Page 42 of Snag (Conduit #2)

“Who are you talking to?” Reck asks darkly.

I’m not certain he has another tone. At least not when addressing me.

“Who’s that?” Gigi asks over the phone speakers.

“I’m not sure,” I say. Then I say to Reck, “Are you my long-lost soul-bound mate? Or are you an Authority agent right now?”

He grimaces.

I’m not sure which option displeases him the most. But it’s likely the soul-bound thing.

“Carlos Guerra,” Gigi says, speaking to Coda somewhere in the background. “Sergeant of the Major Crimes Unit, Cascadian Division. Club name Reck. For obvious fucking reasons.”

“I have a fucking eidetic memory, you know,” Coda grouses.

I can hear the awry tech’s fingers flying over their keyboards now.

“Were the text messages to Presh from you?” I ask Reck .

Deliberately, dismissively, he shifts his attention to the front doors of the house. “Get in, Zaya.”

The strength with which he’s gripping the wheel and the tense way he’s holding himself gives him away, though. He’s angry, likely perpetually, but he’s not indifferent.

He’s pretty to look at in profile. But it’s clear that Reck doesn’t know me— past me or present me— very well. I don’t respond to demands from anyone but the universe. And the universe hasn’t moved me yet.

“I don’t have him.” Coda’s voice shifts closer to the speakers. “I don’t have his phone, Zaya. I should easily be able to jump from you to him.” There’s a brief pause, then a frustrated snarl. “Fucker. He’s running one of those Authority black boxes.”

Reck, still not looking at me, smirks like a total asshole.

I tilt my head, considering him. “I can see the resemblance now. I couldn’t before. Just a sense of the familiar. Of course, I had just died the day before I found the picture. Dying tends to make everything a little hazy around the edges for a few days.”

Reck turns his head just enough to narrow his eyes on me, assessing but also threatening. “Resemblance to who?”

“Your father. Though it’s an easy guess that Bellamy is your twin.”

Anger, maybe even pure hatred, etches across his face. “It’s not an easy guess!”

“What’s that?” Coda asks. “More info, Zaya. I’ve been asleep for a few hours, and Gigi won’t give me another energy drink.”

“You’ve had three in the last fifteen minutes,” Gigi snaps from the background.

“Oso Guerra,” I say, not quite certain why I feel the need to needle Reck. Because I honestly don’t think he looks like his father, and Coda already knows everything we know about Bellamy. “The Cataclysm.”

“You have a picture of the Cataclysm and you haven’t sent it to me?” Coda snaps. “What the fuck, Zaya!?”

“Rath has it,” I say, hovering my hand over the window frame of the SUV, reaching for all the essence spells layered over it, embedded into the steel and paint. Those protections are likely also restricting Coda’s reach. Or …

“Maybe the SUV is the black box,” I say.

“Don’t,” Reck snaps, as if he knows what I can do with a simple touch. “We might need that. Get in!”

“I’ll have the black box disabled in a few minutes,” Coda says. The tech sounds focused, present.

Reck jerks in his seat, as if he’s just stopped himself from making a grab for my phone.

I raise a questioning eyebrow.

He grinds his teeth. Then he says, “We might need that protection as well.”

“Coda protects me in the digital realm,” I say mildly, using their name for the first time since the call began.

Surprise flits across Reck’s face— followed by unfiltered avarice. Yeah, I didn’t think he’d miss that little tidbit. Then he grimaces, presumably at my knowing look. And because I’ve just openly declared the awry tech to be under my protection. The Authority has been hunting Coda for years.

“I’ve got the last logged location for Precious,” Coda says. “Sending you a route. No eyes on her yet.” No cameras or satellite, the tech means. “And I think they’re still on the move.”

My phone screen flashes, then a map appears. A marker blinks southeast of our current location.

“How long was your fucking shower, Gigi?” I ask, unable to hide my ire.

“The kids are practically on the Idaho border!” Okay, that’s a massive exaggeration, but they are in the middle of fucking nowhere at least an hour away, maybe more.

And seemingly heading toward the border because there’s nothing else out there.

“I didn’t know I was babysitting a fucking flight risk,” Gigi snarks back.

I don’t answer her. Coda mutters something that I don’t catch. I stare down at the map, looking at it with intent. I don’t recognize the location. The knowing still doesn’t kick in.

I turn my phone toward Reck.

He looks at the screen, then nods stiffly.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Gigi says over the speakers. “Zaya. Fuck. I’m … you never ask for favors. I’m … sorry …”

I don’t respond to that either. I have no fucking idea how Presh and DeVille got off the property without the combat mage noticing. But I also know that determined teenagers can pretty much do whatever they want if they don’t care about the risks.

