by Leigh, Jena
Not to kill her, which was what Declan had always believed he’d been trying to do.
No, Masterson had wanted to take her. For what purpose was anyone’s guess, at the time. Now it seemed fairly obvious.
Alex Parker possessed the same rare trait as her father.
In a last-ditch effort to stop him, Grayson, Alex’s Aunt, and Brandt shot Masterson and placed him in a cryogenic suspension—a deep freeze that he’d recently managed to escape from.
Grayson hadn’t been too forthcoming on those details, either.
Their efforts to stop Masterson hadn’t made a difference, in the end. Somehow, Alex had been given the treatments.
And now they knew the truth.
Well… Grayson’s version of it, anyway.
Declan wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. He simply couldn’t trust anyone to give it to him straight these days. In that respect, he could empathize with Alex.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat.
Now if he could just figure out where Alex had disappeared to.
She’d jumped shortly after the meeting ended, stating that she needed to get some air and then teleporting before anyone could stop her.
He racked his memory, trying to think of where else she might have gone.
Jump
Not at Connor’s.
Jump
Not on the boardwalk.
Jump
Not on the beach.
Jump
Not on the pier.
He groaned, exhausted from so many jumps. Where had she gone?
Didn’t she realize how dangerous it was for her to be out on her own like this?
Out of ideas, he readied himself to jump back to the cabin… and then realized that there was still one place he hadn’t looked.
Declan landed softly in the grass beside Alex.
She didn’t look up, just continued to stare off into the distance, with her arms wrapped tightly around her legs and her chin resting atop her knees. Her round face, slender hands and bare feet were as white as snow in the darkness, her alabaster skin shimmering in the light of the full moon.
You know, for someone who lived at the beach year-round, Alex sure was pale.
A breeze picked up.
Declan shrugged off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders.
He sank into the grass beside her and they remained there for a long while, two silent and unmoving statues, gazing up at the starry expanse of sky that shrouded the Irish countryside.
“I’m so sorry, Decks,” Alex whispered. Silver rivulets of tears glistened on her cheek.
“Sorry for what?” he asked. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“I do. I have everything to be sorry for. If it weren’t for me, they’d still be alive. Your parents… Nate’s mom… It’s my fault, Declan.”
Three days ago, he would have agreed with her.
Three days ago, he’d been a benighted, self-absorbed asshole.
But after meeting Alex—after getting to know her and learning the truth about what had happened—Declan had been forced to admit something. Something he’d always known, deep down, but had never wanted to accept.
His parents had made the right choice.
Where the fate of an innocent child was concerned, there wasn’t even a choice to be made. It was simply the right thing to do. Protecting Alex had been the right move, no matter the consequence.
And Declan had since realized that, had he been in their place, he would have made the same decision—that he’d already made the same decision.
He would protect the girl sitting next to him. Would fight for her until his dying breath.
“No, Lex,” he said. “The only person to blame for what happened is Masterson. Don’t you ever think that it was your fault. You hear me? It wasn’t. No one blames you for any of it.”
Declan studied her profile and wondered how, in such a short time, she’d managed to leave him so completely undone. How, out of everyone, it had been Alex that had somehow managed to sneak past his defenses.
Alex had slipped past the walls he’d spent a lifetime building, and she didn’t even realize it.
He’d gotten so good at not caring. At distancing himself. But she’d changed everything without even trying.
Declan’s world could never go back to the way it was.
And, heaven help him, if it meant losing the reckless, stubborn, beautiful girl sitting next to him… then he didn’t want it to.
Alex turned her head to face him, resting her cheek against her knee. She wiped the tears away with the sleeve of his jacket. “I just… I don’t know what to think anymore, Decks. Every time I turn around, I find out some new horrible secret. About my family. About myself. About Masterson… It’s too much. It’s all too much.”
He closed the distance between them, hesitantly placing his arm around her shoulders. Declan held very still, afraid she’d pull away.
“I know,” he said. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. They shouldn’t have lied to you. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I should have told you what I knew about Masterson from the start.”
She leaned back into the crook of his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “Promise me something, Decks?”
“What’s that?”
“No more lies?” she said.
“No more lies,” he agreed.
They sat there in an amiable silence for another five minutes before Declan grudgingly fished the cell phone he’d been ignoring out of his pocket.
Huh. No messages.
He’d been gone for over an hour, looking for Alex. Surely someone should be wondering where they were by now.
“We should get back,” he said. “Don’t want the others to worry. And your Aunt said she wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Great,” said Alex, getting to her feet. “That conversation ought to be about as much fun as a root canal.”
They jumped back to the cabin.
The living room was deserted.
Alex walked to the pass-through and peered into the kitchen. “Where is everyone?” she asked. “Surely they’re not all in bed. It’s only ten o’clock.”
He jumped upstairs.
Up and down the long hall, bedroom doors stood open, the rooms beyond bathed in shadows.
“Kenzie?” he thought, dropping the walls he’d had up. “Are you there?”
No answer. Wherever his sister had gone, it must have been a long way from the cabin.
