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walk?” he asked as he got to his feet.
    She stood, reaching behind to pull her backup gun free from the band of her pants. “Can you?”
    He removed his gun from his side, trying like hell not to notice how totally sexy she looked just now. “Highway’s this way,” he told her, turning his back on her and walking in the direction he wanted her to follow. “They’ll come through the main roads to find us.”
    “Yeah, but they’ll find the cops first. We should call them and give them an alternate route,” she was saying from behind.
    “You know an alternative route?” he asked.
    “No,” she replied after a few hesitant seconds.
    “Then we’ll head for the highway.”
    *   *   *
    It seemed like they were walking forever and getting absolutely nowhere. The terrain consisted of branches and dirt-impacted leaves riddling the ground. It was rough going downhill, up a winding incline, and then back to level ground once more. Yet Nivea wasn’t tired. Adrenaline buzzed through her body with a uniform rhythm.
    Her muscles were bunched, her senses heightened, her steps sure and purposeful while moving through the night. Above, the trees weren’t as thick and tangled to create a canopy like in the Gungi, but they were full and mature, standing like guardians to the area, protecting what wildlife it could. Only they weren’t humans and the hike to the highway was much longer than they’d anticipated.
    Eli the Great would never admit that, nor would he stop to regroup or possibly ask her thoughts on which way they should go. He was following his instincts, she knew, but her instincts were telling her something else. They were warning her that this little escape was about to turn bad, quick.
    “Stop!” she said finally, halting her own steps, knowing that if he chose to ignore her words, he’d hear that she wasn’t crunching along the ground behind him.
    It was well-known that Eli’s and his brother’s senses were much more acute than any of the other shifters. Nobody was really sure why, and the twins weren’t the type to wear their secrets on their sleeves. Yet they were renowned for their added awareness and much more powerful shifters because of it. Nivea didn’t think that made a difference in how she felt about Eli … until he kept walking.
    “Eli?” She yelled to him once. “Eli!”
    He finally turned, already about fifteen feet away from her.
    “What is it?” he asked. “Why are you stopping?”
    Even through the night she could see his features plainly, the sharp cut of his jaw and the light sprinkle of his goatee. His eyes were blocked as usual, but the wrinkle in his forehead told her he was worried. The muscle ticking in his jaw said he was angry on top of that worry. And the rigid stance he took when he was looking at her with nothing short of irritation said that now might not be the best time to question him.
    Still, Nivea had never been known to take the easy way out.
    “I think we might be lost,” she told him.
    “I don’t get lost.”
    She nodded, knowing that was what he was going to say.
    “I didn’t say ‘you’ were lost, I said ‘we.’”
    He frowned.
    “Look around you, there’s no road in sight, nor is there any illumination from a streetlight.”
    “No streetlights on the highway,” he corrected her grimly.
    “Fine, but when’s the last time you heard a vehicle driving by, saw some headlights?”
    “In case you failed to notice, we’re in the forest,” he told her. “How would we hear cars or see headlights, if we’re in the goddamned forest, Cannon? Think!” he yelled at her.
    Nivea didn’t speak, she was thinking, and not because he said so. She was very aware of everything around them, down to the creaking of the crickets pouncing about on the forest floor and in the trees. She could still scent the burning of the gas in the truck that had crashed, hear the crackle of fire that wasn’t too far behind them. She could taste the rain as a shower was