Coda mutters something in the background again. It could be “Enough …” But it might also be “Gear up.”

“I’m sorry,” Gigi whispers again.

I hear what I assume is the door to Coda’s trailer opening, then closing.

“I’m here,” Coda says over the phone speakers, firm and focused. “Who has the kids, and why are they using Authority tech?”

“What?” Reck snaps.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know, Sergeant,” Coda purrs maliciously. “Your fellow agents are deep in the Cataclysm’s pockets.”

“That’s a new twist to me as well,” I say mildly, though I’m thinking about the bit of vid that Coda found of Reck’s agents meeting with Devlin. Are Wilson and Shaw in the employ of one of my aunt’s rejected soul-bound mates?

Reck’s expression blanks, all his intent hidden behind that false, almost-too-pretty facade. “We’re wasting time,” he snaps at me, then he glances over at the house again. “Get. In. The. Vehicle.”

“The camera Rought installed,” I say promptingly, keeping my gaze pinned to Reck, watching for any shift in his expression, any shift in his essence. “At the top of the drive?”

“First thing I checked,” Coda snaps. “Before sending Gigi out on foot with a tracking spell. A spell, by the fucking way, that doesn’t fucking work on this fucking estate.

” Coda inhales deeply, calming their tone.

“I have continual feed running from that and the three other cameras Rought installed for me. The tech doesn’t have a problem with the energy boiling out of the fucking earth there, not since you …

gave me access. But I’ve already scoured it for clues. ”

Reck has given up all pretense of dismissing me or ending the conversation.

I can see him analyzing everything Coda’s saying, forming questions.

I smirk at him, and not playfully. His energy, even through the protections coating the SUV, seriously bothers me.

I actually had less trouble with the cu-sith.

There’s something pure, true, in the grim reaper’s malicious power.

Reck twists his lips, as if stopping himself from baring his teeth at me.

So the feeling is definitely mutual.

Severed bonds or not, the contrast between my reaction to Reck and his brothers, Rought and Rath, is stark .

“The kids aren’t stupid enough to have exited the property via the driveway,” Coda mutters over the phone. “So they had to be on foot.”

“They didn’t get this far away on foot,” I say mildly.

I would have to reach through the protections coating the vehicle to truly look at Reck, truly see him.

And I hesitate, not only because of his earlier caution but also for personal reasons.

And yes, I’m aware that the Conduit shouldn’t have personal reasons for not doing something.

But looking at someone’s threads is invasive, even with consent.

Reck is too powerful to not know the touch of my essence.

To not remember the touch of my essence.

And my essence as a teenager wouldn’t even have been a whisper of the power I now hold. That I’m still struggling to hold.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Reck snaps. “I wouldn’t hurt Presh. And … I won’t hurt you.”

“You can’t hurt me,” I say automatically, stiffly.

“Can’t I?” he says coldly. “Your soul-bound mates might be the only beings capable of —” He cuts himself off, grimacing. And dropping his gaze.

“Maybe that’s why …” My eyesight suddenly goes hazy at the edges.

My fingers twitch, subconsciously curling into a two-finger hold.

As if by mulling through all the revelations from the last twenty-four hours, I’m suddenly and involuntarily drafting the threads of the past through my fingers, trying to untangle them.

Or maybe trying to properly ply them together into one unified whole?

Ready to be rewoven into the fabric of the universe —

“What are you doing?” Reck asks sharply.

I refocus on him. “What?”

He shakes his head, grinding his teeth. “ ‘Maybe that’s why …’ what?” He asks the question as if it’s been pulled from him against his will.

“Why my aunt rejected her soul-bound mates after Oso murdered Ward.”

Reck blinks. All of his pretense and masks fall away. Just for a moment.

I don’t make him wait for clarification. “The three half-brothers, Oso, Ward, and Ari, were soul bound to my aunt. After Oso killed Ward, my aunt severed her other bonds. But maybe that wasn’t a punishment. Maybe that was self-preservation.”

“What the fuck …” Reck wraps his left hand across his forehead and rubs both of his temples. Then he exhales harshly. “That doesn’t change the present.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“We need to go now,” he says, reverting to his Authority persona even though none of what he’s doing, nothing he has been doing with or without his agents, is sanctioned.

Especially any interaction with me, the Conduit.

“Just you and me. Bellamy is threatening DeVille, and then Presh, if anyone else comes with us.”