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know.”
    She snorted, a feminine sound. “I think I’d best keep an eye on it myself.”
    A complete contradiction, Katie Maddox. One moment timid, the next bursting out with matter-of-fact confidence. And even on the heels of the thought, she startled him again, frowning. “He didn’t shoot me,” she said, as if it puzzled her.
    Shoot her? The Core agent? But Maks had left her in a safe place—at the house, at a distance. He sat up—if slowly, leaning hard on his good arm; the lingering weakness didn’t soften his voice. “What do you mean, shoot you?”
    She flushed, wiping her hands against the sparse and stemmy grass. “I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “When he triggered that amulet, I ran in to—well, I don’t know what I was going to do. But I was here—and he wanted to shoot me, he really did. But he didn’t do it.”
    Maks had no words for that. For what she’d done—for his horror at it. But she saw it on his face, clear enough.
    “I wasn’t thinking, ” she repeated, defensiveness creeping into her voice. “And I’m okay. I just—it seemed strange. Why not pull the trigger? And what was he doing here in the first place?”
    That, indeed, was a most excellent question. “We’ll find out,” he told her, and untangled his legs to stand.
    “Oh—hold on...” Katie reached back to grope at the ground, impossibly graceful in that awkward position. When she straightened, she’d retrieved a scarf—a decorative thing, long and narrow and awash with artfully smeary green. “You’ll want a sling, I think—at least until we can see how fast you’ll heal.”
    And broadcast the weakness? He shook his head. “I’ll be careful.”
    Her hand tightened around the scarf, knuckles just white enough to give away her frustration. “Maks,” she said, and the next words seemed to get stuck for a moment. But not forever, though she had to look away from him. “I thought I was going to lose you. Just so you know.”
    He drew in the sweet scent of her, tasting the sharp lingering edge of her fear—and he wanted to say, I’ll protect you, Katie Maddox, even though it made no sense inside this conversation at all.
    So, instead, he simply rose to his feet, a sharp grunt escaping him at the fiery pain twisting down his arm.
    “Oh,” Katie said, so casually. “Didn’t I mention? I’m pretty sure the median nerve took some damage. Probably lots of inflammation there. A sling might help, though.” She let the scarf dangle from her hand. “You know...like this one?”
    Maks stared at her a moment, and then gave a snort of helpless laughter. No, Katie the deer wasn’t nearly as timid as she thought she was. He tucked his thumb into his waistband to keep the arm still, and held out the other to pull her to her feet.
    She reached for it, gave him a knowing flash of a glance, and changed her mind to stand smoothly on her own.
    He knew it then—she, too, had felt all of that which had passed between them. And she was either more frightened by it than Maks...or else she was smarter.
    Probably both.

Chapter 4
    D idn’t he just look like hell, Katie thought as she gathered her impromptu surgical supplies with sharp movements. She tucked the little medical field kit under her arm, pretending she wasn’t affected by Maks’s pale, strained face—or that she wasn’t wondering how brevis could even send her this man so clearly still wounded from his previous battle.
    But maybe she didn’t pretend all that well. Because he hesitated, jaw tensed, and he looked away from her before he managed to say, “Don’t tell them.”
    “Don’t—?” she said, stopping short, and not quite understanding.
    “Brevis.” The words were hard to say, to judge by the strain in his voice. “Don’t tell them how it is.”
    She gave a short laugh. “If I did, would they send someone else?”
    He met her gaze with a direct if reluctant look, the turmoil still evident. “Not right away.”
    Not that she hadn’t done