces.

“Don’t move,” Cal whispered.

Gianna heard him slithering backward.  Then nothing.  Not a sound.  Not even the steady in and out of breathing.

If Cal was close, she would have heard him breathe.

She turned her head.  Cal was gone.

She listened intently, but heard nothing but the wind sighing through the pines.  In the distance, an eagle’s cry broke the absolute quiet.

After what felt like forever, but was probably less than five minutes, Gianna lifted her head enough to see the compound.  The two men were gone.  There was no sign of Cal.  So she picked up her binoculars and scanned slowly from one side of the compound to another.

No movements.  No people.

They were all eating lunch, her practical side insisted.

Unless some of them weren’t.

And where was Cal?

She ignored the anxiety building inside of her.  It was the same unease that curled through her when she lost track of one of her fellow firefighters in a burning building.

It was second nature when she went into a burning building — she used her tracking power to keep tabs on everyone.

If someone got into trouble, she knew immediately.  And was able to pull them to safety.

They hadn’t lost anyone on one of her shifts.

She wasn’t in the station now, and her fingers tightened on the binoculars, searching for a trace of Cal.

Nothing.

Staring at the eerily quiet camp, her heart rate ratcheted up.  Her breathing increased.  Anxiety tightened her muscles until they cramped.

Where was he?

She was just about to jump up to look for him when she felt movement behind her.  Spinning around on the crinkly fabric of the waterproof sheet, she lifted onto her feet but stayed in a crouch.

The footsteps got closer.  He or she was trying to conceal their presence, but to her super hearing, it sounded as if they were stomping on the ground.

Gianna edged toward a boulder, knowing she wouldn’t be hidden for long, but hoping she’d think of something.  Just as she crouched behind it, Cal strode into view.

“Where were you?” she hissed, as if someone could overhear them.

“I was checking out the compound.  I needed a closer look at those two guys.”

“You teleported yourself there?”  She leaped out from behind the boulder and rushed toward him.  Smacking him on the chest, she said, “You idiot!”

He grabbed her hand and lifted it off his chest, but didn’t let her go.  “No one saw a thing.”

“You sure about that?”  She tried to tug her hand away and he tightened his grip.  Sparks flew from her fingertips.

“Very.”  Cal looked down at her hand, completely engulfed in his larger one.  He pressed the tip of his finger against hers, studying the spark that exploded out of it.  “If they’d known I was there, they would have come after me.”

Blushing, Gianna tried to loosen his grip on her hand, but he’d shifted his gaze to her face.  Studying her.  Not letting go.  She wasn’t used to guys seeing the sparks.

She also wasn’t used to a guy being stronger than her.  Able to restrain her without effort.

She hated it.

Liar.  A tiny voice in her head mocked her.  No one’s ever done that before.  You like it.

Yanking her hand away, she scowled at him.  “What was that all about?”

“It was about getting information,” he said, finally dropping her hand.  “Getting a better look at those guys.  A closer look at the compound.”

She hadn’t been talking about his reckless approach to the compound.  She’d meant the way he’d held her hand.

Shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, she asked, “So what information did you get?”  Damn it!  She hoped he hadn’t noticed the tiny wobble in her voice.

He nodded toward their perch on the edge of the rocks as if he hadn’t.  “Let’s watch them while we talk.”

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she flattened herself on the ground, picked up her binoculars and focused them on the compound.  The sun was directly overhead now, and her silvery survival blanket was warm.  “Talk.”

Without moving his binoculars, Cal said, “The guy who looked up at us is Theo Smythe.  AKA Jeff Conway, the old CEO who had plastic surgery and is now the new CEO.  I have no idea if he saw us, but I have to assume he did.  Before we left for Montana, I looked into his history with StillWell and his previous companies.  He’s ruthless.  Without a conscience.  He’ll do anything to get ahead.  Anything to win.  Several of his rivals for jobs or contracts have had mysterious accidents.  Or woke up dead.  Nothing that could be linked to him, but it’s not hard to connect the dots if you’re looking for them.  Classic profile of a sociopath who’s made it to the top.”

Cal shook his head.  “If we’re right, and I’m sure we are, the guy threw his wife over a cliff to protect himself.”

