“We’d better go take a look.” Slade opened the door. “If Devin did decide to try to get Nate and himself into the Preserve and it turns out they got lost, I’m going to be pissed.”
Clutch in paw, Rex sidestepped along the back of the seats and hopped onto Slade’s arm. From there he scrambled up onto Slade’s shoulder.
They made their way through the trees along the top of the cliffs. To the left sheer rock walls plunged into the cold, churning waters of the Amber Sea. Slade knew that the rock face went down several hundred more feet below the surface. Rainshadow was a natural fortress, he thought. It wasn’t the first time that realization had crossed his mind. If you wanted to conceal some serious secrets, this was a good place to do it.
Fifteen minutes later he stood on top of the low cliff above Hidden Beach. There was no sign of Nate and Devin. He tried to shake off the chill factor but his senses were growing colder and more acute. His hunter intuition was telling him the truth, whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not.
He went down the rough trail to the rocky beach. Small pebbles and debris skittered from under his boots.
The beach was clean. Too clean, he thought. You’d never know a couple of teenage boys had spent time here looking for the lost treasure of a legendary pirate and smuggler who had worked the Amber Sea Islands fifty years earlier.
“The boys have been taught to pack out all of their trash but there should be some traces left behind,” he said to Rex. “We’re talking about a couple of teens. They can’t even keep their rooms this clean.”
He jacked up his senses a couple of notches. The action was automatic. He did not expect to find anything, he did not want to find anything, because the only psi he could detect was the burning radiation that indicated violence. With his talent he could pick up only the bad news. But somewhere along the line he had slipped into hunting mode. There was no turning back.
The flaring acid light he dreaded viewing was splashed like blood all over the rocks on the beach.
“Shit,” he said very softly to Rex.
Rex mumbled ominously, tumbled down to the ground, and began exploring.
The energy was fairly fresh, Slade decided, only a few hours old. It had not been laid down by either Nate or Devin. He knew both boys. Neither of them could have generated such a cold, violent fever. What he was looking at had been left by adults. Two of them, if he was analyzing it correctly. The ultralight in the prints told him that they both possessed some talent. The chill on his senses went glacial.
Rex was at the far end of the tiny beach, investigating the rocks. He appeared very intent on whatever it was he had discovered. A crab, Slade thought, or maybe some other small creature trying to hunt or hide at the water’s edge.
There was no time to waste but for some reason he felt compelled to find out what had captured Rex’s attention. He crossed the beach and studied the rocks.
“What do you see?” he asked softly.
Rex pawed at one rock as though he wanted to play with it. But there was nothing playful in his demeanor. He, too, was in serious hunting mode.
Slade crouched. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He picked up the rock, prepared for a multilegged shore denizen to scuttle away. But it was not a crab that gleamed in the light. It was a spent shell casing. Someone had recently fired a gun here in the cove. Or from the top of the cliff.
He glanced up, thinking about how casings scattered. The violently luminous light was splashed all the way up the trail. He ran the scenario in his mind. The shooters had been surprised while they were on the beach. They had rushed up the trail in a killing frame of mind. It didn’t take any psychic talent to figure out that the boys had been spotted by a couple of thugs who did not want any witnesses.
The sons of bitches went after a couple of unarmed kids, Slade thought.
The hunting fever was upon him now. He took the notebook out of his shirt pocket, ripped out a sheet of paper, and used it to pick up the casing. He folded the paper around the casing and tucked it back into his shirt. While talent could be used to track down criminals, very little evidence of a straight paranormal nature was allowed in court. Judges and juries still liked hard evidence.
He got to his feet and looked at Rex. “How the hell did you know the shell casing was important?”
Rex fixed him with a disturbingly intense look and growled darkly.
“Let’s go,” Slade said.
He started up the trail. Rex scrambled after him.
At the top of the cliff Slade stopped, trying to think like a couple of teenage boys who had inadvertently surprised a pair of men with guns. If they had been scared, which was the only reasonable response, they would have run. If they had fled, they would have dropped their packs. So where were the packs?
The most likely answer, the one he did not want to acknowledge, was that the gunmen had killed the boys and dumped the bodies and the packs into the deep, cold waters of the Amber Sea. But he would not go there yet, not until he had ruled out all other possibilities. The boys might have had time to escape.
He forced himself to look for the black ultralight that indicated spilled blood. Relief roared through him when he did not see any on the ground. He fought back the emotional response because it would interfere with the hunt. Still, it was useful information, a solid fact. He could use a few more facts of that nature.
“No blood,” he said quietly to Rex. “They were shooting at the boys but they didn’t hit either of them. At least not here.”
That left a lot of equally awful possibilities. The gunmen could have chased the boys into the trees, grabbed them, and murdered them elsewhere.
But there was one other possible scenario. The outer edge of the energy fence that marked the Preserve was not far from here. Both boys were aware of it.
He looked at Rex, who was now staring intently into the trees where the fence began. Slade got the impression that he was waiting. Waiting for me to start the hunt? Rex was acting as if they were a team.
Cautiously he eased his talent up another notch. The first whispers of the dark stormlight energy at the far end of the spectrum flickered across his senses. He could not risk going any hotter, he decided. If Charlotte was wrong, he might trigger total and complete psiblindness right here and now. He needed what was left of his senses to find the boys.
But Devin and Nate had been in a flat-out panic when they ran. They had left tracks that were vivid enough to be seen with his senses only partially elevated. One set of tracks glowed hotter and more vividly than the other.
“Smart boys,” Slade said softly. “You made a run for the Preserve.”
Devin’s newly emerging intuition might have told him that he could get through the barrier. He might even have realized that he could drag Nate with him. It would not have been a pleasant experience but a couple of scared kids could overlook a lot of disturbing energy when they were running for their lives. Adrenaline would have fueled their flight. It was a potent drug and it left seething tracks.
Slade started toward the fence line.
The shooters’ prints stopped short of the invisible energy barrier. Relief surged through Slade. The gunmen had not pursued the boys into the Preserve. That made sense. They clearly possessed some talent, but not a lot, probably not enough to make them want to risk going into the Preserve.
Slade loped after Rex, who was trotting eagerly ahead. Rex’s mood had changed. He chortled enthusiastically, evidently enjoying himself. It was obvious that he was following the boys’ prints. He knew both Devin and Nate. Maybe he thought this was some sort of psychic game of hide-and-seek.
With his talent slightly elevated, Slade had no trouble following the trail into the denser stand of trees. The oppressive energy of the fence was strong now, but he had entered the Preserve often enough to be able to push through it. Devin and Nate had managed to get through it, too. Their psi-prints were still visible and still leading deeper into the Preserve.