“There was a bear,” she explained briefly. “We scared it off. Diana went to report while I waited here.”

“Ah.” He looked down at the remains, his coldly handsome face as usual utterly without expression. He was dressed as casually as the rest of the SCU team was today, in jeans and a white shirt underneath a lightweight windbreaker, but the informal attire did nothing to soften the almost military crispness of his stance and movements, that truly visible sense of considerable strength and the training and ability to know how best to use it.

Hollis had seen that in other ex-military types, but in DeMarco there was something just a little bit… excessive… in his straight posture and almost hypersensitivity to his surroundings. He seemed to her too alert, too ready to explode into action. He made her think of a cocked gun, and she had no idea whether a dangerous hair trigger lurked inside him.

She couldn’t see his aura unless he allowed her to.

He wasn’t allowing her to.

“I gather the bear discovered these remains?”

She shoved the oddly disjointed thoughts aside. He’s a telepath, remember? Don’t let him into your head. Not that she had any kind of a shield she could use to keep him out if he wanted in. Dammit. “Yeah.”

“Is that what brought you two so far off the trails?”

“Not exactly.”

His gaze shifted, pale blue eyes fixed intently on her face. “You know, we are on the same side, Hollis. You don’t have to be so guarded with me. I’m not trying to read you.”

She wondered if that meant he wasn’t reading her—or simply didn’t have to try in order to read her. She didn’t have the nerve to ask. “Was I being evasive? Sorry. Diana and I weren’t following the bear, we were following a spirit who led us to this area. Then we found the bear. Which had just found what was left of this body.”

“That must have been an interesting encounter.”