Page 12 of Cast in Shadow (Drenched in Darkness #1)

12

Fury and an unbearable sense of helplessness were pulling me apart inside, and the longer I drove, the more futile it felt.

Hours had passed since Shay and Nguyen’s team had arrived to find the members of Echo shredded and sprawled in the dirt. Any magical trail I might have been able to follow had long since evaporated. The cleaners had come and gone, and they were transporting the bodies of six of my agents back to Lexa as I stared at the road stretching out in front of me.

What was I doing? Why was I going out to a site that had already been cleaned?

I knew it was a wasted effort, but I needed something to do. Desperately. Something to pull my mind from the anxious claws sinking deeper—into my chest, my back, my shoulders, the base of my skull—as the minutes ticked by.

What if I was going the wrong direction? What if Shay and Nguyen were taken to the other side of Brynworth? Or somewhere else entirely? Would my time be better spent heading straight to HQ and leading the search from there ?

It felt like there should have been a right answer, logically, but what if I was wrong?

I never should have let Shay do this. Never should have had her drive out to meet us in that damned parking garage or walk into this nightmare with Nguyen and the others. If she’d stayed at the hotel, she would be safe and sound right now, probably curled up on the comfy couch in her room watching a movie.

What on Earth possessed me to call her in on this job?

The answer was obvious, but it didn’t help ease my guilt: It was Shay. She wanted to be more involved. She wanted to experience field work, and I figured playing driver to three trained agents, whose only task was to locate and identify the agents we’d lost to the Clark Ridge pack, was about as safe as it would get.

Was I also secretly hoping seeing what could happen when a mission went wrong firsthand might be enough to convince her that field work was too dangerous for her? Yeah, I was. I was fine with her working for Lexa. Happy about it even. I loved having her in my day-to-day life, and there was nowhere safer than our headquarters.

The outside world was a whole different story.

“Dennis, I’m still waiting on that pin,” I said, searching for a calm that wasn’t there. The furious click-clack of his keyboard provided a steady backdrop to the sound of his uneven breathing. When he didn’t respond after a few seconds, I was about ready to reach through the phone and throttle him. “Dennis,” I snapped.

“I’m working on something. Hang on a minute.”

I bit my tongue until I tasted the coppery tang of blood. “Dennis,” I said his name like a warning.

“Hold.”

It took everything in me not to yell at him. Instead of granting myself that small release, I tried to focus on the why. Why would someone take Shay and Nguyen? Why them and not the other agents?

There had to be a reason.

My first thought was that Nguyen might have been the target. Lexa was a covert organization, but that man’s reputation preceded him. Anyone who actually knew who he was, and knew his background, would also know taking him was a great way to end up dead.

Were they after Shay then? She could heal herself, but that was as far as her magical ability went. She couldn’t redirect her power to heal anyone else, and not for lack of trying. She also couldn’t harness it for any other use. We’d tested it, time and time again, in a hundred different ways.

The girl desperately wanted an ability that she thought was more useful than just healing herself, but it wasn’t in the cards. Which was why she’d started messing around with chemistry and creating concoctions that could help her be better or faster. No matter what anyone said, she couldn’t accept that she was perfect just the way she was.

Thinking about that need to prove herself ratcheted my anger higher.

She’d been that way since that very first day, and I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been wrong to let her worthless parents off the hook for abandoning her. She didn’t know I’d tracked them down or that I’d kept tabs on them over the last few years. I knew they were afraid of her magic, even though it had nothing to do with them.

They were both nulls. The pair didn’t have enough magic between them to light a candle. The fact that they’d managed to have a magical baby was a miracle in itself. Then they’d abandoned her for that miracle, and she’d doubted her own worth ever since.

They didn’t deserve her .

Maybe I didn’t either, but at least I was trying.

“For fuck’s sake, Dennis!” I yelled, pushing down the wave of guilt that rose at losing my temper.

“Almost there…”

“Almost where? What the hell are you doing?”

“Hacking proprietary software so I can track her watch.”

Oh.

Hope rang through my body. “You can do that?” I never would have thought to look for her that way.

I’d gotten her that watch for her birthday a couple months earlier. She’d been so excited about it. The thing wasn’t state of the art, but she’d wanted something quick and easy to monitor her heart rate and blood pressure when she was testing out new serums.

“It has GPS and it’s on, but it’s not moving.”

“That could mean they found it and made her take it off. Do you have a location?”

“I’m working on it, Senna. Can you just…”

Shut up and give him a damn minute. Yeah, I got the message. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything else. It wasn’t much help. All I could think about was what had happened to them. The pain in my chest imagining Shay hurt and scared almost made me double over in my seat.

Impatience tingled up my spine, but I could still hear the rapid beat of plastic keys clicking in my ear. I stared out at the road feeling more lost than I had in a very long time.

I’d almost forgotten how much I hated that feeling.

“I’ve got her!”