Gianna thought about the three dead people in the stairwell at the Spaulding Building.  The thirty survivors she’d seen when her station responded to the 911 call.

Smythe hadn’t intended for any of them to survive.  She swallowed hard.  If Rowan and Jack hadn’t disrupted Smythe’s plans, the smell of blood and death would have overwhelmed Gianna when she walked into that lobby.

“Rowan’s plastic surgeon boyfriend had no idea who he was dealing with,” Gianna said softly.  “But we do.”

“Yes.  Rutger was desperate and didn’t look too carefully at that gift horse.  We know better.”

“So where does that leave us?”  Gianna lowered the glasses and glanced at Cal.  “Did he see you, or not?”

“He didn’t see me.  I’m sure of it.  If he had, he would have sent someone after me.”  Cal paused.  Set his binoculars on the ground and swiveled to look at her.  “But I think he might have sensed someone was close by.  I was near the top of a tree, completely hidden by the branches and leaves.  But Smythe knew someone was around.  Just didn’t know where.  Based on that, and the kind of guy he is, I suspect he’s taking the supplement himself.  So we have no idea what kinds of power he has.”

Gianna shivered, as if someone had walked over her grave.  “Scary guy.”

“Yes.  He is.  We have to shut him down if we’re going to stop StillWell.”

Gianna thought about the sleeping bags attached to their packs.  About their plans to camp up here for a few nights.  “You think he’ll send someone up here looking for us?”

“Smythe saw something up here.  Either light glinting off our binoculars or off the survival blanket when you yanked it out of your pack.  He sensed me near the compound.  If he’s as smart as I think he is?  Yeah.  He’ll send someone looking for us.”

Shame and fear slithered through Gianna.  “Sorry,” she said in a low voice.  “I didn’t think about the sunlight on the foil.”

“Don’t worry about it.  He sensed me up in the tree.  So it’s on both of us.”  Cal kept studying the compound.  She wanted him to turn toward her.  She needed to know if he meant it, or if he was coddling her.

She hated being coddled.  “Damn it, Cal!  Look at me!”

He lifted onto one elbow and turned to face her.  “What?”

“I screwed up.  How do I make it right?”

“You made a mistake.  I did, too.  We’re even.  Now we need to figure out what to do.”

“I vote we use that hotel room in Helena,” Gianna said immediately.  “The StillWell guys have the advantage up here.  They know the area.  We don’t.”

“Not the way SEALs operate, Fallon.”  Cal shifted onto his side and studied her.  “If we know they’re coming, we’re waiting for them.”

“And what do we do after we grab them?” she demanded.

“Who said anything about grabbing them?”  Cal sat up and scooted back from the ledge, letting the rocks hide him.  “We’re going to watch them.  See what they do.  Figure out how good they are.  They’ll waste a trip up here and wear themselves out.  If we’re lucky, at least one of them will sprain an ankle in the dark.  That’ll be one less to worry about.”

What if she and Cal were the ones who sprained an ankle in the dark?

Gianna hunched a shoulder.  “So I guess we’re not sleeping tonight.”

“Not until they’ve showed their hand.”  His mouth curled up in a tiny smirk.  “Can you handle that, Fallon?”

Gianna leveled her gaze at him.  “I work twenty-four hour shifts,” she said evenly.  “I can handle it.”

“Good.  Then we’re set.”

Gianna focused her binoculars on the compound again, but there was nothing to see.  No one was outside.  The office building had lowered blinds in all the windows.  Because the afternoon sun beat against the western exposure?

Or was there another reason?

The space between her shoulder blades itched.  The same way it did before a beam dropped from a ceiling in a burning building.  She turned toward Cal, but he wasn’t looking at the compound anymore, either.

He stared to their right, frozen in place.  Moments later, a flock of birds exploded from the trees below them, the black and white shapes circling and shrieking as they flew away.

A hare burst from beneath a rock to their left, powerful legs propelling it a foot off the ground.  Its long ears quivered as it disappeared from sight.

Cal blinked, grabbed her arm as he stuffed his binoculars into his pack.  “They’re coming.”