The Protector (Fire's Edge #4) - Abigail Owen Page 0,80

out in ways so subtle he couldn’t put his finger on how. She’d flown beside him. They discussed each move they made, and she listened to him. She even smiled at him. Laughed. Responded to his teasing.

But the real Lyndi, the woman who’d finally started opening herself to him in other ways, was gone. A metaphorical plexiglass wall had come up behind her eyes. An invisible barrier, nothing he could point to or ask her about, but it existed just the same.

Like he was a fucking mime, trying to get out of a glass chamber he couldn’t see, having to feel his way through a maze that might have no exit.

“Sir?” Elijah asked from behind him.

Levi turned away from the view out of the mountain cavern to find the kid holding out the massive banana-yellow satellite phone. Their connection back to the team.

He took it with a nod and put it to his ear. “Levi.”

“Is Lyndi with you?” Drake asked.

“Yes. She’s safe.”

“Thank the gods for that.”

“They got Bree and Shula out,” he said.

“Yes. We got…word…from Shula.”

“They’d better get the fuck out of Dodge. Tineen will be coming for them again.”

“Already handled,” came the grim response.

No need for more. Levi had his own problems to deal with, and knowledge about details going on elsewhere could be dangerous.

“We haven’t heard from Deep yet, though.”

The solid plastic of the device in his hand cracked as Levi gripped it harder, trying to clench the whine of his dragon inside him. “He got out and met up with Lyndi. He was injured but healing when she left him. He was going to leave a false trail.”

A beat of silence. “We’ll keep our ears to the ground for him.”

“Yeah.” The only thing keeping Levi’s worries at bay was Calla. If something had happened to Deep, she would know.

“Any updates for me?” Drake asked.

“Not that I can share. We’re safe. No encounters or sign that we or Lyndi were followed. That’s all you need to know.” The keeping of secrets for safety went both ways.

“Right.”

Levi hesitated. Should he tell Drake about Lyndi getting sick? Worrying Drake needlessly, when he could do nothing about it from where he was, was pointless, so he kept his mouth shut. “I’ll check back in with you in twenty-four hours.”

“Got it.”

On that, they hung up, and Levi handed the phone to Elijah who’d waited. They’d placed him in charge of communications, and he refused to let that phone out of his sight.

“Stay here and watch,” Levi ordered. Probably more harshly than he’d meant, but he needed to tell Lyndi about the call. Dread reached out with hands from the grave, tugging at his feet as he walked deeper into the caves. Deep better be all right.

A sudden rumble echoed through the darkness from deeper in the caves followed by several shouts, then Lyndi’s voice, high and clear. “Get back.”

Levi took off at a dead sprint, thankful his eyes could see enough in the dark for him to go without needing a light, even as the winding series of caverns and quasi-hallways took him lower. He used the extra speed being a shifter gave him and burst into a room lit by a single flashlight, the beam trained on a massive gray beast.

A cave troll.

The thing had to be close to fifteen feet tall and looked to be made of rock, dust coating its leathery skin and facial features hidden in a face made up of crags and crevices.

And Lyndi, dammit, stood in the middle of the cavern, within easy arm’s reach of the thing, facing it down. She had her arms spread to either side of her, as though she could hold the boys back against the outskirts of the cavern through sheer force of will.

Hard to tell if the troll was looking at her or somewhere else. Not wanting to antagonize the thing while his mate stood so close, Levi held his position at the entrance to the cavern. “Lyndi,” he said, soft, low, and steady. “Back away.”

She shook her head, focused on the troll. “I am so sorry we disturbed your home,” she said calmly. As though having a chat with a grumpy new neighbor.

The troll said nothing.

“We’re trying to find a place to hide.”

“Nothing come here in much time.” The troll’s voice was low but surprisingly smooth. Slow and even, like time itself. “Except wandering humans.”

Hard to tell with a face like that, but Levi got the distinct impression the troll licked its chops with that declaration. Or was