Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)(57)

Instantly heat washed the rest of the way up her face, and she could feel her cheeks turning hot. “I blush extremely easily. So I know my cheeks are bright pink right now.”

His laughter rolled free. “Here. Sit down and go through your mother’s envelope while I scan. We need to track this key to the lock it belongs to. The answers have to be somewhere.”

It was a steady toil to finish. It took Eagle over two hours to get every document scanned, while Issa slowly went through the physical documents on her mother. Then Issa switched to renaming the files on his computer and sorting through them. They paused at an envelope of old pictures. The images were of jewelry. Although poor-quality photos, each snapshot appeared to be of the same thing: an expensive heavily jeweled necklace. There were no identifying marks or notes on the back of the photos.

He scanned them in anyway. Afterward he moved the boxes and their contents to her room.

As long as the scans were saved into cloud storage somewhere, she’d know how to find them. Even if the kidnappers stole the computer along with the boxes, she’d have a copy. It was her heritage—what little of it there was.

By the time they were done, she was exhausted. Her mother’s envelope still sat clutched in her fingers. But she hadn’t looked at it.

Some things she just didn’t have the energy for—and that had nothing to do with her physical fatigue.

*

After he got Issa into her bed for the night, Eagle picked up his rifle and stepped outside. He’d finished the scanning and had transferred everything to his off-site storage. He had taken the precaution of moving all the scans onto a flash drive as well. He placed it in an empty coffee canister he had been using for spare change.

Not that he didn’t trust off-site storage, but … he didn’t trust people. This way he had a backup of the backup. And the papers had been filed off to the side. Bits and pieces of the information he’d read tonight slipped through his brain. Her father had a criminal record. He had been involved in criminal activities. He was being investigated for the attempted murder of Angus McKinley.

How much did any of it matter today? Did any of it have to do with Issa? As far as he could see, her life was uneventful from the time she had arrived in the States. He had read the doctors’ reports for Issa’s psychological testing, stating she’d been traumatized by some unknown event. But the doctors surmised it was a combination of the loss of her family and the move to America. Her school marks were listed. She had essentially failed her earlier grades but had been moved ahead regardless.

Eagle wondered about her mother. She didn’t keep any of Issa’s grades from the higher levels where Issa had done well enough to get into college. There she’d won the president’s award for top marks in her graduating year. That was no small feat. She’d been on the dean’s list every year she was in the university. Again no small feat. So she’d finally adapted and charged forward.

He could see that in her. A part of her was still traumatized from that defining event, but she had clearly blocked it out as much as she could. Her accelerated physical healing from her torture continued to surprise him. It was like so much else about her—too good to be true.

Her feet might not feel like blocks of wood anymore, but also all those little cuts had closed up and healed so well, and the bruises on her torso were gone. In five days’ time instead of the ten he had expected for her feet alone.

He was pretty damn sure, if he brought Annie’s X-ray machine back, he’d find Issa’s cracks and fractures to her bones were eighty percent healed. In the same five days. How did that happen? Particularly when her body was so low in body fat—no energy stores in reserve—so scrawny that it must completely utilize every ounce of energy she had available just to maintain a survival level: to keep her breathing, her blood pumping, her brain working. In cases like that, survival trumped healing, slowing to the point of not being able to heal at all. Infections would fester; breaks just couldn’t mend. But, in her case, she had charged ahead.

It bothered him. Not on a hey, this is bizarre level but a hey, this is wonderful level. He didn’t know what to make of her.

And then there was the intruder last night, the blood trail he’d left. When Issa had gone to bed, he’d sent out more texts to several guys from his old unit. People he could count on; people he could trust.

He hadn’t heard back from anybody—which was a little unusual—but, given everyone had lives of their own, maybe not. He sat with the rifle across his knees on the front porch steps, nothing moving except for his gaze as he slowly let the darkness seep in. One of the first things he’d done when he had moved here was memorize the horizon, the shadows, the shapes.

Over the years the shapes had grown, dropped, changed, but he had always noted the differences. When he’d been in the military, keeping track of the shadows had kept him alive. He had no problems with the bears, the wolves, or even the badgers around here. Like him, they were just out living as they were meant to.

It was the two-legged assholes he had a problem with. He checked his watch and realized it was only eight p.m. With Issa being awake so much and moving around more now, as much as she could, she had crashed early. He knew, in a few more days, she’d be frothing at the bit to return to her place. The thing was, it wasn’t fit to live in, what with all the damage the kidnappers had done. It wasn’t safe to live there either, not until the kidnappers were caught or killed. Plus it wouldn’t fit who she was now. Not after what she’d been through. At least not without a decent security system. Somehow he also felt it had been her private place to get away from her mother. With her mother gone, Issa probably needed something different. Besides he didn’t want her to leave. She belonged here. She probably belonged here with his raptors more than he did.