“Declan!”
The strangled cry echoed through the empty house.
Lex.
He jumped back to the living room. Brandt stood in front of the fireplace, gun leveled at Alex.
“Brandt?” Declan had appeared at the foot of the stairs, roughly eight feet behind Alex. He took a few slow steps forward. Brandt cocked the gun. Declan came to a halt. “Brandt, what are you doing?”
“I’m afraid Carson Brandt isn’t here at the moment,” said the man. Brandt’s Scottish brogue had been replaced by posh English accent. “I’m just borrowing his face, you see. I’d intended to… How did he put it? Ah, yes. I wanted to see if I might ‘ruin his good name’ a bit more. Little did I know, I was late to the party.”
“Masterson,” said Declan.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” he said in a passable southern drawl. Declan couldn’t help but wonder what the man’s real voice sounded like. “But, please… call me Sam.”
“Okay, Sam,” said Alex, taking a step backward, one hand behind her back. “Where is everyone? What have you done with them?”
Alex wiggled her fingers. Declan got the message: two more feet, and her hand would be within his reach. They’d be able to jump.
The only problem with that plan, was that Masterson had already proven himself capable of following them.
“Oh, come now, pet,” he said, returning to an English accent. “Such little faith you have in me. I wasn’t the one that took your
friends. They were already gone by the time I arrived. I’d merely dropped by to return the firearm Jonathan was kind enough to lend me.”
What the heck was he talking about?
Declan eyed the pistol in Masterson’s hand. It was the same model Ruger that Grayson carried. But if it really was Grayson’s gun, then how had Masterson gotten his hands on it?
“If you didn’t take them, who did?” asked Alex.
“I have every faith you’ll figure that out on your own, pet,” he said. “Oh, and I do apologize, but I’m afraid our lessons are going to have to be put on hold for the time being. I’ve had some matters arise that require my immediate and undivided attention. An unfortunate delay, but a necessary one. And anyhow, you’ll have much more free time during your upcoming summer holiday. As it is now, this current break of yours is nearly over and I would so hate to distract you from your other studies.”
How considerate of him.
No doubt about it. The guy was nuts.
“Lessons?” Alex repeated.
“Certainly. Gifts such as ours aren’t mastered overnight, you know.”
The hand Alex had been holding behind her back dropped to her side.
“How… How did I become like you?” she asked, taking a step toward Masterson, and moving further out of Declan’s reach.
Dammit. What did she think she was doing?
“Did you do this to me?” she pressed.
“You’re asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is not how, but why.” He smiled. “And, alas, that is a story for another day… Fare thee well, pet. We’ll be together again before you know it.”
With that, Masterson set the pistol on the fireplace step and disappeared.
“Time to go,” said Declan. He grabbed Alex by the arm and jumped before she could reply.
They tumbled onto hard-packed, rock-covered sand.
Ouch. Okay, so not his best landing. That’s what he got for jumping to a place he’d never actually seen in person. All that really mattered right now, is that they were miles away from anything remotely resembling civilization. And from Masterson, or so he hoped.
“Where is this place?” asked Alex, dusting herself off.
The sun had yet to set in this part of the world, but judging from the thin line of yellow on the horizon and the rapidly falling temperature, it wouldn’t be up much longer.
A towering rock formation loomed half a mile in the distance, positioned at the center of two long dikes that stretched out in opposite directions like a pair of craggy wings before sinking into the flat plains of the desert.
Shiprock.
He’d seen it on TV once, although he hadn’t been paying much attention at the time. All he could really recall was that it was located in the Navajo Nation and that, in their culture, the peak was considered sacred.
“New Mexico,” he answered. “I think.”
“Why the desert?”
“Because it’s isolated,” he said. “And because whoever took the others might still be watching the cabin. We couldn’t stay there.”
“But wouldn’t it be a good thing if they were watching the house? Maybe we could sneak back and figure out who they are.”
Was she serious?
“Alex, there were eight people still at the cabin when I left. Three of whom possess enough destructive power to level that entire house, and six of whom are expertly trained to defend themselves,” he said. “Did you see any broken furniture? Chairs knocked over? Shattered glass? Water or fire damage? Did you see anything there that was out of place?”
“No.” Alex deflated. “No, I didn’t.”
“Whoever they were, they managed to incapacitate and abduct the others without so much as scuffing the hardwood floor. Now, do you really think we’re just going to sneak up on people like that, without them realizing it? We’d just end up getting captured ourselves—or worse—and then who would be left to rescue us?”
“Could they have gotten out?” she asked, still clinging to hope.
“No,” he said, checking his phone again. “Someone would have called to let us know what happened by now. And Masterson seemed to think they’d been taken by someone. Not that I particularly trust the word of a murderer, but… I don’t know. I think he might be right.”
“Alright,” said Alex, determined. “Then what do we do now?”
“Now,” he said, “I think it’s time I paid my friend Oz a visit.”
“Oz? As in ‘Oz, the Great and Powerful’?”
