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do you know this?”
    “ I know Sadin Quyz. He never travels
at night. Either his night vision is poor, or … he’s afraid of the
dark.”
     

Chapter Four
    Corin gave Lana a look of skepticism.
    Lana ignored it. She had no intention of
trying to explain further. If he wanted to keep going, he was
welcome to, but she’d learned from hard experience that impatience
and a disregard for safety procedures generally only led to failure
and/or death for the ranger too gung ho to use common sense. She
was in unfamiliar territory. Corin might know it like the back of
his hand. Corin might, or might not, have some special gift that
allowed him to commune with nature—but she didn’t and she wasn’t
about to be led around blindly by a man she didn’t know well enough
to trust when she was stalking a killer she knew far too well.
    If he was wrong and they got off track,
they’d lose even more time.
    Dismissing it, she surveyed the one room
cabin critically, realizing it was actually in fairly good shape.
It couldn’t have been abandoned long. Moving to the bunk that had
been built against one wall, she tested the mattress, cautiously at
first. When nothing crawled out, she dragged the mattress from the
frame and took it outside to beat the dust from it.
    Corin was building a fire on the small
hearth when she returned. The light from it chased the deepening
shadows from the room, reminding Lana that there was very little
natural light left to take advantage of.
    Tossing the mattress back on the bunk, she
set her pack on top and dug through it for her toiletries then went
outside to look for a well. A cylindrical stone wall defined the
top of the well. Setting her bathing supplies aside, she leaned
over the well and looked down. A crude crank and pulley mechanism
had been devised to lift the water. She caught hold of the handle
and began turning it and was rewarded a few minutes later by the
arrival of a bucket filled with water. Letting out a little slack,
she pulled the bucket to the side of the well and set it on the lip
of the wall.
    She’d dabbed at her grime the night before
in the little creek she’d camped beside, but it had been barely a
trickle of water, not enough to do much more than dabble in it.
Stripping, she set her clothes aside, grasped the bucket, and
upended it over her head. The douche of chilly water took her
breath. Gasping, she dropped the bucket down the shaft once more
and filled it before she began lathering her hair. When she’d
finished scrubbing her scalp, she squeezed as much soap and water
out of her hair as she could. She was about to reach for the bucket
to rinse her hair when a sound close by sent a rush of adrenaline
through her.
    She grabbed her knife even as she whirled to
face the possible threat.
    Corin, she saw, was standing only a few
yards away, either drawn by the sound of splashing water, or merely
curious to know why she’d been gone so long. Relaxing, she dropped
the knife atop her belongings once more and reached for the bucket
again. Corin forestalled her. Striding toward her, he took the pail
of water from her hands and held it up, tipping it so that the
water poured over her slowly.
    “ Thanks.” She turned her back to him,
working the soap from her hair. When he’d emptied it, she took the
container from him and brought up another bucket of water. Corin,
she saw when she glanced around for her soap and washcloth, was
stripping down, as well. When she’d lathered the cloth, she handed
the soap to him wordlessly and returned her attention to her own
bath.
    It occurred to her as she finished lathering
herself that she hadn’t noticed that Corin had had a washcloth.
Turning to him, she held hers out, smiling faintly. “This’ll
probably make bathing a little easier if you’d like to use it.”
    His face was taut as he glanced down at her
hand. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to hers once more and reached for
the cloth without even glancing down. Instead of grasping