And just like that, everything else in the world fell away as Dennis started feeding me information from Shay’s watch. She was still wearing it, at least according to the data coming through, and whatever was happening to her, it had her heart rate and blood pressure spiking every few minutes .

“What does that mean? Is she just scared?” Dennis asked, his voice pitched high with worry.

Torture. That was what it meant. Repeated bouts of pain and panic underscored by a relentless torrent of fear. Whoever had her would pay for messing with my girl.

“How close can you pinpoint her location?”

“Within about fifty yards, I think.”

“You think?”

Dennis exhaled hard. “The system isn’t built to be used this way. It’s a recreational device.”

I sucked in a breath and blew it out slowly. He was doing the best he could. I knew that. “It’s okay, Dennis. Close is better than nothing. Give me what you’ve got.”

Broken white lines flashed by in a blur as I pushed the Jeep to the limit of its ability, and somehow it still felt like I was crawling. Dennis relayed directions, using my phone to direct me to the area where Shay’s smartwatch was still transmitting.

Another groan came over the line, and my stomach dropped. “What happened?”

“I don’t know what the hell they’re doing to her, but her heartbeat cut out.”

My own heart screeched to a halt in my chest. “Is she…?” I couldn’t even bring myself to say the words.

“No,” he said quickly. “It’s back now. Too fast, but still there.” He let out a shaky sigh. “It might have just been a tech glitch.”

I gripped the steering wheel so hard half my knuckles popped, and I was sure the imprint of my fingers would be forever pressed into the leather. It wasn’t a glitch. Whoever had her had just figured out what she could do.

I jammed my foot harder against the gas pedal, not that it had anywhere else to go. If I could have used my magic to make the fucking thing move faster, I would have drained myself dry getting to her .

“Easy, Senna.” Dennis’s voice pulled me back from the darkness threatening to engulf me. “You’re close. Pull over, shut off your lights.”

I nearly snapped at him for telling me how to execute a rescue mission, but the truth was, I needed the help. My judgment was obviously compromised. Having him walk me through the very basic steps might prove helpful. Something to keep me anchored in what I needed to do and not what I was feeling.

“Keep talking to me. What’s next?”

He hesitated for a beat. “Do you have anything you can use as a weapon?”

He meant aside from my magic. Smart kid. There was no need to show my hand too early. I took my phone off speaker and slipped into the back seat of the Jeep. Hauling the duffel bag out of the back compartment, I dropped it on the cushion next to me.

Every Lexa vehicle was equipped with a drop bag, complete with a few staples that could be used to get agents out of a jam. Sitting right on the top was a SIG P226 pistol. “I have a SIG,” I said quietly, taking it out of the bag.

“Holster?” Even Dennis was keeping his voice low.

I shook my head and checked that the magazine was full. “That’ll take too much time.”

The slide moved easily as I pulled it back and eased it forward to chamber a round. It would have been great to get a better idea of my surroundings from inside the Jeep, but the limo tint on the side windows made that an impossibility at night. I could only see out the windshield and what the side view mirrors showed me, which wasn’t much.

Dennis had tracked the signal on Shay’s watch to the middle of the city. It wasn’t ideal, with glass and metal and brick rising all around me. With a fifty-yard radius, there were three buildings she could be in from where I’d pulled over.

Normally, I loved my city. There was something invigorating about the skyscrapers and the cars and the constant hustle and bustle. Tonight, though, it felt like the buildings were closing in on me.

Anywhere this populated was a risky place to take hostages, even at night. It also made tracking magic almost impossible. Too many fading trails of it crisscrossed over each other, mixing as they slowly dissipated. It was a mess, and I couldn’t pick out anything that looked or felt like Shay.

“Can you get me any closer?” I asked.

He said something in response, but a familiar feeling trickled into my system, stealing my focus. I closed my eyes and sent a silent prayer of thanks to the gods. The ribbon was coming back. It might be an hour or just a few minutes before it crossed through our part of the world again, but either way, the closer it got, the more power I could draw from it.

I tested it, opening myself to it. A tiny stream of energy spilled into my blood, running through me, amplifying everything I was. It wasn’t much, but when I slipped out of the Jeep and shut the door quietly behind me, it was enough to reveal a pulse of magic that was like a curse and beacon for my soul all at once.

Emerson.

His was an energy I would recognize anywhere, and I didn’t know whether to be thrilled, terrified, or furious.

“I’ll have to call you back,” I said to Dennis. Then I hung up the phone and slipped it in my jacket pocket as I turned in a slow circle. There was still no sign of Shay or Nguyen, so I zeroed in on Emerson’s ruby pulse and crept through the night.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

I froze at the sound of his voice, though this time it was at least voluntary. He was watching me from the shadows, a blast from the past with eyes glowing a shade of red that tugged at something deep inside me.

How the hell could I ache for someone I hated so much?

I closed my eyes for a second. Just one second, and the next thing I knew, his heat was soaking into me. Peeling my eyes open, he was standing right in front of me, inches away.

It was too easy to forget he could move like that. Quick. Silent.

Deadly.