“I’m sure he’d like you to think so. In reality, it’s more like, ‘Oz, the Short One from Schenectady.’ But I’ll tell him you said that. Knowing Ozzie, he’ll take it as a compliment.”
“You’ll tell him? Aren’t you taking me with you?”
“You’ll be safer here, Lex. I won’t be gone long.”
“Are you kidding? You’re not the only one with family missing, Declan. Besides that,” she gestured to their surroundings. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s freezing cold, and I’m barefoot—again, no thanks to you. You know what? No. I am not going to just sit here and wait while you run off to play hero. You’re taking me with you.”
Thrilling heroics hadn’t exactly been on his to-do list—he was merely hitting up Ozzie’s in search of intel—but Alex’s tone brooked no argument.
He sighed and took her by the arm.
Stubborn.
— 23 —
Alexandra Parker was currently standing smack dab in the middle of a daydream come to life. She’d finally made it to a place she’d wanted to see ever since she caught her first Monty Python’s Flying Circus re-run on PBS as a little kid.
Alex was in London.
She shivered.
Okay, so in those daydreams, she wasn’t usually standing barefoot on a snowy rooftop in the middle of the night wearing paper-thin yoga pants while a handsome blonde swore angrily at a jammed access door… but she’d take what she could get.
While Declan wrestled with the stuck (or, as was far more likely, locked) metal door, Alex crept closer to the rooftop’s edge and stared out over the sleeping city. The world below was bathed in the golden glow of street lights and covered by a fraction of an inch of quickly vanishing snow. A sparse amount of foot traffic meandered along the sidewalks below, oblivious to her presence.
The London Eye was lit beautifully by blue and purple lights in the distance, and just to the left of the soaring circular Ferris wheel, and across the River Thames, was the Palace of Westminster and its iconic clock tower, Big Ben, shining like a beacon in the night.
Alex sniffed the air. An enticing aroma was wafting from the direction of a Tandoori restaurant and takeaway up the street. The ensuing growl from her stomach reminded her she hadn’t actually eaten anything since the day before.
Declan was still struggling with the door.
“Oh, come on.” He kicked it in frustration.
“Use the force, Luke,” she said in her best Obi-Wan impression, smiling at the aggravated look on his face.
“Funny,” he said, sizing up the door. “Very funny.”
What was it with guys and admitting defeat to inanimate objects?
Sink’s broken? Someone get me a wrench. No, no. It’s supposed to spit water like that. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.
Car making an odd noise? Someone get me a wrench. No, no. That metal bit is supposed to fall off every time we take a left turn. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.
Watching Cassie’s dad, her older brothers, and Connor over the years had left Alex with an even greater appreciation for her Aunt Cil. At least her aunt was sensible enough to call a repairman when she knew she couldn’t fix something.
Declan formed a sphere of electricity and took aim at the door.
“Declan,” she chided. “What are you—”
“Trust me,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Alex sighed. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
She dre
w the sphere out his hand and shrank it until the crackling blue light blinked out of existence. Grabbing the sleeve of Declan’s hoodie, she dragged him to the back of the building, where it overlooked the alley below.
Empty.
Alex jumped, taking Declan with her. They reappeared in the shadowy passageway.
“It’s called a front door, Declan.”
Yick. What she wouldn’t give for a pair of shoes right about now. Alex led the way on tiptoe, picking her way carefully across the cobblestones and back toward the main road.
“Which one is it?” she asked when confronted with a long row of identical white doorsteps, each flanked by a pair of white columns and four thin steps leading up to a small stoop and glossy, black lacquered doors.
“You can’t guess?” said Declan as they continued on down the street.
A few residences down, one doorstep stood out from the rest.
Attached to the wall, the columns, and even hanging from the ceiling above, were close to a dozen CCTV cameras, each focused on a different area of the doorstep and the street in front of the building.
They climbed the steps and Declan reached forward to press the buzzer on the intercom.
Alex half expected an angry ginger man with a curly mustache to pop out of nowhere and ask who rang that bell. Instead, the cameras mounted above swiveled down to focus in on them.
“Declan!” said a happily surprised—and somewhat nasally—voice though an intercom speaker. The giddy tone was immediately replaced with suspicion. “What are you doing at my front door?”
“Need some help, Oz,” he said. “And the door on the roof was locked.”
“Hm.” One of the myriad cameras above twitched to the left, focused on Alex, and zoomed in. Alex pulled Declan’s jacket tighter around her. “Who’s that with you?”
“She’s a friend, Oz,” said Declan. “Can you just let us in already? It’s freaking freezing out here. And she doesn’t have shoes.”
The camera panned down. “What are you doing in London in the middle of the night with a shoeless brunette, Declan?”
“Enough with the shoes already,” muttered Alex. She leaned toward the intercom. “Hello, um, Oz, is it? Yeah, hi. We’re really sorry to bother you Mr., um… Mr. Oz, but we ah…” A different camera twitched in her direction. “We need help, and Declan said you were the man to see. Can you please just let us in?”
